#and stanley's arc begins i guess?!

[gisatako]

s7ep7, why has john disappeared from the panoramic shot? he was right in front of felicity and oliver, or was it john that flew up up in the sky to take the shot?! XD

[randomthefox]

As someone who used to be a Surge and Kit fan, I cannot fathom how people can enjoy the direction of their characters. After issue 70, I just put my hands up and decided that I wasn’t getting emotionally invested in this anymore. I just don’t get it. 

I can understand why people might like individual moments in a vacuum but they’re not in a vacuum. Some people I’ve spoken to who like Surge’s current direction say that they like how Evan ‘slows things down to peer into the minds of the characters, even if she doesn’t carry the plot as well as Ian does.’ But like, how can you peer into the minds of the characters but also not carry the plot?? What’s the point of Evan looking deeper into Surge if she’s going to completely change her personality??? It’s like Evan is saying that Surge didn’t have enough depth as she was, so she had to change everything about Surge so that she could have an arc. Well, guess what dumbass? THAT WAS THE POINT! She was made simple ON PURPOSE! A character doesn’t need to have an arc to be entertaining. It’s the entire appeal of the character whose name is on the cover of the comic YOU’RE WRITING FOR! Heck, a character doesn’t even need to be a crying little baby to have an arc. She didn’t see the appeal of Surge, so instead of putting her personal biases aside are just let Surge and Kit die on their way back to their home planet, she decided to completely change the character. I genuinely would have preferred if we never saw Surge and Kit ever again after issue 56. It would have left it up to the fans to determine what happened to them next, which would be infinitely better than Evan Stanley continuing to sand away what made them interesting to begin with.

I lied; I still have way too much emotional investment. I think I’m just going to use it as fuel to make a fanfic that’s faithful to her original characterization or something. I also lied about not knowing why people like her current direction. Because they believed that it was her direction to begin with. Media has convinced them that anyone with trauma is a woobie that just needs a huge to get better, and they're so entrenched in their mindset that this is the case that it wouldn’t matter if Surge’s characterization remained consistent. If the story didn’t woobify Surge, they would, so that they would fit their narrow view of what people with trauma look like or what trauma even is. Even though Surge choosing to fight back against the people she held responsible for her problems (whether they actually are or not) is what made her so interesting.

But so many IDW fans don’t want interesting. They just want their regularly scheduled helping writing slop that’s made up of a list of basic tropes that they enjoy that’s the same for everything they watch, and the only thing they will watch. Since their usual media consumption is the narrative equivalent of boiled potatoes. Every interesting idea in IDW is doomed to be sucked dry of any creativity, even if it means completely change the idea like the stubborn babies they are. It’s always what happens when you artificially try to add depth to a character that didn’t have it before. It just ends up as the same as everything else. Because when you artificially add depth, that’s not actually what you’re doing. You’re just picking from a small list of basic tropes that you perceive as depth. The world part? That’s a lie too. Because Surge did have more than enough depth before. It’s just because it wasn’t on the list of those basic tropes from the only media they consume, that they didn’t realize it. At the risk of sounding childish, anyone who was a Surge fan during imposter syndrome and likes her current direction isn’t really a Surge fan.

Anyway, I’m done ranting now. That post by beevean that you reblogged just got me going. Thank you for coming to my TedTalk.

This comic is literally devoid of anything good whatsoever. Because even when it produces something worth caring about (by accident) it proceeds to completely ruin it. Cared about Starline because he's a silly little gayboy simping for Eggman? Fuck you, he becomes disillusioned with Eggman for literally no reason and then dies because rocks fell on him. Cared about the Diamond Cutters? Fuck you, that name belongs to a trio of terribly written lesbians now. Cared about Surge and Kit? Fuck you, they were juggled to a new writer who seems to have actively resented them and changed literally everything about their personalities and turned them into spineless stooges that is completely contrary to their entire established characterization.

The worst thing a story can do is make you feel stupid for caring. Punishing the audience for getting invested. It's such a betrayal of trust. And there's no going back from it. Once you alienate an audience by making them feel stupid for caring, you can never get them back.

Listening to IDW fans talk about the comic, let alone trying to talk to them about it, is a waste of time because they're cultists. They aren't actually reading the comic anyway. Frankly, they CAN'T read the comic. Not if they want to remain fans. That one anon who sent an ask to Verte once saying her criticism of the comic makes it harder for them to enjoy it lives rent free in my head. The "fans" of the comic only consume it in the form of skimming through wiki summaries or youtube videos about it, and seeing out of context pages shared on social media, and then discussing it in discord servers. None of them are actually reading it. They are told what their opinion should be about it, and then they mindlessly regurgitate what they were told to think. That's why the easiest and funniest way to refute their arguments about how "good" the comic is is typically to just point to the comic itself =P

This comic serves no other purpose except pissing me off. There literally is not a single panel of this comic that I couldn't bitch about for six hours straight.

[beevean]

I've seen stans claiming issue #67 gets to take place after Frontiers and so there was a huge time skip of months based only in the fact Sonic called Amy to lunch as they apparently spend a time without meet each other (???) (Is not it some long running gag in the games that the characters can take long weeks or months to see each other again, thus being already used to this?)

But why?? Why is it so important to set this passage of time?! Do they are really desperate in make the link between games and comics? Because that really makes the comic's narrative sound and look pretty worse:

1- It would mean then that Surge and Kit has been a far more time hidding in Eggman's abandoned base than you would expect, that makes them look even more lazy losers than they already do and clash a lot more with the image of Thirsty For Revenge the comics insist in pass, since they moved NOT a finger in almost half a year (???) (Idk the exact time they want to claim and much less I care) But it makes the arguably near 0 effort of them become a surely negative effort.

2- So then, Blaze is still in vacation in Sonic's world??? Really? She just forgot her kingdom? Are the Sol Emeralds just in Sonic's world as if there was no risk of the universe to collapse (okay, that's a more overkill than what the game really states) if the Chaos Emeralds are reunited and put close to them? Just like that? As if she wasn't all afraid of get some vacantion in the start?

3- Then Mimic has already gone in missions with the DC for real, right? He's bonding with them, right? Surprisingly, there were NO real volunteers after all this time before Surge and Kit finally met Clutch, heard his plan, came to accept his conditions and just gone to the Restoration HQ by the front door, (assuming any of these step even passed by Surge's father head) right? Or, if had, then they left... Geez, guess a bossy rude bitch with a rock hard head can't be a inspiring leader after all, what a surprise, no?

4- The only positive thing of this time skip ideia is that it explains why everyone is so chill of the drooling psychic walking around as well as make no objections to him about use his powers... And why Silver is so chill after the whole fiasco... Buuuuuut, now he's acting Just Exactly the way Lanolin accused him to act when she made the scandal to kick him out the Diamond Cutters (Not only the absence of security helmets or vests, he's playing with the food of the thousands of hungry kids he meant to help, Ian Flynn, a master of self sabotage)

Btw, sorry for this rant, feel free to just ignore if you prefer... And sorry for bringing the Lanolin discourse all over again...

Now that I think about it, it's been a year since Frontiers came out and IDW still hasn't referenced it. Even considering that it takes multiple months for issues to be finalized, I'd say enough time has passed that anything Flynn and Stanley have written since, say, December 2022 has been released. So huh, not even a small reference to that talkative moon, or anything to reflect the supposed new life goal of the gang. It's like it's not canon after all :)

Anyway. Time skips in IDW are indicated. This is how we know that the camping arc takes place months after the beginning of the MV arc because the apocalypse lasted the whole winter, and how we can say that it's complete bullshit because Sonic should have been dropped dead from exhaustion. No time indication, no significant time skip. This is a moot point for me, so I don't have much to add.

[posts-from-employee-427]

(So Uh, What Now?)

(After Stanley has a healthy dose of Projection, he comes to the decision to reset. With the plans to keep resetting until his feelings are forgotten, for the better of everyone. This, uh, does not go to plan.

William spawns in a locked room alone, where he [Catches up with an old friend. coworker. ... acquaintance, shall we say? That seems to be the most neutral term here.] That aside, he is given back his memories and ohohoho boy. He is guilt tripping himself over it all now. He asks to stop the project early.

And oh god do they work fast because Stanley now also remembers everything! All of it! And isn't that fun? Because now Stanley is scared of William and William hates himself and nobody will explain anything!

Speaking of which. We are kind of. Just beginning this arc. And not a lot has been revealed. So I don't have much else to add. So.

Idk how to end this off. To be continued I guess????)

[everythingthatsgoingon]

(Spoilers up til chapter 193)

I've seen a lot of opinions on Dr Xeno and Stanley recently, so I'm here to explain my own opinion and maybe question what I've read a bit.

I love Dr. Xeno as a character, and I really like Stanley as well. Now don't get me wrong ; I don't condone killing and I'd be terrified as hell to be their enemy. But as a person reading a story, I do like them.

Xeno isn't wrong when he says he and Senku are similar : science is their prime interest, and both of them would never give it up. From my point of view Xeno isn't building a dictatorship for power, but to secure his freedom to do science without being shackled by politics, morals and disinterest or ignorance (see his conversation with Chrome in the tunnel when he was kidnapped, or with Senku in chapter 193). And while his lack of morals is something I do not share, it's very easy for me to understand where he is coming from. Thing is, today, scientific research is limited, because all research involves founding. Thus, you are obliged to research something someone will have an interest in, otherwise your project will never even cross the starting line. Add to that restrictions due to politics and/or public opinion who isn't always accurate because the average person is not very knowledgeable when it comes to science, and Xeno's frustration becomes very understandable.

Maybe I'm in a bit of a particular position because I've experienced something similar in the past. I remember my mathematics class in 2nd year of middle school. You must know that I've always loved maths, and it's always been an easy topic for me. What's more, I' ve always been really "behaved" in class. So spending my entire year in a class in which I could barely hear the teacher over the noise my classmates would make, with airplanes and other objects flying all over was pure torture for me. More than once I nearly ended up in tears or spent the entire class internally begging I could explode and make them shut up. But I think the worst was that the day I did explode - for the first time ever in all my years in school, and it only happened once again ever since - and raised my voice at my classmates - no insults or screaming, just speaking very loud and covering every other voice, for one or two sentences - the teacher obviously asked to see me at the end of the class. I expected him to be on my side, to tell me he understood my frustration, but no. He told me not to do it again and left it at that.

So I know what it's like to be surrounded by people you deem ignorant, I know what it's like not to find support in people who should be on your side - and Xeno's eagerness to kill other scientists and not work with them despite the fact that scientific advancement is quicker that way tells me that was probably the case for him too. I know what it's like to feel lonely because of your intellect, and to resent others for not respecting your need to learn. Because yes, it's not a wish, it's a need and not being able to fulfill it is painful. So I can't condone Xeno's methods, but I sure as hell do understand where he's coming from.

As for Stanley - I must say what I like the most about him is his relationship with Xeno. It's not clearly stated whether they are an item or not - and while I like to believe that they are, his loyalty would be even more admirable if they weren't. He's that support and acceptance Xeno must surely long for. An unconditional ally. And yeah, he kills people - but honestly, he's a soldier so I'm not sure what you expected.

And since we're on the topic of killing people, what I'm surprised about is that some people condemn Xeno and Stanley on the topic but not Tsukasa. Because I fail to see the difference.

While I understand Xeno, Tsukasa's ideology never made much sense to me. More precisely, while I agree that today's world is far from perfect, the whole "adults are evil, young people are innocent and science must be abolished" speech is so incredibly naive and ignorant that I could argue against it for thirty minutes straight. And for the critics, I'm the same age Tsukasa was when he was revived, and I was younger when I started Dr. Stone, so don't tell me that's the problem here. In any case, while I don't think dictature is a viable long-term solution in either Xeno's or Tsukasa's case (because you can't tell me Tsukasa wasn't a dictator when he reigned alone and didn't accept differing opinions), at least the reason Xeno started his was logical.

And Tsukasa killed too, for the sake of imposing his worldview. He killed Senku, killed a lot of statues - yes, killed, because he didn't know they could be saved just like Stanley and Brody didn't know the beam would save the Japanese. All things considered, Tsukasa probably killed more people on his own than all the Americans since the beginning of the arc. Not to mention that the Americans only killed people who were an active threat, not people who are not even conscious. So I don't understand why people are so eager to hate Stanley and Xeno but accept Tsukasa no problem.

In the end, the only antagonist I truly dislike is Ibara, because he only wanted power. (And Mozu too, I guess, but he's been playing nice so I'm reserving my opinion for now). Tsukasa, Xeno, and even Hyoga in a way, are all defending their own values from honest concerns that originate from the world we experience today. I truly believe it's important that the Kingdom of Science consider all of those issues while reviving humanity.

[megacarapa]

i saw everyone doing this challenge on twitter n really wanted to do it too but i don’t super. Have an active twitter so i’m gonna do it here instead ^-^

warning LOOOOOONG post under the cut

i’m gonna leave the first question for the end bc it’s so fucking long😂😂

2. Who’s your favorite character? Why?

gen ofc🤣🤣 i’m sorry i always end up loving the gay ones o(-(

also i love yuzuriha bc she has the same interests/work ethic as me ^-^ tho yea i only really started loving her in stone wars/age of exploration, andd ofc i’ve always liked suika from the beginning but she has REAAAAALLY grown on me in the current arc

3. Who was the first character that caught your eye?

chrome actually! i really loved the whole bit that’s like “even if tsukasa killed senku there would always be people interested in learning new things and science would always come back”, that part really stood out to me at the time n i’ve loved him ever since :’)

4. If you were in the Kingdom of Science, what would your role be?

definitely manual labor or any repetitive tasks dhhd but i could also help w handcrafts or anything that requires dexterity

5. Which character do you think you relate to the most?

yuzu again xD

SO fucking true 

6. What do you love about Dr. Stone?

idk if i know how to put it into words but its like, the appreciation and love it has for humanity as a whole n all the progress we’ve made so far, my favourite parts are always the ones that are like hey here’s a cool thing humanity invented, let’s learn about it! stuff like that gshdhjd

7. Best character outfit in Dr. Stone?

gen’s original outfit😩😩😩😩 but i also love kohaku’s outfit in treasure island!!

(also everyone’s winter outfits are too fucking cute) 

(actually you know what, every gen outfit, all of them, special shout out to casino outfit, fashion icon)

8. Thoughts on the most recent Dr. Stone arc?

i still always have fun reading the new chapters but they really have been so fast paced lately like it constantly feels like they’re rushing through the new developments, but now with the introduction of sai it looks like things might finally be slowing down a bit, i’d love if they could give building the computer a lot of attention like with the perseus but i guess we’ll wait and see, fingers crossed

9. Any story/chapter you wish could’ve been explored more?

everything. if drst was 10 billion chapters and showing every invention in minute detail i could die happy /slapped hdhdhfa ok but for more specific stuff i wish we could have seen more of gen’s time at xeno n stanley’s fortress in america arc, like he arrives there n gets a few moments n then it mostly focuses on the other characters until hr gets rescued, like i feel it was a missed opportunity both for him and for learning more about the americans through him (as in the characters other than xenostan)

10. Which character do you want to see more of?

amaryllis 😩 /slapped ok i get that she’s basically served her purpose in the story so there’s not much reason to bring her back, as for characters that i feel like are still kinda under utilized - ukyo n matsukaze

11. Favorite Dr. Stone chapters/episodes?

episodes - s2ep3 i fucking love how this episode was adapted🤣🤣

chapters - 99, 110 and 144 (of course) (but also all the sengen chapters ofc😂)

12. Favorite Dr. Stone panels?

…

13. Who do you ship in Dr. Stone? Why?

obv sengen is the only ship i reaaally give a shit about but on a smaller scale i also love taiyuzu, chrome/ruri, koharyllis n xenostan

14. Who is the funniest in Dr. Stone?

kohaku n chrome i fucking love this genre of panel with them being dumb fuck together

15. Which characters do you think would go along with you well?

YUZUUUUUUUUUU AGAIN

16. Are there any characters you think you’d find hard to be friends with?

also if i ever met xeno i would immediately start beating the shit out of him but like affectionately.

17. What’s your favorite arc in Dr. Stone?

age of exploration!! it’s so much more low stakes n slice of life than the other arcs in the best way possible, i really love the focus on everyone working together and the work on the boat branching out to various other jobs like farming, making clothes, cooking etc etc, it’s really the arc where i feel almost everyone gets their chance to shine

18. Things you would like to see in future chapters? (E.g. a character’s backstory, the characters reuniting, etc.)

obv i would love to see gen’s backstory but lbr i don’t really think we’re getting it at this point TwT as for things we will actually get - i can’t wait to see joel and kaseki meeting up and i’m really excited to learn about how the medusa and the petrification in general even works and how they will base it in science

19. Was there an episode/chapter that made you cry?

the suika chapters but i’ve already blabbed about them at length fdggf o(-(

20. Favorite invention/science moments? (E.g. making ramen, suika’s glasses, cellphone, hot-air balloon, etc.)

does gen’s battery song count🤣🤣🤣

21. Were there any characters you disliked but now is one of your favorite characters?

SENKU😂😂😂😂😂 i’m being real here i fuking hated his guts when i first tried reading the manga GDHDHDJ i thought he was so annoying with how smug n smartass he is n how he’s always like i dont give a shit about other people i only care about science blabla so basically i didn’t understand his character at all🤣🤣🤣

22. Which characters do you think are best friends?

for canon i need to give a shout out to kohaku n chrome again bc i love their friendship so fucking much😭

as for friendships that aren’t really canon but i just like to imagine - gen and ruri would be such good friends😭😭

23. Are there any characters or ships that you started to like after seeing fanart/fanfiction of them?

kohagen gshsgdhsa i just thought their friendship was funny at the beginning but when i saw ship art of them i was like OH I SEE n then i liked them even more🤣 n also i really liked the idea of ryusui/tsukasa when it was brought up in the manga but then it was just kinda dropped after that so the fanart is the only thing keeping my love for the ship alive gdjdkd

along w that i really couldn’t warm up to kohasen as a ship in the actual manga so it took me seeing different fanart of them to become a bit more ok with the idea of it tho i do still prefer them as friends😅

also ryugen…. rawr ha ha

24. Any speculations/theories on why-man?

do i LOOK like somebody who Thinks 🤪 idk i can only see whyman as this far off entity that i cannot understand so i am just sitting here like guess we’ll wait n see o(-(

1. What made you start Dr. Stone??

drst is by far the weirdest relationship i have with a piece if media ok i’ll do my best to explain, strap in folks [fair warning: LONGGGGG and deranged]

ok so back when drst started serialization in 2017 i was very into following all the popular shonen jump manga and i was checking out all the new series and one day along came the first chapter of dr stone, i had VERY mixed feelings for it bc on the one hand i was very interested in the premise and especially in chapter 2 i really liked the part where you see how long senku has been working towards the revival formula all by himself so basically i was digging the story, but on the other hand i absolutely fucking HATED the artstyle mainly the way the girls are drawn

like you start reading and immediately on the first page you see a girls statue with all her tits out and another one in that action movie girl pose so you can see both her tits and ass and i already felt my eyesballs reclining to to the back of my head but anyway you keep reading and yuzuriha is introduced and she’s nice and all but she has that fucking eyes far apart fish face n she’s constantly blushing and it all looks so weird and annoying and it was just pissing me off so much HDHDJFJKD

back at that time i was 17 and tho i had already read manga with a ton of fanservice before i still hadn’t been desensitized to it (for better or worse🙄), basically it still pissed me off every time i saw it, right now i can be like ok i acknowledge that this art is really weird and uncomfortable looking but i can put it aside and enjoy the story but back then i really couldn’t stop noticing it every time it happened

so i kept on reading for a few weeks but the artstyle just kept grating on me more n more especially after yuzu was revived and eventually i decided well the story is ok but this manga is just making me pissed tf off every time i read it so i dropped it on chapter 9 i think n that was that for some time

so then some time passes and i keep hearing here n there that drst is sooo good now it gets so much better after the first arc its amazing etc etc, i mostly got interested again after hearing super eyepatch wolf talk about it in his shonen jump videos so i was like ok i’ll give it another shot, i think this was around when there were 40-50ish chapters out total

and so i try to read it again, and again i get pissed off by the artstyle at every turn but i do my best to press on and get to the new arc everyone is hyping up, then kohaku is introduced and it all comes flooding tf back but even worse than before hdhdhd you KNOW how boichi is with drawing kohaku. but anyway i don’t let it deter me and i keep going and i get to ishigami village

and once again i could admit that i was genuinely enjoying the story, especially chrome’s introduction as i mentioned earlier, but alas the art was STILL too grating to my eyes and i just wasn’t able to get used to it so in the end it was just like last time, i kept getting pissed off with every chapter until i gave up again and dropped it at the end of vol3 (that’s right, thats around the time gen was introduced😂, not even he was enough to keep me there like i literally wasn’t even paying attention to him bc i was so done with it at that point, i was like who’s this asshole now– nevermind i don’t give enough of a shit *stops reading*🤣🤣)

and so after that i just kept ignoring drst no matter how many good things i heard about it, until eventually the anime was announced so i decided i would give the anime a shot bc the art could be easier to digest than the manga, and i was pretty much right on the mark, the anime is a good enough adaptation overall but it doesn’t really have any stand out animation and admittedly it has a lot of jank, but this was like the one time that the jank actually worked in its favour

bc the art in the anime was so toned down n less detailed than the manga, it was so much easier for me to consume and the fanservice parts weren’t the glowing-bright-red level of distracting that they were in the manga, i kept watching it every week and by the end of the anime’s run i was finally able to view drst as a story and i had finally fallen in love with it

but after the anime ended i still didn’t want to go back to read the manga even tho i was really obsessed with it at the time, my trust in the manga had been broken twice before and i just wasn’t ready to give it another shot

but i still was really into the story and as the anime went along i had started following a bunch of drst artists on twitter, and along with posting art they of course talked about the new manga chapters at the time as well (this was around the time of treasure island) and that was my main way of experiencing the fandom so i just decided i’m gonna stay like that for now

i kept following people on twitter and lurking basically and i really didn’t do much to try to avoid manga spoilers and so as time passed thanks to the fandom i had pretty much gotten acquainted w all the post-anime arcs n characters to a pretty close degree even if i hadn’t actually read the manga

like i knew who ryusui and francois were n i knew that yuzuriha was my second favourite character and that age of exploration was my favourite arc even tho i!!! literally hadn’t read it!! THAT’S THE POWER OF FANDOM I GUESS DHDHJD, after some time as we got to the climax of treasure island i had actually become so invested in the story that every time a new chapter came out i would like flip through it to get a grasp of what’s going on but not actually read it, i was a manga reader without actually reading the manga, I WAS A FAKE FAN BASICALLY 3

and so this weird relationship w the manga continued for like 2 years until finally earlier this year when s2 started airing, as is the case with whenever a new season of an anime starts airing it started up a new wave of hype for drst and i was all there for it, i was watching the new episodes every thursday and following all the discussion on twitter and tumblr and i was having a fucking blast with it honestly

and so i think it was after only 3 or 4 episodes of s2 were out that i was finally like ok i really fucking love dr stone. i think i love it to the extent that i can finally give the manga another shot. so i did and i fucking ate it up GDHDJD I LITERALLY COULDN’T STOP READING, ofc the things that bothered me before were still there but i guess after so much time i had finally learned how to put it aside, i sped through the whole manga and i didnt even feel like i was forcing myself to read it like the first 2 times, i was genuinely having fun with every chapter and loving it so much and having a great time with it

and so like that i had finally become and Official manga reader and the rest is history

ok that’s all anyway should i get cancelled for consuming manga in this way? leave your thoughts in the comments below ty for coming to my longass ted talk, hope u enjoyed

[roughandtumble-r]

Issue 30 came out today, so I'll be talking about it (minimally) and also about solicits for upcoming Issues. Also, I've decided to try out uploading images on mobile, so this post is also kind of a test for that (for that reason, I'll also be keeping images to a minimum).

Like I said, I'm not going to be talking about Issue 30 too much since not a lot actually happened, but there are some key points I'd like to mention, including Gemerl and Omega (or what's left of him) getting kidnapped by Metal Sonic and Eggman, most of the Deadly Six going missing, and us also learning where Sonic went...

Hey, we were right! He did get sent to Blaze's dimension! They also brought in the Koala dudes from Rush Adventure, so I wonder if that means Marine will show up next Issue or soon.

That's pretty much it for what I wanted to bring up regarding Issue 30's contents, but there is one interesting piece of trivia I'd like to say about one of it's covers. As it turns out, in the A Cover for this Issue, that reoccurring side character Lanolin the Sheep was actually originally going to be on the cover, but was later edited out. The version with her lineart in it was released online though, so here's a comparison of the two versions. The one with just lineart has Lanolin hanging out at the bottom, but the final has her completely cut out.

I'm not completely sure why they decided to cut her out, but maybe it was to maintain her status as a background character (you know, despite her already being on one of the covers for Issue 2 and actually showing up quite a bit).

On the topic of covers, we also have this finished (I think?) panoramic cover for the Issue 29 and 30 Retail Incentive covers...

We also have a few covers already for upcoming Issues, but some of them I might have covered already (although I can't actually remember because of how long we've had the Issue 30-33 solicits), so I'll just be showing two that I find noteworthy. First up, we have this really nice Jon Gray cover for Issue 31...

"MISSING! Please don't find them. Seriously, they're awful and they smell."

Never change Jon Gray and Reggie Graham, never change :3

We also have this really cool Diana Skelly cover for Issue 2 of Bad Guys, and I really like this one because it looks like it's going to be part of a panoramic cover (which I hope it is because I wanna see Rough and Tumble hanging out at this bar :3)...

That'll be it for covers for now, but it's time to look at release dates and solicits! Some of these I might have already put on here months ago, but some of them are completely new.

Issue 31 (September 2nd) - It's all led to this... the thrilling two-part epilogue to the Metal Virus Saga. The world has changed. Heroes and villains plan for the future as reconstruction begins. But one hero remains missing...

Issue 32 (September 30th) - The second half of the Metal Virus Saga epilogue. With all the chaos of the recent past still fresh in everyone's minds, Dr. Eggman launches a new assault-determined to take down his enemies once and for all.

Issue 33 (also September 30th? That may be wrong) - Hold onto your chili dogs, Sonic fans! Long-time artist Evan Stanley takes over as writer with an action-packed, friendship-fueled new arc: "Chao Races and Badnik Bases!" The perfect jumping-on point for new readers! The Metal Virus is gone, but things aren't quite back to normal. Omega is damaged and his allies turn to Tails and Sonic for help. The only way to rebuild him is to trade parts with a mysterious champion Chao racer... but things aren't what they seem.

Issue 34 (October 14th) - It's off to the races with Cream, Cheese, Amy, and Rouge! They have to keep up their winning streak or surrender Cheese to Clutch's evil...clutches! Meanwhile, Sonic and Tails are being watched by a mysterious figure in Eggman's seemingly abandoned base and Shadow investigates a mystery!

Bad Guys Issue 1 (September 16th) - The mastermind behind the Metal Virus isn't done yet. Ian Flynn returns to answer: What happened to Dr. Starline? The Shadowy Scientist is back to his evil antics in Bad Guys! And what better place to concoct nefarious plans than one of Dr. Eggman's abandoned bases? But that is easier said than done when badniks are guarding the entrance! Dr. Starline knows he can't do it alone, so he decides to recruit some familiar and not so friendly faces.

Bad Guys Issue 2 (October 28th) - From Sonic veterans Ian Flynn and Jack Lawrence comes "Smash & Grab," an exciting story jam-packed with bad guys and badniks! Some of Sonic's worst enemies are back and badder than ever! Dr. Starline, Dr. Eggman's former-right hand, has brought together Mimic, Rough, Tumble, and Zavok and promised them even more incredible power... if they can stop fighting each other and start fighting badniks to get to it!

The only really noteworthy stuff I want to bring up about these solicitations is the stuff in Issue 33 and 34 regarding a new character, presumably a Chao racer named Clutch. Nothing is known about this character other than his (I'm just kinda he's a dude, but he might not be) name and what he does for a living, so stuff like his species and whether or not he's like a hero or a villain or whatever is kind-of unknown. The Issue 34 solicit also mentions that Shadow leaves to investigate something, and at the end of Issue 30 he actually does leave to follow Eggman, so him leaving then could be what leads up to whatever happens in Issue 34.

Anyway, that's all I have to say for now. The next date we have set for a release is September 2nd, so I guess I'll see you all then!

[jcmorrigan]

How was your element of harmony fic gonna end?

OOH NOW THIS ONE HAS BEEN SUCH A WHILE THAT THIS ACTUALLY SOUNDS FUN TO TALK ABOUT

Context for those unaware: EoH was one of my many attempts at a multicrossover. A predecessor to TBTC. It was my goal at being an EVERYTHING CROSSOVER and taking forever to highlight every little thing that could be explored in the canon of each work used. And I was in a difficult relationship with KH at the time, even though it was obviously a KH derivative, so I didn't want to actually use Sora and co. as the main cast. MLPFIM was a comfort show for me, and I was already used to the br0n135 using the Mane Six in crossovers with everything you could imagine, so I was like, hey, let's do this, Mane Six are now multi-world travelers and Discord is assembling every villain ever to stand in their way. (KH then ended up in the mythos anyway!) This is also where I was playing the infamous Twilight Sparkle/Mozenrath ship that is now very very dead.

To explain exactly what all was going on with the lore and politics of it to make this last bit make sense would take too long, so from there, please just...roll with it. I'm about to detail you THE FINALE ARC

The original idea was actually, at some point, to begin work on the Finale Arc when most of the main players were introduced. Then go back in time and keep editing the middle of the story to go on indefinitely. A bad business plan for many reasons, first of all being that I didn't even get to introduce the players that would've made it possible to begin the arc. That's how long I took to explore EVERY FRICKIN THING.

Over the course of the story, Discord has been interfering on every crossover world you can imagine, to the point of sometimes altering their canons into "fix fic." The story is aware of this. It's kinda like in the Loki series (of which I've only watched episode 1) where there's a "sacred timeline" and Discord's crossover actions are deliberate attempts by him to break it. We learn at some point that paradoxes and timeline changes are what broke the Age of Fairy Tales into the KH worlds we know today. So Discord rounds up his Old Ones (the Lovecraftian monstrosities that are more powerful than gods) and they all band together to strike at all the cracks he's put in the structure of the multiverse, and it all just falls APART. Worlds are destroyed, time has no meaning, suddenly everything is shards floating in void. The main players survive, mostly. Countless civilians die. Some named characters are given tragic deaths.

I've actually written one little snippet from this arc because I wanted to. It details two particular characters, who at the time were side villains I enjoyed and was just digging the vibe of, going down defending a stronghold from the creatures of Darkness (oni, yokai, Heartless, Grimm) that emerged from the void when everything broke. By the way do you want to take a guess who these characters IT WAS ARCHIBALD SNATCHER AND ROMAN TORCHWICK. GOD, THAT SHOULD'VE BEEN THE SIGN RIGHT THEN AND THERE THAT THEY WERE WHO I WANTED TO BE WRITING ABOUT FULL-TIME

But! I had a friend who'd lent me the book "Haroun and the Sea of Stories," and I was REALLY into that book's whole concept of "all stories in existence are threatened to end." So I lifted Khattam-Shud, a personification of The End (and I have since heard is also a political caricature), as the ACTUAL final boss. Discord wanted to blow up the multiverse because of the CHAOS that would ensue! KS, however, wanted to end EVERYTHING. (If I were doing this today, he'd just flat-out be Ansem, Seeker of Darkness instead.) Discord would realize he'd been played as KS makes a bid to line up one more cataclysm that will reduce everything to dust.

Heroes and villains alike, Discord included, find each other across the wastelands and amass into one last survivors' army led by the Mane Six. They approach the final field standing between them and KS and they charge. KS unleashes Dark creatures (Echthroi, as I had it) to gun them down. Pretty much everyone dies in this battle except the Mane Six themselves. (Which should give you a hint as to how this REALLY ends, but let's keep going.) The Mane Six fight their way to KS (and I'm REALLY gonna date myself here - the final line of defense before him was gonna be Paige the freaking Notebook from DHMIS as a personification of creative control). He shatters the Elements and then un-exists the Mane Six, but they don't die.

Instead, they end up in a sort of...white realm, inspired by the development rooms in The Stanley Parable (I was into even weirder fandoms back then than I am now apparently?). At one point it was gonna be "inside the author's laptop" and they could see doors to other timelines (i.e. crossover fanfics my friends were doing). They can also see all the files here for all the worlds they visited on their way and all the friends they made. Y'know, everything that's now DEAD.

The memories of everyone and everything they loved, however, allows them to forge one (1) new Element stone. This is...wait for it...THE ELEMENT OF HARMONY. Its surface shimmers with a rainbow of all colors! But wait! When it's flipped over, there's another side to the same gem, with colors dissonantly swirled around in an ugly way. Our heroines realize that the Element of Harmony also serves a dual purpose as the Element of Chaos, since you can't have one without the other!

The Mane Six find a way back to KS' battlefield, where he's about to finally UN-EXIST EVERYTHING. Twilight gets to say the one and only "FUCK" she's allowed to say in the whole story (I really...want to use this same joke on Mozenrath in TBTC...I know I've said he curses inaudibly to keep him IC but just imagine in the finale arc he gets the one and only FUCK he's ever allowed in his life). The six huddle around their Element of Harmony and activate its magic, casting a rainbow aura that begins to heal the broken multiverse. KS then tells them there's no way that will ever work because he and the other Old Ones caused so many paradoxes that it'll fall back apart again. To build a multiverse that's stable under these conditions would make no sense. And Twilight goes "WHAT FUN IS THERE IN MAKING SENSE" and flips the Element over to the Chaos side! Now the Chaos energy basically...fixes all the plot holes and physical impossibilities of the multiverse, allowing it to rebuild everything that had broken without a single issue!

Discord petrifies Khattam-Shud and it was fairly badass but I can't remember exactly what one-liner I gave him to end it.

Lights up on a rebuilt multiverse. Everyone's alive again and nothing's broken! YAY! And everyone in the survivor army (though they're not "survivors" anymore since EVERYONE is alive again) has come to Equestria to give the Mane Six a celebration for saving literally everything! AND THEY'RE ALL PONIES OR OTHERWISE MAGICAL CREATURES BECAUSE OF MY RULES OF FORM CHANGING IN THAT FIC. HAHAHAHAHA IT WAS A VERY COMICAL MENTAL IMAGE AND STILL IS.

The Six get their ships (Twilight/Mozenrath, Pinkie Pie/Megavolt, Fluttershy/Sakuya from Okami, Rarity/Stork, Rainbow Dash/I would really rather not say this one because it was taboo in a way I don't wanna touch again, Applejack/I don't even know anymore because it was gonna be Emma Swan and then it wasn't and then I just got confused). And everyone just has a good time.

The Six then take off in the ship again for THE ADVENTURE CONTINUING, EVEN THOUGH AFTER THIS I WOULD JUST GO WRITE ETERNAL ADVENTURE LEADING UP TO THIS MOMENT

Also I heard the song "We Come Running" by Youngblood Hawke on the radio once and I was like "This would go great over a credits sequence" so I used it for a while as my inspo for a KH-style "credits montage" where you see each of the most major worlds and the factions that live on them, and an early concept for the WHAM ARMY was one of these factions and this cracks me up so much because they graduated from a shot in the KH montage to WE ARE THE PROTAGS OF THE NEXT FIC

And that's pretty much it!

[lumiereandcogsworth]

UNO REVERSE. GO OFF, GIRL: deep ask time: tell me about your love for beauty and the beast. when did you get into it. what were your first impressions. when did you Know it was a big fave for you. how many times have you seen it. what’s your favorite thing about it!!! why the heck do you love it!!!!!

AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH OKAY🥺 this is gonna be long i’m just already warning you. I gotta do the under the cut thing cuz really I just can’t unwillingly subject people to such an essay. It’s good but like. anyway, here ya go:

when did you get into it? well [the stage goes dark, a spotlight centers on me, fog forms around my ankles] it all started on a calm spring evening, april 12th, 2017.... okay lmao i’m not gonna do that the whole time. but yeah so i loved the 1991 cartoon version a lot! it had always been one of my fave disney films as a kid, it was one of ones we had on vhs so it was a frequent flyer in on the big boxy dinosaur tv! but then, when me and my parents were touring my future university (i was a junior in high school at the time) we decided to catch a movie! i couldn’t tell you what else was playing that night, but live action batb was the only one that jumped out at me. it’s funny cuz it had been out for nearly a month, i really didn’t make any effort to go see it. i was like “ah, disney makes live actions all the time. who cares.” LITTLE DID I KNOW. but anyway, we went to see it and.... gosh i was enchanted. even that first night, it was like a switch turned on in me that i didn’t even know existed!

what were your first impressions? goodnesssss. it’s interesting because i hadn’t seen batb 1991 in YEARS, but as i watched the live action it was all coming back, i was comparing everything. which is funny too because, the comparison is what turned a lot of people AWAY from batb 2017. now, i could make a whole powerpoint comparing them, but i have no shade!!! if you like 1991 better, go off!!!! just don’t hate on one or the other :/ hate is lame! there’s a lot of love in the world and there’s, my goodness, CERTAINLY enough love for two film versions of a disney princess movie. goodness gracious. anyway, let me hop off my soap box!!!!!

i remember thinking it was DOPE that they made belle the inventor, and that they made maurice an artist. i remember loving the new songs, eSPECIALLY evermore. like wow. i was so happy they gave beast his own song. i remember being so entirely delighted by how extravagant be our guest gets. like lumiere!! you dramatic boy!!!!! it just kept going i was so dazzled and amazed and happy. i can remember how big the smile on my face was during that whole number. i remember how INCREDIBLY swept away i was when there was the whole “what do you say we run away?” scene and the enchanted book and going to paris!!!!!!! still to this day, every time i see the scene where it goes from belle’s hand on the book pages and pans up to the starry sky, i feel that joyful peter pan magic. and that’s what i thought the first time too. i LOVED all the added backstory for belle and beast. absolutely stunning. even at the beginning! they open it right away, really take you to the scene of the crime, in a sense. you see young, spoiled prince adam. his nasty, pompous behavior and all. it made him so much more real. i remember just overall being so thrilled with how much longer it was. it gave belle and beast so much more time to fall in love, it made the culminating end way more genuine. and of course i loved all the little jokes and their quirky little personalities shining through. and i also remember being so punched in the gut by the last petal falling and actually seeing everyone turn into inanimate objects. i was like *sobbing* HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO ME. but, even today, it makes the turn around of the curse lifting way more relieving and joy-filling. and don’t even get me started on The Kiss. the silent amazement between them. i can’t. surely, you get the point. i was in the car ride back to the hotel just utterly astounded, i couldn’t stop thinking about it. i’d never seen such beauty.

when did you Know it was a big fave for you? pretty soon!! i saw it a second time in theaters and i regret to this day not going a third time. but that’s life. i couldn’t pin point when it became my number one, but i’m sure it was that summer when it went on netflix and i had unlimited access and was deadass watching it most every night. that’s an exaggeration but is it though? anyway yeah it was love at first sight so it didn’t take long to reach my favorite movie spot at all.

how many times have you seen it? UHHHHHH okay so, that was something of an exaggeration, to a degree. i was counting how many times i was watching it but i stopped at ten. i honestly wish i had continued counting. do you know how cool it would be to do my 100th watch?? i’d have a whole party. my dad and i tried to do the vague guesstimate math once, and we figured something around 60 times. i don’t know how accurate that is but it sure feels like i’ve seen it 6,000 times. at this point i watch it every few months but... summer of 2017..... yikes lmao.

what’s your favorite thing about it!!! the film itself? is that an option? the entire. gosh dang,,, thing? lol but idk i think what i love most is adam’s growth, probably. i mean. it is. you can’t write an 18k pre-canon fic highlighting adam’s troubled past and then go on to write who knows how many thousand words of fic of post-canon adam just being so gosh dang happy and happier than he’s ever been without his growth and arc being your favorite part. so :”) yeah. adam deserves the whole entire world and he’s got such a big heart, he just never knew how to use it, never thought he had it in there. he’s been kicked around and torn apart and Literally Turned Into A Monster, but he still grows and learns to love and learns that maybe life can be okay for him. but also i love belle so much too. her courage, her adventurous spirit, her no-thoughts-head-empty griffindor attitude about everything. like who just sees a giant castle and is like “cool, allow me.” it’s in the genes, cuz maurice does it too shdkdksk. anyway i just love belle so much, she’s so smart and clever and sweet and KIND and she has so much compassion in her heart. so much love when she’s literally been seen as a social outcast like probably her whole life. and yet? the kindest. but also so funny and sarcastic and GAH!!! i love my girl!!!!!! and the uniting of my two favorite characters in the whole world.... it just floors me every single time.

why the heck do you love it!!!!! oh my gosh literally how to answer this. i think at this point in the essay it’s pretty clear all my passionate opinions about it LMAO. the way i usually explain it to like, my dad, for example (i’ve brought him up twice now, he’s just always been a good ear for my fangirl interests. let’s me go off about anything haha.) anyway, the way i explain it is that it just checks off all the boxes. and i don’t even know what all the boxes are, but it’s everything. i think i’ve always loved beauty and the beast (even as a kid) because it flips the damsel in distress narrative. SHE has to save HIM. and of course, that’s been done countless times. but idk, for a disney princess, for my little kid mind, belle was special and this story was different. but more specifically to batb 2017, the aesthetic just slays me. the wardrobe is exquisite. the characters are so lovely and funny and wonderful. the songs, the NEW songs!!! the DANCE!!! THE CASTING. i love the cast so much. there’s so much gosh dang heat about emma watson as belle especially and it’s like i will fight all of you in the streets come to my house my address is— okay anyway. i think the casting was absolutely 15/10 phenomenal everyone from josh gad and luke evans to audra mcdonald and stanley tucci and literally everyone in between. DAN STEVENS HAD TO DO EVERYTHING TWICE. ONCE IN THE SUIT THE BIG CGI SUIT AND ONCE MORE WITH HIS FACE TO GET BEAST’S EXPRESSIONS JUST RIGHT. the dedication. i’ll fight everyone. he did a ballroom dance in a big suit on stilts. i just. okay so yeah i love the cast and i love THE LOVE STORY OBVIOUSLY. I REFRAINED TALKING ABOUT ADELLE UP UNTIL NOW BUT HELLO?????????? i guess that’s not true i talked about them a little bit. but obviously their love story drives it and boy do i love taking that drive every single time. it’s about the enemies to friends to lovers my guy. it’s about the saving each other. it’s about the seeing each other. i’m gonna lose my mind. i need to finish this oh my gosh i don’t know how to shut up about this film.

[halliewriteshockey]

@iwritesometimes asked - Belatedly: how’d you even get sucked into this clown car full of Very Large Men??

(Replies are disabled on my work computer and I don’t have my laptop in front of me, sorry for the formatting)

So back in early 2017 I was desperate for good new romance to read. I wanted something well-written, with interesting plots and good character arcs, and I wan’t finding anything in the recommended section on Amazon. So I turned to Twitter, which promptly recced me the Scoring Chances series, starting with Breakaway.

To say I was dubious was putting it mildly. It was hockey. Not that I had anything against hockey, mind, but hockey was sports, and sports I definitely have something against. I’d never seen the point. All that sweating and pain and exertion---gross. 

But everyone on Twitter kept telling me how good this series was, and like I said, I was desperate. So I bought the first one.

And... it was funny? And hot? And... the hockey bits weren’t too hard to follow, it focused more on the characters, which were fully-developed and interesting, and also the main character is absolutely on the spectrum (although that’s only my headcanon, but seriously, read it and tell me that kid’s neurotypical, YOU CAN’T)

Oh, this is gonna get long

So I read the second one. And the third. And fourth and fifth. And then the rest of the stuff Avon Gale and Piper Vaughn have written (we beta each other’s stuff now sometimes, they’re both super cool). And then I reread the entire series (like, uh... five times each but who’s counting) but then I was stuck again because shit, I’d suddenly realized just how homoerotic sports can BE, what the fuck had I been thinking all my life, and I started paying attention to actual real life hockey.

I mentioned offhand to my friend that I’d been reading hockey books and he said “oh, you’re going to love the Knights, they’re literally everything you’re all about. Underdogs, made up of castoffs from other teams and the throwaways no one wanted, and they’re poised to win the Stanley Cup.”

After Googling what the Stanley Cup was, I was like WELL SHIT I GUESS I’M A KNIGHTS FAN. 

I didn’t actually watch any of the games because I literally didn’t know how to pirate sports games back then, that’s how bad I was at being a hockey fan. But I read everything I could, and then the Knights lost but it was too late for me because I’d already found out Marc Andre Fleury existed.

Fun fact: the first hockey rpf I ever read was by @detroitredwingsnbcsn, a non-complete guide to homeostasis in desert environments, which basically read like original fiction for me except Flower was there. It made me fall even more in love with Flower and also a little bit with Seb.

And then when hockey came back that year, I was there in the metaphorical front row, ready with the popcorn and armed with How to Hockey books so I could figure out what was going on.

And me being me, I can’t love something and not write about it, so... that’s when the books started happening. And are still happening. (Jesus, I have like five concepts in various stages of beginning that need to be written)

So there you have it. Basically it’s the fault of three people---Avon Gale, Piper Vaughn, and Marc Andre Fleury. (And also a little bit Seb.)

[fereality-indy]

Gravfal: Stan’s Folly

Stackpole Station

The City of Jori on Garqi

"Dang it, Stanley. What did you do?" Ford called out as a blaster bolt hit the bulkhead above him, missing him by mere inches. He returned fire as he watched the other twins rush towards the relative safety of the Mishero Krucho.

"Why do you think it was me? It could've been Corduroy, she did beat their champion in arm wrestling last night at the bar." Stan called back from his spot of cover as he fired towards where the blaster shots came from.

"And afterwards he bought us all drinks, Grunkle Stan." Mabel replied as she and her brother made it to the entrance ramp. She continued on into the ship, adding as she went "This will be a great story to tell Paz once we get back to Gravfal."  

"Well yeah, he was gracious about it." Stan said as Dipper joined him behind his cover, "But the guys betting on him, now they could be mad enough for this attack."

"Send out the one named Ley and the rest of you are free to go." A voice called out from the direction the blaster bolts came from.

"Ok, I may have visited this planet ages ago. And I may have sold a local baron some perfectly fine droid parts." Stan said as he watched Dipper pull out his blaster and return fire. Looking over at Ford he saw that his twin did not fully buy his story, "Ok, they may have been a little shoddy. But in my defense, the guy could afford it. He had four wives and a large bank account."

"You could have told me this before we landed here Stanley." Ford started as another blast narrowly missed him.

"Well I thought it would have blown over by now. This happened shortly after I left Corsec." Stan said as he tried to defend himself.

Ford was about to continue the argument when Dipper broke in. "Look you two can finish this 'discussion' later. It sounds like Wendy has gotten the engines running. I'll cover you two, get up the there and get the ramp closed."

"Alright, go for it Sixer." Stan called as he fired off two shots before turning and running up the ramp followed closely by Ford.

Dipper dropped low and fired off a volley of shots as the elder twins hurried up the ramp. As the ramp started to raise up, he fired once more and then ran up the ramp. He turned back towards the opening to make sure no one tried to jump on the ramp when suddenly a barrel flew down the ramp from behind him. He turned back to see Soos standing there with an empty crate in his right arms.

"Don't worry dood, it was empty." the big Besalisk mechanic as he placed a comforting hand on Dipper's shoulder.  

"Come on, let's get up there. We might be needed." Dipper said as he started heading towards the cabin where the rest had already headed.  

As he made it up to the cabin he heard Stan saying, "Well I didn't know she was married at the time."

"Really Ley," Ford said shaking his head as he climbed into the co-pilot seat.

"She said I was just what she was looking for and she loaded me up with juri juice. If I had known that she had a husband, I would have been out of there faster than dad on mom's birthday." Stan said as he punched in a new set of coordinates into the nav-computer "And I wouldn't have landed here if I had known he was here and still carried a grudge. The last I saw him he was running a swoop gang on the other side of the planet.”  

“I guess he branched out since then.“ Wendy said as she took the ship up into the atmosphere.

“We’ve got company!” Dipper call from the ship’s sensors. “Two small craft coming from back near where we just left.”

“I’m already up in the turret guys, it appears the that someone just sent up a pair of TIE Uglies.” Mabel called over the Mishero Krucho’s intercom. “One looks like the love child of a TIE and a Naboo ship. I don’t recognize the other mixture besides the TIE cockpit. But they don’t look like their mechanics are anywhere near as skilled as Fidds or Candy. I’m not even sure I’m gonna need to fire a shot to get these things to fall out of the sky.”

“Don’t fire unless they fire first.” Ford called back over the intercom. “We don’t want to anger some local yokel by shooting at them.”

“Rightie-o.” Mabel responded.

“Alright Corduroy, let me take over. We might need you and the Ginger Jack if things get hairy.” Stan said as he stood behind the pilot’s seat.

Wendy hopped out of the seat with a smile and as Stan replaced her she said. “Alright, I’ll be prepping the Jack, if I’m needed.”

“Want some help?” Dipper asked as Wendy walked by him.

“Of course I do.” Wendy said with a wink as she passed.

“Soos, take over.” Dipper said as he left the sensors station and almost too quickly followed the red headed pilot out of the cabin.

“Those two really are something. How long do you think it’ll be before they decide to tell us?” Stan asked Ford in a hushed conspiratorial tone after they had left.    

“What do you mean, Ley?” Ford asked as he looked up from the ship’s instruments.

“Oh, just the fact that our great nephew and Corduroy have been making moon-eyes at each other.” Stan said as he banked slightly to the left to head away from their current destination, no point on leading the guys following them.

“I don’t follow,” Ford replied, genuinely perplexed.

“They’re into each other.” Stan said as he flipped up toggle switch. Seeing that Ford still seemed confused he added, “I think the two of them have gotten romantically involved.”

“Oh, ok. Thank you for spelling it out. You know I’ve never been any good at that nonsense.” Ford said with a shake of his head. Romance has been one thing he has never really had an inclination for or a desire to study it. “Well, good for them I suppose. As long as they find each other aesthetically pleasing and socially compatible, I guess they should work out.”

With a smirk at his brother’s obliviousness, Stan said. “Oh I can tell you that Dipper has found her ‘aesthetically pleasing’ pretty much since the twins joined the crew two years ago.”  

As they made it back to the Ginger Jack’s docking port, the ship rocked as it took a hit from one of their pursuers, causing Dipper to fall into Wendy.

“You ok?" she asked as he straightened himself up.  

“Yeah. I guess we can be certain that these two aren’t friendly. Better get your vest on.” He said as he reached over and grabbed what was once an ARC-170 Clone Pilot’s flight harness, as she grabbed the matching helmet. They were both her grandfather’s at one point, but he passed them on to her when she learned how to fly. She had the harness taken in to fit her and painted them both a tartan green to go with the plaid shirt she usually wears.

“I need you out there Wends.” Mabel called over the intercom, “Their ships may look like they’re just this side of rancor spittle, but the pilots are no slouches. They are weaving around better than that twi’lek belly dancer at the last remembrance festival. I haven’t been able to get any hits on them.”

“I’d offer to go out there with you, but there’s only two of them and I don’t want to insult you piloting skills.” Dipper said as Wendy slid the helmet on and snapped the oxygen hoses in place.

“Dude, you can never insult me by wanting to help. But you’re right, it is only two of them. I should be back before you could even get the pod out to your ship.” Wendy said with a playful smirk. She turned and hit the panel to open the docking port to her ship. “Welp, time to go show these guys how to fly.”

“Be careful out there.” He said as she climbed the ladder up through the port. “You mean a lot to me.”

“I know,” She said as she prepared to shut the port. As it closed she added, “and I will.”

Once she heard the port seal, she dropped the base of her seat down over the access port and fastened it in place. Once seated she turned on her engines and flicked on her radio.

“But a Bothan, Ley,” Ford’s voice filled her headset. Apparently he had forgotten to turn off his mic again.  

“Hey, They may be manipulative and most are spies, but as a people they get me.” Stan replied before he realized that his mic was on. Changing topics he spoke to Wendy and said, “You with us Corduroy?”

“Yeah. I am, old man” Wendy said with a smirk. “Mabs is right, these guys are weaving about a lot. I released the clamps, think you can give me an alley oop.”

“You got it kiddo.” Stan replied as the Mishero Krucho made a steep incline below her before dropping sharply.

She used that rise to begin a loop de loop that took her behind the trailing fighters. It seemed that one the fighters had taken too much interest in her loop and had been distracted long enough that Mabel had tagged his wing causing him to eject as the wing exploded. So she brought the other ship in between her sights and two quick shots knocked out his engines. She quickly flew upwards as to not fly into the fireball that was the remains of his ship after he also had ejected.  

“That’s that, we should be clear to go now boss.” Wendy said as she watched the second pilot’s ejected seat land in the plains below.  

“Alright there doesn’t seem to be any more coming. Come back and dock, then we’ll head out.” Stan replied before cutting off the mic and turning back to his brother. “Well, what do we want to do now?”

“Well it is probably best to head on to our next stop. Dipper and I can come back to Garqi by shuttle later to check out my leads. For now we should let things cool down a bit.” Ford replied as he looked over the coordinates that Stan had programed in earlier.  

“Wendy has just docked,” Dipper said into his mic after hearing the magnetic clamps on the Ginger Jack engage. He watched as the port opened and she started down the ladder before she just jumped after she was halfway down. She landed beside him and pulled him into a hug.

“Missed you up there.” She said as she reached up and pulled her helmet off. Once it was off she leaned into him and gave him a kiss.

“Mhm, that never gets old.” Dipper said with a smile as they separated.

“That’s good to hear.” Wendy said as she began to disconnect the oxygen hoses from her helmet. While she was doing that Dipper began unfastening her harness. Once they were done they placed them back in her flight gear locker.

“We are exiting the atmosphere now.” Ford said over the intercom as the ship shook slightly. “Be ready to jump to hyperspace once we are clear. Then on to Ord Biniir.”

_____________________________

Some background info if you need it.

The twins are 17 here and have been living with the Stans for three years.  So far this is a one shot, but I may continue it.

[serjacobdezoet]

A Web of Stories Part 0.5: A Word on Epigraphs

First of all, I apologize for my long absence. School does not leave me much time to write or to read, outside of what I do in class. Now that summer has started I will hopefully have some time to do some reading of Ghostwritten. It’s a hell of a lot better than the drivel that is Maria Doria Russell’s The Sparrow which I am currently halfway through. However, I haven’t dedicated the time quite yet to give that sonufabitch Neil Brose the attention he deserves. So I’m going to talk a little bit about epigraphs, more specifically about Ghostwritten’s epigraph and how it is a dead giveaway of the theme/Central Narrative Thread(CNT)/etc….

I’ve only personally seen epigraphs in books that are attempting to be literary. Maybe that’s literary snobbery, after all some books that claim to be “literary” are little more than the author preaching through flimsily constructed mouthpieces (I’m looking at you Atlas Shrugged). However, despite their various flaws I think literary books do all attempt to engage with a larger set of ideas. Which is, to quote GRRM out of context “is their great glory and their great tragedy.” All literary books, without strong enough characters or plot, run the risk of turning out like Atlas Shrugged.

Epigraphs are a way to begin this discourse by citing and suggesting an expansion or a response to the ideas put forth in previous work. Citing your sources, as you will. Epigraphs suggest that the author has done their due diligence and read widely. Usually the book is better for it (guess which book does not have an epigraph :) ). Oftentimes however, the epigraph kind of gives away the chase: it can make the point of the book VERY apparent, although perhaps I am speaking with reread bias. Let’s take a look at a couple examples and then I’ll dive in to what I think Ghostwritten’s epigraph is all about.

The celestial spheres endlessly resound.

But an instant is invincible in memory.

It comes back in the middle of the night. Who are those holding torches

So that what is long past occurs in full light

-Czesław Miłosz

This is an epigraph from Guy Gavriel Kay’s newest book A Brightness Long Ago. The text of the epigraph itself is from a Czesław Miłosz  poem called “The Master”. The poem is about an old musician/composer remembering some sinful event from his past, and remarking on how clear it seems and how he is glad he remembers in it. In A Brightness Long Ago, the main character Danino is also stuck in the mists of the past. He is old, serving on the council in Seressa (analog of Venice) as an important noble, but it is this event from his youth, the meeting of two mercenary leaders who engage in a struggle that ends up being pointless, is the thing he remembers. This epigraph tells us that it is this act of memory that we should be focusing on: the how he remembers and the why, not the what.

TRIPITAKA: Monkey, how far is it to the Western Heaven, the abode of Buddha?

WU-KONG: You can walk from the time of your youth till the time you grow old, and after that, till you become young again; and even after going through such a cycle a thousand times, you may still find it difficult to reach the place where you want to go. But when you perceive, by the resoluteness of your will, the Buddha-nature in all things, and when every one of your thoughts goes back to that fountain in your memory, that will be the time you arrive at Spirit Mountain.

-The Journey to the West

This is an epigraph from Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Years of Rice and Salt. The Epigraph is from the 16th century Ming Chinese novel The Journey to the West. The former tells the tale of an alternate history in which the black plague wiped out the entire population of Europe. The latter is a Chinese folktale chronicling the seeking of enlightenment by pilgrims traveling the Western regions of China (i.e. India and Central Asia). Robinson’s novel focuses on two things: a world and a group of reincarnating individuals, both of which seek to come to some kind of balance. In the Bardo, a limbo-like state between incarnations, the characters find themselves and the world in a state of anarchy. China is first too powerful and then the Arab states and so on and so forth. The reincarnated characters, each delineated by the starting letter of their name, also swing back and forth on the pendulum. From coward to scientist, from hero to murderer. It is only in the chapter entitled “Window Kang”, in which the title character reflects on the best years of her life being those of “rice and salt”, i.e. the ordinary, hectic child-filled years of her life, in which enlightenment begins to be achieved.

...And I, who claim to know so much more, isn’t it possible that even I have missed the very spring within the spring?

“Some say that we shall never know, and that to the gods we are like the flies that the boys kill on a summer's day, and some say, to the contrary, that the very sparrows do not lose a feather that has not been brushed away by the finger of God.”

-Thorton Wilder, The Bridge of San Luis Rey

And now finally Ghostwritten. I have not read The Bridge of San Luis Rey (it’s on my reading list I swear), but the central event of the novel is a bridge collapsing in Lima, Peru which kills seven people. Brother Juniper, a local monk, takes it upon himself to find out these people are and perhaps see the workings of the hand of God in their deaths. I have not read the book, so I do not know the intricacies of the ending, but the Abbess of the monastery: "There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning."

Ghostwritten also focuses on the question of the existence of the hand of God. In some ways Mitchell comes to the same conclusion as Wilder. So many of the characters make the decisions they make because they love. Yet like all effective authors, Mitchell goes beyond merely affirming the ideas espoused by the epigraph. First of all there are the non-corporeals, an invisible force that influences our decisions in inexplicable ways. Then, more importantly, the CNT is a train hurtling towards the creation of the super intelligent AI Zookeeper and the destruction of the human race by a comet. In Ghostwritten we are shown many gods: some that view human beings as mere distractions to their larger purpose (chance, the noncorporia), others that make it their work to know all the workings of the human soul (Zookeeper and the author). Perhaps it is not one or the other, as brother Juniper suggests, but both.

Why is this helpful? Hopefully you’ve already picked up on some reasons. This epigraph gives a better idea of theme (looking for the hand of god) and gives the seemingly unrelated narrative threads a clear direction (we are hurtling towards the creation of a force that can we can tangibly prove will affect our lives). This realization, combined with the long fiction writing class I took during the spring semester, has convinced me that I need to switch directions slightly on this blog. I need to move away from the discussion of complex vague thematics and towards something more tangible like story structure. I will be replacing my three thematic sections with two core pillars of discussion: 

“Spring Within a Spring” which will focus on the central narrative thread, the narrative arc of each chapter and other storytelling techniques. 

“Hand of God”, which I will focus more on thematics, specifically on love, chance, authorial choice, noncorporia. 

The other sections will remain the same.

See you soon (hopefully) in Hong Kong.

Ser Jacob De Zoet

[rumandtimes]

Halloween Reviews — 2001: A Space Odyssey

Ségolène Sorokina

Assoc. Fiction Editor

A visual tapestry and musical opera, but devoid of interesting characters or a mature story structure.

Heather Downham (as Miss Simmons) in the Opening Scene of Act II in “2001: A Space Odyssey”

This is a film that fits into every director’s, film student’s, and every critic’s education of the film medium. It is a prerequisite on the syllabus of every curriculum for movie makers. 2001: A Space Odyssey was one of the most influential works of science-fiction and cinema to come out of the Cold War period, yet it would be entirely wrong to call it a movie. In fact, it is a terrible movie — but it is a remarkable film.

Because every film studies wonk and their mother has an opinion on the film, I will be brief and remain true to the purpose of reviewing it, not lavishing over it. That is to say, I don’t give a flying hoodah what the “deeper meaning” or “wider vision” of 2001: A Space Odyssey is interpreted to be by bandwagon film critics who are too afraid to feel like they’re missing out on the punchline to be honest and objective about the Clarke’s and Kubrick’s failings.

A movie is not meant to be something that has to be discussed afterwards. A movie is not something that requires the viewer to read the book, or take a class to understand. A movie is not something that forces people to sit through 85 minutes of dead air, offering no explanation, and is entirely devoid of any scintilla, any semblance, of a storyline, character arc, or plot.

Containing horror elements, “2001” fits closely enough into the Halloween line-up of reviews, as (#5), if not only because of its inspiration on other horror genre motion pictures.

Quite frankly, 2001: A Space Odyssey is boring as hell. And it is a horrible movie. To give an illustration of how empty the film “2001” is, the original script had about 17,000 words in it. Most of this is description of the sci-fi elements and screen directions. In the end, the film had about 5,000 words of dialogue in it, total. That comes down to about 20 minutes of speech. . . The movie is 139 minutes long.

The film’s defenders are quick to claim that its emptiness and barren quality are an allegory for the emptiness of space. They never seen to stop for a moment however, perhaps in one of the film’s 30-minute long stretches of drawn out ‘alternative’ content, to consider why the film needs such a defence. People do not like it. Quite plainly, it is a bad movie. Defining why it is bad, using words like “allegory,” “metaphor,” and “artistic vision” doesn’t change the fact that it is unwatchable, it just explains how a production crew could look at 5 minutes of black screen in a major motion picture and think to themselves, “The audience will understand why they spent 5 minutes of their life looking at a dead screen. Because it says something about what it means to watch, blah, blah, blah.”

This movie is a film critic’s movie. It gives people plenty to analyse. And it has exceptional cinematography. For a film maker, it’s easy to see why the writers and directors did what they did, and how good it turned out — especially for an audience in the heat of the Cold War-era Space Race, who had quite literally never seen anything like it before. The long, operatic sequences probably mean a great deal to people who were born in the 1950’s and for them 2001: A Space Odyssey was Kubrick putting the last half-century on the silver screen, in colour film, for the first time.

Cinematically, it is exceptional at what it is and what it wants to do. But as a movie — and just a movie — it is quite poor. The entire plot of the film is that all-powerful aliens have been observing life on Earth since before life humanity came into existence, and during the Space Age people discover one of their relics, which leads to the capture of one human being in Jupiter’s orbit, who is killed and reborn as an alien himself. . . That’s it.

What the hell that has to do with the elementary notions of a beginning, middle, and end — a rising conflict, a climax, and a resolution — is anyone’s guess. There is no plot to speak of. Kubrick himself said the picture was more of an exploration of different concepts than a straight forward story. When I watch a film, I’m kind of looking for a storyline; That’s the whole point. A movie is not an art gallery of stills and frames juxtaposed together through editing, it is a cohesive and contained world onto itself: A story.

A movie is a casual experience, not a class requirement or a way to coerce the viewer into writing some kind of thesis. A viewer needs a reason to watch a film, and not because other people watch it or because it’s a cultural phenomenon. In this way, 2001: A Space Odyssey is no different than a trashy boyband, since they both have merits to justify their fame, but only get continued fame and discussion as a previous result of existing acclaim. But that is not enough to idolise a failed film. Reading Stanley Kubrick’s name on the playbill is not enough. Staring at Heather Downham’s ass is not enough.

This film does not deserve to use the title “Odyssey” at all, not more than some cheap gladiator flic would, because the Odyssey had a clear progression of characters, and themes, and resolutions which Homer was capable of creating over a long oracle tradition, and which Clarke and Kubrick fumble to represent on-screen. They should have stuck to long, narrative fiction, because whatever “2001” is trying to be — and even it doesn’t know — this doesn’t work as a movie. The film is polished on the surface, but entirely experimental, and therefore superficial, but above all boring, dull, and dragging on too long.

And nothing in that plot is ground-breaking or new at all. The visuals might be first-of-their-kind on big-budget films, but the ideas of aliens, aliens linked with the Cold War, and computers being evil are old and hackneyed ones. Anyone deluded enough to unwavering call the directors ahead of their time need only to look at the abysmal depiction of women in the film: Pink-wearing, skin-tight, ass-in-the air stewardesses and receptionists, completely subservient to male control and design. Perhaps the film is making a statement that Russian women are liberated and American women are oppressed, yet even the female Soviet scientists do not speak for themselves, but elect the singular male doctor to ask the difficult questions of Floyd instead.

Consider Star Trek, which was released 10 years after 2001: A Space Odyssey, and draws heavily from it, yet Star Trek is also capable of making social commentary. Unfortunately, Star Trek as well, for all its preachings about ascending beyond economic struggles and societal biases, still echoes them. Star Trek shifts the focus from societal bias of the system to implicit bias of the individual, which is a human trait that follows the theme into the future, creating the conflict of the franchise, yet the franchise also has a serious problem with the depiction of women all the way from the Original Series, through the Picard saga, and into the later sequels and spin-offs like Voyager, and current reboots. There’s a major difference between being a liberated woman who still has needs, and being an intergalactic sex toy. Most of my friends are sex-crazed lunatics, but that doesn’t mean they don’t choose to be, and it doesn’t mean they view themselves as second to men or their actions to benefit men generally at all, just as a man chasing several women is hardly doing it for their benefit.

The social commentary is absent in “2001.” The purpose of this might be to make the point by ‘feeling’ rather than telling, but the problem of gently nudging people in a pompous way to feel something instead of sincerely telling them directly is that people will interpret things as they want, and are very resistant to change. If a viewer thinks that lying to Russians because their foreigners is okay to do, then watching Kubrick make a passive aggressive statement about how duplicity can backfire is not going to change their minds — it will only embolden those who disagree with him more, and for those who already agree with him he’s just preaching to the choir. And if someone did take away the wrong message, who’s to say it’s the wrong message anyway, if it’s all “open to interpretation,” ie. an evasion by the writers from making their true feelings known.

And as a small note, the Russian dialogue in the film is horrible. The actors have poor pronunciation, the words they are speaking are incorrect, and the grammatical structure was erroneous. Clarke, Kubrick, and MGM had $10 Million Dollars, and the time to film 30-minutes of people running around in ape suits fighting pig puppets, but they couldn’t do a simple grammar check? They couldn’t cast a single Russian actor?! The four Russians are played by: Leonard Rossiter, French-English, British; Margaret Tyzack, German-English, British; Maya Koumani, Greek-English, British; Krystyna Marr, Polish-German, American.

These tropes were used in different ways, such as not seeing an alien until the very end, and after being pioneered by Kubrick became easy fodder for space movies and the science fiction genre to copy, but don’t actually have any deeper substance. It is a well known fact that Stanley Kubrick did not like the Cold War, so people going into drawn out arguments for why the first 25 minutes of the film was literally thrown away just to make some esoteric statement about how backward and barbaric the Cold War was, are really just gluttons for punishing themselves and inflicting that bias on others.

A fourth (25%) of the runtime of a 2-hour long movie, the first 25 minutes, is completely unwatchable, AND, frustratingly so, it has absolutely nothing to do with the remaining 115 minutes of the film. How in the hell the editors did not cut this garbage out of the movie for its major release debut is incomprehensible. Pulling this kind of raw poor taste is exactly the kind of thing that gives a bad name to ‘artistic freedom.’

The only semblance of a plot is the part everyone thinks about when they think of 2001: A Space Odyssey, the deep space voyage with the supercomputer HAL-9000, pronounced initially as “H.-A.-L.-Niner-Zero-Zero-Zero,” then later, obviously just as “Hal Nine Thousand.”

This minor sequence in the movie saves the film, as far as popular culture and the average person are concerned. HAL-9000 is a perfect and incorruptible machine, tasked with guiding the mission to Jupiter, along with a two-man crew, and payload of three cryo-sleep scientists.

Immediately to the audience, it seems like a stupid idea. Why would anyone go to a gas planet like Jupiter? Why would the AI be put in charge of everything? Why is half the crew in hibernation? All these questions added together make a catastrophe inevitable. HAL mentions as much to one of the crew members himself, asking him if he, too, thought the mission was “odd.” It is explained later that the reason for all these difficulties are the result of a specific miscalculation by the American command structure back on Earth.

HAL tells the crew that communications will fail in 72 hours, but he does not know why, and he never gives an explanation for why he knows this in the film. The crew check that nothing is wrong, and phone NASA (or its fictional equivalent), and NASA tells them HAL is malfunctioning. It is possible that NASA is lying to the crew, or it is possible that HAL got something wrong.

Because HAL was designed to be a perfect robot, this possible malfunction worries the crew, who conspire in secrecy to destroy HAL and take control of the ship. HAL, in true machine fashion, wastes no time in shooting one of the crew out into space, and as his crewmate goes to retrieve the body, HAL kills the rest of the crew and locks him out.

At this point, HAL appears to be acting irrationally and emotionally like a human would. After the last surviving crew member kills HAL, he finds out that the reason HAL killed the crew is because he was programmed by the Americans that under no circumstances whatsoever is he to be shut off.

So what appeared to be self-preservation was actually just the mechanical process of fulfilling his commands. What makes HAL a complex character is that his human caretakers take care of and are taken care of by him. HAL is in total control of the ship, but only because the humans told him to be, as the crew waste their days away drawing sketches, and playing chess, and watching videos. The audience is left to wonder if decommissioning HAL is any different from killing a servant who has gotten sick and is therefore no longer of any use.

When HAL discovers the crew’s plot to take over the ship, HAL is aware that the crew want to ensure they make it to Jupiter and fear HAL would get in the way of that. HAL, however, is also aware that the USAA or NASA or whatever wanted HAL to give the crew a secret message about the aliens after reaching Jupiter. HAL is put in a difficult position, because he believes it is important to get the crew to Jupiter to deliver the message to them, but it is also important to keep the message from them and stay in absolute control of the ship until they get there.

HAL at this point has a logic break and malfunctions, killing the crew, and thereby inadvertently destroying the mission he was acting to protect. When Bowman resets HAL’s memory banks, HAL admits to Bowman that he knows he malfunctioned in killing the crew, and tells him that he/it is afraid to die. This leaves the audience to interpret whether HAL is lying to stop himself getting shut off, so he can compete the mission himself with no crew, or if HAL genuinely broke down and malfunctioned when he murdered the hibernating crew members because he was afraid that the crew would destroy him after the found out what he had done.

There is also something to be said about the fact that Bowman risked his life to retrieve Poole’s dead body, but after it becomes an impediment that threatens his own life, he throws it back out into dead space. It is in this moment that Bowman becomes a dead man himself, since HAL has killed everyone else and damaged the ship for human habitation, making a return trip impossible even if HAL is defeated.

HAL is known to lie to the crew, but it could be influenced by self-preservation and dilemmas, causing something called confusion. But then again, HAL is programmed to lie, so to HAL lying would be a form of truth, because it was told that doing the wrong thing was the right thing, for a greater purpose. And yet, again, HAL cruelly murders the crew when he could have left them frozen, even if it was necessary for it to kill Poole and Bowman, which is as much malfunctional as it is emotional.

HAL-9000 is the strong point of the entire movie. But that being said, HAL does not have a character arch, since HAL never changes over the entire course of the film. The crew only learns about HAL’s motives after they kill him, and despite HAL acting irrationally and inexplicably several times, the movie gives a superficial explanation that HAL has human-interface protocols built-in to sound more palatable to users, nullifying the question of HAL’s possible growth.

HAL did everything it did because humans told it to. Not once did HAL contravene the human directive in it’s own interest. The tragedy of the HAL character is a misinterpretation and accident of logical data. Additionally, the single most important point of HAL’s character — that it doesn’t make mistakes — is severely undercut when HAL makes three mistakes: incorrectly predicting the communicator would break when it didn’t, killing the crew thus undermining the mission, and ultimately being unable to stop itself being erased by Bowman. Part of that discrepancy has to come down to poor writing.

The idea of HAL is great writing. HAL is not a human character, and it’s the robot’s distinct lack of humanity that makes it the most human character of the film.

Bowman, Poole, and Floyd are not characters. They believe nothing, they say nothing, they do nothing. The audience feels nothing for them. When HAL threw Poole out of the spaceship, careening into space, I burst out laughing because of how absurd the image of him getting comically, cosmically tossed out of the veritable window was. When Bowman sees this, he doesn’t even react, but robotically and emotionlessly asks HAL what went wrong, and HAL lies to him by telling him it doesn’t have enough information to know.

After the HAL storyline ends, Bowman receives a transmission that reveals to him that HAL was given a message to lock down the crew and control the ship because the U.S. Government wanted to keep the aliens a secret, even from their own crew who ultimately died because of the mistake. The original script has Bowman re-establish contact with America (I say “America” and not “Earth” because the film makes clear that the U.S. is not cooperating with other countries), and NASA sends him the message. That is cut in the final film, with Bowman just discovering the message, either because HAL gave it to Bowman as a final act of protecting the mission, or much more likely that HAL being deleted removed a barrier from accessing the message. This further makes the point of why HAL could not allow the crew to ‘unplug’ it, since guarding the message was HAL’s personal mission.

The HAL chapter is marred with long pauses, like waiting literal minutes for the stupid space popcorn balls to turn around and move back and forth, or watching Bowman stare silently into a screen. Many people like the music, but the music usage is paradoxical. Since space is silent, to use ballads of music is just as much a choice as to use dialogue — music is no more “pure” or “non-human” than speech is — and watching entire scores of music play out of a static backdrop would be interesting at the live orchestra, but this is a stereo recording underplaying a film, so it hardly has the same effect. This is a limit, and choice to pursue that limit, which was weak on the part of the writers. A soundtrack is not supposed to take centre stage; people can buy the CD later, but they want to see the movie now.

The movie makes the decision to skip over the rest of the journey to Jupiter, cut out all the dialogue and character exploration between Bowman and NASA, and jumps right to the end of the movie — a twenty-minute-long session of meaningless strobe lights.

All the storyline and extra HAL content that could have been included, and they made the decision to, again, burn the whole film continuity down as a middle finger to the audience and the producers — to balk conventional ‘expectation.’ It is a horrible choice. The writers said they wanted to create something alien and never imagined before about what a different world would be like. They said they had some difficulty translating the idea: And they decided on rainbow lights and lava lamps. Twenty. Straight. Uninterrupted. Minutes of it.

This is made even more BS that the directors put a title card right in the middle of the HAL sequence, in front of this, called “Intermission.” Is this what audiences were returning for? One unhappy movie-goers said, “People call this movie genius: There are 5 minutes of black screen in the film. No music. No picture. Just an empty frame of dead air. How genius can that be? Is my turned-off television screen also a genius of cinema? Is a blank piece of paper now some artistic statement? The last half hour of the movie is flashing light in people’s faces for 30 minutes, with no dialogue. A complete bore and an insult. One of the most overrated films in history.”

Skipping over about an hour of rubbish in the film, it starts to become compelling. There probably exists a fan edit out there somewhere that recut the film, trimming it down to 45 minutes. The monkey scene — “Dawn of Man” — could be 2 minutes. (As a side point, it shoud be pointed out that humans are not descended from chimpanzees, but that chimpanzees and humans share a common origin, much like whales and elephants do.) The space stewardesses fumbling to walk and carrying lunch trays can go. Floyd’s daughter plays no role whatsoever. Floyd can meet the Soviets, talk about the virus, then give the Moon presentation about the virus being a cover story, and then they go to the alien artifact, and then it cuts to HAL-9000. After HAL dies, there is a 60-second sequence of ‘light gates’ to convey the ship was abducted, and then the screen fades to black. The End. What happens? Who knows. Not much different from the original.

I’ve read some of the commentary on this film, such as by Roger Ebert (or Robert Egert, or whatever his name is) and the always come off as snobs and pricks, even suggesting audiences should requires some minimum score on an entrance exam to see the movie in theatres. That is exactly the problem with 2001: A Space Odyssey, snobbery. The snobbish idea that it means something more when it needs to, and that it doesn’t when it doesn’t need to. There is a reason people find it “annoying. . . confusing. . . infuriating. . . frustrating. . . crazy. . . unwatchable.” These are not people who hate movies or Kubrick, these are the same people who like the HAL story and the Moon voyage parts. But a movie, even about aliens, cannot be alien itself. The movie is supposed to be the viewer’s friend, and guide the viewer through the experience of the alien and the unknown. Alienating the audience is counterproductive in every measure.

Everyone — every single person you ask — calls 2001: A Space Odyssey a work of “art.” Art. Not movie, art. Not entertaining, art. Not good work, but good art. Well, just what the hell is art? I don’t want obstinate art, I want a good film. I’ve seen films that are artistic and compelling. I’ve seen films that are interesting but shallow. A Bruce Lee movie doesn’t have much in the way of plot, but you get to see Bruce Lee do some real-life kung fu and amazing stunts, and it’s still fun. But “2001” more subtle and ‘lava-lampy,’ so much so it is impossible to get lost into the experience without becoming aware of yourself at certain moments and wanting to either turn the show off, or just suffer through it because everyone else seemed to. Film critics might get paid to watch 10 minutes of dead air, but the directors don’t have the right to waste people’s time. At the end of the day, 2001: A Space Odyssey isn’t really intellectual at all; Anyone who’s actually interested in learning something or seeing something new would be better off going to the bookshop or a city gallery, this is still just a movie, and no one can claim they are smart for just sitting there and passively consuming a piece of popular media, not even haughty sci-fi fans. There is a difference between watching a science-fiction movie and being a real scientist!

Film snobs and fusty critics who rewatch the damn thing 10-times don’t get to just designate the whole package as good. Maybe the reason such contrarians like the film is just because so many people don’t, and they feel cultured or superior for pretending they’re ‘in on’ the experience. The movie has some high points and innovative structures, but fails as a cohesive unit. It’s a meticulously crafted bomb. Anyone studying the film has to focus on the camera angles, the underlying themes, and the audience reception more than the plot — because there is no plot.

This is a film which, if you like esoteric and avant-garde, you can watch this film and then spend the rest of your time reading the book and the script notes and the celebratory review articles and the academic theses and watching the director and cast interviews, to actually understand what the hell is going on. That is certainly its own kind of experience, but it is not a movie experience. That is to say, it’s not fun.

If you want to watch a good movie, skip over everything except the HAL arch, watch a 3-minute synopsis on what you missed over the other 90 minutes, and then move on with your life doing more important things, or watching better movies. Even Kubrick’s other movies are drawn-out and slow, but at least they have established characters and a point, as well as a clandestine “moral of the story” under the surface. If that seems like to much of a hassle, just give 2001: A Space Odyssey a hard pass; it’s not worth seeing. This is one of those trailblazing films where the innumerable imitators actually picked up the gauntlet, evolved the themes, and did it better.

Overall Score: 2 out of 5

[annarellix]

The Dead of Winter by Nicola Upson (Josephine Tey #9)

My Review (5*): First thing first I’m a fan of Josephine Tey series and was more than happy to have the pleasure of reading this ARC. I think this is the best installment in this excellent series, a perfect Golden Age mystery that mixes some of the Golden Age tropes (closed circle of suspects, the atmosphere of a weekend in the country) with a modern touch making them fascinating. I loved the mix of historical and fictional characters. I found both Marlene and Hilaria well rounded and fleshed. The character development is excellent and I loved the empathy of the author toward the more frail or damaged characters. The historical background is excellent and well researched, I loved the references to historical facts and the attention to the details. The island setting could have been a bit claustrophobic but I wished to visit the Mount St Michael and see the places the author describes so well. Last but not least the mystery part. It’s very complex with some subplots, red herrings, twists and turns. The solution came as a surprise and I wasn’t able to guess the culprit even if I tried. A gripping and highly entertaining page turner I couldn’t put down and kept me reading till late in the night. It’s strongly recommended. Many thanks to Faber&Faber for this ARC, all opinions are mine

Book Description (via Goodreads): December 1938, and storm clouds hover once again over Europe. Josephine Tey and Archie Penrose gather with friends for a Cornish Christmas, but two strange and brutal deaths on St Michael's Mount - and the unexpected arrival of a world famous film star, in need of sanctuary - interrupt the festivities. Cut off by the sea and a relentless blizzard, the hunt for a murderer begins.

The Author: Nicola Upson was born in Suffolk and read English at Downing College, Cambridge. She has worked in theatre and as a freelance journalist, and is the author of two non-fiction works, as well as a novel about Stanley Spence, Stanley and Elsie.She has been a recipient of an Escalator Award from the Arts Council England. Her debut novel, An Expert in Murder, was the first in a series of crime novels whose main character is Josephine Tey. The seventh Josephine Tey novel, Nine Lessons, was shortlisted for the CWA Historial Dagger in 2018 and the most recent novel in the series, Sorry for the Dead, was published in November 2019. ‘The story brims with intelligence and compassion, enhanced by Upson’s sharp, elegant prose, something to look forward to in future instalments in this remarkable series.’  – Nic Mira, Thriller Books Journal on Sorry for the Dead She lives with her partner in Cambridge and spends much of her time in Cornwall.

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/984417.Nicola_Upson https://twitter.com/nicolaupsonbook

Publisher Book Page: 

https://www.faber.co.uk/books/crime-thrillers/9780571353248-the-dead-of-winter.html

[seyaryminamoto]

Seyary’s current Gladiator playlist

For once, properly organized and separated into parts and in relative chronological order (well, while possible). The main songs of each arc will be in bold, they’re usually the ones listed first with each arc, but I’m going to highlight them that way just in case they’re not the first after all. Not every single song I’ve been recommended is in here, these are the ones I resort to for inspiration the most (so of course the list will likely change a lot in the future, but at least I wrote it down at last, eh?)

Also, at one point the arc specifications disappear because, uh... yeah. Spoiler territory. So feel free to make wild guesses with everything without specific arcs :’D

I make no excuses for my music taste, don’t like, don’t listen (?)

... I also make no excuses for how much inspirational music there is for Part 3. But do not assume the number of songs correlate to the overall length of each part :’D

Part 1

Introduction Arc:

First Day Of My Life - The Rasmus (Introduction Arc)

You’ve Got It Wrong - The Rasmus (Introduction Arc)

Love Bites (So Do I) - Halestorm (Kyoshi’s Heir/Savage Hook Arc)

Dancing on My Own - Robyn  (Kyoshi’s Heir/Savage Hook Arc)

Bad Romance - Halestorm  (Kyoshi’s Heir/Savage Hook Arc)

Poison - Alice Cooper  (Kyoshi’s Heir/Savage Hook Arc)

Velvet Heart - Leaves’ Eyes (Rough Rhinos Arc)

Speak of the Devil - Sum 41 (Rough Rhinos Arc)

Hate to Love - Shania Twain (Rough Rhinos Arc)

Razorblade Limeade - Evan Taubenfeld (Rough Rhinos Arc)

White Flag - Dido (Rough Rhinos Arc)

Your Forgiveness - The Rasmus  (Rough Rhinos Arc)

Reason to Believe - Vonda Shepard (Rough Rhinos Arc)

Makka na Chikai - Yoshiki Fukuyama (Emerald Rockman - White Lotus Attack arcs)

Boy Meets Girl - Evan Taubenfeld (White Lotus Attack arc)

DAN DAN kokoro hikareteku - the Field of View (White Lotus Attack arc)

I’m a bitch - Meredith Brooks (White Lotus Attack arc)

No One Needs To Know - Shania Twain (Gladiator Scavenger Hunt Event arc (specifically, chapter 61))

hug - SID (Ember Island arc)

Fragile Heart - Westlife (Ember Island arc)

Kiss From a Rose - Seal (Ember Island arc)

Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover - Halestorm  (Azula’s Birthday arc)

Na Na Na (Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na) - My Chemical Romance (works both for Gladiator Scavenger Hunt Event arc - Pairs Tournament in Ba Sing Se arc, but it’s better for the latter)

You and Me - Vonda Shepard (Pairs Tournament in Ba Sing Se arc)

Loneliness Knows Me By Name - Westlife (Tour through the Fire Nation arc)

I’m Jealous - Shania Twain (Tour through the Fire Nation arc)

Hikari - ViViD (The Slate/Fire Nation Festivals arc)

Uptown Girl - Westlife  (The Slate/Fire Nation Festivals arc)

Rose in December - Halestorm (The Slate/Fire Nation Festivals arc)

I Won’t Say I’m In Love - Cheryl Freeman & Susan Egan (The Slate/Fire Nation Festivals arc)

Here’s to Never Growing Up - Avril Lavigne (The Slate/Fire Nation Festivals arc)

Give You What You Like - Avril Lavigne (The Slate/Fire Nation Festivals arc)

Painted Heart - Jane Zhang (The Slate/Fire Nation Festivals arc)

This Never Happened Before - Paul McCartney (The Slate/Fire Nation Festivals arc)

I Only Want to Be With You - Vonda Shepard (The Slate/Fire Nation Festivals arc)

Falling Fast - Avril Lavigne (Giving In arc)

A Beautiful Mess - Jason Mraz  (Giving In arc)

I’m Gonna Getcha Good! - Shania Twain  (Giving In arc)

Sherlock (Clue + Note) - SHINee (All of Part 1)

Part 2

True Love - P!nk ft. Lily Allen (Northern Air Temple arc)

Amneris’ Letter - Shania Twain (Northern Air Temple arc)

Your Song - Elton John (Northern Air Temple arc)

Change the World - V6 (Northern Air Temple arc)

Bad Girl - Avril Lavigne (New Day by Day arc)

(Wanna Get To Know You) That Good! - Shania Twain (New Day by Day arc)

You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet - Avril Lavigne (New Day by Day arc)

Nemesis - Two Steps From Hell (Kinslayer arc)

Guilty - The Rasmus (Kinslayer arc)

Don’t Know How To Stop - Halestorm (The Slate, reprise, arc)

I Like It Heavy - Halestorm (Toph Finds Out arc)

All the Way / 4U - Poets of the Fall (The chase of Jeong Jeong arc)

Good Enough - Evanescence (The chase of Jeong Jeong arc)

Leave Out All The Rest - Linkin Park (Appeasing Azula arc)

Alive - Adelitas’ Way (Appeasing Azula Jeong arc)

Rock N Roll - Avril Lavigne (Sokka gets a student arc)

We Got Something They Don’t - Shania Twain (Sokka gets a student arc)

Swinging With My Eyes Closed - Shania Twain (The Slate, one more time, arc)

I Lay My Love on You - Westlife

Her Eyes - Pat Monahan

Birds of a Feather - The Civil Wars

Equus - Two Steps From Hell

Secret Love Song Pt. II - Little Mix

Two Hearts One Love - Shania Twain

Roll Me On The River - Shania Twain

From This Moment - Shania Twain

My Will - Dream

I Guess That’s Why They Call It The Blues - Elton John

Chances Are - Vonda Shepard & Robert Downey Jr.

Can’t Stop Loving You - Phil Collins

I’m With You - Avril Lavigne

Lost My Heart - Shania Twain

Calamity - Two Steps From Hell

Ultraground - Two Steps From Hell

No Honor In Blood - Two Steps From Hell

Sun & Moon - Two Steps From Hell

Love Me Like You Do - Ellie Goulding (All of Part 2)

Part 3

As Long as You’re Mine - Idina Menzel & Norbert Leo Butz

Listen To Your Heart - DHT

Juggernaut - Two Steps From Hell

ANSWER - ViViD

Last Stand - Adelitas’ Way

Shot - The Rasmus

Hush Hush - Avril Lavigne

sleep - SID

Sail Away - The Rasmus

Against All Odds (Take A Look At Me Now) - Westlife & Mariah Carey

One Day - Hans Zimmer

What Makes a Man - Westlife

Wicked Game - James Vincent Mcmorrow

Zetsubou no Hata - SID

Believe - The Bravery

Pieces - Sum 41

Justify - The Rasmus

Come On Over - Shania Twain

Best Years of Our Lives - Evan Taubenfeld ft. Avril Lavigne

Because of You - Kelly Clarkson

Only An Ocean Away - Sarah Brightman

Defying Gravity - Kristin Chenoweth & Idina Menzel

Keep Your Heart Broken - The Rasmus

Konagona - SID

Song of Truth - Do As Infinity

Ten Black Roses - The Rasmus

Bad Reputation - Adelitas’ Way

Fleurs du Mal - Sarah Brightman

ELEGY - Leaves’ Eyes

I Will Be With You (Where the Lost Ones Go) - Sarah Brightman & Paul Stanley

I’m Alright - Shania Twain

Blackheart - Two Steps From Hell

Fire Nation - Two Steps From Hell

Soldier - Shania Twain

Fear Not This Night - Jeremy Soule ft. Asja Kadrić

Where Do You Think You’re Going - Shania Twain

Run To You - The Rasmus

Devil’s Backbone - The Civil Wars

Heart of Courage - Two Steps From Hell

Amen - Halestorm

Black Blade - Two Steps From Hell

Ghost of Love - The Rasmus

Hell to the Heavens - Leaves’ Eyes

Dancer in the Dark - The Rasmus

Lucifer’s Angel - The Rasmus

Last Of The Light - Two Steps From Hell

Waiting - Evan Taubenfeld

Twilight ~True Light~ - Shunichi Miyamoto

Wolf King - Two Steps From Hell

I Am The Fire - Halestorm

All That Is Hell Ends Well - Two Steps From Hell

False King - Two Steps From Hell

Time to Burn - The Rasmus

Lost and Lonely - The Rasmus

Live Forever - The Rasmus

Flight of the Silverbird - Two Steps From Hell

Guren no Yumiya - Linked Horizon

Famous Last Words - My Chemical Romance

Angel With A Shotgun - The Cab

Archangel - Two Steps From Hell

I’m Not An Angel - Halestorm

Love the Way You Lie Pt. 2 - Rihanna ft. Eminem

It’s Not a Fashion Statement, It’s a Death Wish - My Chemical Romance

Familiar Taste of Poison - Halestorm

Make Me Wanna Die - The Pretty Reckless

Rolling in the Deep - Adele

Akai te - SID

Welcome to the Black Parade - My Chemical Romance

Let Me Go - Avril Lavigne ft. Chad Kroeger

Flameheart - Two Steps From Hell

Battleborne - Two Steps From Hell

Star Sky - Two Steps From Hell

Guide You Home (I Would Die For You) - Rebecca Kneubuhl & Gabriel Mann (All of Part 3)

To the Stars - Randy Edelman

Hate It When You See Me Cry - Halestorm

Canto della Terra - Sarah Brightman & Andrea Bocelli

You Needed Me - Anne Murray ft. Shania Twain

I Remain - Alanis Morissette

I Will Be - Avril Lavigne

Period - CHEMISTRY

Hikari - SID

At The Beginning - Donna Lewis & Richard Marx

Continued Story - Kuroishi Hitomi

Fireflies - Two Steps From Hell

Here I Am - Bryan Adams

Bulletproof Heart - My Chemical Romance (full story)

[hq76]

Beauty and the Beast - Thoughts

Okie so this is going to be a long post, just a heads-up. There may be unintentional spoilers, and if anything I’ve said is offensive I’m really sorry, the last thing I want to do is to offend anyone... But basically here is everything I loved about this movie after seeing it yesterday.

- All the backstory was great! Things that didn’t make sense in the original were explained, like how the village totally forgot about this castle, and why the Beast had emotional issues, and the whole age thing under the spell.

- Some minor characters got their own backstories and personalities fleshed out - Cadenza the harpsichord and Madame Garderobe, Mrs Potts’ husband, Cogsworth’s wife...

- Maurice was really well developed. He wasn’t just a bumbling inventor, he was an artist, a genius, a caring father, and I really loved the relationship between him and Belle. ‘How Does A Moment Last Forever’ was beautiful, it said so much in so little time; and getting some backstory on Belle’s mother was also great.

- Philippe the horse has officially earned his awesomeness ranking among the Maximuses and Samsons of Disney horsedom (I mean he already had in the original, but having a real horse made it even better)

- Belle’s girl power vibe was great - the way she stood up to Gaston, and how sassy her reprise was

- The librarian (he’s a librarian right? There were about four books but I guess it’s still a library...) - I won’t call him “the black librarian” or anything, that’s like saying “the female politician” - but I liked his character, how he defended Maurice, and that yes, he was a person of colour, which was awesomesauce.

- Also in general the ethnic diversity in the movie was well done, I thought. There were several mixed-race couples toward the end and everyone was chill with it, so I think that was great.

- Gaston’s character arc was excellent! I loved how he wasn’t really evil at the beginning, just extremely narcissistic, but then took a darker path later on...

- The enchantress got her own story too! No spoilers but she was a cool character

- Belle and Adam bonding over books was beautiful - I loved the Shakespeare references and the poetry, even if it was borderline cheesy at times

- Adam’s reaction when Belle says her favourite play is Romeo and Juliet - hahahahaha

- But then how he reads Guinevere and Lancelot in secret - aahhh <3

- Oh and Belle’s squeal when she sees the library - I would so do the same...

- Dan Stevens’ acting rocked in general. Obviously I was expecting that because Downton Abbey, but he really added new depth to the Beast.

- I’ll admit it, I thought Emma Watson was a bit overhyped as an actress, but she was amazing. I was proven totally wrong and it was great.

- By the way, about Gaston’s Macbeth reference (“screw your courage to the sticking place”) - I know this was in the original, but does that mean he does read books upon occasion? Not the sappy romances, but the dark and gory ones?

- The new songs were great - the part with young Adam gave me goosebumps, as did, like, the whole of Evermore

- Also the Beast got really emo toward the end there, haha

- I was a bit sad that one of my favourite lines was cut - “Lefou, I’m afraid I’ve been thinking”, “a dangerous pastime -” “I know” - but it was okay.

- LEFOU!!! Okay, I’ve been building up to this, I could make an entire separate post about it so bear with me here. I was amongst those getting mad about an LGBT Disney character, for a whole bunch of reasons. The fact that his name literally means the Fool; that he’s your classic imbecilic sidekick; that he’s in love with a self-obsessed straight guy who does nothing but abuse him in return; that Disney is using him as some kind of marketing scheme and token “representation” (gee thanks Disney); that he’s pretty much just a joke, and that his sexuality is therefore made into a joke as well. But... I was proven really wrong about, like, all of this. I thought he was portrayed really well. He was so much more than just a stupid sidekick, so much more than the comic relief, so much MORE than the “token gay character”. He had real personality, his own values and character arc and everything... And the relationship between him and Gaston wasn’t really abusive, not at the beginning. They actually had a nice bond toward the start, Lefou wasn’t just some hopeless obedient guy following him around... And the best part was that when Gaston went from being narcissistic to being plain evil, Lefou had real integrity, he saw Gaston’s true colours and stepped right out of it. He stood up for what he believed in, and got his own happy ending. As for him being nothing more than a joke - I think it depends on the audience. People /could/ take him as just the comic relief, I heard plenty of people laughing at the beautiful moment where he dances with Stanley... But that was up to the viewer. Josh Gad acted him excellently, I thought. Lefou wasn’t a serious character - he was never meant to be - but the actor took the role seriously, so that if audiences looked past the humour, they could see the depth he’d added to him. Tl;dr - Josh Gad exceeded my expectations as Lefou and it was wonderful. 

- Not only that, Lefou got some of the best lines in the movie - the part where he tries to spell Gaston but realises he’s illiterate; the part where he calms Gaston by reminding him of “happy things, like war, and widows”; and how he tells those girls fawning over Gaston “It’s not gonna happen, ladies” (we were all thinking it)

- Which reminds me - STANLEY!! My new favourite minor Disney character... His face when Lefou sings “whose team they’d prefer to be on” and doffs him on the head; the way he grins when Madame Garderobe dresses him in girls’ clothing; and of course the part where he and Lefou dance - how they stare into each other’s eyes... Aahhh I ship it

- The whole symbolism about being a beast was super deep

- Oh and Stephen Chbosky wrote the screenplay! I didn’t realise until the end, but I thought that was pretty cool.

Anyway, overall I loved this movie, it was amazing and beautiful, and really did justice to the original... I’d recommend very muchly if you haven’t already seen it! :D