#and she has become a perfect storm of anti-interest

[orangedodge]

I think Mother Righteous might actually be the worst villain I've ever seen

[reinekes-fox]

The pokémon team anon has returned. I read the Hound Nights demo and got creative.

Starling:

- Starly. The names match! Also, that is Starling's starter, they left the cult together.

- Rufflet. Another cult buddy that escaped with Starling. Rufflet's evolution, Braviary, has this dex entry "For the sake of its friends, this brave warrior of the sky will not stop battling, even if injured." Starling shows similar tendencies towards her family, but much like Rufflet, she still has some growing to do before fully fitting the role.

- Togekiss. A pokémon that enjoys the company of kindhearted people. Starling insists Togekiss stays around for their parents, but it is clear Togekiss really cares for her.

- Drampa. A friendly pokémon that loves children and protects them from danger? Yeah, of course a traumatized cult survivor would end up with one looking after them. MC's family probably gave it to her to help her feel safe.

- Bagon. Just a little baby that wants to fly free and is willing to jump off cliffs to reach its dream.

- Shiftry. Its body is wood, so the nose can serve as an improvised stake. It knows the move Sunny Day, which turns the wheater sunny. It can even read minds. Shiftry is Starling's anti-vampire buddy.

Marian:

- Meowscarada. Green magician cat, that's all.

- Perrserker. Bushy tail, black and grey face, cat. Knows Pay Day (a move that generates free money).

- Male Meowstic. Green-eyed cat with psychic powers. It has the Prankster ability.

- Electabuzz. A pokémon that loves storms just seems fitting. Marian has been raising this one since it was an Elekid.

- Castform. It changes type based on the weather and helps Marian with practical effects, since it can make rain, hail, and even sunshine.

- Female Basculegion. Its dex entry states that females "can afflict a target with terrifying illusions that are under its control. The deeper the sadness in its friends' souls, the paler Basculegion becomes." Marian deserves a fish filled with ghosts.

Theo:

- Mightyena. A pack hunter that values teamwork and is obedient to skilled trainers.

- Mabosstiff. A gentle dog that loves children, but that will take on an intimidating look to protect its family. Theo's Mabosstiff has the Guard Dog ability, which "Boosts the Pokémon’s Attack stat if intimidated. Moves and items that would force the Pokémon to switch out also fail to work."

- Dusknoir. A ghost that guides lost spirits home. Of course the cemetery keeper would end up with one on his team.

- Cubone. Theo saw a little orphan baby and adopted it, no wonder he was ready to take MC in.

- Gyarados. Do not forget what Theo is.

Chrétien/Florence:

- Swoobat. As always, a bat for the vampire. A friendship evolution that gives others positive mood shifts? Very fitting for a vampire who is happy to be someone's best friend... as long as they are of use.

- Skeledirge. Matching its trainer's interests, Skeledirge is both an excellent singer and capable of producing flames at a temperature of 3000 ℃, perfect for burning up a body.

- Drifloon. A pokémon that likes kidnapping children.

- Gorebyss. To quote the dex, "Although Gorebyss is the very picture of elegance and beauty while swimming, it is also cruel. When it spots prey, this Pokémon inserts its thin mouth into the prey's body and drains the prey of its body fluids."

- Vespiqueen. Uses pheromones to control those around it (and make them fight for its sake), much like a vampire does with a hound.

- Hypno. Is it a weird yellow humanoid? Yes. Is it good for getting food in a pinch since it can put people to sleep and drag them away? Also yes.

Welcome back! Glad to see my work can inspire you even more x3

Tbh I would kill for that Pokemon AU...

Also "Shiftry is Starling's anti-vampire buddy." sounds so damn cute!!

Marian.

I love how its just "cat!" and I see they are something... however he and Chase wouldnt get along very well. And the fish looks so tired :(

Theo.

Also whenever I think "awww so cute!" there is always something super dark

Hound MCs totally friendly and absolutely loyal Master /pos as in piece of shit

[lizzygrantarchives]

Billboard, October 22, 2015

After reinventing herself as a cryptic Hollywood femme fatale, the 30-year-old singer has fought off the haters to become a proper, if unusual, pop star. In a rare interview, she opens up about coping with anxiety, her new-age mentors and how she almost played Sharon Tate on the big screen: “I could have become an American nightmare.”

LANA DEL REY AND I WERE FIRST introduced at an Architectural Digest pimped manse off Pacific Coast Highway during a party thrown, weirdly enough, for Werner Herzog and his bud, the physicist Lawrence Krauss. (Del Rey, 30, has spoken before of her interest in science and philosophy.) On that night, she wore an unformfitting Polo shirt dress with a personal-old-fave vibe. In deglamorized “Stars Without Makeup” mode, she was unpretentious and softly gregarious, like a doe-eyed, underdressed newcomer to the Town. I was at the same table, and she caught me staring off at the horizon. Del Rey was sardonically attuned, nudging her boyfriend, the Italian photographer-director Francesco Carrozzinni, to have a look at the cliché: Old Brooding Man. Her warmth took me out of myself.

Lana Del Rey’s fourth album, Honeymoon, debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 in September, but when I asked if she planned to go on the road to promote it, she shook her head. “I do everything backwards. It already happened — I’m actually done with the world tour I started four years ago, when I needed to be out there. I really needed to be out there singing.”

That exodus was partly born of the need to heal following a 2012 appearance on Saturday Night Live that elicited a slaughter-of-the-lamb storm of derision over the then up-and-coming star���s seemingly zoned-out amateurism. She was tarred as a poseur — part Edie Sedgwick, part Valley of the Dolls, a Never Will Be Ready for Primetime Player — but it turned out that Del Rey was only at the end of Act One in an all-American A Star Is Born passion play of celebrity crucifixion and resurrection.

Born Lizzy Grant in Lake Placid, N.Y., Del Rey moved to Manhattan at 18. “For seven years I wrote sexy songs about love,” she says. “That was the most joyous time of my life.” The screen that so many gossipy personas have been projected onto (rich preppy, suicidal anti-feminist, morbid dilettante) has instead transformed into a nearly religious dashboard icon of ghostly seduction. She’s a global phenomenon, part of the national conversation and cultural soundscape. Nielsen Music puts her total U.S. album sales at 2.5 million, and her videos have been viewed hundreds of millions of times. Del Rey is now a few years into her return from the desert, having arrived on a mystery train of Santa Ana winds, existential dread and “soft ice cream” (to quote her song “Salvatore”) that is uniquely her own.

I meet her for the interview at a John Lautner house she rents in Los Angeles. Lautner was a seminal Southern California architect, and Del Rey says her choice of lodging was deliberate. She production-designs her life. She greets me in the drive — inquisitive, friendly and aware. For a moment, she looks like Elvis and Priscilla, all in one. The hair is old-school Clairol dark, the eyes siren green, the auburn ’do the most done thing about her.

“You’d love my dad,” she says. She was just on the phone with him; her parents are visiting. He’s a realtor, and Mom’s an English teacher whose passion is reading history books. Del Rey lives here with her younger sister, Caroline Grant, a photographer who goes by Chuck. (Del Rey tells me that her sister was so shocked by the force of the fans’ emotions during concerts that she doesn’t take pictures of them anymore.)

“My dad’s that guy with perfect Hawaiian shirts and matching shorts,” says Del Rey. “The other day he said, ‘We should see about getting you a vintage Rolls.’ I said, ‘Um, it’s a little attention-grabbing.’ And he said, ‘Uh, yeah.’ ”

What do you do with yourself now that you have nothing on your schedule?

I go for long walks, long drives. I’ll get in the car and drive the streets, feeling for places. I go to Big Sur. I love Big Sur, but it has gotten so touristy. I went to the General Store, and there were hordes. On a Monday! But I’m drawn there. Sometimes I go to write. I’ve been thinking it might be time to do a longer video, a 40-minute video. I was watching The Sandpiper, and I was working on something kind of based on that.

Have you thought of writing something for yourself? Shooting down the paparazzi helicopter in the video for “High by the Beach” was your idea, no?

Yeah, it was. I’d like to write a book one day. But you need a beginning, a middle and an end! I can deal with four minutes — but I’m not so sure about a book.

Your song “God Knows I Tried” fits somewhere between The Beach Boys’ “God Only Knows” and Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.” I’m thinking of Cohen because of that line “Even though it all went wrong.”

I love Leonard — because he’s all about women. Women and God.

Does it all go wrong?

It’s hard for me sometimes to think about going on when I know we’re going to die. Something happened in the last three years, with my panic…

I had read that you were prone to that.

It got worse. But I’ve always been prone to it. I remember being — I was, I think, 4 years old — and I’d just seen a show on TV where the person was killed. And I turned to my parents and said, “Are we all going to die?” They said “Yes,” and I was totally distraught! I broke down in tears and said, “We have to move!”

How do you cope?

I saw a therapist — three times. But I’m really most comfortable sitting in that chair in the studio, writing or singing.

The panic won’t last forever.

I don’t think so, but … sometimes you just want to be able to enjoy the view. I think I’m really like my mother, in the sense that I make small lists. To calm myself down. I reward myself. You know, “If I finish this, then I’ll do that” — I’ll go for a walk on the beach or swim in the ocean. I go for swims and am actually shocked I do that. Because one thing I’m terrified of is sharks.

Do you think having a child would chill you out? Do you want to have kids?

I’ve thought about it. Really thought about it lately because I’ve just turned 30. I’d love having daughters. But I don’t think it’d be a good idea to have kids with someone who wasn’t … on the same page.

Someone who…

Who isn’t exactly — like me! (Laughs.) Though maybe it’s best to have kids with someone who’s … normal.

When was the last time you got trashed by a love affair?

The last one — before the boyfriend I’m with now — was pretty bad. It wasn’t good to be in it, but it wasn’t good to be out of it, either. He was like a twin. Not a facsimile twin, but a real twin.

So maybe finding the same person doesn’t work. Are relationships hard for you?

For someone like me — and it’s not a codependent thing — I just like having someone there. I’ve been alone, and that’s fine. But I like to come home and have someone there. You know, to say, “Oh, he’s here. And this other thing (Mimes a table.) is there. And this (Mimes setting down an object on the table.) is there. (Laughs.) I’m very methodical. I have to be. I’m like that in the studio too. Mixing and mastering can take four more months after we’re done — three to mix and one to master. I like having a plan. Though I do leave spaces for ad-libbing in the studio when I write.

Do you mind if I write all this? Because I don’t want to piss off Francesco.

Oh, he’s going to read this! But he’ll have things to say anyway. He’s very … aggressive. (Smiles.) And besides, I didn’t say he wasn’t just like me.

There’s something weirdly shamanistic about your work. You channel Los Angeles in ways I haven’t seen from anyone, at least not in a long while. Places now extinct, streets and feelings that you have no right to be able to evoke because of your age. And it’s so unlikely that you’re the one to be the oracle that way. But it’s for real.

I know. I know that. I love that word, “shamanistic.” I read energy; I always have. One of the books I love — aside from [Kenneth Anger’s] Hollywood Babylon — is The Autobiography of a Yogi. And Wayne Dyer … I was so upset when he died! [Dyer, part Buddhist, part New Thought motivational speaker, was best-known for his book Your Erroneous Zones. He died in August.] He gave me so much over the last 15 years. I went to see a clairvoyant. She asked me to write down four things on a card before I came in, things I might be thinking about, and she nailed all four. I asked about the man I was seeing — that one, before the one now. She said, “I don’t really like to go there, but … I just don’t see him present.” I went, “Ugh.” She’s seeing the future and doesn’t see him present. Oh, no!

Are you aware of your effect on men?

I’ve only recently become aware of the heterosexual males who are into my music. I remember when I was 16, I had a boyfriend. I think he was… 25? I thought that was the best thing. He had an F-150 pickup and let me drive it one time. I was so high up! I panicked and was worried I might kill someone — run over a nun or something. I started to shake. I was screaming and crying. I saw him looking over, and he was smiling. He said, “I love that you’re out of control.” He saw how vulnerable I was, how afraid, and he loved that. The balance shifted from there. I had the upper hand — until then.

Do you want to be in the movies?

Well… I’m open to it all. James Franco asked me to be in three films that were going to be directed by a Spanish director, and I was hesitant. I think he heard my hesitance and got scared. Someone wanted me to be Sharon Tate. I thought, “That’s so right.” At that time, there were three Manson movies being talked about, but none were ever made. So maybe that was the answer.

Have you ever been the “voice of reason” for a friend in crisis?

I have — I can be. It’s easier to do that sometimes … for someone who’s half-checked out.

Meaning you.

Yes. (Pauses.) You know, I was living in Hancock Park once and thought about a movie idea. I was renting this house whose high walls had been grandfathered in, so of course I kept making them taller and taller. And I had an idea about writing something about a woman living there, a singer losing her mind. She has this Nest-like security system installed, cameras everywhere. The only people she saw were people who work on the grounds: construction people and gardeners. One day she hears the gardener humming this song she wrote. She panics and thinks, “Oh, my God. Was I humming that out loud or just to myself? And if it was aloud, wasn’t it at 4 in the morning? Did that mean he was outside my window?” Then a storm comes, one of those L.A. storms, and the power goes out except to the cameras, which are on a different source. And the pool has been empty for months because of the drought. And she goes outside in the middle of the night because she hears something — and trips over the gardener’s hoe and falls into the empty pool and dies facedown like William Holden at the end of Sunset Boulevard.

For me, one of the most interesting things about you and your story — and of course your work — is that you broke through. That it has turned out well.

I think about it, and I’m so grateful. I am aware that it could easily not have happened. That I could have become … an American nightmare. I see her — Lana — I listen to her and watch her, and I’m … protective.

Let’s end with Big Sur. Do you think your interest is by way of your kinship with the Beats? Your enthrallment with Kerouac?

Big Sur challenges me to surrender. What draws me is … the curves. I’m really drawn to the curves.

Originally published on billboard.com, and in the October 31, 2015 issue of Billboard with the headline An Inconvenient Woman.

[influencermagazineuk]

Kathleen Frankie’s Love for Family Shines Through

Fashion model turned businesswoman Kathleen Frankie dedicates her life to her family and inspiring wellness. For many, changing course in one’s career can seem daunting, but for Kathleen “Frankie” Francesca, it is what brought her hope. Before becoming an unbeatable businesswoman, Frankie was living in New York City and working as a booker for a modeling agency. However, after realizing her dream job was an unfulfilling nightmare, she turned to the business world — slowly taking it by storm. “My work doesn’t feel like a job for me,” said Frankie. “My passion for work makes it a lot easier.” Now, Frankie is the president of R3 Medical, a company that provides regenerative medicine through stem cell and exosome therapy. Since joining R3 Medical, Frankie has tried many hats — starting as a business development director, moving her way up to the chief operating officer, and now proudly serving as the company’s President. “I joined the company because I wanted to make something out of myself and wanted to see how far I can go in taking the company to the top,” said Frankie. With multiple clinics internationally and in the United States, Frankie is moving R3 to the West in July. A new R3 anti-aging and medical spa clinic is opening its doors in Beverly Hills, marking the company’s first location in California. Located on Wilshire and Rexford, this clinic will specialize in cosmetic services such as botox, fillers, hair restoration, facial rejuvenation, as well as regenerative therapy. Frankie’s resilience and dedication are the backbone of her success. When she first started at R3, Frankie’s family was going through hardship. To help her family, Frankie had to sell everything she had. Left without a phone and a computer, Frankie would make frequent trips to the library for internet access. Love for her family is at the core of everything Frankie does. Frankie became interested in entering the medical world when her parents were diagnosed with diabetes. Caring for her parents and volunteering with the American Diabetes Association sparked Frankie’s passion for wellness and helping others. “ shows me that I exist in this world, not just for myself,” said Frankie. “ to help people become better and help motivate people.” Frankie’s mother is her most significant source of inspiration. In times of struggle, Frankie turns to the wise and reassuring words of her mother: “As long as you are breathing, there is hope.” With Frankie as president, the mission of R3 has emphasized the need for wellness in every aspect of people’s life — mental, personal, and physical. R3’s hope to support people in becoming the best version of themselves stems from Frankie’s own goals. “Every day, there’s something that I can improve and everyone can improve about themselves,” said Frankie. “I just really want to best version of myself and be able to balance my work life and my life.” In an effort to create a work-life balance, Frankie makes sure she prioritizes her 10-year-old daughter, Valentina, above everything. Daily Facetime calls with her daughter are the perfect boosts of energy to prepare Frankie for her busy work days. As a single mother, Frankie has learned how to be perseverant and independent — two characteristics she hopes to pass on to Valentina. Being multilingual, a ballroom dancer, and an aspiring lawyer, Valentina has taken after Frankie’s zeal for trying and working toward various passions. “When she wants to learn something, no one can stop her,” said Frankie. “She will teach herself how to do things.” She is incredibly proud of her daughter and hopes to one day gift Valentina with a memoir. Frankie is currently working on an autobiography to tell her daughter about her story, the power of persistence, and the importance of resilience. Frankie wholeheartedly believes that anyone can achieve their dreams, as long as they are strong-minded and diligent. “If you’re willing to make sacrifices, if you’re willing to sweat, you will get far in life,” said Frankie. Read the full article

[the-cat-chat]

April 22, 2023

The Mist (2007)

A freak storm unleashes a species of bloodthirsty creatures on a small town, where a small band of citizens hole up in a supermarket and fight for their lives.

Warning: This review does contain spoilers for the movie. Read at your own risk.

JayBell: For some reason, I was under the impression that the mist was like acid or something and that’s why people couldn’t leave the supermarket. But no. It’s full on weird tentacle-y creatures and bug monsters and stuff. Which is cool, just unexpected.

Let’s start with our main character. For some reason, I found him both really creepy and yet utterly boring. To me, he was just very bland and forgettable. Also, it was so weird that they introduced the cliche “perfect” women, and the whole time it felt like the movie was trying to set them up as a romantic pairing while they were both still married? Plus, her character basically becomes “mom” to his kid and that really freaked me out. Speaking of the kid, yikes did he really not bring much to this movie. He also had the convenient ability to sleep when crazy things were happening.

The best actors were Marcia Gay Harden (the crazy religious zealot), Andre Braugher (the resentful neighbor), and Toby Jones (the store worker). I actually enjoyed the way the movie explored group dynamics and group thinking. It felt like a social experiment gone wrong. So much was put into the relationship between Andre Braugher’s character and the main guy that his death made his character arc seem incomplete. I thought this was one of the most interesting dynamics in the movie, but it felt like there was no emotional payout.

Now the ending. I don’t mind an anti-Hollywood ending. It can be refreshing and surprising sometimes. But it seemed a little ridiculous here. They go through all this effort to fight and live, drive for a ways, and then the car runs out of gas. Their immediate thought? Murder suicide. Not their second or third thought. One of them even says, “Well no one can argue we didn’t try.” I meeeeeaaannn. Did you really try? You didn’t even get out of the car to see if there was another car you could take or siphon gas out of. You didn’t even try to run for some semblance of safety. No one tried to run off and get help. Nope. Clearly the only option is murder suicide. It actually felt so ridiculous that I couldn’t even feel sad at the ending, I just ended up laughing. 

Rating: 4/10 cats 🐈

Anzie: Ummmm. I know its a very rare occasion when I might love a movie- and the rest of the time my other two emotions are either traumatized or seething with rage. But I’m seething with rage with just a dash of traumatization. I reallllly was liking this movie from a dissect it and make funny of it way (bc it is so outlandish but has its moments). And honestly the end of the world? Tell me the one place on planet Earth you’d die willingly rather than to be stuck in- yes the loathsome grocery store. Now come on forget Freddy Krueger- that’s true horror.

I just wanna say- to start off strong- the one thing I didn’t expect to come from The Mist was *spoiler alert* tentacles with teeth OR giant bugs. I thought it would be for sure zombies or like ghouls of some sort - so this plot twist was interesting. The vibes are there for sure too - you definitely pick up on the paranoia that settles in among the people too. Noooow. Let’s not even talk about the religious screaming lady bc I can feel the irritation literally in the pieces of my spine. And then she had to brainwash everyone??? Whhhhhy? 😩 I get it and why the movie does it but I’m not happy about it - so she for sure did a good job. Ohhhh my gawd. The spiders?!? Those thing were 1000x worse that Pennywise. The Punisher’s kid was almost as annoying as the religious lady. And I think his screaming “Daddy?!?” continually throughout the movie really knocks it down at least a half a point. And the fatally flaw. The ending. How? Why? I don’t need this. For reellllzzzzz man. You didn’t see a flame throwing army convoy in your rear view?!??!? I don’t wanna talk about it. Really. If you hate someone tell them to watch this movie just to see their soul leave their body when they watch the end scene. And totally unrelated, but the mystery I wanna know- what was the neighbor’s lawsuit about?? Why even bring it up so much to not tell us? Uggg.

Rating: 3.5/10 Cats 🐈

[serpenteve]

why we ship darklina

an essay literally no one asked for

Nobody needs a "reason" to ship Darklina. But considering this is a villain x hero pairing, it got me thinking about why we shipped it in the first place when the narrative and author so badly wanted us to root for the more sensible alternative pairing and why it became the most popular ship of the entire trilogy.

Personally, I find it really interesting (and low-key hilarious) that a lot of the reasons shippers gravitated towards Darklina can be directly traced back to how badly Bardugo bungled Alina's character arc, Mal's entire characterization and narrative role, Nikolai's wasted potential as an alternative love interest, and the noble intentions she gives the the Darkling.

Alina's Character Arc

Alina's character arc doesn't match who she is as a character. I've written more about that in this post, but a lot of readers were introduced to a passive and insecure protagonist who we were expecting to undergo a typical YA coming-of-age character arc where Alina acquires self-acceptance, confidence, and embraces the full breadth of her powers over the course of the trilogy. Instead, Bardugo gave Alina the kind of character arc that's usually deserved for power-hungry anti-heroines or tragic heroes with a fatal flaw to punish.

The plot offers a strange binary: either Alina suppresses and hides her powers and therefore stays away from descending into villainy OR Alina attempts to find Morozova's amplifiers in order to defeat the Darkling but then becomes corrupted by power in the process. Alina's journey to self-acceptance and exploring her own powers are unfortunately entangled with her relationship with the Darkling. The only way she is allowed to move forward through the plot is to succumb to the corrupting influence of the amplifiers.

For better or for worse, the first character to really embrace her powers instead of thinking she's a fraud or that she's weak or that she's an unholy abomination is the Darkling. He's the first person to recognize her power for what it is and accurately judge its potential and implications for the rest of the world. He advocates for her in front of the royal court, in front other Grisha who think she's weak, and even against Baghra who is initially a very ill-tempered mentor with little to no faith in Alina's abilities. He even rather ironically advocates for her even when the heroic person who's supposed to be supporting her (Mal) does not.

At the start of her journey, Alina is insecure and in constant need of assurance and validation. The Darkling's role as her mentor and guide into this unfamiliar world of Grisha makes him the perfect advocate not only for her powers but also to help Alina see her place in the world. However, once he is revealed to be the villain, Alina also fails to realize that it's time for her to advocate for herself and throws the baby out with the bathwater.

Mal's Characterization & Narrative Role

When Alina loses the Darkling as an advocate in S&B, Mal steps up to take this role. Alina is still rather passive for the majority of the first book and it's Mal who originally wants her to have Morozova's stag as an amplifier if it will mean being able to stand against the Darkling. Bardugo intended for him to be a heroic love interest as a foil to the villainous love interest and I believe she mostly succeeds for the first book.

However, because this is a story about punishing Alina's "evil ambition" (despite there being very little evidence of that) Mal is supposed to serve as a voice of reason in the narrative. Once Alina considers the necessity of acquiring more amplifiers to defeat the Darkling, it is Mal's role to warn her of the potential consequences, to remind her of her inner humanity, and to ward against the corrupting influence of Morozova's amplifiers. Mal's declarations that he wants back the old girl he knew without any power is meant to drive an ideological wedge between them, yes, but he's also meant to be Correct™ because, again, Bardugo is writing a story about a corrupted power-hungry heroine who goes too far and needs to be punished rather than the arc we were all expecting and the one that Alina's character needs: a coming-of-age story of self-acceptance and personal growth.

Some point after the backlash of Siege & Storm, Bardugo seems to have become aware of her mistake and attempts to scrub Mal's character to be more sympathetic. There is a bizarre exchange half-way through the third book when Mal finally declares:

"I wasn't afraid of you, Alina. I was afraid of losing you. The girl you were becoming didn't need me anymore, but she's who you were always meant to be."

This is an interesting line because it's a complete reversal of Mal's narrative role so far. He's supposed to be her voice of reason that opposes her at every turn but readers interpreted him as being resentful of Alina's powers and angry that she was no longer dependent on him. Bardugo is forced to retcon Mal's entire role in the narrative from being a voice of reason that opposes Alina's quest for power to a supportive friend who will fight by her side. But this was never her initial intention and I believe this change was brought on 100% by audience reaction because she failed to understand the arc her heroine needed and the kind of story her audience was anticipating for such a character.

Needless to say, having your heroine's main love interest actively resent her quest for power until half-way through the third damn book did not endear many readers to Mal. Because Bardugo failed to understand the kind of character development her heroine needed and failed to understand audience expectations, we hated Mal. He became the embodiment of every toxic chauvinist we'd ever met who can't stand the idea of his partner's success and feels entitled to be the center of her universe. He was not the voice of reason. He was an annoying gnat hellbent on dragging the heroine down and away from her destiny. We did not want to root for him. Even the villain was more sympathetic than him because he could bring her closer to achieving the self-acceptance the narrative was obsessed with denying her.

Nikolai's Wasted Potential as a Solid Love Interest

Nikolai plays several roles in Alina's journey but most importantly in our discussions for why we ended up shipping Darklina, his entire potential as a serious love interest is wasted.

When we meet Nikolai, we have hitched our wagons to the Darklina train because despite being the villain, the Darkling is the only one who will allow the heroine to accept her powers and come into her own. Her heroic love interest, Mal, is actively sabotaging her efforts and holding her back from her true potential. But then, in swoops Nikolai and we pause, wondering if there may be a better heroic alternative after all?

In a lot of ways, Nikolai and the Darkling alike: they are eager for Alina's power and see her as a solution to all their problems. They may want to use Alina to prop up their own agendas, but unlike Mal, Alina's summoning powers are a massive plus, not a burden. Nikolai is the heroic alternative to our villainous Aleksander. So we wait, wondering if Nikolai will be the one to fix this mess of a romantic subplot. His royal connections offer an easy path to upwards mobility for our heroine and we sense that an alliance between them (even if it's initially political in nature) may bring our heroine closer to obtaining more power, influence, and self-acceptance not only for herself, but also for the oppressed minority she is a part of.

But, again, Bardugo is still obsessed with that "punish the heroine for wanting power" agenda so while Nikolai exists as another mentor figure who offers Alina advice on how to rule, how to appeal to other people, how to charm, how to win people over, and Alina learns and applies much of what she learns from him, he is not treated as a real love interest.

Despite Nikolai being written as a fairy tale prince (handsome, charming, smart as a whip, brave in battle, etc) Alina never actually considers him romantically. They are friends and allies at best and the only time she considers kissing him is only when she's pissed about Mal.

Nikolai's proposal at the end of Ruin & Rising feels like one last saving grace, one last opportunity for our heroine to take control of her life and make a dramatic change to break from the past. But this too is rejected because Alina's arc will never let her access any power. She does not reject Nikolai because she wants to marry for love. She rejects him because she has been "punished" for wanting power and has internalized that she must not seek any more power for fear of angering the plot gods (and Bardugo). She must return to being nobody in order to remain a good and moral person.

(And, of course, we resent Mal even more because who in their right mind would choose him over Nikolai? Once again, he becomes a roadblock on our heroine's journey to power. We grow irritated that the heroine is failing to grasp an opportunity to elevate herself. We throw the book against the wall. Why are we even following this heroine?)

The Darkling's Motivations

Still, all of the above might still not have been enough to pull the reader to the villain's side. But the Darkling is the living embodiment of Villain Has A Point™. He is not pure unadulterated evil. He is not Lord Sauron or Voldemort or the Terminator.

He's more Magneto, Roy Batty, or Ozymandias---a man who is part of an oppressed minority who longs for justice and power but is absolutely unhinged in his methods.

Alina runs away because she does not want to be a non-consenting weapon in hands. But we always end up wondering what would have happened had Baghra not warned her. What would have happened if Alina gladly joined the Darkling's side? There's hundreds of fanfics written precisely about this situation because despite the villainy of his methods, we wonder if Ravka might not have been safer after all?

If the Darkling had used the Fold as a weapon against Fjerda and Shu Han, would any of the problems Ravka faces in the later books even exist? Would any Grisha fall victim to the khergud programs or be killed as witches? The Darkling wipes out Novokribirsk and kills hundreds of lives, but how many would he have saved with the Fold as Ravka's greatest shield and sword? 🤷🏽‍♀️

And therein lies the problem with the trilogy inconsistent moral landscape. The Darkling is an anti-villain that exists in a narrative that is very black and white, unlike the rest of the books in the Grishaverse where our protagonists are anti-heroes who kill, steal, and torture their way through the plot with nary a judgmental glance from the narrative. We long to see our heroine give in to her dark side and get her hands dirty because watching a naive, passive, scared little girl grow into a ruthless powerful Grisha would have made for a hell of a compelling story.

But that's not the story Bardugo wanted to tell.

The Greg Trilogy

Despite taking place in a fantasy Tsartist setting, the Grisha trilogy is oddly anti-Grisha. The narrative doesn't spend much time trying to examine the context or implications of an oppressed minority group fighting for power other than to say "magic powers = evil". Nikolai skates by on a throne of inherited wealth, privilege, and imperialism but it's okay because he's charming and witty and the only monstrous part of him is the Darkling's curse. Literally everything is worse for Ravka and their Grisha after the destruction of the Fold but Ravka must move forward into a new age without relying on Grisha power but putting their efforts into new muggle technologies. Alina must be stripped of her powers and returned to her "old self" in order to be purged of evil.

Basically, it's all one gigantic ✨ dumpster fire ✨ of mismatched character arcs, incompatible moral aesops, inconsistent characterizations, wasted potential, unexamined plot points but it's a a dumpster fire we lovingly and spitefully embrace in fanfic.

We don't ship Alina with the Darkling because we're stupid abuse apologists who somehow missed the giant flashing moral aesop of the books---and honestly, who could have possibly missed them when it's shoved in the reader's face every other chapter? We ship Alina with the Darkling because the entire ship is the embodiment of wasted potential (and wasted ✨aesthetics✨ tbqh 👀). We ship Alina with the Darkling because we're sick and tired of stories where female power is demonized. We ship Alina with the Darkling because the plot gave us literally no other alternative to see our heroine succeed except to give in to her alleged villainy.

But most of all, people ship Darklina because Leigh Bardugo utterly failed in writing the story she intended to write because had she succeeded, Darklina would not be the most popular ship of the trilogy.

[lady-elora]

"It was love", or five reasons and five refutations of hatred for sylki

So, folks, I did it. I finally translated from Russian an amazing article about the romantic line in “Loki”. I agree with every word in it. Hope it’ll help all the sylki shipers to fend off the attacks of antis with a reasoned arguments.

Would you like to talk about our god Odin the most controversial Marvel franchise pairing which caused a storm of indignation and negative emotions on the part of fans?

 We're talking about Loki/Sylvie from "Loki" (2021) mini-series, or sylki (lovie) as they were called by fans. Apparently a simple get-pairing consisting of a man and a woman (or bisexual gender fluids, if you prefer), but some people were shocked by such a relationship on the screen. Why? What for? How? That may be your questions. So we’ll discuss their claims and groundlessness of them in this article.

But before we start talking about it, I want to clarify what actually the concept of the "selfcest" is.

Usually we marked as a "selfcest" those works that describe the relationship of a character with himself. Most often, this warning implies a "doubling" of the character; alternatively – the same character is taken at different ages or falls for his/her absolutely identical copies.

Agreed?

Let's go then.

< < < 1 > > >

 The first and main thing which follows from the definition above is: "Showing the selfcest on the screen is disgusting and immoral!"

 It also follows from the definition above that the selfcest is the relationship of the same character with himself in the form of identical copies both in character and appearance. The highest form of narcissism, according to Mobius (which, in fact, is to some extent true). Horrors from a snuffbox, according to some impressionable audience. It hardly makes sense to rant about the fact that masturbation is also a form of selfcest (although the fact is rather amusing).

 The bottom line is that if Loki once again created a copy of himself to deceive someone and fell in love with it, it would be a selfcest. Splitting himself into two people and building a relationship between them is a selfcest as well. Turning into a hermaphrodite and ... no, this is something completely perverted.

 The basis of the selfcest is absolute identity. If we take a character who is so in love with him/herself that he/she sees relationships only with him/herself, then in such a case he/she can only build them with a perfect scanned copy of him/herself. It will be very easy for the person who knows him/herself inside and out to notice some inconsistencies in a partner, and then it makes no sense to build a relationship if he/she is not as perfect (as the "original" is), isn’t it? That’s how this logic works.

 And now attention, please!

 Is the romance of two Elvis Presley understudies a selfcest?

They look almost the same, both like Elvis... But no, right? These two people are different people, with different tempers and lives, who are similar only in appearance and pseudonyms. So this is a very ordinary relationship.

Now let's get back to our sheep. So we have two people from different worlds, with different stories, different tempers, different powers and different external signs who were born under the same name and later lived their lives with different ones. The only thing that is identical in them is the essence of the God of Mischief. So where is the ground for an egoistic selfcest? Nowhere.

Don't forget about identity. We can say that they are very similar, since initially they are both Lokis. But do you wanna say it's so hard to meet similar people in real life? No. Do you wanna say it's hard to meet similar people in two similar universes? No. I'll tell you a secret: writers often like to use the trope of intertwining almost identical tempers between characters to show their mental connection. And it's not a crime, but a common technique. And, again, a "similarity" doesn't fall under the criteria of selfcest.

 And finally, if Sylvie were an exact copy of Loki, would there be people who love one but can't stand the other? It's the same character after all, so what's the problem? But the point is that Loki is Loki. And Sylvie is Sylvie. They exist separately from each other and are not the same due to the presence of distinctive features.

 If you want to use Kang's words, remember that he admired these two.

 < < < 2 > > >

 The second and no less amusing is "Loki doesn't need a love interest at all!"

 I'm sorry, but which Loki?

 The one who appeared in all the films of the series "Thor" and "The Avengers"?

 He's dead, guys.

 And Loki from the series is a character torn out from the finale of the first "Avengers" and revamped by TVA with the help of an impromptu session of psychologist Mobius and viewing on-screen all of his promising deeds. This Loki was told head-on that he was created as a minor character in order to plot his machinations for the development of the protagonists and he was unnecessary to the whole world. This Loki has an advantage over the previously known version of himself just in knowing this fact. This Loki has recognized for everyone and for himself that he didn't want to harm the others. And this Loki, by definition, is already a different character, but for some reason people tailor him to a long-familiar one, ignoring the obvious things point-blank.

 He is no stranger to simple human feelings, because every version of the God of Mischief is initially an offended and despised child grown up in the shadow of his own brother, a child who just wanted to be loved too and in the same way. Only the paths to this under-goal were different for all Lokis. One killed Thor in order to remain the only ruler (people always adore kings), another invented unthinkable feats (people love heroes), the third built a perfect world out of promises for everyone, the fourth tried to become a hero himself, but was too crushed to find mistakes in his plan, the fifth excluded himself from the equation so that everyone understood he didn't want to harm the others and to cause the pain.

Loki from the series is a version that knows everything about himself, but at the same time is not bound by the framework of the other variants' plot. He doesn't need to win back Asgard, to fight with Thanos, with the Avengers, with contempt and so on. He is free from borders. He is from the world where Frigga never died. He is the only Loki without the "glorious purpose". He is different.

So his attitude to other people is now different as well. It's stupid to perceive this version exactly as a long-known character.

After all he had seen, this Loki would hardly be able to live alone like any other. He is extremely naked and needs love (in any form), as the most reliable and not bringing destruction and suffering point of support.

 < < < 3 > > >

 The third and my favorite thing is: "Love in five minutes! Why did it come out at all?"

Why did Loki fall for Sylvie, and even in a couple of days?

OK, you can quite easily explain Sylvie's motivation: she found a person who had interest for her, who suddenly cared about her, protected her... Could he be an unworthy party in such a case? Moreover, before that, Sylvie, in principle, had no close people and she internally really lacked such an attitude to herself, banal love (parents, people, friends, romantic), which she hadn’t due to the lack of normal childhood and a stable life.

But Loki?..

But Loki is not a vain killing machine from The Avengers anymore, not a person for whom the self-affirmation is the only goal in life. Let's rewind a little, and remember that he was brainwashed in TVA and lowered from heaven to earth. Loki was always reasonable. Loki could always be courteous and friendly. Loki was always a gentleman. And finally he realized that there's no sense in all this aggression and hyperbolized narcissism, and he pushed his one-actor theater aside in order to at least normally rethink the concept of time and reality.

 And here comes Sylvie.

Unpredictable, dangerous, painfully similar to him, but at the same time completely different. Loki never had good intentions in his conquests; only the ways were sometimes good. Sylvie went to the good liberation of people and the return of their right to choose their lives, but through blood. In fact, she is his mirror image.

She intrigued. A wild person who swung at the destruction of the time control organization alone and coped well with it.

However, the countdown started from the moment when they both got on the train. The moment when Loki began to understand what the real essence of Sylvie was. Grown up in fear, distrustful, broken Sylvie, who was desperately trying to make TVA pay for everything. For everyone. And it was amazing for him.

Here, as for me, the Moffat's quote about his BBC Sherlock fits very well: ..when he saw her, he thought: "Maybe there can be someone like me?" – but with a slight nuance that Loki himself would like to be someone like that. Like a fighter in spite of and for the good, causing admiration. With some corrections in the form of the absence of a painful childhood, despair and anger.

Then the spring of "Loki's MeUs" begins to unwind, and the essence of it is that he understands her and her feelings, because, although they are different people, they are internally similar. Loki looks at her as if she is a person he has known for a very long time, but not completely. It's like if you met an old childhood friend seven years later: it seems to be the same, but also it seems to be different. It seems that everything is elementary, but there's not enough of a certain number of details.

(He'll realize later that he was missing much more).

So we take the initial interest, add the conditional knowledge of a person, and we get a very specific variation of the trope "from friends to lovers".

This may seem far-fetched, but we have two factors on our hands that are fundamental for this trope. Keep them in your head, but for now, let's applaud the fact that Marvel for the first time figured out how to derive formulas for the logical development of relationships in the shortest possible time. In what way? In the most elementary way: through psychology.

There's such a thing as the stages of the formation of relationships, which includes:

- Falling in love (interest, flirting, rethinking)

- Trust (challenge, joint activity, mutual assistance)

- A sense of kinship (empathy, responsibility, confidence)

- A sense of unity

- Love

In our case, only the first three points are considered, but the third one is with a chip in the form of a final. I should also focus attention on the fact we are not considering love. We are considering a serious crush, which can develop into love, since the latter one is a slightly longer process that still has to go through to the end. And we consider them in extreme (+accelerated by our two fundamental factors) conditions, where our heroes are forced to work together and trust each other in order to survive.

After reviewing the aspects of the three points we have chosen, we can easily draw analogies with the events that happened with Loki and Sylvie.

They are interested in each other, they think that they know each other, they develop in relationships with each other in a completely healthy way. A little faster than in the series for a hundred episodes maybe, but it is conditioned.

Needless to say, this is impossible and illogical: we have the clearest example of love from nowhere in the form of a couple of Scott Lang and Hope Van Dyne, who had absolutely no prerequisites to it, but at the same time kissed at the end of the first film. Nothing personal, it's just a fact.

The relations of our "defendants" aren't based on carnal attraction, they didn't immediately break out ready-made due to a rush of adrenaline, they are not one-sided and not abusive. Loki and Sylvie carry about each other, support each other (if it doesn't seem so, then we'll also talk about Sylvie a little later, everything in its own time), plus sympathy and love based on the fact that a person is ready to fight with you and trust you, sounds very appropriate, doesn't it?

And yes, there are similar examples of "love in five minutes" in life, which I've also seen. This is real.

 < < < 4 > > >

 The fourth thing which also makes me roll my eyes is "Sylvie didn't need relationships at all and she didn't care about Loki."

So let's make a small lyrical digression and think about who Sylvie is.

The Goddess of Mischief? Yep, but far from Loki, which means there's no sense to adjust her to the same classic image. As a child, Sylvie was dragged out of her own world. As a child, Sylvie fled across the time with fear and horror from TVA. Sylvie hid all her conscious life and saw people dying around her over and over again. Sylvie knew that outside of the apocalypses millions are simply dying from the hands of TVA too. She was alone all the time, during all her life she developed anger and hatred for this organization, until revenge for herself and for others became the only meaning of her life.

And here comes Loki.

Another version of the God of Mischief, which forces her to rebuild the plan on the go, in order to still bring it to the end. Frivolous, broken, stucked up Loki. He lazily, automatically puts sticks in her wheels. And then, on Lamentis, he suddenly decides to fight with her and help. After that, he completely trusts her with his life and cares about her own. And it seems to her like some kind of nonsense, like another trick, an invention for personal gain. Sylvie understands the essence of Loki, but she can't perceive him the way he perceives her. She sees in him what she could have become without the intervention of TVA.

But after that rush through the city, after realizing the hopelessness of the situation, when he says he is sorry and he thinks she is amazing, something clicks in her head. No one has ever cared about her (in this regard, she is not like Loki, who had at least Frigga), and now Loki, who knows her only from the archives and her meager life-story, who dragged her into the apocalypse, but also tried his best to help her to get out, just says that he is fascinated.

Sylvie grew up with her own concept of truth and lies: for her, there's only her truth and the eternal deception from the others. And then she thinks: may it be that..?

The thoughts that no one on the entire Timeline needs her, and that she should have recognized the lie, are marinating in her head to the end. Loki is not like the people she has spent her whole life with (he looks more like her, understands more or tries to understand at least; he believes), Loki behaves strangely and worries about her. Sylvie can't believe it (her past affects her completely), but subconsciously she wants someone to really care about her.

And she starts taking care of Loki in return. She comes closer and closer, but at the same time she is ready to turn around and rush back at any moment. Because she's scared. Sophia Di Martino says that for Sylvie, feelings are something new, unknown, and such things always cause fear in people. She tries to deny it, to be ironic, she's waiting for a trick, but doesn't move away.

She's just thinking: "Come on. Betray me. Betray me so that I'll be right again and trust no one anymore."

But Loki doesn't betray her. On the contrary: he recognizes that he cares of her, he tries to protect her with all his might. And that's the moment when Sylvie finally falls in love. That's why she pushes him through the portal to TVA which – the Multiverse is being formed, yay – is the safest place at the time.

Why didn't she give up on killing Kang? Because that was her glorious purpose. Sylvie lived with the revenge and the dream of saving everyone from the dictator and she just couldn't give up all this after the horrors that she experienced in her life. Blood, death and fear – that's what she saw during all these years. But Loki didn't see that so he couldn't understand. That's why Sylvie didn't listen to him.

And if she didn't care about Loki, if she didn't feel anything at all, Sylvie would have killed him the moment her sword was at his neck. She'd killed before – it wouldn't be a problem. But she does care of Loki.

 < < < 5 > > >

 The fifth and final thing is "These relationships hinder the development of both characters!"

And that's the funniest claim from those who watched the series with their eyes closed.

During the series, Sylvie and Loki are revealed from new sides thanks to their feelings. Caring for others, compassion, responsibility, the very fact of showing love for another person – all this develops them both. The friendship was shown through Mobius. The family has always been represented by Thor, Odin and Frigga. But showrunners wanted to reveal Loki from all sides, decompose him into components and show what he is from the inside in all aspects. And they did it.

Loki, who doesn't care about the fate of the Universe, and who only wants to regain world domination again, turns into a hero who wants to save the whole world. And one more person.

With Sylvie, it's a little more difficult, due to the fact that her life was also more difficult. Her case is more lost. However, in the end we see that such a long-awaited retribution doesn't bring her satisfaction. Because she understands the wrongness of this act, she regrets it and realizes that everything was wrong. But she realizes it too late.

If we had cut Loki out of her life, Sylvie would have killed the Keeper without any guilt, without feeling remorse, because she wouldn't have known that everything could be different, that she might choose another way.

This is what is called character development.

Sophia says both Loki and Sylvie feel the same, they grow together, but at different rates. And by the end of the series, Sylvie is approximately where Loki was after a psychotherapy session with Mobius. But not at the very beginning – that's what's important.

I hope this article has at least a little explained the whole essence of sylki pairing, because surely I'm not Tom and Sophia, who know their characters best. However, trying is something, isn't it?

Thanks for attention ;)

Source:  «Это была любовь», или пять причин и пять опровержений ненависти к Sylki

[star-going-supernova]

So. Madison Russell. Godzilla vs Kong. Welcome to my ted talk.

From a writing perspective, they totally wasted her character. She, Josh, and Bernie were almost exclusively used just as a method of showing the audience what was happening "behind the scenes" at Apex. Pouring the whiskey on the computer was about the only thing of note they did, and even that didn't do much. Mechagodzilla was only slightly hindered by it, and if they'd just written Kong and Godzilla differently in the fight scene, they could have skipped the whiskey part entirely. They could have done so much with having people "on the inside" but Monarch as a greater organization barely had any presence at all, which negated the need to have people on the inside. 

Maddie's steadfast insistence that Godzilla wasn't a bad guy at the beginning had so much potential, but it became the conspiracy thing instead. It felt less like she wanted to prove Godzilla wasn't turning against humans, and more like she and her new conspiracy friend wanted to crack open a shady organization, which was frustrating. If they wanted to depict her as someone who was forced to become competent at a young age, which was part of the serious, intense vibe I got from her, instead of the inexplicable personality shift, they should have showed her doing something to help. Getting in contact with her dad/Monarch, giving them evidence to begin a city wide evacuation outside the Apex Hong Kong HQ, messing something up or making it harder for the Apex people to get Mechagodzilla up and running—just, anything. 

The fact is, we had Maddie being very proactive in KotM. Stealing the ORCA was the game changer. Instead of taking that to the next level in GvK and giving her an opportunity to continue that aspect of her character—that is, being someone who refuses to sit by when she can do something to help, even if it’s dangerous—they rendered her obsolete. 

The movie wouldn't have significantly changed if you took her character out. If Bernie went by himself and ended up in Hong Kong, nothing would have changed, because Maddie didn't do anything of personal importance. She went from being an active character in KotM to being a passive one here, which are a pet peeve of mine. If you saw my post about what I liked and didn’t like about Godzilla (2014), that might sound very familiar.

It would also have made so much more sense if she developed a love for studying Titans instead of focusing on conspiracy theories. Plot-wise, it would have given her claim to her dad that Godzilla was being provoked more credence, and could’ve opened an interesting dialogue between them to reinforce that she knows what she’s talking about. Monarch was obviously still a big part of their lives, given that Mark had rejoined, so it would’ve been the perfect opportunity for Maddie to pursue a Titan-related future. 

Now, don’t get me wrong. I loved Jia, and wouldn’t want to take her out of the movie or even diminish her presence in it. In fact, I think they should have focused on Jia, and only on Jia. 

Hear me out: Godzilla vs Kong should’ve been split in two. A Part 1 and Part 2 situation. 

For Part 1, we keep a lot of the GvK canon, especially the Kong-centric stuff. Include even more scenes showing us that he’s protective of Jia, don’t just have Dr. Andrews say that he is. Have him defend her from something dangerous, maybe even from some humans. Include their backstory, how he saved her during the storm. And start it even earlier, before Godzilla attacks Apex the first time. Keep the whole Hollow Earth plot, keep the fight scene in the ocean, keep the discovery of the temple and the axe.

And on the Godzilla side of things, start earlier on that as well. Keep the other Titans in, have humanity tentatively believing that a time of great peace is upon them. Their mere presence is restoring the planet. There was an emphasis of nature, particularly in relation to the Titans, in KotM that I really think they should have included more of in GvK to better tie the two movies together, if only they hadn’t swept all the other Titans under the rug. They wanted a movie about a fight, not about the Titans. So, undo that. Show us a little of what Mark does, do a sweep of the other KotM cast (cameos at the very least) to show how they and Monarch are working to uphold that peace post-Boston. I’d also have loved to see Boston itself, too, five years later. 

Instead of giving us a Generic High School scene, show Maddie learning about the Titans alongside the experts. Bring back the wonder and amazement she had when she saw Mothra for the first time, when she reached out and touched her. She’s second generation Monarch, make that mean something. When Maddie took the ORCA to Boston, she had a conviction. She couldn’t not have. She was there in part to lure Ghidorah in, but I can’t even pretend to believe her plan ended with that. She knew Godzilla would come. 

That sort of belief is hard to kill, and if death via Ghidorah wasn’t enough to scare her off, no way anything else in those five years afterwards did. Her belief that Godzilla is good survived to GvK, and should’ve been a main focal point of her character. Godzilla attacks Apex—she and every other Monarch person who has spent years studying the Titans knows something is up. 

Keep Mark’s character development regarding his opinions on Godzilla. He believes Maddie when she says something has to be wrong, not just because he trusts his daughter, but because he looked into Godzilla’s eyes and saw more than just an animal. 

They’re in Part 1 only minimally, just to establish their presence and how they feel about Godzilla destroying Apex. The focus is clearly on Jia and Kong’s side of events. 

Sorry, but I’m leaving Josh out and seriously dialing back Bernie’s role. Instead, the character we follow inside Apex is Ren Serizawa. We see his motivations, his ambitions, and he becomes a character with more than just a few lines. Does he resent Godzilla? Or does he resent his father, too? Serizawa’s sacrifice was willing, after all. He was no accidental casualty. 

Part 1 ends in the Hollow Earth, with Ghidorah taking control of Mechagodzilla on the surface. Alter the timeline just enough so that Godzilla has only just arrived to Hong Kong, and Kong’s still in the Hollow Earth. The final scene is Mechagodzilla emerging into the city as the sun rises. The post-credits scene is our KotM cast in the Argo, location unknown, watching a screen with Mechagodzilla on it. 

Part 2 begins with a reveal: Ren Serizawa isn’t dead. 

Backtrack. This part focuses more on the Godzilla side, and Monarch. It’ll have flashback scenes from the five years between KotM and now, showing exactly why Monarch as a whole firmly believes Godzilla is reacting to something instead of being anti-human all of a sudden. The Titans are not inherently malicious; destruction is a side effect of their size, no more, no less. He earned his title of King in KotM—make it mean more than just trying to make Kong “bow.” Make him a protector, a guardian. He’s nature’s balance. By definition, he must protect humans as well. 

What Monarch needs to figure out is this: what is he trying to protect them from? 

They investigate Apex in search of the answer, but knowing from past experience the sort of things Godzilla gets proactive about—the MUTOs, Ghidorah—Monarch mobilizes. They prepare for another fight, at Mark’s instructions. He witnessed both San Francisco and Boston firsthand, even if the former was from a civilian standpoint. 

Godzilla has more hunt scenes. He targets a second Apex lab after his ocean fight with Kong, telling Monarch that they’re on the right track. 

Maddie, being a minor and not dragged into the thick of things (yet), has to stay home. Remembering the podcast she sometimes listened to, when the topic was focused on the Titans, she tracks Bernie down, and he tells her about what he saw: the eye. 

The two of them go to the ruined Apex building and discover the eye is gone before getting caught. With Monarch currently breathing down their necks, they recognize Maddie to be Mark’s daughter and take her to Hong Kong. Sorry, Bernie, but that’s mostly as far as you’re involved. Timeline-wise, this is roughly when Kong puts the axe in the temple floor and Godzilla blasts a hole to the center of the earth. Monarch is following Godzilla, but they’re behind a bit thanks to the tunnel shortcuts. They’re still unaware that Maddie has been kidnapped and is en route to Hong Kong.

This is also when Mechagodzilla gains a life of its own. Walter Simmons is killed and Ren Serizawa becomes trapped in the link to Mechagodzilla, serving as the bridge between the robot and Ghidorah’s mind. Ghidorah is essentially controlling MG by controlling Ren, who is controlling MG. Make sense? He’s the puppeteer’s puppeteer. 

We reverse some things. Godzilla fights MG first, gets beat around but not as much as in GvK because he isn’t fresh out of a different fight. Kong returns to the surface through the tunnel Godzilla created, having carried the one remaining HEAV out himself, because Nathan Lind has never flown one before and doesn’t know how they work. Kong wants to protect Jia, and Ilene Andrews and Nathan Lind are very lucky that Jia likes them. 

Mechagodzilla sees Kong and takes off, and Kong decides now would be a great time to fight Godzilla, who’s having a pretty bad day. Monarch arrives, and half of them split off to follow MG while the rest stay to try and deescalate the situation. Other than Godzilla faring slightly less well, the fight goes mostly the same as in the movie, except for one big difference: one of the Monarch crafts pick up Jia and Co, and she’s able to get Kong’s attention from the back of an Osprey well enough to tell him to stop fighting. There’s a bigger threat out there, and Godzilla definitely needs to be okay enough to fight it. Either they work together, or they reschedule. 

She’s very stern about it, and though no one’s really sure what the two Titans decide on, they stop fighting. They leave together to go after Mechagodzilla, who is currently being slowed down by Mothra, because she deserves to be in this movie. The other Titans basically hinder Mechagodzilla as much as possible as it rampages, telling Godzilla where it is. Monarch finally figures out that it’s heading for the nearest entrance to the Hollow Earth, right around when they also figure out that Ghidorah is involved. With Dr. Andrews and Nathan Lind’s input, they theorize it intends to take more of the power source down there to further strengthen it. 

They do their best to clear the cities in its path, evacuating as many people as possible. It’s all they can do. As in the past, they must trust Godzilla to do the heavy lifting. Around the same time, an assistant tells Mark that some guy named Bernie called and is asking for him. This is how he finds out Maddie was taken to Apex’s Hong Kong location.

Meanwhile, the Apex guards and Maddie finally arrive to find the facility abandoned and damaged, MG gone, and Simmons dead. The guards more or less split, leaving her there alone. Maddie, being Maddie, goes deeper until she finally discovers Ghidorah’s skull and Ren Serizawa inside, trapped in his own head with Ghidorah. It’s killing him. 

He’s aware enough to have a conversation with her. They argue about the Titans. He wants Godzilla destroyed out of anger over his father’s preference for Titans, rather than his own son. 

(“You’re not the only one with ghosts!” she yells at him. “You’re not the only one who resents a parent for putting Titans ahead of you when you needed them!” He chokes out, “I do not resent my father—” “Coulda fooled me. Why else would you be spitting on his sacrifice like this? Who are you trying to help, huh? All the other kids out there who are losing their moms and dads because you let Ghidorah out? Sorry, mister, but the last time someone did that, your dad paid the price.”) 

Ren is getting worse. He’s going to die if he stays in the link much longer, but he can’t disconnect. Maddie, looking around, gets to work on something. The camera slowly pans around to show that there’s a second pilot seat, back-to-back with Ren’s. It would allow for seamless switching between pilots without MG ever not having someone at the controls. 

Even with the other Titans’ help, Godzilla and Kong are unable to stop MG from going through the tunnel and into the Hollow Earth. Monarch is unable to follow, because of the gravity issue. They’re both tired from the journey and their fight, especially Godzilla. This is their last chance. If Mechagodzilla reaches the power source, it’s all over. 

The fight doesn’t go in their favor. They’re both bad at working together, so their attacks are uncoordinated at best, actively hindering each other at worst. Kong gets flung off a mountain and MG pins Godzilla. Even thought he caught himself, Kong isn’t going to make it up in time to help him. 

Maddie puts on an identical pilot setup, and with Ren’s instructions, switches the link over to herself, freeing Ren. He collapses forward, immediately falling unconscious from the release of the strain. Fighting past the pain and overwhelming presence suddenly in her head, Maddie does what she does best: she causes Ghidorah problems. 

She screams, and it echoes like a roar through his skull. 

In the Hollow Earth, Mechagodzilla stumbles. 

It’s the beginning of the end. She can’t control it or even really stop Ghidorah, but she gets in his way as much as possible, giving Godzilla and Kong the edge they need to finally get their act together and use some teamwork to take Mechagodzilla down. They destroy it and return to the surface before parting on amicable terms. 

After too long, Mark arrives at Apex with a whole team of people. Ren Serizawa is found comatose but alive, and he’s quickly removed for medical attention. Though Maddie’s also alive, there’s something else clearly wrong. She’s still wired into the piloting gear, stiff and unseeing, as if she’s frozen. Her eyes are open but distant, pupils virtually gone from how constricted they are, and her jaw hangs open slightly. Despite how tense her body is, she’s limp. Nothing they do wakes her up, even after getting her out of the skull. 

They wheel her out on a gurney to where a handful of Ospreys landed, but as they leave the building and step out onto the roof, they find Godzilla has returned. He watches them, and he’s exactly as aware as Mark remembers. 

(“She tried to help you,” Mark calls out to him. No one knows exactly what happened in the Hollow Earth, during the fight, but the scene in Ghidorah’s skull was telling. “No, she—she did help you!” For the second time in her life, Maddie put herself in Ghidorah’s path and, ultimately, won. Only this time, her victory came with a price.) 

Godzilla snorts before leaning over the roof’s railing, moving toward the gurney. The humans all back away, even Mark, though he doesn’t go far. Spines humming, eyes flaring blue, Godzilla rumbles deeply. 

On the gurney, Maddie stirs. 

Later, much later, after Maddie and Jia have met—heaven help everyone else, honestly—they sit together on the edge of a pier over the ocean, Jia leaning comfortably against Maddie. It’s quiet. They’re alone, watching the sunset. A heavy footfall behind them, the feel of the vibration trembling through the wood, makes them turn around. Half concealed in the brush at the edge of the island’s foliage, Kong stands, facing them. 

They both wave before standing. They sign goodbye to each other, then part ways. As Maddie walks away to a waiting Osprey, we see behind her as Kong crouches to allow Jia to climb into his palm before vanishing into the forest. 

The Osprey takes off over the calm ocean. It has a different design than most, with a large door set in the side instead of at the back, more like an ordinary helicopter. It’s open as they go, Maddie secure inside as she stares out. A smile spreads across her face as jagged spines slowly breach the ocean’s surface, easily keeping pace with the Osprey, which lowers to be closer to the water.

For just a moment, in the fading light, Maddie’s eyes almost shine blue. The screen goes black to the sound of Godzilla’s roar.

[space-malex]

I know nobody likes the Wyatt and Rosa thing, and I completely understand that, and kind of agree, but I have to admit I also find it to be pretty fascinating. I feel like it brings up all sorts of questions about alternate realities and nature versus nurture. I would never excuse the things that Wyatt has done, and it’s very difficult for me to see real redemption for him, at least not through simply erasing what he did in his own mind. But it’s still super interesting. Who would he have become if Kate hadn’t died? Or if he hadn’t been radicalized? I don’t think he necessarily would have been Mr. Liberal, but he very likely wouldn’t have become the person that he is now either. 

A bit of a personal story. My mother always voted Republican because of abortion only. A single issue voter. For my entire childhood up until my mid 20s, when she voted, and it wasn’t in every election, she voted Republican, but that was the only reason why. She knew nothing else about politics, she had zero interest, and she was…for the most part….a relatively normal person. Not perfect. Had her issues with depression, anxiety, etc. But still…somewhat normal. Then she lost her best friend. And then she lost my grandfather. Pretty close together. The two people that she was the closest to and the two people that she talked to the most. (Also both my grandpa and Jan were staunch democrats). And then somehow, someway, she started making “friends” on Facebook that were extreme conservatives. She started consuming nothing but Fox News and fake internet bs. And she is now one of the most hateful, conspiracy theorist, delusional, and radical people I’ve ever known. She didn’t storm the capitol on January 6th, but she may as well have. She definitely was cheering for it. She thinks Covid is made up. She won’t get vaccinated because she thinks there’s a chip in it. Anti gay, anti blm, anti any liberal or even moderate policy you can imagine. And she was never like that. Not ever. Seeing who she is today compared to who she was 10 years ago is like night and day. She was completely and utterly brainwashed by the echo chamber surrounding her and there is no getting through to her anymore. I realize that’s my own personal story, and it’s very different watching this kind of representation on television, but I often wonder how different things could’ve been if she had taken a different path or if things had not gone down the way they did. It’s like she was looking for connection out of loneliness and sadness and grief and got sucked into a cult.

As for Wyatt, I kind of wonder the same thing. Who could he have been instead of who he is? His future at that time wasn’t set in stone. And this drug has essentially taken him back to who he was before he was radicalized. I think the romantic set up with Rosa is obvious and even though it kinda makes me cringe at this point in time, I’m prepared for it. (Also props to Dylan for genuinely being a completely different person, Wyatt’s entire demeanor, body language, even face has changed and I’m like how). I also think that at some point, Wyatt is going to regain his memories and that is when we are going to see if he has truly changed. And if he tries to make up for his past wrongdoings. I think he’s going to remember who he is and the things that he has done and the things that he has believed and he will be tested. And then we will see. 

The other thing I find to be really compelling about this story is that it parallels Rosa’s own journey. Obviously, the circumstances are very different even if they are related to one another. But in many ways it’s the same thing. Rosa lost 10 years of her life. She woke up the same person that she was right after she had graduated high school. And who knows where she would have been now if she hadn’t died then the way she did. She could have ODed. She could be in jail. Or she could’ve done what she has since she came back- gotten help, got sober, worked on her mental health, and is in a different place now. But there’s a really good chance that wouldn’t have happened. She was on a really destructive path at the time. When Rosa came back, she realized that she had a second chance to do things right. And I think she sees that in Wyatt as well. Rosa relates to what Wyatt is going through because she felt that same kind of shock and confusion when she woke up. I also think that she has some kind of feelings for him or at least did in high school and she wants to help him. She could be wrong that he could change, because she has been absent most of this time, but I think she feels like maybe he’s not too far gone. That maybe it’s still possible that he could change. And I definitely think that a huge amount of that has to do with herself. She relates to what is happening to Wyatt right now with what happened to her. And honestly I am kind of excited to see where it goes.

[comingoutofthecauldron]

on malyen oretsev as a character and a love interest

this might be slightly rambly and incoherent but i need to say it. malyen oretsev has been the underdog in this fandom for as long as i can remember. a little while ago it was the “malaria” jokes (very classy, folks), and then waves upon waves of mal antis and darkling stans/apologists, and even now a decent majority of the fandom is convinced he’s just boring or an asshole. and fair enough on that last account, if you genuinely don’t like him as a character, that’s fine. but there are a lot of accusations people throw mal’s way that i am really sick and tired of hearing, and hopefully this will help put a stop to them.

mal is not boring. mal is witty and charismatic and an easy friend, and he is also incredibly brave. when he thought alina was being tortured and brutalised by the darkling, he volunteered for a suicide mission to track the stag—which he didn’t even know existed—into fjerda because it was the only way he thought he could help her. that mission killed two of his best friends. people say mal is an asshole because of the way he treated alina when he saw her (months after she’d been dragged away from him against her will) happy and healthy in amongst the people who had looked down on the both of them their whole lives, after having just lost his best friends for her. i say his being upset was pretty understandable. and yes, he was a bit of asshole in siege & storm, but he’s a teenage boy and you cannot hold him to all these ridiculously high moral and behavioural standards (especially when you don’t hold other characters like nikolai or the darkling to those standards). everyone has their asshole moments. nikolai’s is ongoing. holding mal’s against him just because he’s not all-powerful like the darkling or royal like nikolai is bullshit, plain and simple.

as for malina, i have a lot to say on that front. a lot of people say that mal was only interested in alina after she got her powers, but that is blatantly untrue. the quote, “just you and me. it’s always just you and me, alina” literally happens in the first chapter of shadow & bone. mal himself said that he always loved alina, and her being taken away was the wakeup call he needed. if anything, alina’s powers only complicated their relationship—mal didn’t know how to deal with her becoming the very thing they’d both grown to resent after being treated like shit in the first army while the grisha were treated like royalty, which explains a lot of the tension in their relationship surrounding alina’s abilities.

people tend to say that mal didn’t like it when alina became powerful and less dependent on him, but that’s not right. mal never wanted alina to be less. he was afraid of what would happen to her if she became more. from his point of view, all that alina’s powers brought them was trouble; the darkling’s grooming of alina and his subsequent manhunt for them, nikolai’s proposal to alina (when he was an adult and alina was a minor), the apparat’s cult and imprisonment of them, the death of the only mother figure they’d ever known. in his mind, alina’s powers only ever brought them misery, and mal was scared of losing her to that misery. we saw how they were torn apart throughout the books, because mal was otkazat’sya, and he was not the only one who felt that that might never be good enough for alina. neither of them ever wanted the power that alina was given. that’s why it was so hard for mal to accept that alina wanted to keep it—he was scared it would corrupt her the way it had the darkling. he was scared of losing her.

the argument that really frustrates me is when people call malina abusive. say it with me, folks: malina is not an abusive ship. mal and alina loved each other unconditionally. even if he wasn’t happy about alina’s powers, he knew that it was important to alina that she use them to save ravka, and so he helped her. he owed ravka nothing. this was the country whose monarchy had essentially taken his life from him to force him into being little more than a foot soldier in their army; the country his friends had died for thanks to the darkling being placed in such a position of power; the country whose king let the people starve whilst he sat in his golden palace and wasted more money. mal helped alina save ravka not because he loved his country, but because he loved her. hell, he literally died for her.

whilst we’re on the subject, let’s talk about that quote that people like to say is abusive: “i love you, alina, even the part of you that loved him.” do you understand how monumental that quote is? mal found out that the darkling is the same darkling who made the shadow fold, the shadow fold that had taken numerous lives and that had gotten them into this mess in the first place. he was beginning to realise the extent of the manipulation alina had undergone at the hands of the darkling, the grooming and abuse. they both knew the atrocities that the darkling had committed, and yet mal has it in himself to tell alina that not only does he not care that alina ever thought she loved the darkling, he loves her all the same anyway? how is that abusive?

lastly, i want to talk about his most infamous quote: “i am become a blade.” this is one of my favourite quotes in the entire grishaverse, and i’m going to explain why. a lot of people think that it’s grammatically incorrect, but as your local grammar nerd, i’m here to tell you that it’s not! as alina notices, the actual tattoo is written in ancient ravkan: e’ya sta rezku. because of that, the quote translates with slightly strange phrasing, but that phrasing still makes grammatical sense. it’s sort of like how shakespearean english is still english, it just sounds different.

now, grammar aside, i want to talk about why the quote is so beautiful (to me, anyway). mal has been used all his life. when they were at keramzin, he tracked and hunted animals for them to eat. in the first army, he was used as a foot soldier and a tracker, and the darkling (and nikolai, to an extent) used him to track the amplifiers. he’d always had his agency taken away from him by those with more power, and he’d been used and mistreated almost every time. then he turns around and offers himself and his agency up to alina without a second thought. because he loves and trusts her that much. at this point, it doesn’t seem to him as though there’s any chance of him and alina ever being together or getting a happy ending. he’s not doing it for that. he’s doing it because alina wants to save ravka, and he loves alina, so he wants to help her do that. in all of his indecision about his life and what he is and who he is for alina, he is able to decide that to live in service of her, to live for her, is exactly what he needs to do. he is essentially saying, “i recognise your power and though i am afraid for you, i won’t hold it against you now. instead i’ll help you wield it and fulfil your destiny, even if that isn’t what i want/what i want for you and even if it gets me killed.”

mal is a teenage boy who had to mature very quickly under terrible circumstances. of course he’s not perfect and he makes mistakes, but i cannot for the life of me understand why he is hated on such a large scale. he was an asshole to alina at some points, yes, but alina was usually an asshole right back, and it was only because they were both pining and angry at their situation. if you still don’t like him, fine, but for the love of god, stop calling him abusive/toxic. he’s a good character and a healthy love interest (a rare sight in ya) and malina is a healthy romance. it’s that simple.

[arctimon]

*insert witty title involving Momakase here*

(Warning: This post is long.)

So I never actually shared this theory outside of DeviantArt, and it was also part of a greater post of predictions for the show. But now that I've essentially had a year to sit on it, and can now better illustrate my points, hopefully I can make it clearer. Today, on the "Big Hero 6 Conspiracy Theories" Podcast with Arctimon, we're going to be talking about...Momakase.

“But Jason, you’ve already talked about Momakase and her comparisons with Lady Deathstrike!” You are correct, imaginary person I made up for the purposes of this conversation.  But we’re going to go a little deeper this time.

However, before we get into Momakase, let’s talk about someone else for a hot second.  And that person’s name is Ana Cortés. Now, if you’ve read my stories, that name may seem familiar to you: it’s the alias that Momakase uses when seducing the rich guy at the end of "The Usual Suspects” (Chapter 9 of Continuity II).  But what if I told you that the name isn’t just an alias to her?  What if it’s her real life? But let’s chat about the Prime Marvel Universe Ana Cortés.

The character was only around for four issues back in the 2013 run of X-Men, when the all-female team was being led by Storm.  She made her first appearance in Issue #7, being introduced as the daughter of a recently-deceased Colombian businessman.

Being the head of a billion-dollar company wasn’t enough for young Ana, so she recruited a Yakuza member named Reiko to bring her the consciousness of Lady Deathstrike, who had recently been killed.  That, along with the nanites that she would later be given, gave Deathstrike a new young body, capital to boot, and a quest to make a new Sisterhood to topple the X-Men.

Which ultimately lead to Ana/Yuriko’s new look...

Through the next four issues, Ana would recruit others into her new Sisterhood, such as Amora the Enchantress, Typhoid Mary, Selene, and Madelyne Pryor, with them ultimately achieving their goal: to bring back to life a sentient bacterium named Arkea and declare war on mutants and humans.

As the plan progressed, Ana started getting cold feet, fearing what Arkea wanted to do and hating what she had become.  So, in Issue #11, after pleading with Typhoid Mary to finish her life...

She decides to take her own.

And thus the life of Ana Cortés came to an end.

So what does this have to do with Momakase? Well...everything. Momakase’s history is a mystery (unintentional rhyming).  The only clear thing that we know about her past is her family in an indirect way, courtesy of “Hiro the Villain” and her recruiting him to get her family swords back from Yama:

The katana and the wakizashi seem very important to her, so much so that she would risk breaking into Yama’s penthouse to get it and getting Hiro to come along with ehr.  Unfortunately, this is never expanded upon because this is the last speaking part of Momakase in the show before the series finale in “The Mascot Upshot”.

We know that her father gave them up because they were being threatened by gangsters.  We don’t know how long ago that was, but since Momakase mentions that the swords are “the last connection to her family”, we can deduce that they’re probably not in the picture any more.

(By the way, if anyone can decipher what that emblem is suppose to be, knock yourself out.)

But as we all know, apples don’t fall very far from trees.  And this is where we’re dealing with pure conjecture and guessing on my part.

I’ve written in my stuff about how Momakase started out in villainy at a young age.  Her first attempt at crime ended up with her being caught by Boss Awesome.  And she must have left an impression on him, because remember...he had a file on her in “Food Fight”.  So she must have been active at least a couple of decades ago, because Fred’s dad retired before Fred was born.

But what really led her to go down that path?  Perhaps the mash-up nature of this world could give us some insight. So imagine that your father is a Colombian handyman who had to work extra hard to support your immense family of brothers and sisters after his parents died.  Now imagine that your mother is a Japanese socialite and never had to lift a finger in her entire life.

Now imagine their fates intertwining.

The mother is immediately infatuated.  The father tries to rescue her from her life of artificial captivity.  They run off, elope, and in less than a year, they give birth to a wonderful daughter.

That daughter being you. Your elders, seemingly seen the error of their ways, gift the couple a pair of ceremonial daisho swords that have been in the family forever.  Life goes on. You witness the bullies of the world threaten your family.  You see their most cherished possession being taken away, and then you swear to yourself you won’t end up like that.  So, you get yourself involved in villianry.

And then years later, when it doesn’t seem like you can do anything right...you meet someone.

He’s a police officer, also in the infancy of his occupation.  He visits you in jail, talking on and on about how justice was served...but something else is there in his eyes.  Pity?  Interest?  Sadness?  All of that and more?

Once you get out, you visit him between heists.  He doesn’t know, of course.  You tell him you’ve gone straight.

But the more you stay with him, the more you feel yourself getting closer.

“But it wouldn’t work”, you say.  He’s a man of the law.  You’re a woman of lawlessness.  Both you and he come to the consensus that while things are good between you, it’s best to quit while the both of you are ahead.

Fate, of course, had other plans.

Life rears its beautiful and ugly head.  Your enemies come calling for you.  They want your debt paid.  And they’ll do anything to get it, including taking down your beloved...

And your newborn baby girl.

Of course, we all know who this certain “man of the law” is.

The person who suddenly had to leave San Fransokyo with no reason to the befuddlement of the people closest to him, including Aunt Cass. I mentioned before that it didn’t make sense that his father dying would be the reason why he had to leave San Fransokyo.  It would have to be something that needed to be kept away from public consumption.

Alternatively, what do you think would happen to the most hardnosed, relentless officer in the San Fransokyo force if word got out that he fathered a child with a criminal?

And what do you think would happen to her?

Megan is looking into it with the help of Kate (as of Loose Ends).  We’ve seen Diego and Momakase have this conversation in “Assembly Required”.  Heck, even Hiro seems to think something’s up when he talks to her in “Anti-Hiro”.

She doesn’t have any of her attributes.  She doesn’t have any tremendous thieving skills.  She has never interacted with the Cruzes in the show at all.  It’s the theory that, no matter how you look at it, doesn’t make a lick of sense at all.

And somehow it makes perfect sense to me.

Momakase, the woman whose real name is Anastasia “Ana” Momo Cortés...is Megan’s mom.

And that is a plot thread that I plan on tugging on even into The Future.

What was that about apples and trees?  They never seem to stray too far from each other...

[vergi1ius]

Notes on Rhythm of War

Well that had more twists and turns than the chasms of the Shattered Plains.

1. Minor note that bugged me: Gavinor talked *way* too mature for his age. Mostly in that his sentence structures were way too complex.

2. I can’t believe Sanderson managed to somehow redeem Roshone. Dude really stepped up in a crisis -- not in a way that made him suddenly perfect, but in a way that demonstrated he was clearly growing toward something better.

3. New Shard names yay

4. Fascinated by all these new Lights. I’m not quite sure where Lifelight is supposed to come from, nor Voidlight. A comment from Venli seems to say Voidlight comes from a ritual prayer, which seems to imply it’s directly bestowed by Odium, which has... implications.

5. That Raboniel thought Storm and Void Light were opposites for so long seems odd to me. Where did Lifelight fit into that? On the one hand, it seems so rare that she might have passed over it; on the other hand, given she obtains some for Navani (from where, though?) and she’s aware of its Tone, clearly it must feature somewhere in her theories.

6. I wonder precisely when Odium integrated so much into Roshar. My first guess would be around the time of the Recreance, given that’s when the Sibling is first weakened. My other guess would be when Odium first arrived, or when the Singers accepted him, though that seems rather too early. But most likely it was something building up for a long, long time.

7. While Raboniel and Navani see the implications in anti-Lights for ending the war, I think Wit foresees something terrible from this creation (as per his discussion with Jasnah on the battlefield). In particular, the explosive force of combining a Light and its anti-Light is very likely to change the scope of warfare.

8. Wit is hilarious and I will quote everything he says.

9. Ace Jasnah confirmed. (I might have prefered aroace Jasnah, but whatevs)

10. FUCK YOU MOASH YOU BASTARD.

11. RIP Teft. I’m seriously gonna miss him.

12. I love that Kaladin’s Plate has Bridge Four on it.

13. “Journey before destination, you bastard.” This book has so many good one-liners.

14. Interesting that Urithiru’s defenses don’t work on the Honorblades. Also, Moash survives again >:( At least 1) He didn’t get out in one piece and 2) The new management deals with him differently.

15. After hearing Ash’s account of Ishar, it probably shouldn’t surprise me all the shit he’s gotten up to. Perhaps one could hope that between leading the exodus to Roshar, creating the Oathpact, and leading the defense in the Desolations, he might have become a better person: but it rather seems he’s retained some of his greatest moral weaknesses or else reverted to some earlier state of mind. Given hints from Dalinar, though, there may very well be something else at play.

16. Holy shit a Herald can fight.

17. Being able to manipulate Connections is rather terrifying. But I still feel like we’re only seeing the tip of the iceberg as to what Ishar (and other surges) can do.

18. It seems clear to me that Ishar is bringing radiant spren into the Physical Realm by essentially rewiring their Connection to the Physical Realm, so that they essentially *become* Physical. Thus why those whose bodies are already more realistic survive better, and why spren like Cryptics come out looking so different: in particular, translating a Cryptic’s head into something physically possible is just too difficult.

19. That being said, while I’m fairly confident on *how*, I’m still not sure on *why*. I suspect he might be trying to either 1) force bonds with spren (though why not just adjust the Connection on a spren I don’t know) 2) find a way to kill sprens or spren-like beings (such as the Fused) 3) somehow extract surge powers. But Ishar does seem to be interested in how long he can keep them alive.

20. Wow. A line I’d thought was just a throwaway lie in WoR coming back in a terrifying way. It does make me wonder whether that was a (unintentially true) falsehood from Taravangian, or if he was actually being honest.

21. Also holy shit Cultivation. I’m still trying to wrap my head around the sheer amount of planning this must have taken her.

22. Like, seriously, the amount of planning to ensure that everything’s in place at a specific day and a specific moment, is just kinda staggering. I may have to do another post just to figure out all the pieces that Cultivation had to have in use at once.

23. That being said, that Taravangian 1) took up the same name (and therefore Intent) as Rayse and 2) hasn’t apparently changed Odium’s game plan at all leaves me very, very worried. On the one hand, Taravangian seems to be much craftier than Rayse (possibly in part because he’s new to the role, though that may be a double-edged sword); on the other hand, Taravangian’s goals seem to be different than Rayse’s (I don’t think “galactic conquest” is what most people have in mind when they say “save them all”, but props for at least having the good of those he conquers in mind rather than his own ambitions). I also suspect that Taravangian would be willing to absorb the other Shards, or even leave them alive if they will cooperate with him (or if he can’t absorb them and can find a cooperative Vessel).

24. Given that Taravangian is going through all the same motions as Rayse, I’m a little curious as to what Cultivation is doing and what she thinks of this. Though perhaps now that Rayse is dead she doesn’t feel the need to intervene in the war (given how little the other Shards seem to involve themselves in the international politics on their worlds).

25. YES Adolin x Maya!!!

26. That the Radiants of the Recreance discussed things with their spren, and that the spren agreed to their plan, seems like something we really should have seen coming. I’m a little less surprised about in universe, given that 1) most humans didn’t understand the nature of the Nahel bond and 2) none of the spren bonded were able to explain their reasoning. Or that none of those involved actually knew what they were getting into by breaking their oaths (or, perhaps as they thought they were doing, *ending* their oaths).

27. Over 2000 honorspren. That’s a full level of magnitude more than what we’d been led to believe had been killed from previous books. It makes me wonder 1) what happened to the spren of those who hadn’t reached the level for a blade yet and 2) *where are all those blades*?

28. I’ve been kinda wondering this about honorium, but where does one find raysium, and what about tanavast-ium and cultivation-ium? And how exactly do all three work / interact with the world?

[mattzerella-sticks]

So I had a little brain blip this morning, about an interesting idea that could’ve happen if I were writing DC Comics DC weren’t cowards things went a little differently back then...

So we know in Crisis on Infinite Earths, Barry Allen sacrifices himself to destroy the Anti-Monitor’s big weapon. In doing so, he only has enough power to warn Batman of what’s to come before disintegrating and joining the Speed Force.

Well what if, after everything’s calmed down, Batman notices strange readings popping up and decides to investigate. What he finds is a ghost - specifically the ghost of Barry Allen. Instead of ‘dying’ he’s trapped as a ghost in the 21st century. And because of Batman being the last person he saw before he died, he’s the only one who can see him now.

So we get Batman & Flash/Bruce & Barry teaming up, investigating how to bring Barry back to life while keeping it a little hush hush from everybody else (because while it’s not the strangest thing, Barry feels weird about telling people he’s a ghost if they’re working on a way to bring him back to life - because what if they can’t?) Maybe if he He’s also highkey missing Iris and his kids. But spending time with Bruce makes him feel better in a way. Some days he even forgets about the future because he spends time with Bruce - which is weird and he also feels guilty.

He feels hella guilty for a lot of things. For Wally taking over as the Flash. For leaving Iris and his kids. For not being there for Hal when he gets taken over by Parallax.

But it’s this that gives him some saving grace, as when Hal Jordan dies, he becomes the Spectre. And Barry has someone else he can talk to.

Except Bruce isn’t jealous, not at all. Why should he? Being the only one Barry could talk to didn’t make him feel special, and give him all the time he wanted with the speedster. Not like there were always something bubbling under the surface, that Bruce never paid much attention to because Barry was always zipping off somewhere - going to see someone else. He’s trying to help Barry back to life so he can return to Iris and his kids, any other reason would be selfish and unrealistic. Although each passing day in Barry’s presence makes it harder and harder to admit that, even to himself.

Anyway, Barry and Hal get to hang out when they can. When one day Hal asks Barry an important question - why hasn’t he moved on? He’s sure earned the rest. And so Barry hems and haws but admits he feels like there’s still something holdhing him back. So Hal gives him a chance that he never got - to set his affairs in order. He visits Wally, his dad, Jay, Bart (if he’s in the comics at this point) - even Iris, and is allowed a few minutes of being real to say what he needs to say. And it all goes well. Wally is happy to carry on the legacy, Jay is proud of him (as is his dad). He’s happy to get to meet Bart, which gives him the strength to go into the future. Visiting Iris. Now, Iris was mad, but she understands what he did and has found some kind of peace. Knows that’s who Barry is no matter how much she wished it weren’t. Tells him that what they had was special and she’ll always remember their time together fondly. However, if he’s staying for her, he doesn’t have to. Or for their kids. There’s someone new in their lives, who’s taken over the role of father and husband. While they will all still love and think of Barry in those roles, it will always be in the past. For all the speed in the world, he’s too late.

Barry and Hal go back, Barry going on about how if he’s alive he can go back to the moment he left and it’ll be like nothing happened. But Hal is like “Would you jeopardize their future, like that, change it knowing that they’re already happy?” And as much as Barry wants to say yes, he knows he can’t. He should be happy they found a way to move on, and is proud of them.

That was the last one, and Barry thinks he’s done. Except Hal says they have one more place to visit, and he takes Barry to the Batcave where Bruce is working. Bruce can’t see him this time because of Hal, which is perfect because Barry wouldn’t know what to say. Thinks it’s just to tell him the plan is off, except Hal is like ‘we both know the last thing tethering you to this plane, and it’s not the plan’. Basically makes Barry confront his latent feelings for Bruce, and decide whether he lets go and moves on. Or stays and spend possibly forever trying to find a way to become human again, basically signing Bruce’s suicide note because he will never stop looking until he dies. Bruce will never move on unless Barry forces him into it by leaving.

Barry thinks about it. And decides he will stay, positive they can find a way out. Hal smiles, already knowing what Barry was going to say. Says he can make him real like with all the others, if he wants to do anything. Barry holds off, knowing that if he takes it and does something he’ll only be obsessing over that and wants it to happen when there’s no time limit. Barry also asks Hal if he’s cool with it, and while Hal thinks Barry could have better taste in men “God cares little about two consenting adults of any gender and sex what they choose to do”

So after all this, Barry and Bruce continue working on bringing him back to life. And they have help, because more people know about Barry the ghost. And while Bruce should be miffed because it’s more people who want to talk to Barry, Barry keeps giving him special treatment. Their alone time is fonder and more charged. It’s bittersweet, as it’ll only make Bruce miss Barry more when he’s alive and in the future.

Because OF COURSE Barry and Bruce, whenever they have a chance to maybe be intimate and honest, either chicken out or are interrupted.

Anyway, Clark has this idea after being reminded of an adventure with the Legion. You guessed it - L I G H T N I N G S A G A baybay!! So Bruce decides it’s worth the risk (even after Barry nixes it, not wanting anyone to die for him to live). Bruce gathers six other people who also agree with the risk and set out to bring Barry back to life.

Barry is relaxing when he hears storms brewing. Concerned, goes to seek out Bruce. No one is there. But Hal appears, and Barry asks why he’s there. Hal spills the beans on Bruce’s plans. Barry is scared, even more so when Hal is like “we both know who the lightning’s gonna hit”

Barry races to where Bruce is, standing in the room where Barry ‘died’. Waiting. Barry finds him and tries talking Bruce out of it. “It’s gonna hit you!” “Good, that’s what I want!” “But you’ll be dead!” “I’m okay with that - as long as you get to come back to life!” Basically lightning is striking it’s getting closer, and Bruce keeps going on about how Barry always deserved to live, more than him. And that when he’s alive he’ll be able to go back to the people he loves. 

That does it. Barry yells at Bruce, saying how coming back to life won’t be worth it if the one person he’s been sticking around for isn’t there. Bruce is stunned. Barry tells him about how through it all the only one keeping Barry still tethered and not in the Speed Force is Bruce, he’s his lightning rod now. And if Bruce lets himself die than Barry will be more lost than he is now. Bruce is stunned, can’t believe it. So Barry leaps forward, grabbing Bruce’s hand just as the lightning strikes and kisses him.

And Bruce can feel it.

Barry’s alive again. He steps back, unsure, but accepts that he’s alive and so is Bruce. Laughter turns to awkward silence, as Barry tries setting Bruce up for an easy let-down.

Except Bruce sweeps him up in a bruising kiss. They’re both happy, smiling. Until someone calls over the line, asking what happened. Bruce tells them, “It’s... it worked. Barry’s alive.”

They’re both alive. Barry is welcomed back, and the next steps are considered. How will it be with him back as the Flash? Navigating a new relationship with Bruce, not as a ghost but as a real person.

It’ll be hard - but worth it.

Again, just some ramblings about a pretty good plot line that DC could’ve had if I were born many years earlier and were a comic book writer lol.

[afreakingdork]

Jessica Jones Season 3 A.K.A. Morality

I genuinely believe that the writers of Jessica Jones season 3 have no idea what morality is supposed to mean or how it applies to basic situations. We can start on this, of course, with the friction between Trish and Jessica. The series starts with Jessica doing everything she can to keep ties severed with Trish, while Trish tries in vain to chase Jessica down like a puppy so they can ‘team-up’ like old-new times with Trish’s shiny new powers. Episode 2,  “ A.K.A You're Welcome,” paints a more full picture by showing Trish’s side of the conversation. Overall, the whole thing falls so flat for a variety of reasons. I can applaud Trish’s dedication to really honing her craft, but even this is something she tries to hold over Jessica. She offhandedly remarks that Jessica could train once in a while and hints often at her inferred superiority because she actually wants to be super, or she has the right attitude to be super, or she has the actual drive to be super. All of which, paired with Rachael Taylor’s insufferable acting, makes seeing Trish feel like nails on chalkboard every single time. Trish doesn’t understand that her store bought powers and being a hero aren’t something to play around with or have moral superiority about, but she refuses to listen to anyone or even reason. It’s mind boggling because while, we know Trish has always been jealous of Jessica’s power, she of all people should know about what Jessica has been through. They were sisters against the world their whole lives, Jessica doing her best to protect and support Trish from her mother’s abuse and Trish full well knowing Jessica is basically alone in this world, not to mention all the time and everything else that she lost to Kilgrave. Jessica is a wounded soul and her powers have everything to do with that, but all that just goes out the window because Trish wants powers and Trish thinks she knows better and the show is happy to say both Trish and Jess are equally bad. Even in the end when Trish finally realizes she is the bad guy, she has to go off the deep-end and then even further into the pool before the show will even let her admit it and then it gives no time for the weight of this statement to take affect and instead just moves on.

However, let’s move back to respective family histories, there’s a line that really enraged me in episode 5, “A.K.A I Wish,” where Gillian says “I'm sick of people throwing away friends and family like there's plenty more where that came from,” because Trish and Jessica won’t talk out their issues. There are some things that you can’t come back from with family and friends, especially when they aren’t willing to move their opinions on it. There are plenty more people that you can become friends with or even make your new family (it’s called found family and is huge especially in comic books) because it’s insanely toxic to stick with someone just because you’re related to them or have been friends for a long time. It’s really hard to play along with this sentiment, especially when in episode 6, “A.K.A Sorry Face,” you have Trish and her mom, Dorothy, really go head to head about Dorothy’s abuse towards Trish. Trish’s whole life has been shaped by her mother’s abuse. She never had a moment to think for herself because Dorothy was always controlling every second of it and it was the reason Trish has resorted to drug use and relapsed multiple times, but the moment Trish, justifiably so, tries to mention this her mother flips out and still has the gall to make it about herself. When Dorothy storms out you can see that from Trish’s weak attempts to roll back on it, again a completely justifiable comment, that the show thinks that Trish is in the wrong here. Sure, Dorothy’s points on Trish’s flippant attitude towards her own safety were, in my opinion, needed; Trish is heading down an insane path where all she can see is the glory of supering and can’t see how dangerous or miserable it is (which is crazy because she’s been Jessica’s sister basically their whole lives and seen all the horrific shit Jessica has had to go through, but I’ll get to that later). Good and bad aren’t so black and white, and this show refuses to play with that. Just because Dorothy and Trish have the most precariously stable relationship now, doesn’t mean Trish isn’t still allowed to be upset about the lifetime of verbal and physical abuse she’s had to endure. 

When you compare that matter to Trish telling Jessica that she needs to get over being upset that she shot her mom, it adds a whole new layer of ‘what the actual fuck?!’ to Trish that the story isn’t particularly interested in delving into. The story seemingly wants you to agree that both Jessica and Trish are equally at fault for what’s happening. Jessica is being too callous and gatekeeping Trish, while Trish is acting rogue and playing like being super is fun. It’s insane because we see Jessica already struggling with her mother’s influence. She was already destroying herself in season 2 because her mother was evil, but also she was the last vestige of her family who still happened to be alive. In her last moments, Alisa was going to turn herself in to the police and imparts on Jessica that being a hero is worth it. It’s almost comical looking back on it now, seeing how holier-than-thou Trish has become, and knowing that she shot Jessica’s mother in cold blood because she believes it was right. Sure, Jessica doesn’t seem to have told Trish the full details of her mother’s turn in those final moments. The show fails morality yet again, when even the question comes up in conversation between Jessica and Trish, Jessica only goes so far as to say ‘it was my mother.’ Jessica completely neglects to mention that her mother turned good in her last days after getting a taste of heroics and instead plays the ‘she was my family and you didn’t give me a choice in whether or not I should keep them’ card, that makes no sense to the total overarching argument to who is in the moral right. You can say that Jessica is a terrible negotiator when it comes to getting her point across verbally, and you’d be right, but that isn’t what the show is trying to illustrate and it’s beyond irritating.

This piss poor morality spread and infects other characters in season 3 also. We have the manifestation of morality with the introduction of Erik, who gets a physical response to evil. Nothing has bothered me more than when Malcolm scores a 3 on Erik’s bad-o-meter. Malcolm is grappling with the bad things he has done for Jeri because he thought he could justify it with the money and experience he would get now to fund him fighting for justice later, but even that wasn’t enough. Long before Erik pinged Malcolm as bad, Malcolm was already trying to atone for what he had done, physically might I add, he should have gone to the hospital for peeing blood after getting in a car accident to get a drunk driver off the streets. It makes Malcolm physically and mentally ill and he even takes time off work to consider his position and this is the moment that he pings a 3 (and, not to mention, Trish doesn’t ping at all)!? How can someone who feels guilt, knowns what he’s doing is wrong, and even takes a break to take a look at himself ping at all on the scale when Jessica is supposedly so good that she is anti-bad-dar for Erik and acts like aspirin for his bad guy headaches?! To add insult to injury, Malcolm cheats on Zaya with Berry because he’s... struggling with maybe becoming evil for some reason, but only long enough for him to immediately roll back and work as a double agent for Jeri so he can actually help Jessica put Sallinger away. Even that is short lived, when he just comes clean and quits to clear his conscience and starts to atone. It’s like the show realized that the tension between Malcolm and Zaya wasn’t enough of a morality issue and they had to have Malcolm do something extra bad to justify, again, that both parties are equally wrong in the matter. In the end though, they end up just reinforcing multiple times that Malcolm was the bad guy and Zaya never had an issue. Progression is a good thing, right?

Malcolm and Zaya are at each other on the ethics of lawyering, something that was handled much better in Daredevil and even that show had it’s faults, but nothing will enrage me more than Jeri’s line in episode 7, “A.K.A The Double Half-Wappinger,” of “...it is not our job to assess guilt or innocence.” While that is technically correct, there is a huge glaring problem with how the show is using it. The show is obsessed with the alleged portion of Sallinger’s guilt, in that he is so smart he leaves no evidence behind and is always multiple steps ahead of investigators trying to find a mistake on his trail. Only criminal defense attorneys do not decide if the client is innocent or guilty. While that is Jeri’s position as Sallinger’s attorney, this type of attorney's concern is whether there is sufficient evidence to prove that someone has committed a crime since the jury or judge will be the one’s actually deciding the verdict. The thing is, especially based on her past history with Jessica, is Jeri does have this information, albeit not as evidence, but she still tries to proceed as if Sallinger is still innocent until proven guilty. It’s a complete implosion of Jeri’s character when she already is grappling with everything falling apart with her ALS and Kith. It’s mind boggling to think this is the same Jeri who entrusted Jessica in episode 1, “A.K.A The Perfect Burger,” to take her life when she can no longer make the choice herself due to her illness. Jeri then goes on to declare war on superheroes, for what? Short term retainer of Sallinger could distinguish her firm from it’s accused ties to powered people, but long term she knows he is in truth a serial killer and having taken his case knowing so will destroy her firm a million times more than Peter Lyonne’s suicidal statement ever did. She feels like supers are undermining her as if Jessica is trying to take advantage of her ALS and make her look weak? This is a far cry from the Jeri Hogarth that was accused of murdering her first wife or the Jeri Hogarth that was ten steps ahead to blackmail her partners from trying to force her out of the firm she helped build and get her fair share. This isn’t the Jeri we love to hate, this is just hatred to put more pressure on Sallinger’s inane hatred of super people. She’s somehow, even though she never showed interest and expressively talked back to him when he was spouting his drivel, bought into the weaker man philosophy of supers having cheated to better positions in life and has, in her mind, made her whole existence of failures hinged on them trying to make her feel weak. An unfathomable turn for her character indeed, but this is a show that thinks that digging up dirt on someone and releasing it to try to get with their wife is equivalent at all to a man pushing his wife into an open marriage to cheat and skimming money out of their dead daughter’s non-profit foundation. Jeri should have told Kith no question. I don’t think she should have done it the way she did or for the reasons she did, but we are operating on a 20% bad scale vs. an 80% bad scale. Also, Peter Lyonne was such a shithead that he would rather kill himself and blame Jeri in the process than deal with a little jail time for being a fuckface. Crying that he should have had his chance to tell Kith like he was planning on it. Through Laurent they insinuate that the show absolutely makes Jeri out to be the monster in that situation. It honestly makes me think these writers need to take a course of morality or even just watch a few episodes of The Good Place so maybe they could have a real actual human opinion on what is good and bad. I’m worried about them.

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

What if Aldrea's ghost really did work with Rachel or Toby Hamee instead of Cassie in #34?

First of all, I think #34 does a reasonably good job of showing why Aldrea ends up with Cassie — people keep describing Aldrea as “tough-minded” and “independent” and I’ve argued before that those are some of Cassie’s core qualities.  I also like that Aldrea’s gender is a core part of her identity, given that she talks a lot in Hork-Bajir Chronicles about being frustrated with the way female andalites are treated and even having internalized some of the dominant attitudes about being “weak” because her tail is smaller than her brother’s.  It feels like a cool triumph that she wants and needs a female host.  Anyway.

Toby would probably be a friggin disaster if Aldrea took her as a host, because it’d be a perfect storm to combine Toby’s deference for her ancestors with Aldrea’s dismissal of her host’s mind.  There’s absolutely nothing wrong with the respect and love and awe that Toby feels for Aldrea — this is Toby’s only to her own culture, which has been annihilated by genocide.  However, Toby also considers abandoning her family and the only home she’s ever known in order to go die fighting yeerks at Aldrea’s say-so, and she later only abandons that plan because of a push from Aldrea.  Toby trusts Aldrea so much that she angrily dismisses Ax’s question about how to ensure the host’s safety, even though Ax later proves to be exactly right about the danger of there being no kill switch on the Ixcila.

If you combine that with Aldrea’s utter lack of respect for the person hosting her?  I shudder to think.  Toby wouldn’t fight and argue and force the issue of a personal connection in order to get control back the way Cassie does.  Toby would probably give in completely and let Aldrea have her body.  Aldrea would probably mean well toward Toby, but she’d probably also demonstrate exactly the same entitled imperialistic attitude toward Toby that we see her have toward other hork-bajir and non-andalites.  So I’m not saying Aldrea would get Toby killed, and she wouldn’t knowingly go against Toby’s wishes... but she also wouldn’t take Toby’s wishes into account either.  That scenario would probably end with Toby going off to try and die liberating the hork-bajir homeworld, an outcome that everyone from Cassie to Toby to eventually Aldrea herself agrees is not what’s best for the free hork-bajir.

Rachel on the other hand might not figure out how to work with Aldrea at all.  There’s this interesting motif starting as early as #2 that Rachel fears neither death nor pain — she fears a cage (X).  Specifically, she is afraid of being trapped in her own mind because someone else is controlling her body or because she is physically unable to fight back against the threat.  It informs her horror at being buried alive in earth (#17) or water (#27), her attitude that she’d kill Saddler or David if she thought it would help (#22), her nightmares (#2, #7, #22) and her ridiculous bravery because death doesn’t seem so bad by comparison (#37, #54).  Rachel would dig in and not give up any modicum of control over her body, and the harder Aldrea pushed to try and get in, the harder Rachel would push back.  There would be no give-and-take with Cassie offering Aldrea the use of her mouth and Aldrea letting Cassie do the hard morphing and the two of them offering each other privacy once Cassie figures out how to demand it.

Instead, I imagine that those first few minutes where Aldrea’s inside Cassie but completely disoriented would involve a lot of Rachel mentally shouting at Aldrea “This is MY BODY, you are a GUEST, if you do not wipe your feet and GTFO when you’re done, then we are going to have PROBLEMS, lady.”  Cassie realizes that Aldrea’s on the verge of just shutting down completely when it becomes clear that Dak and Seerow and the whole damn planet are dead, and — it being Cassie — finds a way to support her and draw her out anyway.  I think if it was Rachel hosting Aldrea at the time, then Aldrea really would just shut down.  Of course, then that leaves a whole other problem of how they’d get Aldrea out of Rachel if none of them can communicate with Aldrea and she’s in Heroic BSoD mode.  A really creepy thought: since it takes Cassie a long time to figure out how to communicate with Aldrea enough to figure out she’s there, maybe Rachel wouldn’t even realize that the ritual had worked.  So Aldrea would be this, like, sleeper cell inside Rachel’s mind, also lacking some important context on how she came to be within a human body on a foreign planet... That could end really really badly.

If I can venture a dark-horse candidate that no one in canon even considers... How about Tobias?

Tobias also has a lot in common with Aldrea personality-wise.  He’s an idealist who doesn’t always fully consider the consequences of his idealism.  He learns and embraces hork-bajir culture in spite of not having been born hork-bajir.  He’s a nothlit.  Ax also says of Aldrea “You are highly intelligent, emotionally self-controlled, capable of lying and manipulation... also fundamentally peaceful, moral, courageous, and capable ofself-sacrifice,” a description that always struck me as applying to Tobias maybe even more so than Cassie, even though of course Ax is describing andalites in general.  (Wow, it’s almost like Tobias is part andalite or something!)  Anyway, part of what’s striking is that Ax and even Cassie fundamentally don’t get why Aldrea would ever become a nothlit voluntarily, much less a nothlit in a body with a shorter lifespan than the one she was born with.  Tobias obviously does get it.

If Tobias and Aldrea were sharing a body, Aldrea would probably consider the three-pound thing with feathers she got stuffed inside to be less than ideal, but they also might have a lot of potential for harmonious coexistence.  Tobias has more experience with multiple minds in a single body, including the balance of hawk-human-etcetera that he has to perform when listening to multiple sets of instincts at once and figuring out which one to use.  Tobias is more thoughtful and self-reflective than Cassie, and I think he’d be far more aware as a result of exactly how much power and control Aldrea would have at any given time.  Although Cassie and Aldrea learn to work together, Tobias would probably set a mutually beneficial division of powers between himself and Aldrea and remain in control of the situation the whole time, only changing the relative degree of power over his body if Aldrea comes to him with some damn good reasons why he should do so.  It’s also notable that this is ONE DAMN BOOK after the events of #33 with Taylor and the Anti-Morphing Ray.  So it might be good to have Tobias do what he’s good at and get a win for the whole team at a time when he’s feeling like he lost himself.  It might even help him heal if he chooses voluntarily to connect with another mind compassionate toward his own, and to continue to get in touch with his andalite heritage through mind-melding with Aldrea.

[fuwafuwamedb]

Summoning An Ancient Jackass (Gilgamesh, Hakuno)

There was a lot of chanting.

Hakuno stared at the room, watching the man in the center of the circle chanting and shouting towards a large, very poor adaption of the great king of Uruk… or rather- what seemed to be a pop culture icon with a smolder on his face and a lion on his lap.

Truly?

They thought that was Gilgamesh?

She’d switched four departments before settling on this damn language and culture and that was what they were going to do with the kind of information that she delve up from the depths of Iraq? Why didn’t they just make Raikou a large chested “ara ara” kind of person? Why not just make Nero Claudius some ‘waifu’ material for horny young people to jack off to or imagine as a wife?

Heck, why not make change up some relationships? Who says Brynhild needed to have only a one night stand with a disguised Sigurd? Let’s have them fall in love and cancel out his wife. He doesn’t need the woman anyway?

I can’t even remember that woman’s name that he married, Hakuno thought bitterly.

Tomorrow would be a study day.

“COME GILGAMESH!” The man in the center of the circle chanted. “COME TO ME!”

She scoffed. “The man wouldn’t come to you even if you were naked and pumping your dick, dumbass.”

Oh.

The group paused from their work, glancing up to the alcove she was sitting in.

“YOU! HEATHEN!”

They sounded like the damn conferences, but she could hardly appreciate that. There were a handful rushing for the stairs. She could see them storming to get her, grabbing just as she finished gathering her sketchbook and preparing to head home.

“You’ve invaded the wrong church,” one of the men murmured.

“I am a tourist,” Hakuno tried.

The hooded men barely reacted, opting to haul her down to where their summoning circle was. The one in the center of the circle- their precious leader- was already pacing, cursing and spitting at those around. She didn’t need to see their bodies or their faces to sense the levels of tension in the room. Why they would be frustrated by their own games and play occults, she would never know.

“You. Girl.”

“I prefer my name,” she told him, earning a growl.

“We do not know your name, do we?”

This was true.

“What is wrong with my summoning?”

Finally, someone bothered to ask what was wrong. Rather than blindly going about their work and continuing to become more and more frustrated as they reached incorrect solutions and assumptions, someone had finally bothered to look at alternatives. Someone had finally decided to think that perhaps they were wrong.

She could work with that.

“First problem that you have is that your circle here is grossly incorrect on Sumerian,” she told him. “You tried to write this in modern letters too. And why is there German here?”

Was this the Thule Society?

“Second problem,” Hakuno pointed out, “Your circle takes after a great number of symbols that come from Christian and stereotypical occult symbology. You’re trying to summon someone from ancient Sumer with the entirely incorrect culture. This is like giving Eastern robes on an American as part of their culture.”

The hooded group murmured to one another, bringing forth scrub brushes and beginning to wipe up the circle quickly.

“You have a statue here that was clearly made by a horny teenager with a cat love,” Hakuno pointed out. “You’re doing this in a church, but considering the fact that you probably can get this place to yourself at night, we’ll leave that for now. Your chants are partially in German as well. What is it with you people and German? Not all cults have to use German, you know.”

“You try this out then,” the man growled, moving to grab something from the nearby altar and shove it into her hands.

She took one look and snorted.

“What is it now?”

“This is a fake tablet.”

“It is not. It is the tablet that Gilgamesh wrote, declaring a need for valuables to build a crown from for his friend, Enkidu.”

“Why would he use a younger version of Sumerian that isn’t developed until at least a century after his death?”

The man stared at her.

She could almost sense the dismay.

“…Create your circle, since you are so smart,” he demanded.

Well, she could try.

It might be fun to mess around and attempt to summon a great king of heroes. Taking the blood colored marker from the men, she hummed for a moment.

The Sumerian flower would be a good symbol for the center of her summoning circle. She drew one quickly before humming again.

The next part of their circle had been writings. They’d been bad at writing and opted for German, which was no doubt one of the occultist’s primary language. For her circle, she would use the script of the great king’s talk with Humbaba. It was witty. It was a negotiation for gaining something that the king wanted. It also was just entertaining to write.

She swapped the offering of a mouse with an offering of an idiot.

Ah, this was actually becoming fun.

The inverted symbol of Ishtar was fun to draw in one of the flower petals. She drew a mapping of ancient Euphrates and Tigris in another petal. A lion head in another. A great bird in another.

Anzu birds were part of the Sumerian myths around the king’s time. His father had gotten speed from them in exchange for his actions.

“Alright.” Hakuno handed the marker back. “This should do.”

The hooded leader looked at her handiwork and shook their head. “…This looks like an indie band’s album cover.”

“Thanks, your opinion has reminded me that I have better things to do.”

Ah, but her witt shoved her right back into the center of the circle, the group barring her from leaving. Their chanting began again, leaving her to groan at their insistence to try to do this summoning.

A light came from beneath her feet, making her mind draw short.

Was this?

The chanting grew louder around her. Sparks began to fly, expanding as Hakuno laughed. She could feel her hand burning a bit, her eyes going to the leader only to hear him shouting over the others.

“You must say it too, woman.”

This was interesting.

She didn’t even worry about the how of it all. They’d humored her. She could humor them in turn. It beat arguing over the phone with Rin or Shinji. She listened to their small chant a moment before she began to chant.

The chant was said once before everything went black.

“…Well… That was anti-climactic.”

A laugh came from behind her.

Suddenly, the world was back in rights, the hooded ones passed out around her as someone stood behind her person. She could feel their breath on the back of her neck. She could almost sense them leaning in.

“What is this?”

Hakuno turned, noting the man looking at her drawn circle with interest. The armor on his person was out of sorts, showing Sumerian influence right down to the grand writing upon his pelvic plate declaring him a grand warrior.

She stared, rereading that for good measure.

Grand warrior…

Shouldn’t that be on a chest plate of his back?

Was this a reference to him being some kind of sexual deviant in bed? Was it intentional or was it a last minute piece? Was-

“Woman.”

The man snapped his fingers, making her glance up at him.

“Who are you?”

“You’re neither cute nor amusing, master… if you are even worthy of such a title, mongrel.”

She really wasn’t trying to be cute now. The annoyance and the bitter humor at finding these occultists trying to pass off inaccurate nonsense about myths as accurate had been grating at her nerves a bit. And then this guy…

Her eyes shifted to the statue nearby.

“…Are you a patron for this church?”

It would explain why he had a statue here.

“I am Gilgamesh, King of Uruk, the conqueror of Humbaba and-”

“Gilgamesh was a co-conqueror, not a conqueror alone,” Hakuno pointed out. “He had his friend at his side and went there originally with a moment of faltering in the Cedar Forest. If it wasn’t for his friend, he wouldn’t have bothered and he’d have returned home, without discovering the reality of mortality.”

The man stared at her.

“Tell me I’m wrong.”

“…You are not.” He didn’t sound pleased about that.

“He was a great king.”

The man nodded.

“And he’s very dead, so please. Who are you?”

“I am Gilgamesh.”

“A Gilgamesh? Did your parents wish to name you something unusual?” She’d heard of some oddball parents out there in the world. Sometimes parents wanted to feel like they had a unique and unheard of name for their child.

“My mother is Ninsun. My father is Lugalbanda.”

“If you are Gilgamesh, then tell me this: how was sex with Ishtar?”

His expression was priceless. The brows furrowed almost to limits they dared not go. His eyes, already so serious, narrowed, glaring at her with an unerring focus. His lips thinned.

“Well?”

“I have no need to sully my person with someone so useless. The woman is the splinter in the hand of a farmer. She’s a cut upon the heart of-“

“Tell me something only the real Gilgamesh could say.”

The man glared at her a moment longer before beginning what had to be the most profound and detailed rant in Sumerian that she’d ever heard. Minutes passed, filled with the sounds of his shouting. Perfect pronunciation, without a second of hesitation or search for words; he was truly a speaker of Sumerian.

Hell, that was even archaic insults!

“Come with me.”

Hakuno grabbed his hand immediately, hauling him towards the exit.

“The grail, woman.”

“I have some cups at home,” Hakuno promised. “I brewed some ancient Sumerian beer recently too. I’ll pour you a glass when we get to my house. I have questions for you.”

And demands, but he could hear her demands for answers about his Epic later.

He could explain why he looked very different from his real statues then too.