#again. the concept of translating this idea into tangible plot

[a-bucket-full-of-feels]

Thoughts after watching BanG Dream! It's MyGO!!!!! as a former Bandori fan

I used to be a rather active Bandori fan back in the day, actively playing Girls' Band Party (Garupa), listening to their original music and covers, and I even watched all 3 seasons of the anime. However, I eventually stopped playing the game, because I no longer felt compelled to keep up with the events, and following that I eventually lost interest in the music they've put out, both old and new. That was shortly after Morfonica was added to the game, so when MyGO!!!! was announced, I was already quite far removed from the fandom, though I did see promotional materials and briefly thought it was an interesting band concept at first. The reason I decided to give the MyGO anime a shot was because I had seen discussions mostly on Reddit on how good the anime was, and also how MyGO interestingly became extremely popular in China, which is fascinating because usually newer bands or members would never reach the same level of popularity as the OGs (take the Love Live franchise and AKB group for example). And after watching the anime, I could totally understand why it's so highly raved about.

Having read several band and event stories in Garupa (I played on the JP server so the only way to understand the stories was to rely on dedicated fan translations), I have seen how the Bandori writing team is able to craft great character development arcs and drama through the in-game stories, and these band and event stories are integral parts to each character's development, since a 13-episode anime can't possibly do justice to their massive cast. In contrast, the anime plots I have always found to be mediocre at best, mostly focusing on light drama and finding ways to showcase performances (though I remember the season with RAS as one of the main bands did flesh out the drama in RAS' backstory pretty well). In a sense, the anime was more of a companion piece to the game stories. So when I watched the MyGO anime, I was surprised at how well written the anime was, sufficient to be a standalone piece, and how gritty and realistic the drama was.

The first 2 episodes kind of started off slow at first, setting up the premise for the formation of the band - the breakup of a previous band which wasn't a completely original idea, given that Saaya also had a similar backstory in the Popipa anime. But what made this plot point shine in MyGO is how tangible it made the trauma of CRYCHIC's breakup feel through the lens of different characters. Episode 3 was an excellent demonstration of this storytelling through the lens of Tomori, from how she used to be an awkward kid who was detached from her emotions, till Sakiko brought the band together which gave her something to love, and then abruptly taking it away from her by disbanding CRYCHIC. Likewise, we're given equal opportunities to step into the emotional turmoil of the different characters, like how Taki struggles with her inferiority complex when she faces the task of composing music for the band (which Sakiko used to handle); or how Anon struggles with running away from challenges that are too daunting for her; or how Raana has been drifting around, unable to find a band or place she wants to stay put in; and then there's Soyo.

Holy shit, I know I'm not the first person to recognise it but Soyo's arc really was something else and I really loved how they executed it. She seemed to be a nice, friendly girl at first (as compared to Taki's brash attitude to the "outsider" Anon, owing to her over-protectiveness towards Tomori), but here and there little hints are dropped, like how she repeatedly approaches Mutsumi about joining the new band and contacting Sakiko, to the scenes where she constantly looks at her old CRYCHIC photos. And then she snaps at the end of episode 7 and we find out her true intentions - she wants to re-form CRYCHIC all over again and is willing to abandon the "new" members Anon and Raana so that the original members will be together again. Beneath that well-mannered mask of hers is a possessive, manipulative girl, and also a desperate and lonely girl who cannot let go of her memories of CRYCHIC - that scene when she literally goes onto her knees to beg Sakiko felt so raw, I was impressed that Bandori was willing to write such a morally complex character for their series, I literally thought she was just the rich girl version of Imai Lisa at first. And what's interesting is at the end, Soyo doesn't completely "get over" this - she still holds on to the trauma and memories from CRYCHIC'S breakup, but still moves on with her activities in MyGO.

And speaking of morally questionable girls, I also want to talk about arguably the antagonist of the series, the one who caused all the trauma, Sakiko. In the final episode, we're given a plausible explanation to why Sakiko abruptly quit the band and joined Haneoka High instead of staying in rich girl's Tsukinomori - due to her family's sudden financial downturn and her father turning to alocholism to cope (that would explain the latter, but it may not be the only reason for the former). And similar to Soyo's arc, there were also little hints dropped like how in the present day she is always seen outside her former home rather than indoors, and how she only plays Haneoka's music room piano instead of her own, and Nyamu's comment about coming to an expensive place which could be beyond her budget. Though, it seems like the full development of Sakiko's story would occur in the Ave Mujica anime, but nonetheless, I really appreciated this touch of realism in Sakiko's character - because in "idol" series and Bandori included, most of the time the character drama is developed around less heavy topics, like maybe their lack of confidence or failing at something once and not wanting to try it again for fear of failure. It seems like the Ave Mujica anime will be even grittier so I'm quite interested in how it will play out.

In terms of things I think could have been improved, definitely one thing is that they could have developed Raana's story a bit more. Given that she's the granddaughter of the old lady who ran SPACE in S1 before it closed, it would've been interesting to learn about her relationship with her grandmother and why she clings on so dearly to her old guitar, and why she spent all this time wandering around by herself without forming a band despite her technical prowess. Though she does serve her purpose to lighten the mood in an otherwise heavy show, so perhaps her character will shine more in the Garupa stories.

Overall, I really enjoyed It's MyGO!!!! and can see why it fared excellently as a standalone anime, while also working as a piece part of the larger Bandori universe (especially with all the cameos and references). Will I play Garupa again just for them? No, it's too much time commitment to restart Garupa at this point. But will I listen to their music? Hell yeah I will - I really like their style of music, which to me is reminiscent of artists/bands like Atarayo and Minami, so I'll definitely follow the music they release. (IMO, they're the aesthetic I was hoping Afterglow was supposed to have but somehow I never really got into their original songs that much...)

[theusurpersdog]

An Avenging Dragon

A Storm of Swords is the second big push Daenerys gets on her path to becoming a much darker person; at the end of A Game of Thrones she is hatching dragons, but her plot pauses substantially in A Clash of Kings. While she is in a higher position, travelling through the Red Waste and staying in Qarth doesn’t give her an opportunity to actually lead her people that much; she still leads them in more subtle and understated ways, but A Storm of Swords puts her back in a position to take military action. Back in the Lhazareen village, Daenerys did not have the stomach to be the conqueror she tried to be, and in this book we see how she’s grown and changed since hatching her dragons.

Bred For War

The first two books establish a very strong symbolic connection between Daenerys and her dragons, and hint at an actual physical link between them, but A Storm of Swords is the first book to really expand on the concept.

Throughout the book, there is countless examples of Daenerys’ mood actively translating to her dragons. They are particularly in touch with Daenerys’ passionate emotions; whenever Daenerys get angry with someone, her dragons also stir:

Her dragons sensed her fury. Viserion roared, and smoke rose grey from his snout. Drogon beat the air with black wings, and Rhaegal twisted his head back and belched flame

Dany felt hot tears on her cheeks. Drogon screamed, lashing his tail back and forth.

And when Daenerys is having sex with Irri, her dragons seem to experience it with her:

Still, the relief she wanted seemed to recede before her, until her dragons stirred, and one screamed out across the cabin

She screamed then. Or perhaps that was Drogon.

Daenerys and her dragons have become so interchangeable that she herself can’t tell one from the other.

This very tangible connection she has with them works on two different levels; it highlights that Dany’s dragons want what she wants, and also works to strengthen the symbolic connection she shares with them. By making this emotional connection explicit, GRRM strengthens the parallels between Daenerys and her dragons that are meant to be subtext. As the dragons begin to really grow, they develop personalities and traits that reflect on Daenerys:

At first Groleo had wanted the dragons caged and Dany had consented to put his fears at ease, but their misery was so palpable, that she soon changed her mind and insisted they be freed.

He was always hungry, her Drogon.

Daenerys’ dragons hate being held back in any way; they aren’t happy until they can soar over the ocean, free to hunt and fly wherever they want. This doesn’t fully pay off until Daenerys chains them at the start of A Dance with Dragons, but GRRM is seeding that being chained is something that both the dragons and Daenerys will hate.

It also feeds into the larger narrative point that Daenerys herself is a dragon. She herself starts to realize this as time passes, and she grows more and more comfortable equating herself to one. Back in A Game of Thrones, she called herself “the blood of the dragon”, and when she compared herself to a dragon, it was often in symbolic terms, in a removed sort of way. She still does that in A Storm of Swords, but she is also much more direct in her language when she says she is a dragon:

“I have a dragon’s temper, that’s all. You must not let it frighten you.”

The anger was fierce and hot inside her when she gave the command; it made her feel like an avenging dragon

She had not meant to be so sharp with Ser Jorah, but his endless suspicion had finally woken her dragon.

“YOU ARE THE DRAGON’S NOW!”

And not only is she comfortable directly stating she is a dragon, she uses it to excuse her behavior; especially in the context of Jorah “waking her dragon”. Not that it is at all wrong for Daenerys to lash out at Jorah, considering his abhorrent behavior toward her; but that particular phrase is something Daenerys is familiar with because Viserys used it as both a threat and a justification. It’s a way for Daenerys to excuse her outbursts as a right she has as a Targaryen; dragons can do whatever they want, and can’t be held accountable for the things they do.

Looking beyond the connection Daenerys has to her own dragons, the history of House Targaryen is starting to become ominously present within her chapters. I’ll get into Old Valyria and Aegon’s Conquest more below, but this particular line about the Targaryen’s dragons is very interesting:

“the dragons the Seven Kingdoms knew best were those of House Targaryen. They were bred for war, and in war they died. It is no easy thing to slay a dragon, but it can be done.”

Daario is introduced in this book, and with him the idea of Daenerys having to choose between peace or war, so this quote seems particularly damning for the choices she will make.

As Daenerys’ connection to her House grows, the parallels she shares with her brother Rhaegar also start to become apparent. Jorah always said that Rhaegar was the last dragon, before he saw Daenerys step out of Drogo’s Pyre, and as the books go on it’s made clear that the title of “the last dragon” is really hers. She is fascinated by her brother, and even dreams of herself standing in his shoes:

That night she dreamt that she was Rhaegar, riding to the Trident. But she was mounted on a dragon, not a horse. When she saw the Usurper’s rebel host across the river they were armored all in ice, but she bathed them in dragonfire and they melted away like dew and turned the Trident into a torrent.

And when she is trying to work up her courage to turn Drogon and the Unsullied against the Great Masters, she thinks to herself “It is time to cross the Trident”. Unlike Viserys, who Daenerys had to live under and experience his cruelty, Rhaegar is just a story to her; someone who can be as brave and heroic, as Romantic and honorable, as inspiring as she needs him to be.

In many ways, Rhaegar represents all the same things to Daenerys that Westeros does. Just as she cannot acknowledge the possibility of fault in Westeros (“She tried to imagine what it would feel like, when she first caught sight of the land she was born to rule. It will be as fair a shore as I have ever seen, I know it. How could it be otherwise?”), Daenerys also sees Rhaegar as flawless; instead of placing blame on him for running away from Elia Martell and his children, she asks Ser Barristan just how awful Elia was to make him abandon her. Part of why she feels so uncomfortable buying the Unsullied to fight for her as slaves, is because Rhaegar’s men followed him out of love and loyalty, which leads to Jorah Mormont’s famous line:

“Tell me, then-when he touched a man on the shoulder with his sword, what did he say? ‘Go forth and kill the weak’? At the Trident, those brave men Viserys spoke of who died beneath our dragon banners-did they give their lives because they believed in Rhaegar’s cause, or because they had been bought and paid for?” Dany turned to Mormont, crossed her arms, and waited for an answer.

“My queen,” the big man said slowly, “all you say is true. But Rhaegar lost on the Trident. He lost the battle, he lost the war, he lost the kingdom, and he lost his life. His blood swirled downriver with the rubies from his breastplate, and Robert the Usurper rode over his corpse to steal the Iron Throne. Rhaegar fought valiantly, Rhaegar fought nobly, Rhaegar fought honorably. And Rhaegar died.”

I find this argument between Jorah and Daenerys so important because we’re definitely not supposed to agree with Jorah. The idea that Rhaegar’s honor got him killed flies in the face of why he had to fight at the Trident to begin with; that he had run off from his wife with a young girl, and refused to stand against his father’s tyranny. Yet it also highlights Daenerys’ continued lack of understanding of what Robert’s Rebellion or Westeros really is; Daenerys specifically asks Jorah what Rhaegar said when he knighted men, the implication being that the men Rhaegar chose to knight were honorable and good. But we know that the greatest tragedy that befell Dany’s family during Robert’s Rebellion, the rape and murder of Elia Martell and her children, was carried out by Ser Gregor Clegane, who was knighted by none other than Prince Rhaegar Targaryen.

Knowing Daenerys shares such a strong connection to her brother, it makes the details we know of Rhaegar’s personality very interesting:

“Perhaps so, Your Grace.” Whitebeard paused a moment. “But I am not certain it was in Rhaegar to be happy.”

“You make him sound so sour,” Dany protested.

“Not sour, no, but. . . there was a melancholy to Prince Rhaegar, a sense. . .” The old man hesitated again.

“Say it,” she urged. “A sense. . . ?”

“. . . of doom. He was born in grief, my queen, and that shadow hung over him all his days.”

Melancholic is a very apt way to describe Daenerys in A Storm of Swords. Whether it be fear of betrayal, a profound sense of loneliness, the trauma of her past, or any other number of worries, Daenerys is incredibly sad throughout her chapters. She often finds herself crying, set off by small things, and she doesn’t even understand what drove her to tears. Similar to Rhaegar, I’m not certain Daenerys has it in her to be happy. The struggle between Dany who wants to live in a house with a red door, and Daenerys Targaryen who wants to be a Queen and Conqueror, is such a huge part of her story and in A Storm of Swords and A Dance with Dragons, is expressed through Daenerys having to choose peace or war. As we saw in A Game of Thrones and A Clash of Kings, choosing peace wasn’t enough for her; she could not let herself live as a khaleesi, or return and rule Vaes Tolorro. But when she chooses war, she isn’t particularly satisfied with that either:

Up here in her garden Dany sometimes felt like a god, living atop the highest mountain in the world.

Do all gods feel so lonely? Some must, surely.

The red priests believed in two gods, she had heard, but two who were eternally at war. Dany liked that even less. She would not want to be eternally at war.

The way Barristan Selmy describes Rhaegar as being shadowed by grief his entire life is also very true of Daenerys, and reminiscent of the Undying Ones calling her daughter of death. Her mother died giving birth to her, she was named “Stormborn” because her father’s fleet was crushed on the night of her birth, and her entire arc is shrouded in death; whether that be Viserys, Rhaego, or Drogo. And as Barristan says of Rhaegar, what I’ve been trying to outline in these metas is just how much a sense of doom follows Daenerys Targaryen.

Bricks & Blood

Daenerys’ complex relationship to slavery is driven to the forefront of her story when she arrives in Slaver’s Bay. While it has always been present in her story, from her first chapter when she was sold to Khal Drogo, it isn’t really the focus until she goes to Astapor to buy the Unsullied. It’s such an interesting part of her story, because it highlights both the best and worst of her personality; it gives her a chance to chase the ideal of being the Breaker of Chains, but also really shines a light on how little she understands what she’s doing, and how little patience she has to actually be a savior.

There is a lot of focus placed on the middle and end of Daenerys’ arc in A Storm of Swords, but it’s important to consider how she began her journey to Slaver’s Bay: to buy a slave army. Trying to argue the exact moment Daenerys decided to burn Kraznys and free the Unsullied is pointless, because GRRM writes her as intentionally vague in Astapor to keep the element of surprise, but it’s inarguable that she arrives there with the intent to buy the Unsullied:

“If Magister Illyrio would deny you, he is only Xaro Xhoan Daxos with four chins. And if he is sincere in his devotion to your cause, he will not begrudge you three shiploads of trade goods. What better use for his tiger skins than to buy you the beginnings of an army?

That’s true. Dany felt a rising excitement.

. . .

“Yes,” she decided. “I’ll do it!” Dany threw back the coverlets and hopped from the bunk. “I’ll see the captain at once, command him to set course for Astapor.”

And once she’s in Astapor, Daenerys is clearly torn on what decision to make. Barristan and Jorah act as the angel and devil on her shoulder, and through her debate with them we can see how and why Daenerys makes her choices. When she is faced with Barristan’s steadfast refusal of the Unsullied as a potential army, we get to see Daenerys arguing for the buying of slaves, and I find her justifications quite interesting:

“There are sellswords in Pentos and Myr and Tyrosh you can hire. A man who kills for coin has no honor, but at least they are no slaves. Find your army there, I beg you.”

“My brother visited Pentos, Myr, Braavos, near all the Free Cities. The magisters and archons fed him wine and promises, but his soul was starved to death. A man cannot sup from the beggar’s bowl all his life and stay a man. I had my taste in Qarth, that was enough. I will not come to Pentos bowl in hand.”

For Daenerys, it doesn’t matter how wrong slavery is or how negatively it will be received in Westeros, because it cannot be worse than having to beg. In her mind, she believes that having to beg the rich men of the Free Cities to help him caused Viserys to become the cruel monster he was, and Daenerys thinks that the same could happen to her; which implies that Daenerys sees Viserys’ reaction as either valid or inevitable – either way, it’s troubling.

What’s also troubling is how Daenerys uses her past to justify her present actions:

“Better to come a beggar than a slaver,” Arstan said.

“There speaks one who has been neither.” Dany’s nostrils flared. “Do you know what it is like to be sold, squire? I do. My brother sold me to Khal Drogo for the promise of a golden crown. Well, Drogo crowned him in gold, though not as he had wished, and I. . . my sun-and-stars made a queen of me, but if he had been a different man, it might have been much otherwise. Do you think I have forgotten how it felt to be afraid?”

The concept of slavery does not bother Daenerys, the brutality does. I briefly mentioned when I wrote about her A Clash of Kings chapters that Daenerys doesn’t think twice about Xaro’s slaves, which seems to be at odds with her actions in Slaver’s Bay; but I think this is because Daenerys isn’t really opposed to owning people, as long as they are treated well. She can buy a slave army, because she would treat them well, so it wouldn’t be wrong. But once she arrives in Astapor, and has to see the way the men are treated, she can’t lie to herself about her actions anymore. But, just as she did in the Lhazareen village, Daenerys tries to overcome horrific violence to continue in her actions:

She was feeling faint. The heat, she tried to tell herself.

She can’t bring herself to ignore the suffering of the Unsullied, though, as her fight with Jorah shows:

“How many men do they have for sale?”

“None.” Was it Mormont she was angry with, or this city with its sullen heat, its stinks and sweats and crumbling bricks? “They sell eunuchs, not men. Eunuchs made of brick, like the rest of Astapor. Shall I buy eight thousand brick eunuchs with dead eyes that never move, who kill suckling babes for the sake of a spiked hat and strangle their own dogs?

“If you were my true knight, you would never have brought me to this vile sty.”

But it is dark below, in the streets and plazas and fighting pits. And it is darkest of all in the barracks, where some little boy is feeding scraps to the puppy they gave him when they took away his manhood.

“The blood of my enemies I will shed gladly. The blood of innocents is another matter. Eight thousand Unsullied they would offer me. Eight thousand dead babes. Eight thousand strangled dogs.”

Seeing the dehumanization of the Unsullied makes Daenerys feel physically sick. Being exposed to that extreme level of cruelty stirs something in Daenerys; she has high ideals of what a King or Queen is for, and seeing so many abused people makes her want to stand up and fight for them. I’ll get into Daenerys’ version of justice more later, but I think it’s very important to understand how she sees herself. Freeing the Unsullied is in no way altruistic – it allows her to get everything she wants and lose nothing – but Daenerys doesn’t do it for entirely selfish reasons. This is how the scene is described:

She raised the harpy’s fingers in the air. . . and then she flung the scourge aside. “Freedom!” she sang out. “Dracarys! Dracarys!”

She believes she’s setting the Unsullied free, she’s singing out the words: Freedom!

But that’s not entirely true. Before she sets the Plaza ablaze, Daenerys specifically asks Kraznys about it:

“The Good Master has said that these eunuchs cannot be tempted with coin or flesh,” Dany told the girl, “but if some enemy of mine should offer them freedom for betraying me. . .”

“They would kill him out of hand and bring her his head, tell her that,” the slaver answered. “Other slaves may steal and hoard up silver in hopes of buying freedom, but an Unsullied would not take it if the little mare offered it as a gift. They have no life outside their duty. They are soldiers, and that is all.”

“It is soldiers I need,” Dany admitted.

Daenerys is being told in no uncertain terms that the Unsullied are trained not to understand the concept of freedom. And, by her own actions, we can see that she believed Kraznys:

She stood in her stirrups and raised the harpy’s fingers above her head for all the Unsullied to see. “IT IS DONE!” she cried at the top of her lungs. “YOU ARE MINE!” She gave the mare her heels and galloped along the first rank, holding the fingers high. “YOU ARE THE DRAGON’S NOW! YOU’RE BOUGHT AND PAID FOR! IT IS DONE! IT IS DONE!”

Daenerys makes sure the Unsullied know that she is their Master now, screaming it as loud as she can and waving the Harpy high above her for them to see, before giving the command for them to sack Astapor. Not until after they obey, does she drop the scourge. Again, Daenerys loves the idea of liberating people and she loves a version of freedom, but she doesn’t fully understand what slavery is.

A part of her is uncomfortable with her actions, though, and that comes through the most in her interaction with her handmaiden Irri. When she was khaleesi to Khal Drogo, Daenerys’ two handmaidens were her slaves, and even though she set them free at the end of A Game of Thrones, Irri doesn’t fully understand what that means:

Dany stepped away from her. “No. Irri, you do not need to do that. What happened that night, when you woke . . . you’re no bed slave, I freed you, remember? You . . .”

“I am handmaid to the Mother of Dragons,” the girl said. “It is great honor to please my khaleesi.”

When Daenerys hears this, it does not please her:

"I don't want that," she insisted. "I don't."

On some level, Daenerys understands that having sex with Irri is exploitative and wrong:

For a moment Dany was tempted, but it was Drogo she wanted, or perhaps Daario. Not Irri. The maid was sweet and skillful, but all her kisses tasted of duty.

But we’ll see in A Dance with Dragons that Daenerys continues to have sex with Irri.

I want to pause for a moment and explain why I say that Irri and the Unsullied don’t understand what their new found freedom means. I am not trying to infantilize them or remove their agency. But years and years of dehumanization and abuse have tried to take their agency from them; the Unsullied are violated, tortured, drugged, and emotionally and psychologically manipulated from the time they are little boys, all with the goal of stripping them of the very concept of self. That level of emotional damage can’t be solved by simply setting them free, especially when they’re given the option to live in their old patterns. While we don’t have details about Irri’s upbringing, we know that she was a slave Viserys was able to buy specifically to serve Daenerys, and spent a year or more of her life as Dany’s slave. So, on top of the trauma inflicted on Irri and the Unsullied through years of being told their lives were not their own, there is the added layer of them actually being Daenerys’ property at a point in their lives. It is one thing to be treated as property your whole life, and then someone comes along and tells you that you’re now free; it is quite another for someone who also treated you like property to then give you your freedom. Daenerys is, even if unintentionally, taking advantage of the slaves she freed.

This complicated relationship to slavery also gives Daenerys yet another connection to her Targaryen - and Valyrian - heritage. When she arrives in Astapor, she remembers how the Valyrians destroyed the empire of Old Ghis:

Old Ghis had fallen five thousand years ago, if she remembered true; its legions shattered by the might of young Valyria, its brick walls pulled down, its streets and buildings turned to ash and cinder by dragonflame, its very fields sown with salt, sulfur, and skulls.

Lore from The World of Ice and Fire expands on this, clarifying that the “Freehold” of Valyria learned slavery from the conquered cities of Old Ghis, and their first slaves were the Ghiscari they had taken prisoner. Similar to her ancestors, Daenerys quickly starts to profit off of selling slaves:

Dany thought a moment. "Any man who wishes to sell himself into slavery may do so. Or woman." She raised a hand. "But they may not sell their children, nor a man his wife."

"In Astapor the city took a tenth part of the price, each time a slave changed hands," Missandei told her.

"We'll do the same," Dany decided. Wars were won with gold as much as swords. "A tenth part. In gold or silver coin, or ivory. Meereen has no need of saffron, cloves, or zorse hides."

Daenerys is careful to put boundaries around men selling themselves into slavery, trying to avoid people being forced back into the slave trade, but she is equally quick to make a profit off of the trade. Now that Daenerys is directly benefiting from the selling of slaves, she has less of a reason to discourage it. It’s also unsettling how she hears of how Astapor ruled, the city responsible for the atrocities of the Plaza of Punishment, and decides we’ll do the same. Like her ancestors, Daenerys is starting to fall into the patterns of Ghis and their slave trade. She is still far from being the same as the men she hates, but she is profiting off the buying and selling of human beings, which is morally bankrupt. She could have allowed the men to sell themselves back into slavery without taking ten percent, but instead she chose to follow the example set by Astapor.

Valyria and the cities of Slaver’s Bay are extremely intertwined, and Daenerys deciding to adopt Astapor’s slave tax is just one in a long list of similarities. Before Old Ghis was conquered by the Freehold of Valyria, they were in the slave trade but had an elite source of free fighting men; then Valyria salted the very ground Ghis was built upon, and adopted their people as slaves to send into the volcanic mines, where so many slaves died it would “defy comprehension”; after Valyria drowned in the Fourteen Flames, the cities of Old Ghis were reborn as Slaver’s Bay, now with no willing men to fight for them, and thus created the Unsullied. The two empires feed off each other in a twisted cycle of human suffering (one could almost say Valyria helped create a wheel?) where one is never better than the other, and only grow more similar. By the time Daenerys comes to Astapor, the Ghiscari don’t even have their language anymore and instead speak Valyrian.

The old rhyme Barristan Selmy tells Daenerys really highlights how similar the two empires became:

"Bricks and blood built Astapor," Whitebeard murmured at her side, "and bricks and blood her people."

"What is that?" Dany asked him, curious.

"An old rhyme a maester taught me, when I was a boy. I never knew how true it was. The bricks of Astapor are red with the blood of the slaves who make them."

The meaning of the rhyme is not hard to see; the slaves are the ones who built Astapor brick by brick, the very stones stained in their blood.

Knowing why Valyria took slaves – so they could work the fire mines – it is incredibly easy to make this rhyme about the Freehold:

Fire & Blood built Valyria, and fire and blood her people.

While Daenerys is far removed from the atrocities of both the Valyrians and the Ghiscari, she fails to understand how her own people helped to create the environment in which Slaver’s Bay could exist. In her mind, the six battles Valyria fought with Old Ghis is a legend of her people’s greatness, and that Valyria was somehow better than the people it conquered. One could almost argue the opposite was true, though, since they took the Ghiscari and sent them to work slave mines inside literal active volcanoes. Daenerys doesn’t know the history of her people, of her house (who brought their slaves with them to Dragonstone), so when she conquers cities in the name of House Targaryen, as the blood of Old Valyria, she doesn’t understand what she’s saying. But she is actively benefiting from an empire that served to make Essos an even worse place than they found it.

I Am Only A Young Girl, And Do Not Know the Ways of War

A Clash of Kings gave Daenerys a taste of what being a Queen was going to be, but A Storm of Swords throws her into it. Between the moments that Daenerys loves, such as setting the Plaza of Punishment afire or being named Mhysa, she has to deal with the actual day to day of leading a people. We get to see her in political situations, making diplomatic negotiations, and making policy for her people. This is the book that gives us the first real taste of what Daenerys could or would be like as Queen of the Seven Kingdoms. And I think we start to see why Daenerys shouldn’t be Queen of the Seven Kingdoms. She loves the feeling of being a leader to her people, but the actual role she has to play as Queen is so incredibly boring to her.

After conquering Astapor, Daenerys is faced with the question of how to take Yunkai. She doesn’t want to abandon all the slaves in the city, but she also does not want to risk the lives of her men and she knows they don’t have the supplies to last a siege. Smartly, Daenerys decides to meet with the commanders of the sellsword companies and also envoys from Yunkai; but her behavior during her meeting does more harm than good:

“I say, you are mad.”

“Am I?” Dany shrugged, and said, “Dracarys.”

The dragons answered. Rhaegal hissed and smoked, Viserion snapped, and Drogon spat swirling red-black flame. It touched the drape of Grazdan’s tokar, and the silk caught in half a heartbeat. Golden marks spilled across the carpets as the envoy stumbled over the chest, shouting curses and beating at his arm until Whitebeard flung a flagon of water over him to douse the flames. “You swore I should have safe conduct!” the Yunkish envoy wailed.

“Do all the Yunkai’i whine so over a singed tokar?”

We learn in A Dance with Dragons that this is used against her quite often, and not entirely unfairly. She swore the men would have safe conduct, and then turned her dragons against them. No real damage was done, but it leaves a lasting impression on the men who were there. And Daenerys has no real reason to threaten him in that manner; her dragons are too small to threaten the safety of a city, and she is trying to propose a nonviolent conquering of the city. She does it because her temper is raised, and Grazdan said she was mad. I don’t think it’s bad that Daenerys has such a heavy disdain for the men of Slaver’s Bay, considering how they treat her and even more so how they treat their slaves, but she tries to have it both ways; offering to meet with them and give them safe passage, and also insulting and attacking them. She tries to be the kind of Queen who can meet with her enemies, but she can never follow through.

When she arrives outside the gates of Meereen, Daenerys is given another opportunity to try her hand at politics, and this is her in her element. The champion that Meereen sends is Oznak zo Pahl, a highborn pit fighter, and Daenerys has to carefully decide who she is willing to send to face him; Greyworm, Jorah, and Daario are all eager to prove their bravery and impress her, but Daenerys knows none of them are the right choice:

“Strong Belwas was a slave, here in the fighting pits. If this highborn Oznak should fall to such the Great Masters will be shamed, while if he wins . . . well, it is a poor victory for one so noble, one that Meereen can take no pride in.” And unlike Ser Jorah, Daario, Brown Ben, and her three bloodriders, the eunuch did not lead troops, plan battles, or give her counsel. He does nothing but eat and boast and bellow at Arstan. Belwas was the man she could most easily spare. And it was time she learned what sort of protector Magister Illyrio had sent her.

Where the peace of politics does not sit right with her, Daenerys is incredibly smart and intuitive when it comes to war and conquest. Her choosing Strong Belwas as her champion was a well-made decision and the best she could have made. But it also highlights something about Daenerys personality, which being Queen exacerbates; there is almost a thoughtlessness to how Daenerys sends Belwas out to die for her. Daenerys has an incredible amount of loyalty to those who follow her, especially after they proclaim her Mhysa, but she also has less concern for people when they are not loyal to her. There is a thread that connects all the people Daenerys loves the most, from the people who follow her, to Ser Jorah, to Daario; they live for her. She is capable and often loves and shows sympathy for people who aren’t centered around her, but Daenerys is attached to the idea of being a savior. Daenerys invests in people when they invest in her. That in and of itself is not a bad thing; but she invests so much in certain people that she seems to almost forget the lives of others.

That becomes incredibly destructive when she becomes Queen of Meereen, because it’s symptomatic of how self-centric her worldview is, but the full weight of that isn’t explored until A Dance with Dragons. There is small hints of how Daenerys can treat people sometimes, though, such as this:

Irri had been sleeping at the foot of her bunk (it was too narrow for three, and tonight was Jhiqui’s turn to share the soft featherbed with her khaleesi)

Daenerys lets one of her handmaidens sleep on the floor every night. Not because she’s being cruel or malicious, but because she doesn’t seem to notice how uncomfortable that must be for them. Unintentionally, Daenerys takes advantage of her position of power by allowing people to do things like sleep on the floor or go out to die for her, and does not think twice about these decisions. Being in a position of power, especially being a Queen in a medieval setting, puts people in a position where they have control over other people’s lives and their deaths, so when Daenerys has to make these choices, she should approach them with a great weight. And sometimes, often even, she does; but there are noticeable slips, moments where she outweighs the lives she controls, that are slightly alarming. A Dance with Dragons gets into this aspect of Daenerys a lot more, but it’s been present in all her chapters and A Storm of Swords is no exception.

Mhysa

So much of Daenerys’ arc is about her family, legacy, and motherhood. She is constantly being pulled in two different direction in life, whether that be by outside forces or her own internal monologue, and who she chooses to mother is no different. Her two identities, Mother of Dragons and Mhysa, stand at odds with each other.

Mirri Maz Duur telling Daenerys that she can’t have children impacts her hugely, and she invests in her dragons as if they were her children:

She felt very lonely all of a sudden. Mirri Maz Duur had promised that she would never bear a living child. House Targaryen will end with me. That made her sad. “You must be my children,” she told the dragons, “my three fierce children. Arstan says dragons live longer than men, so you will go on after I am dead.”

So much of what drives Daenerys is the idea that she’s alone in the world, that no one else is like her. House Targaryen will end with me. The way she bonds with her dragons is her attempt at having children, giving herself a future that can outlive her. She becomes fiercely protective and maternal over them:

At first Groleo had wanted the dragons caged and Dany had consented to put his fears at ease, but their misery was so palpable, that she soon changed her mind and insisted they be freed.

And she watches them learn and grow with tremendous pride:

Viserion’s scales were the color of fresh cream, his horns, wing bones, and spinal crest a dark gold that flashed bright as metal in the sun. Rhaegal was made of the green of summer and the bronze of fall. They soared above the ships in wide circles, higher and higher, each trying to climb above the other.

The joy she gets as they learn the command “dracarys” or watches them fly for the first time, is like a parent. Her dragons are the only children she will ever have, and she is determined to love them more than anything in the world. And beyond just being a mother, they become her identity; back in A Game of Thrones she thought to herself “daughter of dragons, bride of dragons, mother of dragons”. She thinks that she wants them to be her legacy when she dies, but they already are; everything she does is because of them. Just the idea of giving Drogon away makes her feel sick:

It was a wretched thing she did. The Mother of Dragons has sold her strongest child. Even the thought made her ill.

By the time she has told Kraznys this lie, that’s all it is; she never intended to sell Drogon. Saying the words, hollow as they were, is enough to turn her stomach. Her dragons are everything to her, even her identity.

And then she arrives outside the gates of Yunkai:

Dany felt a lightness in her chest. I will never bear a living child, she remembered. Her hand trembled as she raised it. Perhaps she smiled. She must have, because the man grinned and shouted again, and others took up the cry. “Mhysa!” they called. “Mhysa! MHYSA!” They were all smiling at her, reaching for her, kneeling before her.

Suddenly there are thousands of people, cheering, screaming, that she is their mother. These people that she liberated, that she saved, are now looking up to her like they’re her children. She has more than the dragons now; she has a people that are hers.

By the time we get to A Dance with Dragons, even though she tries not to, Daenerys just hates these people. She hates their city, she hates their culture, she hates all the things they’ve taken from her. But to understand how she ends up so miserable, you have to see just how much she loved them and was willing to give up for them:

The raggle-taggle host of freedmen dwarfed her own, but they were more burden than benefit. Perhaps one in a hundred had a donkey, a camel, or an ox; most carried weapons looted from some slaver’s armory, but only one in ten was strong enough to fight, and none was trained. They ate the land bare as they passed, like locusts in sandals. Yet Dany could not bring herself to abandon them as Ser Jorah and her bloodriders urged. I told them they were free. I cannot tell them now they are not free to join me. She gazed at the smoke rising from their cookfires and swallowed a sigh. She might have the best footsoldiers in the world, but she also had the worst.

Already there’s hints of Daenerys’ frustration, but she refuses to leave them behind. Even though they’re quickly eating through her food supplies, eating off the land so quickly she can’t gain more, and almost none of them can actually fight for her, she lets them come with her. And when taking Meereen without a slaughter seems impossible, Daenerys’ men again advise her to abandon all the people she brought with her from Astapor and Yunkai, but she refuses:

Dany had left a trail of corpses behind her when she crossed the red waste. It was a sight she never meant to see again. “No,” she said. “I will not march my people off to die.” My children.

She rides out among them, so they can see her and get strength from her:

If it helps give them courage, let them touch me, she thought. There are hard trials yet ahead. . .

The language of that is incredibly similar to the House of the Undying, when Daenerys is giving her life to the screaming crowd before it turns into the Undying Ones stealing it from her. I’ll get into it more later, but Daenerys is so in love with her people, her children, that she decides to stay in Meereen for them.

So she has these two identities, one belonging to her dragons and the other to her people. She doesn’t have to choose yet, but the stage has been set for Daenerys to make a choice; is she going to mother thousands of poor and enslaved people, or the three dragons that saved her life in the Dothraki Sea?

Do All Gods Feel So Lonely?

As the books go on, even though Daenerys begins to surround herself by more people and close companions, she only feels more alone. As I mentioned before, Daenerys is in many ways the product of tragedy; tragedies that have left her feeling alone and cut off from everyone else. And becoming a khaleesi and leading thousands of people takes her feelings of loneliness and turns them into something else, more like paranoia; and as people betray her and attempts are made against her life, those feelings only grow.

So much of her childhood was running from place to place, the only constant in her life being Viserys; and the older she gets, and the more distance she puts between that time in her life and where she is now, she loses that image of Viserys she had:

“I was alone for a long time, Jorah. All alone but for my brother. I was such a small scared thing. Viserys should have protected me, but instead he hurt me and scared me worse. He shouldn’t have done that.”

She still tries desperately to cling to the good memories she has of him, though:

Viserys had been stupid and vicious, she had come to realize, yet sometimes she missed him all the same. Not the cruel weak man he had become by the end, but the brother who had sometimes let her creep into his bed, the boy who told her tales of the Seven Kingdoms, and talked of how much better their lives would be once he claimed his throne.

The only other person that Daenerys sees as dependable in her life is Ser Jorah Mormont; but A Storm of Swords sees her emotionally cutting ties with him, too. In A Clash of Kings, the seeds for it were planted, as Daenerys felt slightly betrayed in the way he saw her; as a child or a woman, but never a Queen. Daenerys was willing to look past that, and give him time to see her for the Queen that she wants to be; but then he takes advantage of her, treating her as child he can take advantage of as a woman:

“And my vest-” she started to say, turning.

Ser Jorah slid his arms around her.

“Oh,” was all Dany had time to say as he pulled her close and pressed his lips down on hers. He smelled of sweat and salt and leather, and the iron studs on his jerkin dug into her naked breasts as he crushed her hard against him. One hand held her by the shoulder, while the other slid down her spine to the small of her back, and her mouth opened for his tongue, though she never told it to. His beard is scratchy, she thought, but his mouth is sweet. The Dothraki wore no beards, only long mustaches, and only Khal Drogo had ever kissed her before. He should not be doing this. I am his queen, not his woman.

While it is obvious that Daenerys is made incredibly uncomfortable by Jorah’s advances, the way she explains it to herself is not entirely honest:

“I . . . that was not fitting. I am your queen.”

“My queen,” he said, “and the bravest, sweetest, and most beautiful woman I have ever seen. Daenerys-”

“Your Grace!”

She is quick to remind Jorah, and herself, that what he did was wrong because she is his Queen. But it becomes clear as the chapters go on that Daenerys is really feeling a different sort of betrayal:

Dany could feel tears welling in her eyes, sudden and unwanted. Her hand flashed up and cracked Ser Jorah hard across the face. It was either that, or cry.

Mormont touched the cheek she'd slapped. "If I have displeased my queen—"

"You have. You've displeased me greatly, ser. If you were my true knight, you would never have brought me to this vile sty." If you were my true knight, you would never have kissed me, or looked at my breasts the way you did, or . . .

Daenerys is still a young girl, 15 or 16, and Jorah is a grown man leering at her. And while she doesn’t entirely understand what she’s feeling, because she was raised in a society where that sort of thing is widely accepted and she was sold to the highest bidder at 13, it’s clear that Daenerys feels used and taken advantage of sexually by Jorah. She’s in a unique position within the story, because she is the only woman we see who is in a position of power above their abuser. And while the entire foundation of their society has taught Daenerys to accept behavior like that as a woman, being a Queen gives her an outlet for her rage. She can’t let herself be mad at Jorah as the little girl he’s being sexually aggressive with, but she can punish him as his Queen:

He should never have done that. He is thrice my age, and of too low a birth for me, and I never gave him leave. No true knight would ever kiss a queen without her leave. She had taken care never to be alone with Ser Jorah after that, keeping her handmaids witth her aboard ship, and sometimes her bloodriders. He wants to kiss me again, I see it in his eyes.

While she hasn’t fully lost Jorah yet, the growing divide between them makes Daenerys feel very alone:

It was a long, dark, windy night that followed. Dany fed her dragons as she always did, but found she had no appetite herself. She cried awhile, alone in her cabin, then dried her tears long enough for yet another argument with Groleo.

But this betrayal of Daenerys by Jorah isn’t quite tangible; Daenerys hardly understands what she feels and why feels it, and almost thinks of herself as irrational in her anger toward him. Not until she finds out about his political betrayal, something she can point to and see exactly how he could have hurt her, does she banish him out of her life.

At the start of the book, Daenerys has already had two attempts against her life and is understandably paranoid:

Ser Jorah saved me from the poisoner, and Arstan Whitebeard from the manticore. Perhaps Strong Belwas will save me from the next.

Not only does this tell us that Daenerys fears another attempt on her life (which she’s right to worry over), but it also comes at the end of a long argument she has with herself over how likely Arstan Whitebeard and Strong Belwas are to betray her. (It’s also a nice piece of foreshadowing, considering Belwas will eventually save her from a poisoner). Daenerys is starting to see enemies all around.

Yet, just as when the poisoner at the market and the Sorrowful Man with the manticore tried to kill her, Daenerys does not see the next attempt at her life coming:

Dany had stopped to speak to a pregnant woman who wanted the Mother of Dragons to name her baby when someone reached up and grabbed her left wrist. Turning, she glimpsed a tall ragged man with a shaved head and a sunburnt face. "Not so hard," she started to say, but before she could finish he'd yanked her bodily from the saddle. The ground came up and knocked the breath from her, as her silver whinnied and backed away. Stunned, Dany rolled to her side and pushed herself onto one elbow . . .

The man who tries to kill her, Mero, tells her this:

“There’s the treacherous sow,” he said. “I knew you’d come to get your feet kissed one day.”

He’s using the kindness Daenerys has, her willingness to ride out amongst her people to give them hope, and turning it against her. And in her mind, this is not the first time that has happened. When she tried to save Eroeh and instead she was raped and murdered, when she put trust in Mirri Maz Duur only to get Drogo and Rhaego killed, all of these times she tries to do something good it falls apart. In A Storm of Swords, Daenerys will still fight and try to save people, but this book helps to set up for when she eventually breaks.

And later the same day, Daenerys learns the full truth of both Arstan Whitebeard and Jorah:

“Before I took Robert’s pardon I fought against him on the Trident. You were on the other side of that battle, Mormont, were you not?” He did not wait for an answer. “Your Grace, I am sorry I misled you. It was the only way to keep the Lannisters from learning that I had joined you. You are watched, as your brother was. Lord Varys reported every move Viserys made, for years. Whilst I sat on the small council, I heard a hundred such reports. And since the day you wed Khal Drogo, there has been an informer by your side selling your secrets, trading whispers to the Spider for gold and promises.”

The weight of Jorah’s betrayal, made even worse by the small lies Ser Barristan has been telling, hits Daenerys like a pile of bricks. She was nothing but good to him – she was going to take him home! And he still sold her to the Usurper and his dogs; the person she trusted most in the world still betrayed her. I find it interesting that Daenerys does not let her anger and hurt fully overwhelm her until Jorah confesses that he told Robert Baratheon that she was pregnant with Khal Drogo’s baby; the rage she feels at him for putting Rhaego in harms way is in some way misplaced at anyone other than herself, since she is the one who put her baby in reckless danger chasing the ghost of Khal Drogo.

After Daenerys learns of Jorah’s betrayal, she can’t go back to the way she was before. Suddenly, whereas before she was rightfully paranoid but often trusting, she is just waiting for someone to betray her next. The prophecies of the House of the Undying weigh on her, and everywhere she turns she sees a traitor in waiting:

Daario and Ben Plumm, Grey Worm, Irri, Jhiqui, Missandei. . . as she looked at them Dany found herself wondering which of them would betray her next.

And it starts to affect the way she treats people:

"I am going to take you home one day, Missandei," Dany promised. If I had made the same promise to Jorah, would he still have sold me? "I swear it."

Is this an act of genuine kindness, a heartwarming promise Dany is making to see Missandei feel safe on Naath? Or is Daenerys just trying to avoid another betrayal? We don’t get to know a definitive answer to this because Daenerys doesn’t know herself.

Justice . . . That's What Kings Are For

This is the first book where Daenerys has some real agency to make choices as a Queen or Khaleesi, and we see the shape of her ruling philosophy start to take form. And she does have some great ideas about how Kings and Queens should rule, and what kind of justice they should make for their subjects. But there is also a darker side to how she wields her power; a harsh, rash, childish cruelty that looks less like justice and more like violence for the sake of violence.

Daenerys wants to be a benevolent Queen, and strives to be as fair as she can be:

“A queen must listen to all,” she reminded him. “The highborn and the low, the strong and the weak, the noble and the venal. One voice may speak you false, but in many there is always truth to be found.” She had read that in a book.

As well as listening to the both the high and lowborn, Daenerys still believes in the idea of justice:

He wasn’t just my brother, he was my king. Why do the gods make kings and queens, if not to protect the ones who can’t protect themselves?”

“Some kings make themselves. Robert did.”

“He was no true king,” Dany said scornfully. “He did no justice. Justice. . . that’s what kings are for.”

On the surface, this sounds like a strong moral philosophy for a Queen to have. The responsibility Kings, Queens, and Lords had, the social contract, was to protect the people below them; to use their unmatched power to protect the weak and keep the strong in check. Kings are for justice.

But Daenerys is already showing a double standard; she refused to call Robert Baratheon a king because he “did no justice”, but she still gives the title to Viserys – even though she thinks he was vicious and cruel. Viserys did no justice, and Daenerys knows that better than anyone. So why does he get to be a King? Because he’s a Targaryen. Daenerys really does try to be benevolent and fair, but it always runs up against the way she views herself and her family. Before Barristan reveals his true identity to her, he tries to tell the truth about her father as gently as he can, and Daenerys cannot hear it:

Whitebeard did his best to hide his feelings, but they were there, plain on his face. “His Grace was. . . often pleasant.”

“Often?” Dany smiled. “But not always?”

“He could be very harsh to those he thought his enemies.”

“A wise man never makes an enemy of a king,” said Dany.

Even though she can see the discomfort plain on Arstan’s face, Daenerys chooses to place blame on the men who challenged her father.

Daenerys’ thoughts on Kings and Queens often seem equal parts reassuring and discomforting. For every good thought she has, an equally worrying one chases right after:

“Only lies offend me, never honest counsel.” Dany patted Arstan’s spotted hand to reassure him. “I have a dragon’s temper, that’s all. You must not let it frighten you.”

Her being open to council and disagreement sets her apart from many of the tyrants we’ve seen elsewhere in the story. But the way she excuses her temper is concerning. Barristan offered well meaning council, and was met with a rather aggressive put down from Daenerys; even though she says that honest council could never offend her, she hardly gives Barristan reason to give it. And when Barristan desperately tries to talk her out of selling Drogon to Kraznys, she again rebukes him:

Whitebeard stared in shocked disbelief. His hand trembled where it grasped the staff. “No.” He went to one knee before her. “Your Grace, I beg you, win your throne with dragons, not slaves. You must not do this thing.”

“You must not presume to instruct me. Ser Jorah, remove Whitebeard from my presence.”

“Whitebeard,” she said, “I want your counsel, and you should never fear to speak your mind with me. . . when we are alone. But never question me in front of strangers. Is that understood?”

Daenerys is not entirely wrong; it is not the best look as a Queen if your advisors are openly disagreeing with you. But Barristan only disagreed with her publicly because she had given him no choice to do it privately; Daenerys did not tell anyone of her plans in Astapor. From Barristan’s perspective, Daenerys is about to sell the single most valuable item in the entire world to buy an army of slaves, which he knows Westeros will not take kindly to. And not only does he believe this is a political misstep, he has made it clear to Dany that it is morally abhorrent. When he questions her, he does not do it from a place of superiority; he gets down on one knee and begs her to change her mind. Daenerys also shows him no sympathy, even though she knows he is right; she was never going to sell Drogon, never. I understand her putting on a show for Kraznys and the slavers so they don’t catch on to her game, but in private she has no reason to be so harsh to Barristan for voicing a belief she herself holds.

While Daenerys’ talk of justice sounds appealing for a monarch, the way she actually carries it out is less enchanting. When Kraznys is demonstrating how strong the Unsullied are, he shows her a grave example of their ferocity:

He stopped before a thickset man who had the look of Lhazar about him and brought his whip up sharply, laying a line of blood across one copper cheek. The eunuch blinked, and stood there, bleeding.

Daenerys has to stop him from hitting the man again, and is horrified by the inhuman response of the Unsullied, who are drugged and conditioned not to feel pain. So when she holds the whip instead of Kraznys, Daenerys doesn’t hesitate to hurt him the same way:

“There is a reason. A dragon is no slave.” And Dany swept the lash down as hard as she could across the slaver’s face. Kraznys screamed and staggered back, the blood running red down his cheeks into his perfumed beard.

There is something wholly righteous about this anger, a certain release in seeing someone hurt in the same way they hurt others. But the way in which it doesn’t matter to Daenerys is what gives me pause:

The harpy's fingers had torn his features half to pieces with one slash, but she did not pause to contemplate the ruin. "Drogon," she sang out loudly, sweetly, all her fear forgotten. "Dracarys."

The black dragon spread his wings and roared.

A lance of swirling dark flame took Kraznys full in the face. His eyes melted and ran down his cheeks, and the oil in his hair and beard burst so fiercely into fire that for an instant the slaver wore a burning crown twice as tall as his head. The sudden stench of charred meat overwhelmed even his perfume, and his wail seemed to drown all other sound.

This is written very similar to when Daenerys steps inside Drogo’s funeral pyre. In that chapter, Daenerys is too focused on the beauty of the dancing flames, the screams of Mirri Maz Duur and her people in the background less important to her. And here it is the same; there is one moment where Kraznys’ screaming drowns out everything else, his face burning with fire high into the air, but it is hardly enough to grab Daenerys’ attention.

When Daenerys is 163 miles from the gates of Meereen, she sees another horror as bad as the Plaza of Punishment:

Worst of all, they had nailed a slave child up on every milepost along the coast road from Yunkai, nailed them up still living with their entrails hanging out and one arm always outstretched to point the way to Meereen. Leading her van, Daario had given orders for the children to be taken down before Dany had to see them, but she had countermanded him as soon as she was told. "I will see them," she said. "I will see every one, and count them, and look upon their faces. And I will remember."

And, rightly, Daenerys cannot let this horror go unpunished:

Dany set great store by Ser Jorah's counsel, but to leave Meereen untouched was more than she could stomach. She could not forget the children on their posts, the birds tearing at their entrails, their skinny arms pointing up the coast road.

But the way Daenerys punishes the Great Masters seems frighteningly unlike justice:

“I want your leaders," Dany told them. "Give them up, and the rest of you shall be spared."

"How many?" one old woman had asked, sobbing. "How many must you have to spare us?"

"One hundred and sixty-three," she answered.

She had them nailed to wooden posts around the plaza, each man pointing at the next. The anger was fierce and hot inside her when she gave the command; it made her feel like an avenging dragon. But later, when she passed the men dying on the posts, when she heard their moans and smelled their bowels and blood. . .

Dany put the glass aside, frowning. It was just. It was. I did it for the children.

Daenerys has no idea how many “leaders” Meereen has. It could be any number more or less than 163; there could be dozens of men complicit in the crucifixions of the children who are free in the city, or a dozen men who knew nothing of the children nailed upon a cross for someone else’s crimes. She also leaves it up to the Great Masters of Meereen to choose the 163 men she will crucify; there is a chance that they were honest in who committed the crime, but it seems much more likely that the Great Masters picked the least respected of them to give to Daenerys.

A part of Daenerys knows what she did was wrong, though:

Dany remembered the horror she had felt when she had seen the Plaza of Punishment in Astapor. I made a horror just as great, but surely they deserved it. Harsh justice is still justice.

But Daenerys was not after justice, she was after revenge. Her crucifying the Great Masters is very similar to when Ned refused to let Loras Tyrell go after The Mountain in the Riverlands:

Ned looked down on him. From on high, Loras Tyrell seemed almost as young as Robb. "No one doubts your valor, Ser Loras, but we are about justice here, and what you seek is vengeance." He looked back to Lord Beric. "Ride at first light. These things are best done quickly." He held up a hand. "The throne will hear no more petitions today."

Vengeance isn’t entirely wrong, but it is much more dangerous than justice. Daenerys did not consider her actions, did not make sure the right men paid for the crime; she picked an entirely arbitrary number, 163, and an equal number of arbitrary men and killed them. The Great Masters are infinitely more culpable in their deaths than innocent children ever could be, but Daenerys decided to play by their own rules in serving them “justice”. There is something harshly satisfying about that; but something equally disquieting, too.

And, going back to the connection she shares with her dragons, this passage stands out:

"They have been wild while you were gone, Khaleesi," Irri told her. "Viserion clawed splinters from the door, do you see? And Drogon made to escape when the slaver men came to see them. When I grabbed his tail to hold him back, he turned and bit me." She showed Dany the marks of his teeth on her hand.

Irri was watching the dragons while Daenerys had her fight with Jorah. So, when Daenerys is angry, her dragons are increasingly volatile; ending in someone innocent getting hurt.

It’s also incredibly interesting to me, what Daenerys is able to handle and what she isn’t. When her men first see the crucified children, Daario, Barristan, and Jorah try to have them taken down before Daenerys can see; but she demands the dead children stay on their crosses, so she can see every single one and remember. She didn’t want to shy away from the cruelty of Meereen and the Great Masters, and instead wanted to see it firsthand for when she would be in a position to get justice. Yet Daenerys doesn’t have the stomach for this:

“Viserys was a child, and the queen sheltered him as much as she could. Your father always had a little madness in him, I now believe. Yet he was charming and generous as well, so his lapses were forgiven. His reign began with such promise. . . but as the years passed, the lapses grew more frequent, until. . .”

Dany stopped him. “Do I want to hear this now?”

When it was someone else’s horror, Daenerys understood why she needed to see the crucified children; she wanted to know, so she could make those men pay. But when it comes to her own father, Daenerys doesn’t want to know, and won’t let Barristan tell her. The vague idea of her father being mad, of knowing she needs to be careful with her own thoughts, is enough for her; the shocking cruelty, the details of the men Aerys murdered, is not important. Daenerys does not give Westeros the same curtesy she gives Meereen, because the monsters that tormented the Seven Kingdoms share a sigil with her.

The Face of A Conqueror

All of the different directions Daenerys is pulled in this book, and all her chapters really, comes back to a simple choice she has to make: to be the girl who lived in a house with a red door, or to be Daenerys Targaryen, of the blood of kings and conquerors. I think the problem a lot of people have when reading her chapters, is the assumption that it’s one choice to make, but in reality, it’s a series of choices. Like I said when I wrote about her A Game of Thrones chapters, the arc of a real person is not as clean as a traditional “narrative arc”; real people make good and bad choices, try to be better, backslide, rinse, repeat. I think Daenerys choosing to kill Mirri Maz Duur to birth her dragons sealed her fate in the way that her dragons were such a tangible thing, so real to her, that no matter what she would always go back to them. But that doesn’t mean that Daenerys doesn’t try exceptionally hard to be different. The end of her arc in A Storm of Swords is unique because it’s the only time (so far) where she has ended on the choice not to be Daenerys Stormborn.

In A Storm of Swords, Daenerys is trying desperately to be seen as a Queen and not a child:

“I am not a child,” she told him. “I am a queen.”

And even her line of being a young girl who doesn’t understand war, is about how Daenerys does not want to be seen that way; it’s an overly humble and self-deprecating line, something both her and her enemies know she doesn’t mean. It still works because the men of Slaver’s Bay are horribly sexist and will see her as stupid no matter what, but it is certainly not something Daenerys herself believes.

Yet, alone and to herself, Daenerys doesn’t know how to see herself:

Dany stared at herself in silence. Is this the face of a conqueror? So far as she could tell, she still looked like a little girl.

No one was calling her Daenerys the Conqueror yet, but perhaps they would.

The same person who sees herself as a lonely god can also look in a mirror and see a little girl. But it’s very important to her that no one else see her that way, not even her closest companions:

I am the blood of the dragon. I must be strong. I must have fire in my eyes when I face them, not tears.

Yet, even though she is trying her best to put on the face of a conqueror, the young girl in her is still searching:

“I was looking for a house with a red door, but by night all the doors are black.”

Part of why Daenerys can keep pushing forward, city after city, is the belief that somewhere out there is a house waiting for her; a red door promising everything she can’t seem to find anymore. She looks out on the whole city of Meereen, trying to find proof that she could belong there. When Missandei asks her about the house, Daenerys’ answer is revealing:

“A red door?” Missandei was puzzled. “What house is this?”

“No house. It does not matter.”

No house. Of course, when Daenerys answers that way, she is just hand waving so she doesn’t have to explain to Missandei a personal memory; but on a doylist level, it’s confirming something we’ve suspected for a long time: Dany is never going to find her house with a red door. The vivid memory she has of that time in her life when she was safe and happy and everything was perfect is what pulls her back from the edge more than anything else, and the longer she stays in Meereen and realizes there is no home for her there, the more she’s going to regret the choice she makes at the end of this book.

Another reason for why Daenerys turns back from completely embracing Fire & Blood so many times, is that being a conqueror makes her feel terrible. Most times, Daenerys is able to keep looking forward, onto the next city full of slaves she’ll set free, the next city to conquer, onward toward the Seven Kingdoms. But sometimes the memory of all the awful things she’s seen is too strong:

She found herself remembering Eroeh, the Lhazarene girl she had once tried to protect, and what had happened to her. It will be the same in Meereen once I march, she thought.

And she actively wants to be different than those that came before her:

“When Aegon the Dragon stepped ashore in Westeros, the kings of Vale and Rock and Reach did not rush to hand him their crowns. If you mean to sit his Iron Throne, you must win it as he did, with steel and dragonfire. And that will mean blood on your hands before the thing is done.”

Blood and fire, thought Dany. The words of House Targaryen. She had known them all her life. “The blood of my enemies I will shed gladly. The blood of innocents is another matter. Eight thousand Unsullied they would offer me. Eight thousand dead babes. Eight thousand strangled dogs.”

Up to this point, Daenerys was trying to balance both sides of herself; she wanted to sack cities and conquer peoples, but also save the girls from the horrors of war. She wanted to get her Seven Kingdoms and save Eroeh, too. But in her last chapter, she realizes that’s impossible:

All my victories turn to dross in my hands, she thought. Whatever I do, all I make is death and horror. When word of what had befallen Astapor reached the streets, as it surely would, tens of thousands of newly freed Meereenese slaves would doubtless decide to follow her when she went west, for fear of what awaited them if they stayed. . .

No matter her good intentions, thousands of girls will end up just like Eroeh. She thought she had done something good in Astapor, freeing eight thousand men and leaving the city in the hands of smart men on the path to a more just city; but instead she turned a nightmare into a living hell. Daenerys realizes that her path has to be that way; if she’s going to keep looking forward, forever toward Westeros, then she can’t avoid the horrific bloodshed.

And she decides she can’t keep going:

“I will not let this city go the way of Astapor. I will not let the harpy of Yunkai chain up those I’ve freed all over again.” She turned back to look at their faces. “I will not march.”

“What will you do then, Khaleesi?” asked Rakharo.

“Stay,” she said. “Rule. And be a queen.”

Daenerys realizes the human cost of what she’s doing, how even her good ideas only cost more lives and cause more suffering, and decides she has to change. Back in the Lhazareen village, after Daenerys turns back to save Eroeh and Mirri and all the rest, and after it falls apart so spectacularly, she makes a promise to herself: never look back. If I look back I am lost. The words serve as a reminder; that trying to help somebody had only hurt them worse, and cost her everything in the process. She needed to be like her khalasar, only looking forward on a beautiful horizon, and never back on the torn earth and trampled cities. But when she decides to stay in Meereen, for the first time since Eroeh, she breaks that promise to herself.

Daenerys’ arc this book is the best she will ever be. The character that some people fell in love with, to the point of ignoring so much else, is really on display here. Daenerys struggles, really struggles, and almost as often as not still makes the wrong choice, and gets people hurt over it too. But her heart is truly in the right place; she’s trying to fix problems she doesn’t understand, and makes a mess of it, but, in this book, she really wants to help. All of the red flags I mentioned are still there, and the seeds are planted for Daenerys to turn her back on her people, but before she does any of that, she makes the right choice.

A Storm of Swords is the story of how Daenerys looks back.

[backtothebog]

Avengers 4: Endgame is entirely overchallenged with Captain Marvel

this article reflects exactly my thoughts on captain marvel’s (inadequate) appearance in endgame and the sloppy and shallow way they have dealt with her character

the full translation below the cut:

Captain marvel, who was just recently introduced to the MCU, is fighting alongside Iron Man and Co. for the very first time. Her appearance is a disappointment.

Attention, spoilers about Avengers 4: Endgame: Brie Larson as Captain Marvel conquered the cinemas just a few weeks ago and introduced the new heroine of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Set in the 1990s, a time leap to the present was upon us in the last minutes of her solo movie which set up the immediate beginning of Avengers 4: Endgame.

This transition to the fourth Avengers adventure turned out to be rather unspectecular: Captain Marvel simply appears in the Avengers’ headquarter and finally reveals the full meaning of the the post-credit-scene of Avengers 3: Infinity War.

Ultimately, this rather clumsy dealing with the character doesn’t change in Avengers 4: Endgame. The creative heads of the MCU haven’t fully found out how they want to deal with Captain Marvel yet.

Avengers 4: Endgame provides no space for Captain Marvel

The by far biggest problem emerges right from the beginning of Avengers 4: Endgame: Captain Marvel simply plays no part in this world (so far). As her debut was set more than two decades ago and as she had disappeared into the vastness of the universe to bring law and order to planets without an Avengers Initiative, she didn’t have any points of contact with Iron Man and Co. up until now.

The now more than ten years old story of the MCU, which we can experience one more time in quick motion, works without the presence of Captain Marvel. Therefore it’s no surprise that certain tensions between Carol Danvers and the survivors of Infinity War exist. She is a stranger and almost threateningly embodies the future of the MCU.

For now, however, there is no room for this future as Avengers 4: Endgame focusses mainly on the past to finish the storylines of a lot of the oldest MCU-characters. This is most certainly appropriate for a movie that indicates the end of an era, the end of the Infinity-saga. Iron Man and Captain America were carrying the franchise on their backs for numerous films after all.

In Avengers 4: Endgame Captain Marvel is just a god from the machine

Still it’s remarkable that Captain Marvel, of all characters, was pushed aside in such an extent in this three hour epos as she was sold as one of the next big superheroes of Phase 4. She’s in contact with the leaders of the first generation, yet she was downright ignored at the passing on of the baton. A concrete idea of her character is missing in every way.

Hence does Avengers 4: Endgame restric itself in the matter of Captain Marvel to deus ex machina-moments of which some are more, others less skillfully executed. Tony Stark’s rescue from outer space is equally hastily and lovelessly dealt with as the post-credit-scene in Captain Marvel prior - a plain execution without any development of a feeling of what is actually at stake.

Captain Marvel gains a lot more importance in the final battle against Thanos. She is allowed to rush into the army of the opponents alongside all of the MCU-heroines in one iconic take and gets to present her own version of the Holdo-maneuver from Star Wars 8: The Last Jedi. Eventually, the peak of her appearance in Endgame is a short duel with Thanos, which again continues to reduce her to her superpowers.

Avengers 4: Endgame is only interested in this mighty superhero when she is able to demonstrate her powers while ignoring her human side - and all of this after her solo movie’s strongest moments were those in which Captain Marvel’s vulnerability was explored and by which Carol Danvers’ identity was revealed. Avengers 4: Endgame doesn’t immerse into the depth of her personality like this in any way.

Avengers 4: Endgame forgets the future because of the sheer amout of history

This Captain Marvel is no longer vulnerable, and tangible even less. Her existance is reduced to her surface and is used solely to drive the plot forwards. Her new look is the only improvement that can excite in Avengers 4: Endgame apart from the demonstration of her physical strength. There is no room for her building up relationships with other characters which is why she is located alone and far away in the background at Tony’s funeral at the close of the movie.

Even though Avengers 4: Endgame is supposed to be a film mostly about the original Avengers it does miss one crucial point of it’s story by the negligent exclusion of the next generation: the journey to the past is exclusively this thrilling and explosive because the future is in harm’s way - however, Avengers 4: Endgame alarmingly shows little to no interest in this future.

The void at the end of the movie doesn’t result from the farewell of renown and embosomed characters but from the uncertainty in regards to what is about to come next. We only have a few clues of Phase 4 so far - this, of cause, is part of the whole concept. But what can a sophisticated masterplan do for Kevin Feige if one of the so far most important movies of the franchise has nothing to say about one of the most important new characters?

Avengers 4: Endgame gives away the magnificent Brie Larson

Captain Marvel most definitely is a symbol for a turningpoint in the MCU, for a new generation of heroes. Despite of Brie Larson’s unbelievable engagement to bring the character to life in a headstrong way, she is merely allowed to play the part of an outsider in the Endgame and is faster forgotten than Thanos is able to snap his fingers. And yet she could have been the one who puts on the Infinity Gauntlet and the connected burden likewise,

This is a lost chance without a question since there could have been a whole different dynamic in the movie with Captain Marvel at play. The interplay of Brie Larson and Samuel L. Jackson should be solid proof of Captain Marvel’s hidden potential as a companion who interferes actively with the plot, who changes a story and even scrutinizes defiantly.

Especially in a movie like Avengers 4: Endgame, a film that feasts so voluptuously on MCU-nostalgia, a fresh, unadapted impulse would have been welcome. Not least was Iron Man in his first adventure nothing else more then ten years ago: a sassy troublemaker who extensively stirred up the superhero-cinema and changed it sustainably.

Were you disappointed by Captain Marvel’s appearance in Avengers 4: Endgame, too?

[minty-pepps]

some thoughts on comics

this has less to do with comics as they are in their current state in the industry and more about the artistry possible with the form, maybe even artistry in other mediums as well. this is something i’ve thought about a lot, and it’s rather long and a bit rambly, a bit elitist and maybe even pretentious, but i’d gladly appreciate it if you read it!

(this contains some spoilers regarding The Killing Joke by Alan Moore, the film and novel Drive, respectively by Nicolas Winding Refn and James Sallis, Devilman by Go Nagai and Persona by Ingmar Bergman.)

while discussing art with an art examiner, i came across a particular topic which has been bothering me for a while. i mentioned my interest in comics and their influence upon my work, and one way or the other, i can’t particularly remember how we got to the point before we moved on, she said “yes, but you need to use your influences in the high arts”.

a typically familiar distinction was made once again: comics are low-art, cheap and mass-produced, with little artistic viability; all visual arts besides it have the potential for high art. 

had i been the person i was a few years ago, i may have agreed. i may have also extended the idea of “high visual art” being only possible within the classical mediums of visual art: painting, drawing, sculpting. 

but as i’ve gotten a little older, a little more open-minded, and a little more willing to see things from others’ perspectives, i’ve realized just how much artistic expression is possible in other visual arts as well. photography, film, comics, collages, printing, 3D art, etching, animation. all of these visual mediums possess inherent strengths that can create extraordinary images, can communicate things otherwise impossible in other ways.

but, as i wrote in the title, this is about comics; or, maybe, more specifically, the concept of comics and their potential. 

so, to give a definition of comics, let me use scott mccloud’s definition: “comics are juxtaposed pictorial and other images in a deliberate sequence, intended to convey information and/or produce an aesthetic response in the viewer.” 

this is ripped directly from mccloud’s book “understanding comics” (which is a great read and sort of inspired this write-up, i’d advise you to check it out) and while this may be the most accurate description of the form, it’s possible far more things may be done outside this definition, which could also fall under the idea of comics, but we will have to wait and see. 

it works well for now, however, and can possibly, with a backwards look at history, relabel some pieces of art as comics. an example of this, given in “understanding comics”, is the triptych, which typically is 3 paintings placed alongside each other to convey an overlying idea within the culmination of the works, with each work conveying their own specific idea. 

this gives one possible insight into the possibility of comics, and that is their ability to explore ideas in a “narrative” way via their images, whether it be actual narratives on display, or themes which link and provide context to each image. 

in other words, comics can explore singular ideas belonging to larger ideas, with each piece of art in the sequence informing the context and/or meaning behind the others, providing a framework for the entire comic from which meaning can be derived for each individual artwork.

 this ability of comics, for each piece in the whole’s meaning to be able to affect the overall whole meaning of the work, and vice-versa, falls under the idea of semiotics, and i believe it is this direct connection to semiotics which gives comics a large range of visual artistic expression beyond only narrative, beyond only language and beyond only imagery.

to give you an idea of why semiotics is such a powerful thing, let me illustrate for you; imagine a dog barking, wagging its tail, and running around in a field - see how it runs, jumps, and chases, in a friendly game, after a bird. now imagine a man, laughing, holding his belly, with a soft, loving smile on his face, a dog collar and leash in hand. finally, imagine a pickup truck parked in front of a house, its back canopy dirtied with mud and hair, with a man about to clean it up, a tired look on his face.

the logical association you could make here might be an obvious one: a man who loves his happy dog, after returning home from letting the dog run on a field, hates the process of cleaning his truck after bringing the dog back home in it. your mind has automatically made a logical framework to provide meaning to each idea shown.

but what if the man carried not a dog leash but now a shovel in the second idea? what if his face showed not happiness, but anger, hatred and disgust? the tired cleaning of the final idea can now carry a far darker association, yet it is entirely a created one within our minds. in fact, our entire perception of the relationship between the dog, the man, and the truck is created by ourselves. 

and it is with this perception of the whole, with our mind creating a logical connection between each individual element that comprises the whole, that gives comics its ability to convey artistic themes extraordinarily lucidly and at the same time also give the potential of intentional ambiguity and different interpretation (this intentional ambiguity i believe being the most important part of what people classify as “high art”). 

with this in mind, i believe comic artists have the ability to depict not only stories but thoughts and human ideas beyond the limitations of both narrative and visual arts in a vividly clear way which only our individual minds, informed as they are by our personal perceptions, can understand.

 but it does not happen, or if it does, it does not happen nearly enough. and this, i believe, is why comics are perceived as a “low art”, that comics are only a form that can only communicate simply and explicitly. 

so what are the limitations that, i feel, limit comic artists from being perceived as “high artists”, as artists with something serious to say in their respective form? 

i believe there are many reasons, reasons beyond the control of artists themselves which i can understand immensely (such as comics being a form of industry, which limits artistry a lot), but there are some beliefs and ideas which i believe are perpetuated within and around the form that limits comic artists from fully utilizing the medium in an artistic manner (this is also where i have to engage some elitist opinions of mine but nevertheless i believe they are necessary).

1) Comic art =/= Fine Art

(please note that this is dealing with artistic proficiency, not artistic intent or authenticity)

this is usually the first reason why comic artists are dismissed as “low art”. narrative propels comics, usually, and with the narrative behind comics providing the necessary framework for meaning to be connected between each frame in a comic, this usually has the unspoken implication that art in comics does not have to be technically proficient, or at least proficient to the standard of “amazing art” which most people expect from the visual arts.

i think, if you’re on tumblr, you can inherently understand why this is ignorant. if not, if you’ve ever given visual art a proper go, you can also understand why this is wrong. if an example must be provided, please look at this

this was made by Ashley Wood, an illustrator and comic artist, for his comic Automatic Kafka. i think this demonstrates how comic artists can display remarkable technical proficiency, and why i think the idea of comic artists not being able to be as technically proficient as a regular “fine artist” is a flawed belief.

However, even if a comic artist is technically proficient, what often drags them away from being considered a “serious” artist is

2) good art and good writing =/= good comic

(this is also handled in scott mccloud’s book, i highly recommend “understanding comics” once again”)

now i might sound elitist here, but listen, i think this is something that needs to be vitally understood by anyone who believes in comics as “high art”/a serious art form: any visual story when driven by plot, by actions, by thoughts, by things which can be tangibly translated into language and have a narrative formed from that, is inherently going to be inferior as an art when compared to literature; maybe not all forms of literature, since lots of “low art” fiction relies immensely on imagery to create scenes or events (which would be rendered a lot more elegantly and simply in a comic), but it’s simply due to the fact that words are far more useful for many abstract ideas which cannot be communicated simply by images alone. 

for example (and i’m going to use an example of a novel considered cheap, pulpy stuff to illustrate the problem here so that one gets the sense that it isn’t just “classic novels” that do narrative better than comics), if one takes a look at the film Drive by Nicolas Winding Refn, then compares it to the original novel by James Sallis (which, admittedly, the film adapted loosely), one will immediately notice the difference in tone between the two, but also what’s strikingly different is the way the Driver is characterised. 

In the film, the Driver is portrayed as a stoic, quiet and friendly guy, a sort of Man With No Name, with a dangerously efficient, criminally-inclined hidden life, whereas in the novel the Driver is shown to interally monologue a lot, and often in a cynical and acerbic way, while being a sort of anti-heroic moral judge, giving further insight into the character’s relation to the rest of the narrative, while still illustrating the abstracted Driver from the film. this could not be done as easily in the film, nor would it contribute to the film at all and quite frankly the novel’s Driver is a lot less of a character appropriate for the film in general but ignore this for now

this illustrates the problem of comics being believed (both by audiences and creators) to be only a narrative-driven or art-driven form. with this i must say there is nothing wrong with comics being narratively driven, it is just incredibly reductive to think of the possibilities comics may have if they’re only seen as narrative-driven and/or art-driven.

and, this is going to sound very elitist of me, a lot of the stories presented in comics are very schlocky, convoluted and contrived, and do not use the medium to its fullest extent to work on possible themes as best as they could. even highly acclaimed comics are praised primarily on their story lines and/or their art, perhaps some may throw in a nod to panelling, composition and so on, but there is rarely appreciation for how these comics use the form of comics, and often times, they don’t, really (i’ve had a couple of friends admit to skimming over the art in various acclaimed comics and manga they’ve read, such as Watchmen, The Sandman, Berserk and Goodnight Punpun, because “they’re secondary to the story”). 

to give an example of how i think comic form can be utilized to its fullest in narratives in a very good way for that “intentional ambiguity” i mentioned earlier, i’ll use the last page of The Killing Joke by Alan Moore

this is the culmination of the entire story, and it ends ambiguously for the reader (i suggest reading the comic for the full effect of this page, plus it’s a really good comic). 

is the joker being taken away by the police in the final panel? in the middle panel, is the joker being strangled, or is batman simply placing his hand on the joker’s shoulder? is batman laughing with or at the joker? is he being sympathetic, or is he trying to conceal his anger? does the laughter’s disappearance in the final 3 panels indicate resignation or death? 

we’ll never know, and thus we’re given this ambiguity which we can weigh against ourselves, reflect upon as human beings, and use as an insight into the overlying theme of the work. 

this may sound a little too serious for some, but I feel that dismisses the real issue here: it’s not about what approach an artist takes to approach their theme, nor what themes they have, it’s about how “seriously” they handle what they try to do - whether it illustrates the joy of familial love and care or the unseens horrors of war and their effect on everyday life, a certain level of gravitas should be employed by the artist to do so.

however, this comes to another point which i feel needs to be addressed, and it’s something i feel needs to be understood, as i feel it will help bridge the divide of comics and “high art”, or, more satisfactory, destroy the ridiculous barrier which prevents the form being appreciated or used for serious artistic expression, and that is

3) cliched and pulpy subject matter

(this is a bit of a rant and more rambling than my other thoughts, but i think this one is the main issue)

this ties in with a point i mentioned earlier, being that comics are seen as “narrative-driven” or “story-driven”. this often leads to extraordinarily convoluted plots having lots of “plot logic” and “lore” to justify many of the events that occur, as well as give a scenario for the emotional climaxes occur and for the themes to be explored. 

 now, let me say here, in addition to the earlier point about “serious handling of subject matter”, i personally, and i think some may agree with me, cannot stand having long and unnecessary trimmings surrounding a core theme, nor do i think justifications need to exist for anything and everything; if it works towards the emotion or ideas being explored, it works. 

for example, Devilman by Go Nagai is a pulpy action horror manga, that is its primary intent and the general expectation one gets going into it. i don’t really think i can get much exploration of any themes in the work beyond an “eh” touching on an anti-war theme in the second half with subsequent rereadings, but as a primarily action-focused manga with the intent being to entertain, Devilman is just perfect for that. there’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s first and foremost a pulpy story, done interestingly and satisfyingly; anything further than that is entirely a reading of my own, since everything else within the work contributes to its main explicit intention of the work. 

it wants to create a fictional reality where the events in the story can occur, so it does that, and it does that knowing the story as its end to the means of the plot’s logic and events, nothing more (i think this is where most people get irritated by seeing others do in-depth analyses of anime, manga and general other “trashy” stuff like 80s horror B-Movies but I digress).

i’ve got a big space opera dealing with the horrors of war. i do not see why i would need to divorce war from its inherently political-social implications on earth. 

i’ve got a fantasy chosen one journey, with elves, orcs and warlocks, with a side-theme of racism. yes, this may add interest to the fictional world created, and that may be interesting to consider when applied to real life, but it is honestly too distant, too alienated from the context of real life to adequately consider in real life, and i feel that that cheapens the value of any possible interpretation or intended meaning.

(do note that i am not derriding people who wish to such with fiction, with comics, or with any form of art, but i feel this is simply the issue that causes such a divide between “high art” and “low art”.)

let me use an example of what i feel handles its artistic expression well, without the trappings of logic or subject matter (thus moving into that “intentional ambiguity” which i feels gives serious art its timeless quality), though it is a film: Persona by Ingmar Bergman (something which i’ve had a couple thoughts on, which i plan to write on).

this film, from what i understand, deals with the personas which make up one’s self, and how our personas, even if we try to distance them from ourselves, are ourselves. how it does this is not shown in a structured, logical or plot-driven way, even if there is a plot which gives context and drive to the events being able to explore it. it instead uses the elements of film to explore this in ways which only film could: acting, imagery, sound, continual movement of time. when the lead characters enter the beach house in the film, reality become less rigid in structure, as it seems to merge with dreams (hallucinations even), and things don’t generally seem to work within reality’s logic, but instead operate for the needs of the emotion, the themes, the ideas that wish to be conveyed.

and that’s how the film “works”; not because of the material around what the artist wants demanding things be this way,or that, but allowing what is wished to be expressed instead steering the artist and their internal artistic logic. it is this whole idea which is expressed by the entire work that should be given priority, not the clutter, i feel, and the minor ideas surrounding this whole idea should give both insight into the meaning of the whole idea, as well as its surrounding informing our perception of its own individual meaning.

and, as i’ve said before, this is semiotics, and comics have the most direct connection to it in all artforms outside maybe film, and as our entire human consciousness is formed from individual experiences and elements from which we derive meaning in both their entirety and in their individual context, this is why i think comics have such immense potential for artistic expression: they are the easiest way for us to express, as closely as possible, the human mind.

thank you for reading!

[rpgmgames]

November’s Featured Game: lux (dream.girl)

DEVELOPER(S): Rindre Rindere ENGINE: RPGMaker 2k3   GENRE: Psychological Horror, Exploration SUMMARY: lux (dream.girl) is a surreal psychological horror game created in RPG Maker 2003 where you play as Benjamin, a socially inept teenage writer who struggles with depression, loneliness, and writer’s block. When he decides to try lucid dreaming to figure out how to push his story forward, he meets new friends, new enemies, and his literal dream girl. Making certain choices will either help or hurt his relationships, and the outcome of his story.

Download the demo here!

Introduce yourself!  *Hi! I'm Rindre! I've been working on RPG Maker for about 5 or 6 years at this point! First and foremost, I'm an artist, then a game developer, then a voice actor. I am also a garlic bread enthusiast. You might also know me as: -The voice of Aria/the lead translator in Aria's Story -Will's Teacher in The Hanged Man -The mod of Yumeresource -The admin of the RPG Horror Discord server -The host of the Pixel Horror Jams! I'm also on plenty of teams, mostly as a voice actor. These include b/f, AURORA, and The Doctrine of Perseverance.

What is your project about? What inspired you to create your game initially? *Rindre: lux is about a boy named Ben, who is an aspiring writer who hits a writer's block and tries to take up lucid dreaming to interact with his stories and characters find out how to advance his story. He ends up meeting interesting people, including his literal dream girl. Yume Nikki is a big inspiration for me. My stories I had written when I was younger also played a huge part, and I decided to recycle bits and pieces of them into lux. Ultimately, the frustrations and experience of being a content creator inspired me to make the game. Hopefully these themes will ring universal to whoever relates to being a creator as well.

How long have you been working on your project? *Rindre: You could say 5 years, or 2 years, or since July 2017! lux actually originated as a Yume Nikki fangame in 2012 (as are all games I've made...). I picked it up again on October 2 2015 as a concept to keep a work log, but actually making it into a tangible product took me until 2017's Pixel Horror Jam. The work log has 30+ pages to it! The Yume Nikki fangame version was prepared to be released, but I forgot, and now I'm too ashamed to release it because I meant to do it 5 years ago :(

Did any other games or media influence aspects of your project? *Rindre: I'm a big fan of psychological and sci-fi/cyberpunk media. These things usually ask: Who are we, and who are we in other people's eyes? What defines us? What does it mean to be an individual in our society? It's a question I like to ask myself and explore in my own projects. My major inspirations who ask these existential questions are deep within Satoshi Kon's works and Philip K Dick's stories, as well as other movies that were inspired by those two or are in the genre (like The Matrix, Inception, Akira, Ghost In The Shell, Serial Experiments Lain, etc.). Some other inspirations and influences that might be surprising are: Kappa Mikey (art style mixing), Vocaloid producers (Crusher-P, Mothy, Yuyoyuppe), Evangelion, Linkin Park, the Hamtaro GBA games, Kirby, and my own dreams. Unsurprisingly, Yume Nikki is the biggest inspiration. I really like the concept of dreams and escapism, and how it often plays into existentialism.

Have you come across any challenges during development? How have you overcome or worked around them?   *Rindre: They say that when making a game, 10% is actual development and 90% is bugfixing/quality assurance. This is VERY TRUE. I spent a couple months working with my bugtesters (Thanks Biel, Choko, Meaka, Pinkuboa, and Uboaappears). The actual demo was a bunch of crunch time for the jam, which was July - August). There were a lot of bugfixes involved, including a bug I was so puzzled with and thought I couldn't fix but the solution was so simple. It took me a month to figure it out! The RM2k3 update caused a bit of trouble for me, but I thank my bugtesters endlessly for helping me squash most, if not all, bugs. On the other hand, in case anybody asks, yes: I have lucid dreamt of my characters in lux when I hit a roadblock. These were never successful. I've only been able to do it twice, both by accident.

Have any aspects of your project changed over time? How does your current project differ from your initial concept? *Rindre: I usually go into development with a clear idea in mind with certain events and endings, but lux differs greatly from its old Yume Nikki counterpart (dream.girl). Notable major changes: Ben now wears glasses. Ben is now a writer. Stella used to not be a bunny. Stella also did not have any stars in her eyes before. The only things retained was the concept of dreaming a dream girl, and Ben's and Stella's names and facial appearance. Even if I make a bunch of plot outlines and flowcharts, things change, but it's natural! The stories that occur within lux also have changed slightly plot-wise from their earlier pre-2012 counterparts (most were written over 10 years ago!), and are begging for a facelift. One involved parkour, but sadly, there is no parkour anymore :(

What was your team like at the beginning? How did people join the team? If you don't have a team, do you wish you had one or do you prefer working alone? *Rindre: I prefer working alone when it's my project! I like working at my own pace, but if needed, I'll reach out to other people for help. I like helping people out on their projects too, but when it comes to my own, I like to handcraft everything by myself. It shows me what I'm capable of doing, and gives my game a "this was 100% made by me" stamp.

What is the best part of developing a game? *Rindre: Making music is relaxing and lets me convey a mood or theme without having to take out my tablet to draw or write something extensively. Being able to relax yet still work on the game is great. I like nights where I can sit down and make something nice I can put in my game. A lot of them are on my SoundCloud (Rindere), but some of the really nice ones are ones I haven't uploaded there. I'm really not a musician, but I did take a class on music technology. My favorite ones going to be in lux on my SoundCloud are "Nepenthean", which is also Ben's theme, "Choke On Your Misery", and "Empyria Incarnadine". It's also really nice to get files from your voice actors and they sound EXACTLY like how you thought your character would sound like! Special thanks to Aidan, Mizu, JR, and Nuei.

Do you find yourself playing other RPG Maker games to see what you can do with the engine, or do you prefer to do your own thing? *Rindre: I prefer to do my own thing! I like to push RPG Maker 2003 to the limit. A lot of the cool effects were done before the major update of RM2k3 that came out earlier last month. Some things I thought were never possible in RM2k3 are things that I made possible after some thought. Like any problem, it can be solved in a bunch of ways, even if you have limitations.

Which character in your game do you relate to the most and why? (Alternatively: Who is your favorite character and why?) *Rindre: The character I relate to the most is actually my least favorite character. It's Ben! I specifically modeled him after myself but changed certain things, like the intensity of his reactions. It was actually difficult to write him, because I had to think about how I would react in the situations I put Ben in. I feel like I had to get into some kind of mindset that was "mine", but also "not mine" as well.

Looking back now, is there anything that regret/wish you had done differently? *Rindre: I feel like I could've released the game sooner, or continued work on FLUX instead. I would like to go back to working on FLUX soon, since I haven't worked on it in a long while. But after hosting the Pixel Horror Jam with Choko and jamming on this game, I'd like to rest up a bit before I take on a big project again.

Once you finish your project, do you plan to explore game's universe and characters further in subsequent projects, or leave it as-is? *Rindre: Because lux is part of the -UX Series, it would naturally be a series with other entries. I don't know if or when they'll all be created, nor if they'll all be games, but I do eventually hope to see it finish. Something I want to explore is to further flesh out the stories Ben has written, especially because they were concepts written before lux ever came up as a concept. I've also given them -UX titles! I think I'll work on Crux/quX next.

What do you look most forward to upon/after release? *Rindre: I am donating proceeds to the One More Light Fund with what is being donated to the itch.io-uploaded version of lux, so I really am looking forward to donating to a cause that is important to me. I encourage people to donate to the OML Fund directly, not through me. I also really like fan reaction, but I love the catharsis of releasing something you've made. It's a mix of relief and pride, but a little bit of anxiety because you don't know how well the fan reaction will be. I hope that my game will affect somebody in a positive, personal way, whether it be a new favorite game, something for them to draw, or become inspiration for their own works. I look forward to free time and rewarding myself with something good, like chicken parmesan too!

Is there something you're afraid of concerning the development or the release of your game?  *Rindre: I constantly ask, "Is my game worthy enough for others to play? Is my game good enough?" But when it comes down to it, really you're asking it to yourself, not to the people that will play your game. Sometimes, you have to sit down and ask yourself, "Am I satisfied with what I have made so far?" Then you go down the list of things you've made and say either, "I'm proud of this!" or "This could use some more work." and you fix it accordingly. The first audience of your game is always you, so if your game is "worthy" and "good enough" to you, then it is for other people.

Question from last month's featured dev (Team Galanx): What kind of stories do you appreciate most in RPG Maker games? For example, do you like ones based off real-life experiences, fantasy elements, or morals? *Rindre: My series of games is called the -UX Series, with there being 4 main stories that are related to each other: "FLUX", "lux", "Ux.", and "X". The rest of the titles end in "-ux" as well. It was only natural to do that!

Do you have any advice for upcoming devs? *Rindre: Game Development -Give things meaningful names. -Back up your work in three different places. -Back up your games frequently. -Never be afraid to remake things, but do this occasionally. If you do this frequently, you'll be caught up in a loop of perfectionism. -Think if the cool new thing you want to put in will actually serve a proper purpose in the game. If it's only there just to be cool, don't put it in your game. -If things don't work out, it's perfectly fine to scrap ideas. -Don't pander. Make a game you want to make, not what others want to play. Releasing your game -Reach out to people who haven't played games similar to yours. You'll have opinions that you wouldn't normally get, compared to others who are familiar with your type of game. -Learn how to take critique. This might be the skill that will take you the longest to hone. -Not everyone is out to get you, but sometimes there will be people who want to bring you down. Even if this happens, there are always people there to support you. -You don't have to agree with every critique given to you. Other advice -If you're not embarrassed about your old work, then you haven't progressed. Continue to improve your skills and yourself. -Don't compare yourself to others. Compare yourself to your past self instead. -Don't be working on your game 24/7. Take up hobbies to occupy yourself, so you don't get burned out. -Learn to be a generalist, but also learn to specialize in something that people will recognize you for. -Be proud of your work.

We mods would like to thank Rindre for agreeing to our interview! We believe that featuring the developer and their creative process is just as important as featuring the final product. Hopefully this Q&A segment has been an entertaining and insightful experience for everyone involved! 

Remember to check out lux if you haven’t already! See you next month! 

- Mods Gold & Platinum 

[moondriftingold]

bnha verse time !

it was kind of difficult to translate this into bnha canon because the context for saïx’s whole existence in kingdom hearts is completely different from any lore in bnha. kh has concepts like the spirit, soul, and heart as literal tangible things, and saïx’s whole reason for being a ~villain~ is because he lost his heart, and not just in a figurative sense. like. he literally has no heart, in spirit or as the organ. it’s gone. literally empty inside; when nobodies “die”, they dissolve into black shadow, communicating that they were just the shell of the person they were before they lost that integral piece of themselves. so without that as a working factor the context of his whole motivation as an antagonist is skewed and hard to piece together, but the idea that saïx has some part of him that's missing, and that its something so important to him he'll do anything to get it back, is an integral part of his character that i don’t see changing throughout worlds. so. with that vague bit as my baseline, here we go.

first things first: his quirk is called moonshine, and his villain name is luna diviner. it primarily operates nocturnally since that’s when the moon is out/easiest to reach --- though with great focus and energy, saïx can activate his quirk during the day, but just not to the same extent as at night. he gains giant boosts in attack power and speed when exposed to the moon’s aura, and can transform himself into a psuedo-beast with enough energy. think of his berserk state in kingdom hearts, except amped up with a more monstrous twist. at times his attacks may seem mindless, but behind the beast is a viciously calculating and relentless mind.

saïx works with the league of villains, but not necessarily voluntarily. he doesn’t believe in shigaraki’s cause and actually thinks very little of him, personally, but he’s there on his side because he’s doing what he has to do to survive. it’s a dog-eat-dog world, you see, and he’s not going to let himself be eaten.

his real name is isa, but he’s been going under the guise of saïx for upwards of ten years. again, the name-change isn’t a thing he decided to do voluntarily --- it was gifted to him by his boss, xemnas, a cold and controlling and manipulative man. the group they belong to, the organization, is vaguely similar to chisaki’s yakuza, but on a smaller scale with more mystery surrounding them. they’re not actually known to most mainstream heroes, just a handful of the underground ones that may have crossed their path. they focus on information control and have remained in the background for many years, shrouding their true goal behind the activity of other villainous groups. though, they may begin to rise up through the turmoil following all might’s retirement. saïx is his second in command, and has power over the grand majority of the organization’s decisions and information, minus a pool of power that xemnas keeps to himself ( which infuriates and frustrates saïx to no end ).

much like how he isn’t loyal to shigaraki, he isn’t very trusting towards his own boss, either. considering all the things he’s done to him, and how he’s had him trapped in a crime-syndicate with no plausible way out for over a decade, he’s a little warranted in his suspicions. it’s important to know that he has no true loyalties other than to himself, and to his childhood friend lea. but even that bond has waned out, and saïx doesn’t know if it’s worth the energy to rekindle.

considering all that saïx knows and how long he’s been in the villain community, he could actually be incredibly useful to police and heroes if they ever got their hands on him, and if he was actually willing to tell. though he has no true loyalties to xemnas or shigaraki, the hold xemnas has over him keeps his mouth shut no matter how much he may kick and scream. 

all kh characters are considered npcs in this verse if they’re ever involved in a thread, unless someone would like to plot with me! which i would love!! i’m mainly only considering the organization members at this point, but obviously it’s viable to have other characters included. anyways. here it is n Enjoy

[tedlyanderson]

A Completely Incomplete History of the Magical Girl Subgenre in Manga and Anime, pt. 1

I’ve been posting a bit recently about a pitch I’m working on called Sunshine Cheer Squad Go!, which can be summed up as “magical girl cheerleaders.” But what do I mean by “magical girl”? In this case, I’m referring to a very specific subgenre of manga and anime, first appearing in the 1960s and which has gone through some significant evolution since then. If you’re even passingly familiar with Japanese pop culture, you’re most likely familiar with the basics of the genre: teenage girls acquire magical superpowers, transform into sparkly princess warriors, and then battle and defeat the forces of evil. (The Japanese term for this subgenre, mahou shoujo, literally translates to “magical girl.”) I’ve always been fascinated by these narratives, and what’s struck me is that it’s a subgenre unique to Japan; that is to say, while it originated from a variety of tropes and concepts from across the world, and there’s been cross-pollination since the very beginning, the subgenre began and flourished in Japan. What’s more, because it’s such a relatively recent creation, we can trace its evolution very precisely. I want to take a look at the origins of the magical girl and describe the changes and permutations she’s gone through. Join me below the break, won’t you?

I’ll start with an attempt at a definition: a “magical girl” series is a series in which the main character(s) are girls, typically teenagers or pre-teens, who have access to magical or otherworldly abilities in what is otherwise a normal, real-world setting, which are used in conjunction with personal strengths and virtues to solve problems and/or achieve their goals, and which they must keep concealed from other people who aren’t in on the secret. Now, that definition is overly broad and probably includes a lot of things which most people wouldn’t call “magical girl”—for example, the only thing that separates this from the superhero genre is that the protagonist is exclusively, rather than occasionally female, and that there is rarely a focus on physical combat—but that’ll do for now.

As I see it, there are three major generations of magical girl series, three phases of the subgenre marked by significant changes in the character archetype and the structure of the basic narrative, but with an underlying set of themes and a continuity of ideas that links them together. Now, you can’t completely divide up any group of media into rigid categories, because there are always going to be outliers and works that defy categorization: creators ahead of their time, deliberate throwbacks, attempts at hybridization, cross-genre works, and so forth. But it is possible to define broad trends and expectations, and that’s what I’ll be writing about. When applicable, I’ll also discuss works which notably depart from these categories for one reason or another, but this is a general overview, not an encyclopedic history.

So let’s start with the first generation of magical girls! There are of course antecedents and early works that have elements of the magical girl—for example, Osamu Tezuka’s Princess Knight (Ribon no Kishi)—but the very first magical girl series as it is usually defined is Little Witch Sally (Mahoutsukai Sally), which began as a short-lived manga series in July of 1966; it was adapted into an anime by Toei Animation and began airing in December of that year. In the series, Sally is the Witch Princess of the Magic Kingdom, who travels to the human world in order to make friends her own age. She keeps her magic powers a secret and acts like a normal human girl in order to fit in.

The creator of the manga, Mitsuteru Yokoyama (who also created Tetsujin 28-go, better known in the United States as Gigantor), said that the major inspiration for the series was the American sitcom Bewitched, about Samantha the witch marrying a mortal man and trying to act like a normal housewife. Now, there’s a debate to be had about whether Bewitched was a patriarchal fantasy about dominating women and preventing them from using their natural talents, or a slyly feminist parable about the degree to which “submissive” wives can manipulate and control their husbands within the domestic sphere, but that’s a whole other essay. What matters here is what differentiates Sally from Bewitched, and to me the difference is clear: Sally, the character, has no responsibilities. She is beholden to nobody; the only rules she has to obey are those she sets herself. Sally is allowed to do anything she likes, because there is nothing at stake and her actions have no serious repercussions. In a word, Samantha from Bewitched is an adult, with adult responsibilities and obligations, but Sally is a child.

[Edited 9/11/17: friend and cartoonist @bakertoons pointed out that, technically, the series Akko’s Secret (Himitsu no Akko-chan) premiered before Sally, and should rightly be considered the first magical girl series! In the series, the young Akko is visited by the Queen of the Mirror Kingdom, who gives her a magic mirror and a spell to transform into whatever she wants. The manga of Akko by Fujio Akatsuka (probably more well-known today for his series Osomatsu-kun) was first published in the manga magazine Ribon in 1962, four years before Sally‘s debut. Sally was the first magical girl anime, debuting in 1966, but Akko was definitely the first magical girl manga. In fact, Akko was made into an anime series in 1969, partly as a replacement for Sally. I have seen references to the effect that Akatsuka was also inspired by Bewitched when creating Akko. I can’t verify this, but it certainly seems plausible.]

Professor Susan J. Napier, in her book Anime from Akira to Princess Mononoke (later updated and re-released as Anime from Akira to Howl’s Moving Castle), describes three extremely general categories of anime and manga, based on the overall emotions they evoke: festival, apocalyptic, and elegiac. This first generation of magical girl series falls squarely in the festival category: our characters have no major duties, little is at stake, their problems are relatively small and easily solvable, and all’s well that ends well. Virtually nothing carries over between episodes of Little Witch Sally; there are no recurring villains or long-running plotlines. Now, to be clear, this isn’t rare for anime of the period, or even most television—Bewitched didn’t have much in the way of long-running continuity, either—but it’s worth pointing out, in light of later developments in the genre.

Sally was followed by other, similar series: Mahoutsukai Chappy in 1972 and Majokko Megu-chan (pictured above) in 1974. I’ll admit to having difficulty finding episodes of these series, so I can’t comment on them as extensively, but from what I’ve read, they follow the same basic trajectory: young girl from a magical world is transported to our world, has low-stakes adventures, learns some lessons about friendship and so forth. Toei also produced other series that I think merit the “magical girl” label—for example, Marvelous Melmo (Fushigi na Melmo), in which a normal girl who loses her mother in a car accident receives a bottle of magic pills from her mother’s ghost, which lets her transform into various forms—but again, my direct knowledge of these series is limited.

The elements that define the first generation of magical girls as distinct from later works will become more clear as I discuss the genre in future posts, but for now, here’s what I see as the crucial points for the first generation. First, these series are largely episodic; while there may be recurring characters and even a series finale, there isn’t an overarching plot which shapes the series as a whole. Each episode stands on its own, and follows a general formula that remains largely the same for the entire series. Second, there is no larger threat, or at least no threat that tangibly menaces the main character. These girls weren’t leaving their magical kingdoms because they were threatened or some dark villain was invading—they needed to learn how the mortal world works, or they had to train their magic powers, or they were just bored! These series did not have active, menacing villains who worked against the heroes, or at least not ones who were in any way competent or legitimately threatening. And lastly, the protagonists do not have secret identities. While they need to keep their magical abilities secret, they don’t have alter egos or alternate personas that they need to hide from their friends. Again, this will be more significant by comparison to later generations of magical girls, but for now, put it like this: Sally was always a witch, whether she used her magic or not, but Usagi Tsukino is only sometimes Sailor Moon.

That’s it for part one of this extremely incomplete history! Join me for future installments, won’t you?

[rigelmejo]

it is really... not even an understatement... that the me from august 2019 would be blown away at the progress i’ve made in just a little under a year.

in august 2019 i definitely did not think i’d be able to watch and comprehend the main plot of a show in only chinese, within a year. i literally only knew the greetings, thank you, and the numbers 1-10 in august 2019. 

congrats me from august 2019, i am glad i accomplished one of your goals. you can now go watch guardian again and see how much better you’ve gotten at chinese since august. ovo)/

---

i am sure a part of this quick progress has been due to me having studied languages before, so i personally know what study methods work the most efficiently for me. i’m sure another part, is due to the existing knowledge i had of japanese, which admittedly i do think helped with my ability to learn hanzi. another large part is just how determinedly adamant i am to want to read chinese novels and watch chinese shows. So utterly determined. So completely determined, that I actually tried to do it from month 3 onward, repeatedly. Even though for much of the time I attempted to do this, I sucked so much that it was a draining slog and I struggled to get through a few paragraphs and then a few pages. I struggled to get through more than a few minutes of a show. And yet I kept making myself try again, and again, with small noticeable progress each time. 

I am well aware that I never tried so adamantly to attempt to understand japanese, especially so early on and so frequently. Because... it is an absolutely brutal experience lol. And it is the most brutal in the very beginning, when it’s also the easiest to get demotivated! That’s why with japanese... I didn’t even try to read SIMPLE things like tweets and titles, or watch SIMPLE short youtube skits in japanese, until I had studied for an entire year! In japanese, I did not even try to slog through mangas until 1.5 years into studying. Precisely because the slog is really so brutal, and I got so demotivated whenever I tried to engage with target-language-only material in japanese. It probably wasn’t even until 2-2.5 years of studying japanese... that I even attempted trying to read through manga chapters just trying to comprehend the main plot points. 

Meanwhile, in chinese? I tried to read through comic panels by like month 3, and got a bit decent at it by month 6. Now I’m like 11 months into learning chinese, and I feel comfortable enough with comics that I could skim through one if I wanted and translate a decent bit of it (which took OVER 2.5 YEARS to do in japanese). 

I am certain that part of my rapid progress has been my kind of intense determination to try and comprehend chinese NOW, to keep trying every so often. Even though my language skills aren’t ‘good enough’ yet. I only attempted to do this in chinese, because when I did it in french it seemed to help a lot... and I figured I might as well try it out in chinese and see if it helps too. I think it’s almost as difficult as doing it with japanese was. The main difference is I am more willing to feel confused/frustrated/drained trying to read/watch chinese content. With japanese, when I got frustrated/drained, I would give up for months at a time before trying again. As a result, I saw quite slow progress, and it took 6 months - 1 year at a time for me to ever notice significant improvement. With chinese, I have actually been using these ‘attempt’ activities to gauge my progress. So I kept doing them every couple of weeks, despite how intensely hard they felt to do. So with chinese, I have seen noticable progress every couple of months. Which is, expectedly, slower than my progress was in french. But it is, thankfully, quicker than my progress in japanese.

Again, I think the other big reason my chinese improved more ‘rapidly’ than I expected, was also just me having a study plan already tested and ready to utilize since I’ve studied other languages before. So I didn’t waste a lot of time figuring out HOW to study for my goals, whereas with japanese and french I definitely wasted more time figuring out how to study to meet my goals, and which study methods helped me most personally. So I got to skip a lot of the figuring out what methods to use portion of the learning process. My japanese study experiences helped me come up with a plan for studying chinese that helped account for the special difficulties of characters and lack of cognates. I didn’t have that experience to help me when I started studying japanese.

A little timeline comparison for myself:

French progress: bare minimum reading skills - 3 months. read simple stories/comics and grasp main ideas - 6 months. read general content, grasp main ideas - 1 year. read most content, at least grasping main ideas - 2 years.

Chinese progress: bare minimum reading skills - 6 months. read simple stories/comics and grasp main ideas - 11 months.

Japanese Progress: bare minimum reading skills - 1 year. read simple stories/comics and grasp main ideas - 2 years.

So for me, chinese is taking about twice as long as french to learn to read. japanese has taken 4 times as long as french to learn to read. 

I speculate that if I had not had such a solid study plan, and had not engaged so frequently with chinese content, then chinese would probably also be taking 4 times as long. Hopefully, if I got back into studying japanese, the study methods I’ve utilized me would allow me to speed up my improvement compared to how slow it took me to improve in the past. 

And, for fun, a comparison of my speaking skills, and listening comprehension:

French progress:

speak about really simple topics - 3 months. 

speak about things on my mind in at least a basic way (like a 9 year old, with worse grammar probably) - 6 months. 

speak about things on my mind in some detail - 1 year.

write letters, speak on a somewhat specific topic with someone - 2 years (highly dependent on the topic, on if i’ve refreshed my french recently since i only use french every few months now, and if i’m allowed to use a dictionary to look up words i might want to use)

can listen to simple conversations - 6 months.

can listen to shows/videos and get the gist - ahahahah no. i need french subtitles.

can listen to audio only content - i have never tried.

(Can you tell I almost exclusively studied french to read?)

Chinese progress:

speak about really simple topics - 5 months.

speak about things on my mind in at least a basic way - 8 months (I joined HelloTalk and I credit that to my improvements in this area, it forced me to use chinese to write and speak a lot more... if I go back to studying french with the goal to speak/write, I’m going to do that with french).

speak about things on my mind in some detail - 11 months+ (I’m in a grey area right now... I can write about most topics if I can look up words to use, and I can speak about my life/interests without a dictionary and have an exchange with someone. If speaking, I can speak about most ‘tangible’ topics like what is happening/who feels what/what is something - it’s concepts like ‘the idea that the political system is blah blah’ or ‘my meaning is that...’ which I struggle to talk about, because I don’t know very many ‘concept’ words.)

currently I cannot write about any specialized topics. i can write about most things in a broad way though, granted there will be a plethora of grammar mistakes and i may need a dictionary if i need to say something detailed. my writing skills are only comfortably able to discuss everyday kind of ‘chat’ topics like what’s happening, how people are feeling, what they’ve done/plan to do, what they like. I am not adequate at discussing topics such as ‘how do you feel about politics/this theory’ or like poetic language like fiction. 

can listen to a simple conversation - 6 months. (I think it improved better than my french to be honest, because it’s much easier for me to listen to chinese. I’ve practiced listening in chinese from day 1, I... rarely ever practice listening to french and it shows in my pathetic french listening skills).

can listen to shows/videos and get the gist - 8 months. (if we are talking bare minimum, I could probably start managing to follow the main ideas back at 8 months it was just... such an intensive difficult task. it is getting easier.)

can listen to audio only content - not there yet. (at my current 11 months, I can comprehend audio only graded-reader type content and learner podcasts - which is barely anything but way better than my french listening comprehension. I can also currently follow audio only content if i have some kind of transcript to refer to for context first... I’m going to make a guess that this skill will take me 2 years to get to any comfortable level of ‘catching the main ideas’ at. Based on the assumption I never practice/study listening comprehension enough, and on the fact chinese is more difficult for me than french. Then I’m going to guess it will be a minimum of 4 years until I’ll actually feel like it’s not draining, to listen to chinese audio only. I might manage to progress a bit faster, depending on how often I study this skill.)

And, for fun, Japanese progress:

speak about really simple topics - 6 months. (I took an intensive japanese class in college, and used the Genki books, those first months).

speak about things on my mind in at least a basic way - never got to that point. (after the intensive japanese class, I switched to focusing on learning vocabulary/kanji/grammar patterns with the intent to learn to read, and never actually practiced speaking again). 

speak about things on my mind in some detail - never got to that point.

write letters, speak on a somewhat specific topic with someone - never got to that point.

can listen to simple conversations - 1 year roughly. 

can listen to shows/videos and get the gist - no. maybe 2 years for the ability to only catch some very main ideas (I can get the gist if they’re about simple life/job/interest topics, otherwise I am useless without a dictionary. Sometimes I can watch youtube japanese videos about daily life/humor/politics/culture/fandoms and follow along from context, but it can be draining depending on how long I do this, and I only catch the very narrow main ideas... I miss many details unless I use a dictionary). 

can listen to audio only content - no. (Like the other two languages, I can mostly only listen to slow paced audio only content about subjects I know very well already. In japanese, that’s mostly daily life related audio. My chinese is better hands down than both other languages. My japanese listening comprehension is better than my french though - I am very good at listening and recognizing japanese words I know, whereas in french I am very bad at that. )

[pa0231michelletsang]

evaluation

In order to create an idea that is conceptually strong and engaging to the audience. It’s crucial to learn and understand the key fundamentals of story creation. These of which were themes, stories and genres that had been summed up by author Philip Parker, it allowed us to understand the true definitions and how they connect to each other through the three acts (Syd field 1984), known as exposition, conflict and resolution that all classic narratives follow.

By using the knowledge obtained from the lectures that followed Philip Parkers understanding of film concepts, we were required to use this to generate a strong idea that could work for a short film lasting 5-10 minutes.

Brain-storming the idea consisted of selected themes that I particularly enjoyed the most and what I felt would be much more captivating to the audience. The following themes I decided to focus on were “Injustice” “Desire for Order or truth” and “The pursuit of self-validation”. All of which involves the character to deal with personal conflict and over-come either themselves or the world around them. This made me come up with the idea about self-validation about a character who may appear threatening from the exterior that has caused them to be isolated from others, however they want to change this as they are more than what they look. With self-validation he would then be able to break out of isolation and therefore be accepted into his society.  Other stories that I’ve created followed the same narrative, “A girl is cursed by her mother’s spirit and is unwilling to let go and therefore controls her”. However with these stories, I felt like they were cliché and finding a resolution may be hard.

After research on Paul Wells and his articles about symbolism and metaphors, I then start to think about how characters may not necessarily need to be a person, that they could perhaps be an inanimate object in which could be the protagonist,, that perhaps the world could be a character who is an external force to the protagonist. I found that this was quite similar to how society can be today in certain aspects, whether we like to be aware of it or not. We as citizens are quite helpless and can feel controlled when major negative changes are happening in the world and we are unable to make a strong positive difference. By connecting today’s society with exaggerated antagonists, I would be able to create a world that is mundane, dull and emotionless. After several drafts and help from my peers this helped me come up with an idea that I worked.

“A violin awakens in a black and white world futuristic world with people who are controlled by a “system” and their freedom being taken away, they are brain-washed to believe the money and success are the way to evolve. The violin and its’ bow that this is wrong and wants to make a difference, she uses her traits (her passion for music) to change people’s hearts and for them to realise that having fun and leisure is okay.  Her side-kick, the gramophone comes to life and goes to the centre of town with her, plays music together until the tallest building known as the system awakens, and it then alerts the crowds of people to confiscate her prized possession. Saddened by this, she then attempts to find her partner in a scrap yard shop, who she then finds other instruments that could help her break the system. They then climb on top of the system building, sing and play music on the top of their voices. Spreading both music and colour to the world”  

I was very much inspired by the visual style and concept from the Pixar short inner workings, which focuses on a man who goes to work every-day, disconnecting himself from the happy and outgoing world to a workplace that’s very robotic and emotionless.

The system character in my story is inspired by the book 1984, a novel that focuses on a futuristic world where citizens are under heavily surveillance and controlled by bringing this inspirations together to form the message that I want to put across to the audience is that.

The message that I want to put across to the audience is that “By having the passion and will to change the world, having one voice may not be enough. However by coming together with a group of people, the voices will therefore be heard.”

 After writing the plot out, I began to build the story together by identifying the genre and its’ story, finding it’s’ connections to the theme. I found that a personal conflict is evident as the protagonist’s has the desire to escape this world, in which they try and bring happiness into it, however this fails and realises that not all things can be done solo but in a group which allows them to work together and changes the world. The story is very much the gift being taken away, we watch as the character mourns but becomes stronger as they find the power to bring them back and is able to bring colour to themselves through the power of friendship.

However, the story was not always about a violin as it was originally about a girl from the 1970’s who woke up in this world and had a gramophone as a side-kick, following the same acts and narrative.

So at its’ earlier stage feedback that I received for the story pitch was generally positive, as the character is seen to be strong willed and positive and is exposed into a world that reflects our current society and that music was a good plot device to lure the audience into the musical journey that can change the world. The most helpful feedback was to change the side-kick to something a bit more related, perhaps have something that is more tangible compared to a gramophone. In which I have exchanged for a violin, something that is small, curvy and has a counterpart in order to play (the bow).

I was asked a few questions during my feedback and had made me realise more about the world, about which parts I would exaggerate that would make the contrast stronger between the character and the world. I was asked how I would be able to portray success and money in a bad light and how what they look compared to humans. I decided to go for a much more futuristic approach and made research about the negative impacts of success and money and change the concept of the citizens into robotic humans with angular shapes. While doing this, I began to think about the environment and how I would be able to capture the dark and evilness and put this into contrast to the pure character that will change all of this. Another strong question that was asked from my tutor was, why is the girl there? It wasn’t until then that I realised that the violin has the exact same characteristics as the girl. Strong willed, musical and wanting to change the world. This caused me to re-write the story, replacing the girl with the violin. So instead of the girl losing the violin, the violin could lose its’ bow. This is a strong reference to the idea of anthropometrism (Paul Wells 1998), as the violin is being given the same human characteristics as the girl did in the previous draft of the story.

Happy with the feedback I have taken, along with the adjustments made to the story I was motivated and looking forward to creating this into an animatic.

The hardest parts I found during the creation of this module was not the story-creating, I believe it was how I executed it, especially with how the acts were introduced. At times when I was working on the animatic I felt lost finding the transition between the acts as these frames were blank-fillers. In which has made me wished I worked the key-frames better with act 1, act 2 and act 3. I do feel like the beginning and end worked well but I was missing a dramatic effect between the world and the protagonist. Which many agreed in the feedback I received. Act 2 was the weakest act as it was hard to tell if the bow was dead or just taken away, I also feel like there wasn’t enough conflict or drama , this might be due to because the system character wasn’t well developed or translated well from the story to the animatic.

I admit, I felt like I was being a bit over ambitious with the world development and trying to allow the main characters to have room to breathe, again I feel like it was translated incorrectly

Despite these flaws, the animatic has been somewhat successful in my eyes. I was able to bring these instruments to life through anthropometrism and bring a metaphorical meaning into my work as we see the violin progress as a character, it produces music but not enough to change its’ surroundings and not enough to make it have its’ own kind of life as it continues to remain black and white. However with friends, they provide a power to all of them as they whisk through the city with their musical powers, enough to bring him to rescue his friend. It goes back to the meaning of the story that I wanted, that one voice may not get the message fully across but a group of voices can make a difference with support and positivity. I feel like using music was a good drive, it allowed me to visually show its’ power and its’ colourful effect to the dull world.

Acts one and three work out well enough I feel, as the character was well exposed to the dull world attempts to play music, loses its’ possession whilst not strong I feel the resolution allowed the character to realise life lessons.

What else I could have done in my work, is create stronger acts and spend more time planning the animatic rather than jumping straight into it. I feel like this was my weakness, I was too involved in the work and not looking at the bigger picture. I could have also made the contrast stronger between the characters, such as planning the shot when the creature building awakened and make this obvious to the audience.

What I thought I could have done better was consciously be aware that I am making the acts obvious in the story, perhaps as well make the contrast stronger between the protagonist and the antagonist. Make the antagonist appear much more threatening and make the audience feel the danger the violin is going through and therefore the loss would have been a lot more effective. With these being the things I could of done better are how I feel towards to what I would of done to make the animatic better.

If given the chance to redo this, the things I would change in the work done in this module is making the acts more obvious, perhaps be a bit more experimental as I feel like my work wasn’t powerful enough when displaying the evil-ness of the monstrous building, I may have held myself back while working on this. I’d also put more time into the environment as this plays a big part in the story. However despite all this, I am happy with the work I have created and whilst not perfect, the module has taught me the key elements of story-telling, how it is structured and how all of these devices are crucial. With the mistakes I have made, I am glad that I am able to look back at them when making my new ideas and see myself progress. It has inspired me to learn more about the art of story-building and enabling me to make a story much more effective and emotionally moving to my audience.

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