#as possessive of their own distinct arc too. like each person has problems that are worth addressing and growing from

[formashimataichi]

Reading chihayafuru and why does taichi keep going on with "is this all i am" thoughts is beyond me, like bro is good in 10 other things school topper ig and Chihaya has been constantly working all the time since middle school ofcourse she will be better than him, arata has also been practicing crazy since he was a kid under a former meijin. I don't understand tchi arc sometimes like ofcourse everyone has expectations from parents, most asian households have that torture, to top this all off he's rich lmao. Like chihayas mom is literally scared her daughter will have unstable life because this field isn't like other sports..

Sometimes even comparing him to leero retro also don't seem to be fair, taichi is so good in short amount of time , why the narrative makes him seem like an underdog of sorts. He is kind and changed a lot since middle school is the model student but he can be self centred. There's a guy Going blind and karuta all he has in the series there are women who are juggling family and a queen title so the whole fandom coddling taichi with oh poor baby makes no sense.

that's why i really enjoy his interactions with suou the most, like the whole "you ignore what you're blessed with" shtick (apologies if i'm misremembering the exact wording of the line, i'm too lazy to go and check the translation). there is so much in taichi's life for him to appreciate and cherish but it always gets bogged down in his own insecurities and his belief that if he can't be great at this one thing he won't be able to actually maintain those connections that he desperately wants to keep. i don't think you can really view his insecurities as mutually exclusive of his desperation for companionship. he's always afraid he'll be left behind if he can't catch up and it takes him a while to realize that this is a community that will always have a place for him regardless of how he performs, bc they recognize that he has a passion akin to the rest of them. i'm not personally a fan of comparing taichi's problems to other characters' problems bc i think each person deals with their own slew of issues that is worthy in its own right. being pressured all your life by your parents to do well and being dismissed otherwise is something that can seriously mess with your head and debilitate your forays into passions thereafter. esp when that factors into the relationships you form with people bc you're constantly being forced to leave behind the endeavors that are meaningless, and thereby the friends who are attached to them. i don't think it's realistic to say that bc he's good at other things he should be content when it's clear karuta is the thing he specifically wants to be great at, esp bc it keeps him connected to his friends. but at the same time, i also love how the narrative addresses taichi's privilege and weaves it together with his tendency to be self-critical anyway. he knows he has to change and be better and question his priorities and that's what really draws me into his arc. he knows there are aspects of his attitude and behavior towards others that are unfair and borne of jealousy and he doesn't like that about himself, so he tries however incrementally he can to mold his perspective into something more constructive and less vindictive. his constant devotion to improvement is inspiring even if it's a slow work in progress, and i like that he has setbacks and doubts himself constantly. it's very realistic in its non-linear portrayal imo

[jwillowwolf]

Okay, so I have a Theory for what will happen in the Finale, but it comes with a very long rant about my reasoning for said theory, so I’ll put it under the cut. Basically, I just got excited and wanted to talk with someone about what I think will happen and have turned to the internet to share my thoughts. Warning for spoilers from Working Through Intrusive Thoughts bellow.

Before I can get to what I think will happen, I need to explain the context of my thinking. Currently, we have Logan feeling ignored, Roman feeling lost, Virgil feeling defensive, Patton feeling confused, Remus just being his dramatic gremlin self, and Janus is in his element.

Logan himself said to Remus “It’s not every day Thomas... is interested in... carrying out this sort of thing.” Showing that today was important to Logan and spoiled by 1) Remus’s interfering, and 2) Thomas going out with Nico. Not to mention he lost his cool for a second and now we’ve got Orange to look out for.

Now, there are two possible theories I know of on this scene. 1) Logan is the Orange-side, which seems to be the most popular opinion. 2) the Orange-side, similarly to Janus, can possess other sides. Personally, I think that Logan being the Orange-side is most plausible.

We have seen Logan almost lose his temper before when he threw a piece of paper at Roman in ‘Learning New Things About Ourselves’. He seems shaken by that, almost scared of what he did. Or maybe of what could have happened. He looked even more shaken in ‘Working Through Intrusive Thoughts’ when we got a glimpse of orange in his eyes. He knows there is a dangerous side to him, an emotional state of anger and frustration that he’s been doing his best to keep under control.

How much longer will he be able to control it though?

Next, we have Roman still feeling kind of upset towards Patton, if his stiff reaction to him speaking in the end card is anything to go by. I describe him as feeling lost because in a way he’s lost his moral compass. After what happened in ‘Putting Others First’, I think he distrusts Patton and considering he has in a way followed morality’s lead through all of this, he’s now struggling through questions of what he decides for himself is wrong and right. And he needs to get this right because he’s meant to be the hero, the good creativity. Or that’s what he’s believed all this time.

He’s been conditioned to see things in black and white. To him, there’s meant to be a clear distinction between a hero and a villain, which means if he does something that is not considered good then he’s bad. You can see how that mindset affects him firstly in ‘Dealing With Intrusive Thoughts’ “It’s a little like looking into a funhouse mirror, but instead of a giant head, or like, long legs and a tiny torse, …it shows you… everything you don’t wanna be” and then at the end of ‘Putting Others First’ “He’s (Janus) asking us to go back on things we’ve known for years! rights and wrongs, should’s and shouldn’t’s!”

The world is not black and white like Roman was taught, so now he’s lost himself in trying to understand the many different shades of grey around him.

Continuing down the angst road, we have Virgil’s uncharacteristic behaviour towards Patton. Yes, we have seen him act this way before, but ever since the ‘Accepting Anxiety’ arc he’s acted differently. More like his true self with the knowledge that he’s safe and among friends, like Logan said in Fitting In he’s part of the group. So, what changed?

Logically he would act out this way as a part of his fight or flight response, or more specifically he’s fighting against what scares him. He acts this way towards Janus and Remus (although it’s harder with Remus since he’s Remus) he gets defensive, cold, and downright mean because he’s trying to protect himself. My point? Something about Patton is scaring Virgil.

If we look at the relationship between them before Virgil’s behaviour, then we have what happened in ‘Dealing with Intrusive Thoughts'. Virgil was at a terrible point of stress over Remus showing up, mainly because Patton was stressed at Remus showing up. Pat’s knee jerk reaction to Remus and what he contributes sends Virgil into a panic because, in a sense, they’re connected as Thomas’s emotions. This may seem odd but stick with me here.

Fear and stress are the two things that drive Virgil. In ‘Why do we Get Out of Bed in the Morning’, he mentions that Thomas feeling stressed over deadlines and projects causes him to “work overtime”. As for fear, that’s clear enough in ‘Moving On’ parts 1 and 2, with his reaction to Patton’s Room. The strong influence of emotions in Patton’s room may have heightened his function because emotion is a core part of who he is. In fact, in ‘Dealing with Intrusive Thoughts’, Logan asks Virgil how Thomas is feeling. This means that he is just as connected to Thomas’s emotional state as Patton.

There isn’t a clear indicator of what happened between ‘Dealing with Intrusive Thoughts’ and ‘Are There Healthy Distractions’ to prompt Virgil’s behaviour towards Patton. Or is there? Let’s look at what exactly he says to Patton:

First from ‘Are There Healthy Distractions’: “How can Thomas Feel B-A-D with his inner D-A-D?” “I can think of a few ways.” This is the first time Virgil lashes out at Patton, and it’s obvious through the whole episode that he’s stressed out.

He actively wants to address the problem throughout the episode and is in a lot of emotional turmoil since the others seem to be ignoring it while he just can’t. Seriously, the pain piles upon him till the point he and Thomas fall into an anxiety attack.

So why does he antagonise Patton here? Because Patton is the one ignoring the problem. Patton is the one most actively ignoring what happened and Virgil is feeling hurt by that. Sure, Logan is distracted, but Logan understands that there are healthy distractions and can stay concentrated on the movie, causing him to not notice Virgil’s dilemma until later. And Roman is still following Patton’s lead here. When he took a jab at Virgil at the beginning and Patton said, “that’s not nice Roman.” He instantly panicked and scrambled to amend himself.

After ‘Are There Healthy Distractions’, we don’t see Patton and Virgil interact again until the end card of Working Through Intrusive Thoughts. “Oh, thank goodness, you’re giving him permission.” “Well, y-yeah. Of course I would.” Virgil bringing up Patton giving Thomas permission seems out of context, and yet it’s perfectly in line with the ending of ‘Dealing with Intrusive Thoughts’ where Patton said “I can’t control every little thing that pops into your head. This may be unnecessary, but, … It’s okay if you sometimes think some… Icky thoughts, Thomas. You have my… permission”

This begs the question though, why is that the line that stuck with Virgil? Because Virgil doesn’t want to be manipulated anymore.

If we look at his relationship with Janus for a moment, then anyone from a mile away can see the two have some sort of history. Something that goes beyond even Virgil’s past as one of the others. The relationship that they used to have. It’s been established that Remus used to unsettle Virgil, so I doubt they spent too much time together, but Janus? That’s a very different story.

Janus is deceit, lies, and denial so he may have hidden Virgil from Thomas. He may have lied to Virgil about his function to keep him under control. It was the best way he knew to hide Virgil from Thomas. But in the end, Virgil came to the realisation that Janus was a lair and hence they must have had a terrible fallout.

This began his arc as the ‘antagonist’ in Thomas’s life. He no longer allowed Janus to control him and faced the light sides on his own. He fought to have his voice heard along with the rest. Now he’s scared of losing the freedom he fought for via Patton taking control.

He’s been down the road before where he was taken advantage of, and he doesn’t want to fall for that again. Never again.

Oof, okay, now we come to Patton himself. He seems fine from the outside, but we all know that he has a habit of keeping his negative emotions on the down-low. He doesn’t exactly know what he’s done. That doesn’t excuse it, but it does put his behaviour into context.

In ‘Dealing with Intrusive Thoughts’ he realises how his reaction to things has influence Thomas’s wellbeing. In ‘Are There Healthy Distractions’ He’s trying to stay committed to Thomas's decision and not influence changing his mind towards facing the problem. Then in ‘Putting Others First’, we see how absolutely distressed he’s feeling because the influence he has over Thomas could be used for bad and hurt Thomas.

In a nutshell, he doesn’t want to become the bad guy, but he doesn’t know how to correct his behaviour. In ‘Putting Others First’ he even asks Janus “What can we do”. It shows that he knows he’s doing something wrong and wants to do the right thing, but everything he’s ever known has been torn apart and now he’s just left confused.

He doesn’t know what to do anymore.

Remus is just doing what he normally does. He’s functioning just fine and honestly, there isn’t anything much to unpack about his behaviour. He’s being himself. Although perhaps there’s something, or someone, behind what he’s doing.

It’s no secret that Janus is the brains of the two (although Remus can create some magnificent Rube Goldberg machines) and could be the mastermind behind this scheme. Since he was introduced, we knew Janus hid behind lies and worked with complex plans to fulfil his goals. The ending of ‘Putting Others First’ shows that he has a part of himself that is only looking out for others but that doesn’t change the fact he’s planning something.

His words at the end of ‘Working Through Intrusive Thoughts’ “Yes, everything is just… fine.” He knows something is not fine. He may even be behind instigating the entire thing.

This time though, perhaps his scheme is meant for good. He can see how the sides are very different from each other. Their working together as the light sides is incredibly unstable. Thomas's mental wellbeing is practically hanging from a thread.

How do we solve this problem? Expose it. So far, Janus's meddling has been to push things into the light. to get Thomas to face all aspects of himself and better understand the complexities of the world.

The truth needs to come out before things can get better.

And all of that brings me finally to the main point of my rant. My personal theory about what will happen with the finale.

Patton and Roman/Virgil currently have an unresolved conflict. That’s what will start the episode. Patton is trying to fix things with Roman and/or Virgil. Logan will try to be the mediator for the situation, and no one seems to be listening to him.

Then Janus shows up and is now on Patton’s side. This is making things worse because well Roman and Virgil still don’t like Janus at all. Perhaps Virgil will even snap and give more context into what happened between him and Janus, comparing Janus and Patton now that Pat seems to be betraying them. Remus even shows up and adds his own comments to further unsettle everyone. The fight is going to get bigger until finally, Logan snaps.

Orange-Logan is now part of the mix, and he is angry. Nothing is holding him back anymore so now everyone is going to have to focus on him. They will listen to him now, which is good, but because anger has taken over, Logan isn’t the same. He’s not able to reason with his own emotions and act as the voice of reason. Everything is coming down!

So now the fighting has gotten even worse, even louder, everyone is stressed and hurt and shouting and then Virgil says “stop”. He doesn’t shout it, he just speaks in a normal calm tone, although his voice is echoing a bit. Everyone does stop mainly out of confusion at his sudden hushed tone, then they see what is happening to Thomas. All their arguing has caused him to spiral into a panic.

Virgil calms Thomas down from his panic, and then Logan from his anger. It’s good for Logan to stand up for himself to be listened to, but anger will get them nowhere. He even apologises for not listening to Logan before things got this bad.

Logan calms down and apologises for his behaviour then calmly calls out the others on their own actions. With a calmer atmosphere, everyone can see a bit more clearly where they were in the wrong and apologise to one another. They talk things out, come to an understanding and resolve their feelings.

Anyway, if you made it to the end of this, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this theory and any theories you have regarding the finale. Thank you for reading and I hope that you have a wonderful day.

[uponrightful]

So, I love possessive, jealous Crosshair 🥵 Tell me about this scene (please?):

“Trouble doesn’t suit you, doll.” He murmured lowly, soft voice contrasting the slight pressure over her pulse point and the swell of her hip. Crosshair was all-consuming and Dutch was weak to do anything but try to stay silent under his pressing weight and commanding presence at her back.

Also, I’d love to know what Echo was thinking once Cross went to the fresher after Dutch.

You’re the best! 😘

Commentary Track for Coriolis Effect

Copy 500 words -or more- of any of my fics and I'll give you my thoughts/rambles on what was going through my head -or the character's- when I wrote it!

*send one in here anytime!*

My oh my! 😍 What spicy scene we have here. I'll start with what's going on with Crosshair first, then I'll come back for Echo and the rest of the Batch. haha

***

Crosshair is fuming with rage during his conversation with Echo: It's that kind of bodily energy you get after watching a action-movie, where your whole body feels tired, but it's twitching with adrenaline that can't be spent or released. That kind of feeling you can't get rid of no matter what you do to ignore it, or work through it. Your mind feels like it working so fast that it's in slow-motion, overanalyzing the smallest details until your grinding your teeth because there's nothing else that helps relieve the pressure.

But the second he enters the refresher all of that energy snaps from anger and fear for Duchess, into dead calm. His inner voice stops screaming and evens out in tone and his hands stop shaking. His breathing slows and the second Cross sees her standing there, it's like he's been meditating deeply for hours. This kind of concentration is only present in Crosshair one other time... And you guessed it. When he's shooting.

Note: This is the epitome of Crosshair's ability to manage impulse-control in unfamiliar -and stressful- situations. Key-word here being "unfamiliar." I firmly believe that Cross is painfully terrible at monitoring and expressing his emotions. He has so many of them all the time that from a young age he had to learn how to turn them off in a moments notice, simply so he could survive. Think about it... How can a sniper worry about his brothers dying right before his eyes and still make clean shots? Not even Crosshair can do that. So the second he's certain Dutch is safe -by visually proving her health- that well-trained nature takes over to protect him like it always does.

Crosshair -at this point- isn't sure what he wants. He needs to touch her though, remind himself that she's tangible and within reach. Not that he isn't aware of his effect on her, but this moment isn't about sexual appeal or attraction. This is desperation, and Crosshair knows that; He's just banking on the hope that she'll let him, because she's always done so. He feels safe with Duchess, and even though this feels/looks sexy, Crosshair feels completely vulnerable right now.

Note: I will say it now; Once and for all. I have never subscribed to the idea that Crosshair is a typical Dominant/BDSM/Sadisim kind of guy. And the distinction is all to do with motivation. I've spent a lot of time trying to figure out why he acts the way he does, and how that manifests itself. So when I planned this scene, I wanted to focus on just how strong his desire to have security is. Not prowess, or control. It's all to do with the desperate need he has to prove how he feels about her. That kind of vulnerability just comes easier to him physically than it does emotionally. Duchess gives him a sense of stability -in and out of the sexual sense- that makes his characterization insanely complex and difficult to balance.

The moment he finds his words, it's a compulsory need to cover his own jealousy. Crosshair is undoubtedly unhappy knowing she went out with Regs... but what's really bothering him is how easy it is to feel so strongly for Duchess. Every time he speaks, it's intentionally driving attention towards someone else, and away from his own desire to be the focus of her attention. Cross uses his fear of her being unsafe to mask the jealousy that constantly compares himself to the others who can give her attention more freely than he can personally. Duchess sees his calm nature as patience and precision, but it's really Crosshair planning out what he's going to say because he knows one wrong move will reveal just how desperate he is to have her acceptance of him.

Note: I've never struggled to balance possessiveness and love like I have with Crosshair. He's so intense that if I'm not careful, he comes off like a walking red-flag. Word choice is essential when getting Cross' character and reactions right. Whether it be the way he talks to her, or the way he naturally falls into a protector role. That's why when I'm writing for him, it takes double the time it does to write anything else. Every movement, every word he says, needs to be written like he says it in the moment. That's the only way to show his softness... because the love that he gives is best felt in person. You can't describe Crosshair's love with words easily.

Now for sweet, sweet, Echo.

Let me preface this by saying: Echo is his brother's keeper. There is a relationship there that goes far deeper than the ones Crosshair holds for his other brothers. It happened slowly, but it wasn't until the two of them were too far into it that either recognized what had happened. Their personalities are something that wouldn't really mix on first glance, but for some reason or another, they just get each other. It's natural, and they gravitate towards each other.

That being said, Duchess and Echo are their own kind of dynamic. I see them as the "platonic-soulmate" kind. She has an intensity that Echo marvels at, and Dutch knows she could take any problem to him and he would do anything to help her. They both see something in the other that they wish they still had, or could develop. It's probably the purest friendship Duchess has ever had, and Echo can't help but harken back to Fives when he sees her attitude -in future chapters.

Note: From the first moment I created Duchess, I just knew in my heart she was meant to be something special to Echo. To me, it was only right that Crosshair's doll would feel strongly connected to Echo as well. Add in their common feeling of loss for brothers, and that just made their relationship that much stronger. She's such a force, and the ARC trooper can't help but find a enamorment with people who have such a strong will and fiery personality. (See Fives)

The moment Echo sees Crosshair, he's already preparing to do anything necessary to protect Duchess from incurring another possible hit to her bruised emotions. Echo trusts Crosshair, but he's highly attentive to Cross and how raw his emotions are. Their interaction is based in Echo's desire to save the couple from losing the chance to do things the right way. Intuition and experience guide Echo through the whole conversation; He really is flying by the seat of his blacks here... But he's so well-versed in reading Crosshair that none of the other Batcher's even think about offering to be the first one Crosshair faces when he comes in the bunk hall. Echo has unmatched faith in Cross, and this was something both of them knew would happen.

Note: Writing this scene was challenging for a number of reasons. For one, neither Echo or Crosshair really talk a whole lot. They say what they need to, and that's the end of it. So I spent days watching Echo and Crosshair's interactions. Trying to figure out what I could based off the -very little- examples I was given. In that, I found that the two of them hardly ever stand next to each other, but they're constantly sharing glances and looking at each other. Echo and Crosshair have silent conversations all. the. time.

Had Echo not allowed Crosshair to go and see Duchess, their sexy scene would have never happened. (And I played around with that idea very seriously...) Ultimately, Echo's intuition was the deciding factor. That conversation, and Crosshair's attempt at honesty was the reason Echo felt confident in letting him speak to her. And although Echo could sense Crosshair's patience running thin, he'd already told the rest of the Batch to be prepared for any fight. Echo wouldn't put it past Cross to stun him, but a gut-feeling kept him from mentally preparing to do the same thing.

Additionally, it was Echo who made everyone leave the bunk hall. The second Crosshair and himself reached an agreement, Echo was the first to step away. His next move was to shove the rest of the Batch out the doors and give Duchess and Crosshair the privacy needed to work through their shit. And although he expected it to end in sex, the desire to keep their business between them alone was Echo's main motivation to empty the bunk room. Neither Crosshair or Duchess really trust the Batch at this moment -in Echo's mind at least- and risking their privacy wasn't something the ARC would stand for. In the back of his mind though, Echo was terrified that Crosshair would fuck her and leave it at that. He's seen the sniper at his best and his worst, and although his best is wonderful, his worst can be miserable to endure. Echo was praying that Crosshair wouldn't be too harsh -physically and mentally- on Duchess.

When Hunter finally decided enough time had passed, Echo was on edge to see just where the two of them would be. The image of them sleeping in separate bunks: Crosshair pretending to sleep -like always- and Duchess laying quietly and pretending like nothing happened shook Echo to his core. But the second he saw her bunk in a disarray, and her not in it, Echo couldn't help but fucking grin. He was proud of his brother for doing the right thing. For doing something for himself, and not worrying about how it would make him look for once. Add in the way Crosshair reprimanded Tech, and how deathly serious he looked with her sleeping peacefully against him...?

That was the moment Echo knew for certain that Crosshair was never coming back from this. He saw a visible change in his brother, in the way his attitude changed. The way Crosshair wasn't worried about himself, or attempting to hide behind sneers and sarcastic comments. Echo noticed how attuned he was to her in that moment, putting her comfort above all else. For a man who pretended to not care about anything, Crosshair did a terrible job of hiding his true personality when Duchess was curled up into him. And Echo couldn't be happier, knowing that his trust in Crosshair hadn't been for nothing. Not only was his brother experiencing love in a way that all of them desired, but Duchess was never going to live with the question of whether or not someone truly cared for her.

***

I hope this was what you were looking for in-terms of answers 😅. I had a great time writing this for you, and I hope you'll feel comfortable doing this again whenever you feel like it! I love sharing the behind-the-scenes stuff with you! It makes the cuts and editing feel a little less sad knowing I might be able to share some of it with you anyways!

[fishoutofcamelot]

I'd like to preface this by saying that I love your blog and all the analysis that you've done on various characters, scenes and ships. You are one of my online heroes. I'm not sure if you're still doing the ship asks, but if you are, what are your thoughts on frelin?

Dude tysm! I’m not sure ‘online hero’ is a great way to describe someone who once made a post comparing dragonlords to furries, but I’ll take the compliment nonetheless!! Your kind words have given me enough dopamine to last until my next paycheck <3

Freylin is a decent ship - conceptually. They're two kindred spirits who found solace and intimacy with each other, drawn together by their mutual sense of otherness (possessing magic). However, I think Freylin does fall into some obvious trappings of Insta-Love, Heteronormativity, and Not Giving Female Love Interests Any Discernible Personality Traits.

For some people, that's not a problem. They like watching Merlin and Freya be cute and sappy with each other, and I'll agree that it was a treat to see such a fun side of Merlin. If that's the kinda ship you like, then great! Ship away. But personally, Freylin makes me feel bad for Freya. 

Not because of the death thing - lord knows I've done far worse to beloved characters without even a hint of remorse. But I feel bad for her because of her role in the ship. As mentioned above, her main purpose in the narrative and in Merlin's life is to give him some angst, then come back later in season 3 to give him some helpful advice as a sort of Freya Ex Machina. Her personality has no depth beyond what was necessary for the story. And even in fanon interpretations of her, she's essentially just a more shy/introverted carbon-copy of Gwen. 

And, okay, as a writer I can admit that there are some characters who don't need a lot of depth. Some characters are plot devices, and that's okay. Freya only appears in like two episodes, so under normal circumstances I'd begrudge that level of shallow characterization. But the rules are different for characters who have a close emotional connection with the MC, especially love interests - even episodic dalliances like Freya! 

Take Balinor, Will, and Daegal, for example. They were all important to Merlin, and all had distinct personalities. Balinor is cantankerous and reclusive. Will is pragmatic and confrontational. Daegal is earnest and youthfully naive. And we as the audience liked them too, because they felt like actual people, even though their main purpose in the story is mainly to serve Merlin's arc. They are, fundamentally, plot devices, but they don’t feel like plot devices because of how organically they’ve been written. 

Freya is a harder sell, because she doesn't have as much of a personality with which to endear us. I'm not saying we need to know Freya's favourite colour and her fondest childhood memory, nor do we need to witness her go through a seasons-long character arc. Not every background character needs their personality painstakingly detailed, least of all background characters. If well-written main characters are chicago deep-dish pizzas, then well-written background characters are hot pockets - easy to make, easy to love, easy to remember. Characters like Gilli and Elena and the love of my life Sophia are good hot pockets. But Freya as she currently is, she's not even that. She's like if we were told there was a hot pocket in the microwave, only to open it up and find it's just a lump of half-melted cheese. 

And it's sad, because Freya had the potential to be interesting. She could've had a distinct personality that made us fall in love with her right alongside Merlin - which would have made her death even more painful for both the characters and the audience alike. But even if you don't give her a personality, at the very least let her fulfill her purpose of furthering Merlin's character arc instead of just making him sad for a few minutes. 

While I'm by no means an expert writer, here's how I would've taken a crack at having Freya’s impact on Merlin's arc. 

So Merlin sees Freya again, but she's not some helpful water spirit. She's emotional and volatile and vengeful and deeply, profoundly traumatized by the nature of her death. And maybe it's his job to finally lay her soul to rest once and for all.

She gets upset at Merlin. She cries and shouts and weeps about her death, about the pain and injustice of it. How could he continue protecting her killer? How could he befriend the man who literally murdered her? Freya didn't want to die, she didn't want to be a monster, she didn't want to be alone (cue implications that she has been trapped inside the lake all this time, maddened by isolation). She just wanted to be left in peace. To be loved. Merlin naturally defends Arthur, saying that he is destined to be a good king, destined to free magic and bring about the golden age of Albion. But she insists that destiny must be wrong, because what has Arthur done for the magic community besides perpetuate his father's company line? He killed her, killed several others like her, and even to this day he condones the oppression of their people - what makes him think a man like that could ever change, could ever set them free? And even if he does, why should any of them be expected to forgive him for his war crimes? 

She tells him that deep down, Merlin knows this. Deep down, Merlin fears Arthur just as much as the rest of them. If he truly believed in Arthur's inherent goodness, in his destiny, then Merlin would not have kept his magic hidden for so long. 

Thus sparks a seed of doubt in Merlin's mind, and scenes like Morgana's speech in Tears Of Uther Pendragon Part 2, Arthur's drive to destroy the dragon egg in Aithusa, Kara's execution in Drawing in the Dark, and the confession in Herald of a New Age would only cause that seed to grow. 

Not only is this a natural and logical progression of his character, but it would also be compelling to see Merlin's unwavering loyalty to Arthur do exactly that - waver. It grants depth to his character, empathizes us to his cause and the cause of his people, and lets us see Merlin in a unique perspective. It also puts a new light on Arthur's actions, foreshadowing an eventual moment of reckoning where Arthur will have to face the consequences of his harmful rhetoric - thereby creating a subtle layer of tension as we wait for that moment to finally arrive. And there's yet another layer of tension that arises from Merlin's repressed yet growing doubts: will he finally admit that Arthur isn't the shining saviour Kilgharrah had promised he'd be? Will he snap like Freya did? Will he and Arthur drift apart? And if they do, what will bring them back together, if such a thing is even possible? How will they make amends? How will Arthur learn from his mistakes and earn back Merlin’s trust?

I could go on and on about how this would impact the story as a whole, but I'm not here to talk about my rewrite ideas. I'm here to talk about Freylin.

At the end of the day, while it's a good ship, Freya doesn't have much personality, which affects their overall chemistry, and I don't think they have enough going on between them to be an endgame pairing. My personal opinion is that Freya has less narrative potential as a romantic partner, and more narrative potential as a supplementary background character whose closeness to Merlin combined with her own trauma forces him to develop and grow in certain ways. She's less of a Gwen (long-standing love interest), and more of a Balinor (one-off character with emotional importance), and that's perfectly fine. But because of her lack of personality and overall narrative relevance, I have a hard time believing or shipping Freylin beyond the scope of her debut episode.

Thanks for the ask! <3

[tokiro07]

I think I may have talked about this before, but I really hope that DBS: Broly sets a precedent for canonizing older, non-canon characters and plotpoints

That being said, I realized today that I don’t really want every single Dragon Ball movie to be rehashed into excuses for Goku to get stronger ad infinitum

Instead I think it would be cool if they were rehashed to be excuses for EVERYONE ELSE to get stronger! 

It’s basically gotten to the point where Goku is incomparable to basically everyone else anyway, so when the “final” Dragon Ball villain finally shows up in the next X number of years, I think it would be good for the rest of the cast to be a bit more balanced with him. Sure, we know he’d still be the last one standing and would probably get another power-up to shoot ahead as always, but it would be a lot more engaging if the rest of the cast was at least able to put up a real fight. I don’t imagine they’d each be getting a movie, but I don’t want them to have super short OVAs either, so I think somewhere between 5 and 10 episodes each would do really well

So let’s say we bring back Dr. Wheelo from World’s Strongest; while it might be cool to get more scenes with Roshi, I don’t think we quite need the whole “stealing Roshi’s body” plotline anymore. Instead, we could use it as an excuse to bring back Android 13 using Dr. Wheelo as the impetus. From there, this plotline follows Krillin, 18 and 17 on a family trip, wherein we get to meet 17′s wife and children. Wheelo shows up with 13, maybe 14 and 15 too, trying to get 17 and 18 so he can use them to upgrade either his own robot body or further upgrade 13. After the group dispatches with 14 and 15, Wheelo has 13 upgrade himself into Super Android 13 with their cores like in the film; this necessitates that 17 and 18 get stronger by also finding a way to become Super Androids, which also ties in and canonizes certain aspects of the Super 17 Arc from GT. At the same time, Krillin is also finding a way to upgrade himself, leaving him to beat Wheelo while Super 17 and 18 beat Super 13

Lord Slug gets repurposed as specifically a Piccolo villain and showcases a new Namekian transformation, perhaps the armored form seen in Dragon Ball Heroes; in order for Piccolo to defeat Slug, he needs to also access this armored form. It’s been stated that in order for Piccolo to fully regain the power of the Nameless Namekian he would need to reabsorb King Piccolo and allow evil back into his heart. The need to attain the armored form may be what prompts him to bring back King Piccolo’s soul and absorb it, with the major character arc of the film being Piccolo confronting the villain he used to be and finally overcoming it once and for all. Garlic Jr. could also serve this same purpose, and I actually think it would be interesting for Garlic Jr. and Slug to somehow team up, but I also think it would be better if it were a bit more focused and only chose one. 

Turles could be repurposed as a Universe 6 Saiyan, giving him an opportunity to be redesigned to look less like Goku so as not to overlap with Goku Black. Vegeta finally makes good on his promise to visit Planet Sadala and decides to bring his family with him so that Trunks can be closer to his heritage. Goten either sneaks aboard or Vegeta allows him to come with because he thinks it’s an opportunity he’d never get from Goku. After taking in the Saiyan culture and giving Vegeta some time to reflect on how things could or should have been for him and his race and family, the plot shifts to Turles betraying Sadala, possibly under Frost’s orders, and attempting to drain it with the Tree of Might. Because he’s draining the Saiyans and not Earthlings, he gets a massive powerup that far outstrips what he got in the original film, allowing him to easily dispatch with Cabba, Caulifla and Kale. This in turn requires either Vegeta fight him with the powers he’s currently learning from Beerus in the manga or Trunks and Goten gain a power up as Gotenks. I do think that Turles would be better served as a Vegeta villain specifically in this case, as while I think Goten and Trunks need more development, Vegeta definitely deserves to have a story where he’s the hero

Tapion and Hirudegarn could easily provide Trunks with the development that he’d otherwise be getting from Turles, repurposing the sibling relationship he developed with Tapion in Wrath of the Dragon to have a bit more of a lasting impact (actually forcing Trunks to be confronted with the choice of killing Tapion rather than just having Hirudegarn escape from Tapion’s body before Trunks does anything as just one example). This would not only build up Trunks’ character, but would give him a really easy powerup in the form of Tapion’s Brave Sword

Garlic Jr., if not a Piccolo villain, could then in turn be a Goten villain, as Garlic Jr. was previously always defeated by child Gohan. Goten could be confronted with Garlic Jr. while Trunks is busy with Hirudegarn, forcing Goten to fight without relying on fusion and ultimately finding his own way of fighting that’s distinct from Goku’s ever-evolving Super Saiyan forms and Gohan’s Potential Unleashed. This would also make it even more impactful when Goten and Trunks reunite into Gotenks later in a bigger final battle

Bojack would then return as Gohan’s villain, but this time Gohan would have Videl with him (who would also be given an opportunity to improve her skills), as well as a slightly older Pan who may exhibit the same kind of untapped strength as Gohan did at her age. Gohan would either find some way to surpass Potential Unleashed to defeat Bojack or would specifically be able to beat him because his family is there fighting with him. Perhaps something like “Bonds Unleashed,” wherein Gohan exceeds his potential through the power of his love for his family or something silly like that? It’d also be a good chance to revisit Bojack’s team and develop them a bit more, especially fan-favorite Zangya

Cooler could give us a chance to develop Frieza on his own a bit, allowing him to finally reach the Fifth Form and subsequently combine it with the Golden Form while also exploring the culture of Frieza’s species, or at least the dynamics within his family as galactic conquerors

Janemba doesn’t really have anyone in particular aside from Goku and Vegeta that he would make a ton of sense to be a villain for, but given how frequently Janemba is compared to Buu, I could see him being a way for Buu and Uub to team up, fully reintroducing Uub and giving us a way for Buu to level up, maybe somehow channeling his Super or Kid forms in a more constructive way

Baby of course would be a way to reintroduce Super Saiyan 4, but seeing as he’s a Tuffle Machine Mutant, I could definitely see him coming into conflict with Broly as a way to get Broly up to Legendary Super Saiyan 2 or beyond. That said, Broly’s probably going to be brought back long before they rehash Baby, I just think that would be really interesting, especially since Legendary Super Saiyan is such a similar concept to Super Saiyan 4 (going Super Saiyan while in a pseudo-Great Ape state as opposed to going Super Saiyan while actually in Great Ape). My main problem is that I’m not sure how SS4 can be introduced at this point since it might conflict with SSG and SSB, but that’s an issue for the writers. I also don’t think it’d necessarily be good to have Baby remove Vegeta from the plot by possessing him like in GT, so maybe Baby’s Saiyan body should be a Universe 6 Saiyan. Perhaps Cabba would be a good candidate, since he’s pretty clearly far weaker than Caulifla and Kale, so it might lead to some good development for him

Finally, the Shadow Dragons would be a good way to tie everyone back together, with each of them (barring Frieza, probably) taking on a different Shadow Dragon using what they’ve learned; since I couldn’t find a place for Tien or Yamcha, perhaps they can team up to beat any of the Shadow Dragons that the others don’t get to. I don’t think it would be good to end things on a repurposed villain, so of course Omega Shenron wouldn’t be the final Dragon Ball villain this time around, but perhaps this would be where Goku finalizes and masters whatever abilities he’ll be using against the true final villain

I don’t know if other people would like this as much as I would, I just think it’d be really cool to revisit all of these characters and concepts, tweak their designs a bit and also give the extended cast a way to powerup and get closer to Goku’s level. Probably won’t happen, but I’d personally love to see it

[vedj-f-bekuesu]

Ninjago Unpopular Opinions

Following on from my watch of the entire old series (combined with already having seen the last two series), I have enough material to work with to make a sort of unpopular opinion list. Some of these are lightweight, some of these are...uh, not so much. 

These aren’t in any particular order, this is more of a “I’ll just put them down as I remember them” sort of deal. That’ll be why they appear so messy. 

-Even after all this I prefer the newest seasons to the older stuff. There have been a surprising number of good to great older seasons, but I just love that hit of S1/S2 campiness with the more developed writing of later seasons. 

-Cole sucked as a leader, aside from in the pilot episodes. In the series proper he varied from complete meathead I hated (first part of S1), to having the same mentoring personality as everyone else (S1 - S2), to being consumed by the love triangle which made him pull a really shitty move (I don’t need to tell you what that refers to). He eventually gets ironed out in season 4, but Lloyd had already taken over as leader at this point. And rightfully so, even if Lloyd’s material got knocked from season 3 as a result. 

-I couldn’t really warm up to Ronin that much for some reason. I get the reason why he’s popular, since it was pretty obvious he was supposed to be like an off-beat mentor figure to Nya, but...I dunno, unlike with Dareth, it felt like his skeevy moments were more off-kilter, plus I didn’t really like his arc in Skybound (even if that was written out of reality). That being said, his was strong in Possession even with said moments. Maybe I just need a future appearance to see how I ultimately swing with him.

-I mentioned this in my Hunted overview, but I think Skylor’s just bland. Part of the problem is that she’s mainly just wedged in as an action girl and doesn’t have too many moments to interact outside of that. That’s mostly reserved for moments where she acts as Agony Aunt (which is fine, that shows that being supportive is in her nature), but she needs more to work with. And as an obvious offshoot, if Kailor is the intended endgame it sucks in its current form. They don’t have chemistry or a decent dynamic.

-The other Ninjago ship I don’t particularly like out of all of them is...actually Geode. Yeah, Rebooted obviously wasn’t good for it considering the love triangle, but what actually did more damage to it for me was Skybound. It went so far in trying to oversteer back that it beat you over the head with the fact they were making Cole and Jay best friends after said love triangle (made really obvious when Jay is worried about Cole’s reaction to him seeing Nya in his reflection in both Possession and Skybound, when Cole isn’t even phased when he’s told). It was just really off-putting.

-Jay is a better big brother figure to Lloyd than Kai. Yeah, Kai’s true potential moment in Rise of the Serpentine hinged on realising he (and the others, mind) were supposed to protect Lloyd, they all spent Legacy of the Green Ninja’s first half being Lloyd’s proper mentors, Zane’s death prompted Kai to hover with thoughts of the Green Ninja again (which seemed to me for different reasons to being envious of power at the start, although its handling was very clunky after that), and he had the first episode in Possession which was arguably the strongest showing of a dynamic with Lloyd, but Possession didn’t have much about it outside of said episode, and the show seemed to just forget it from that point beyond some very, very fleeting and sparse bits. In the more modern seasons, it feels like Jay’s stepped up to be more supportive of Lloyd on a more consistent basis (which would make sense with the common fanon that Jay is the youngest of the original Ninja, he’d be closer to Lloyd’s age). It’s something I kind of want tapped into in a proper way at some point.

-Sensei Garmadon is a bit overrated. Just a smidge. When he’s good, he’s good, but most of the time he’s no more interesting than Wu would be in the same position. And I feel like they didn’t really develop his fatherly bond with Lloyd too well despite that being what his character was there for. Again, aside from moments where he was really good.

-Most underrated season of the old batch for me was the last minute shock, March of the Oni. I did enjoy Day of the Departed (which has a worse reputation), but I can understand why someone wouldn’t like it considering how bare it was. March of the Oni is far from my favourite season but I thought it came together really well, so the fact it’s generally panned legitimately confuses me. I guess Hands of Time would be a contender too, but I think opinion on that has swayed in its favour after the new seasons came out (and Secrets of the Forbidden Spinjutsu would be here if I included the new batch) so that’s why it’s edged out. 

-Most overrated season for me was undeniably Tournament of Elements. It’s not my least favourite season, but Rebooted and Hunted are pretty maligned to begin with, while Tournament of Elements is usually considered one of the top ones. It starts strong, has an interesting premise and there are ideas that are executed well. The thing is that the elements that people tend to praise the season for are ones I actually think the writers dropped the ball on, hence why this ended up the toughest season to get to the end of, even more than Hunted. It’s a shame, but it’s just not for me. 

-Best ninja suits...honestly, I don’t really notice the suits unless they’re really bad, because I’m used to franchises where costume changes mark radical permanent redesigns, and are not just par for the course of the brand (it makes perfect sense with a toy brand who want to sell you the same characters over and over again but still). Not counting the S11 suits since they weren’t part of the old batch, I guess I’d honestly say the ZX suits, maybe? They’re simple, but they’re cute and very distinct. Also Sons of Garmadon Cole channelling the Movie costume was a very good move (and arguably looks even better ripped up in Hunted aethetically), and Kai’s suit was bleh in Sons of Garmadon but its overhaul in Hunted was way better. Also, just as a wildcard, Rebooted Lloyd looks like a more finely tuned ZX suit. Actually, just one last bit on a tangent to note a difference the show makes to the figures that demonstrates the figures’ limitations. For Kai and Jay’s S11 suits, their figures invoke similar feels (because underneath the accessories they do have a lot in common), whereas they feel very different in the show because while Jay sticks to the figure and looks snug, Kai has a lot exposed around the neckline, as if his gi is hanging loosely on the shoulders and should join Cole in the “For fucks sake it’s an ice realm wear a jacket please” club. 

-Worst ninja sui--what the hell happened to Cole and Nya in Hands of Time?! Nya’s main issue is that it’s trying to work too many colours and they just don’t mesh well. I think this was the time they were partially adapting the movie’s change, but they were clinging onto her having red to both represent Samurai X and her ties to her brother, but they should have just picked one or the other because it just doesn’t work the way it did in Skybound. And Cole’s outfit is just hideous. Its balance of colours and accents is all off-kilter, and to top it off the shoes just don’t work and somehow look like socks with sandals. I didn’t know that was doable with a whole suit. Finally, on a general note, I’m not a fan of when the suits are all very similar bar some very, very minor differences. One could argue that it makes them look more like a team, but I prefer the individual personality to come out. 

-It’s hard to judge the best and worst episodes, honestly. The seasons from Tournament of Elements onwards are done so tied to each other that picking an episode is rather difficult outside of designated finales (or the odd Jay-focused/Zane-focused episodes that happened in seasons 7, 8 and 9). I guess for best I’d say stuff like The Quiet One, or The Fall, or Grave Danger, or stuff like that would be up there. Worst episodes in those seasons are even harder, because usually it’s how arcs over episodes are written that get to me, not individual episodes.  This all being said, it’s much easier to do this with the more episodic first three seasons, and to that end I would still say that Tick Tock is my favourite standalone episode still, and Home is still my least favourite. For all the times the writing has dropped the ball, nothing has legitimately pissed me off more than what this episode did because it’s in its own category of bad writing. 

-There have been some concepts thrown in that, while they definitely wouldn’t work out in the long term, make for interesting snippets of what-ifs. Like, I loved the bit where Jay was a show host and got around the stage using his lightning powers. That seems like such a natural fit outside of his ninja identity I wish I’d thought of it. Imagine Bradley Walsh using lightning to get around the studio, that would be metal as fuck.

-On the other side of that coin, the bizarro Ninja are the single most overrated concept in the show. I don’t like Scourge the Hedgehog to begin with, but he at least had some efforts to make him unique (that fell flat, but eh). The bizarro Ninja are the equivalent of Evil Sonic; cliche and undeveloped. They’re not even useful for the cliche idea of framing the actual Ninja since even though they’re seen doing delinquent behaviour, this is never addressed. Heck Nadakhan was more effective with this idea. Thing is that I can’t blame the show at all for this. While the concept is naff, the show itself treats them as they actually were; Garmadon’s puppets and the scheme of the episode. Aside from bizarro Jay’s behaviour to Nya being full of unfortunate implications, there is no greater purpose for their existence, and the show never tries to do it again. It’s really the fans that have inflated their appearance in this case because I guess the idea of “take this nice character and give them an evil version” is just so appealing to the teenage demographic. Screw that, corruption is way more fun and interesting. 

-What I can blame the show for is the single worst execution of an idea, because to this point I still consider Kai’s green ninja “arc” in Tournament of Elements to be the single worst executed arc (yeah, even worse than the love triangle, but that one is still bad). The sad thing is it managed to convince me that it wasn’t such a bad concept when they explained it by being an offshoot of his depression following Zane’s death (before that I was very sceptical it could fit it in naturally after the last three seasons). But then it was used once when Skylor tried to get Kai to stab Lloyd in the back during the skating match (which Kai completely rebuffed and seemed over his depression-rooted negative vibes on Lloyd), and once more when he was overcome by the power of the staff. The latter is especially infuriating since this would have been the perfect opportunity for a character moment. Like, Lloyd and/or Skylor could have fought to get Kai out of the trance of the staff and see that his friends mean more to him than having power. It practically writes itself and is a perfect set-up. What happens instead is that Cole is technically the one to save Kai from himself as he rams the Roto Jet into the chamber and makes the rocky serpentine structure come crashing down on Kai. Maybe interesting to read into if you want a Lava reading of the show, but in that moment is just a wasted opportunity. Come on!

-Actually, also talking about other bad concepts, I don’t miss those weird energy dragons they could summon starting from Tournament of Elements. The dragons in Rise of the Serpentine/Legacy of the Green Ninja were fine because they had a logical reason for being there and actually were integrated into the plot (so you got to watch them being maintained and having moments with the ninja). The energy dragons in Tournament of Elements existed for one character as a plot thing (Zane’s, because he always had the good plots in the earlier seasons), but then everyone else suddenly could do it too and they became convenient plot devices and nothing else. Airjutsu I was more okay with because it seems more like a tool they’d use and could be integrated better, but I can also see why that stopped being used (outside of that one bit in Prime Empire).

-The Elemental Masters are both over-hyped and underdeveloped. The normal civilian cast really got the shaft once the series decided it wanted to explore this lore, yet the only ones I really got interested in in any way were the villain EMs and Karlof. And even Karlof is overlooked by the fandom, by the looks of it. 

-Jay actually came off the best in the Rebooted love triangle. He’s not entirely perfect, but he is essentially the biggest victim as a result of it in that season, and what Nya and Cole did either bordered on or was outright callous for different reasons. I think if people gave Jay the biggest shtick for Rebooted’s events, it’s influenced with how Skybound botched trying to patch it up. 

-The movie was a net positive influence on the show. Aside from me preferring the designs of the movie anyway, it forced the characterisation to actually pick a lane for each character and stick to it, mitigating a lot of the haphazard characterisation issues. The inconsistency in later seasons is tone instead, which is maybe why people thought the characterisation was inconsistent between Sons of Garmadon/Hunted and March of the Oni/SotFS (when really, they weren’t that different if at all). The show also made a good call in ignoring movie Zane’s characterisation; as much as I enjoy it in the film, it really didn’t gel up with what the show had done with him, so trying to force it in would have been more of a characterisation jolt than any of the early season stuff. 

-I’m generally fine with Jaya and Pixane. The former I can see why people would be off about it because there have been some badly written periods for them, but I think on the whole it manages to hold it together. The latter was written in surprisingly smoothly given the circumstances, so it’s no wonder I don’t see discourse about it. 

-Oh yeah, I don’t get Wu/Faith as a ship. Like, she was the cool drill instructor/aunt to everyone, including Wu. This is a quick one because it’s just a very small aside.

-Also I can’t really get behind Polyninja either. If the characters had a fairly even spread of interaction and moments between each other I could, but the spread ends up like lots of moments between Cole and Kai varying from little moments to huge dollops, and Cole and Jay having a whole best friends affirmation arc due to the fallout of the love triangle, to Kai and Jay having barely anything to work with and anyone with Zane getting a couple of table scraps occasionally. It’s not even enough.

-Following on from that though, Zane feels the least integrated with the group dynamic in general. He’s has some of the best plots and stories in the show, but nearly all of them have been focusing on him solo. And not even SotFS or Prime Empire helped with this one. Hopefully MoM can smooth this one out a bit. 

-Finally for this post, after going through all those seasons I still prefer Nya’s movie voice to her show voice by a significant margin. Sorry Kelly Metzger. 

I think that’s it. I’ve actually been on this for a week but I’ve been allowing time for more thoughts to come to me, because there have been a lot of thoughts coming in batches. I think I’ll leave it at this though, because I think most of it is covered pretty well.

I have at least two more text posts like this planned, but they’re not strictly about the old seasons so I’ve left them for after. I’m looking forward to them though, because they’re on specific topics and that is my bread and butter pudding. 

[tigerlover16-uk]

So, what do you think of Baby from GT overall?

He was okay, a really mixed bag overall.

The character’s motivations are fascinating and touch on some interesting thematic elements, and I loved his ability to possess people, that lead to some interesting and tense encounters early on. I find the whole set up with him and the Machine Mutants kind of weird, but otherwise he had some great build up as a villain.

While I criticised how Vegeta himself didn’t get to do anything as a result (Though that’s really more a problem with the next two arcs wasting him in fairness), Vegeta being possessed as Baby’s main host was a cool idea and felt appropriate to the story. And I loved the idea of him becoming a golden great ape too, that was a cool idea for a final fight with SS4 Goku that theoretically upped the scale and tension of the fight (Theoretically…).

That said though, I find Baby’s actual character a bit… meh.

He was great early on when he was this mysterious, creepy presence and we didn’t quite know who he was. His initial takeover of earth and the Z fighters, especially Vegeta, was really good stuff and probably some of the most entertaining parts of the arc (Weirdness with Piccolo’s pointless cameo aside). But after the initial fight with Goku, Baby honestly just got kind of dull.

Mostly because he just devolved into bargain store Frieza.

Seriously though, I get most of his actions. Taking over the earth and possessing it’s inhabitants so he can turn them all into Tuffles, while simultaneously screwing over and spiting Goku and Vegeta? That all worked, but then for some reason he decided to just take over the universe and I was just like “… why?”

I mean, writing wise I understand why they had him do that. It was to give the story a bit more a sense of urgency after the stakes had already been dramatically raised, but I don’t see why he needed to possess and screw over everyone else in the universe when he could accomplish all of his actual goals just fine with the revived planet Vegeta and the enslaved earthlings.

I know it was probably meant to signal “He’s become the thing he hates”, which sound compelling on paper, but it just felt like there wasn’t a good reason given for him to suddenly go after the entire universe when his goals were revenge against the saiyans and rebuilding his race. Why suddenly become an intergalactic conqueror? It just makes him seem really selfish and petty.

Which is my other problem with Baby for the second half of the arc… he feels like any other villain we’ve had in Dragon Ball. He doesn’t have a ton of personality, mostly just being the same kind of arrogant, spiteful and petulant kind of character we’ve seen from other various villains like Frieza, but with less charm honestly. And while his motivations and backstory are still fascinating, it’s not enough to make up for that lack of charm to me.

Say what you want about Majin Buu, but he had an entertaining and unique personality compared to the other villains. Buu’s a big pink manchild who’s entire thing was that he didn’t understand morality in the way humans do and was just killing people and following Babidi’s orders because he thought it was fun. His personality was pretty goofy and childish, but it was also handled in a way that made him really creepy and threatening at the same time, but endearing enough that you could eventually start to like him. While not my favourite I feel like he’s probably the best villain in Z, possibly any of the Dragon Ball series, because in addition to having a unique motivation and cool powers, he also had a distinct personality and charm to him that made him always interesting to watch to see what he was going to do next.

Baby only has the first half of that. And terrible designs that are just off-putting to look at to me, except for maybe the form we first see him in and the Golden Great Ape form. His actual character during the second half of his arc just feels very by the numbers and not all that interesting, to be honest, it’s more the concepts behind his character that are the interesting part. Which alright I like reading into things, but characters still need to be varied, interesting and entertaining on the surface level or who cares.

Worse yet, I honestly just found the final fight between him and Goku a slog after the part where he becomes a Great Ape. Everything just felt like it progressed so slowly, and there was very little actual action going on. I’m someone that wants to see fast paced attacks and a lot of fight choreography in the big Dragon Ball fights, like what we see in Goku vs Vegeta or Piccolo. The fight with Great Ape Baby and Goku just felt almost inactive at times. The part where they were running alongside each other while charging up Kamehamehas was pretty cool, though.

And that’s a deal breaker for me, because if a Dragon Ball villain isn’t particularly entertaining or well designed, then they need to at least be able to compensate with a cool and enjoyable fight. And I personally just didn’t get that from it. I’ll stick with Goku vs Nuova Shenron as best GT fight, thank you.

I wouldn’t mind him feeling like such a typical villain either if his set up hadn’t been so good and made him stand out and feel like he had these unique motivations behind him. Frieza is a very simple character who’s largely evil for the sake of it, but I love him more than any other villain because he just OWNS his evilness and is really fun to watch.

Baby though felt like he could have, and should have, been something a lot more than that though.

I dunno, maybe it’s just wishful thinking on my part, but honestly I do love the ideas behind Baby and he does get off to a really great start. But watching him for the rest of the arc… I just got nothing from him. At least, nothing I don’t feel I could get from other villains but better (And yes I include the Great Ape fight in that. Hirudegarn’s fight was honestly more entertaining than that one to me).

Eh, maybe I’m just too nitpicky. Baby wasn’t a bad character, he was probably the best new character GT introduced alongside Nuova Shenron and his arc was the only one that felt overall decent in that series, if still a bit lacking in places.

I just didn’t find him anything that special overall, and he doesn’t stick with me in the way that characters like Frieza, Beerus, Buu, King Piccolo, Cell, etc do that makes me really enjoy coming back to their scenes.

[violetosprey]

Hey there! You mentioned in one of you posts that your favorite ending for Marcus was the one where he frames the MC. I'll admit, you kind of got me liking that ending too! However, this is a problem I have the the style of romance-novel-type games, that being that options are limited (This isn't a complaint with anyone who likes those games or uses such a format, I'll admit, it has its uses). Your thoughts I guess?

Oh, a good question :)  My only fear with answering this question is that I end up completely misunderstanding what you’re saying here XD  You might have to correct me if I go on a monologue here that nowhere near answers your question.

I think you’re talking about the limit of choices you have when going down a character’s path and/or the endings you can get with the character.  If that’s it, I’ll talk about that in terms of romance-novel games in general, and use Marcus from TDDUP as an example.  HUGE spoilers for Marcus ahead (which I will leave for #3 if you want to avoid that).

1)  Limit of choices for the MC

I can’t think of too much because I’m not a game developer myself.  There’s first the physical limitations a developer can face when programming choices.  Obviously, the more options you put in for the player to do/say, the more fun it is for the player.  But that means the developer has to work each option thinking “which one of these then leads to which of these selections” or “how much does the love meter go up or down if the character picks this option.”

If the game is shorter too, there’s not a whole lot of sense putting in a lot of choices for the character to make, especially if you still want to have plenty of different scenarios to branch into.  The “Till Death Do Us Part” game IS a shorter game.  It takes less than an hour to get through a full scenario with each character for example (quicker if you’re a fast reader and not debating decisions).  There’s also another element thrown in there as well: the MC’s personality.

TDDUP you aren’t given much other than saying that Chris’s MC is abusive, Jack’s MC is neutral, and Marcus’s MC is strong.  So naturally the selections you can make should match how they would react to a situation naturally.  Some selections can get a little out-of-character if the MC’s sanity starts to fall apart (that’s understandable).

If you have an MC who’s more of a blank slate, the player likes it better so that they can play more how they want to play (project themselves if you will).  If you have an MC that has a more distinct personality (ex.  Alice from Alice in the Country of Hearts is the cynical type), then I personally think the developer can actually drive the story a little better.

At least that’s how I see it.

2) Limit of endings

I was going to say at first “in terms of TDDUP,” but I think this can actually apply to pretty much most or all of any kind of romance-novel games:  You’re going to be limited with certain kinds of endings in a romance-novel because they are more often based around the romancing character’s personality and/or actions rather than the MC’s.

Really weird wording for that, I know.  You’re probably also thinking, “Wait, don’t MY choices as the MC determine the ending, not the character I’m romancing?”  Yes and no.  What your choices do affect how the character you’re romancing REACTS to the MC.  Those reactions should be be held within the confines of the love interest’s natural personality and qualities.  They can have some extremes so as to surprise the player, but what they do should make sense.  

For example, if you do want to surprise a player with the love interest having a yandere side for one of the endings, there should usually be SOMETHING in that love interest’s route that at least hinted at the possibility.  It can even be subtle if you want, like there are times the love interest seems slightly possessive, or the love interest is known to be a little clingy or worried about you leaving them (very lonely characters can go into a panic if they think you’re leaving them).  Those can then be taken as hints so when they do go full yandere, it’s still believable.

3) “Till Death Do Us Part” game and Marcus

I figured I could put this as its own little section in case some casual readers weren’t as interested in hearing about this horror game, or didn’t want to be spoiled.  If you’re thinking about checking it out btw, please be sure to read the WARNINGS beforehand (play at your own comfort level).  Otherwise, feel free to continue here if you want to see how I compare it to what I just stated above.

Quick recap:  Marcus is a good cop, but an extreme male yandere who kidnaps the MC due to his obsession.  Out of all the TDDUP characters, not only does Marcus have the fewest endings of them all, but he’s the only one where you NEVER get killed.  That’s pretty interesting.

I actually went into WHY this is the case before in my post here from long ago.

The asker here may have even read it already :P  But just to recap, I concluded that the reason why Marcus never kills you and because you never escape is because he has complete control.  He’s set up the scenario in advance to ensure you stay with him.  And his goal was never to kill you to begin with.  He “loves” you.  

So really the choices the MC makes hear just determine how Marcus reacts to the MC based on his own personality.  Your own actions and his either up mindbreaking the MC (in one of two ways), treating the MC like an animal (still not killing you though), or this in between if you’ve managed to hold onto your sanity, but Marcus isn’t ticked off at you (the “framed” ending).

And since Marcus basically wins, it actually just makes more sense for his portion to be short anyway.  If you made this a MUCH longer part of the game and STILL let Marcus win the way he wants, that’s just going to be distasteful for most of the audience (even me, and I love that horror yanderes).  If you were to make it much longer, you’re either looking to have Marcus get defeated/killed in the end, or looking to have him redeemed for a good ending.

The TDDUP game is short in general because it’s almost more of a brief character study than anything.  You have a very interesting cast set up in smaller scenarios rather than larger story arcs.  It’s not like uhhhh I think Mystic Messenger actually has a story line to it.  Things like that you have more meat to work with.  But with TDDUP you’re there to enjoy the baddies themselves and see the different “what if” scenarios.  Marcus is so obsessed and so prepared that you can’t really win against him no matter what you do.  He just treats you differently based on how you act.

The “framed” ending was indeed my favorite because I think that can branch off later for the MC keeping hope of escaping and not letting Marcus win.  Sorry, I just like my yanderes as villains more than heroes :P

[entamewitchlulu]

On the Essence of Recovery: The Necessity of Arc V’s Unsatisfactory Ending

So, lately, I've been rewatching Penguindrum.  I've also been reading a lot of analyses of Penguindrum, and in turn I've been looking up analyses of some of my other favorite surrealist anime, mostly Ikuhara's work.  And remembering how Penguindrum ended, I found myself thinking about how almost all of Ikuhara's main works end sort of...bittersweet.  Progress has been made, but something huge has been lost as well, leaving the end feeling almost unsatisfactory.

And that's gotten me to thinking about analyzing shows that have similar endings, that aren't necessarily made to be...well, as dense as that particular brand of anime.  Specifically, I've been thinking about Arc V, and again about the ending that left a lot of people upset.  I was and still am to a point one of those people who was disappointed with how it ended, but looking back at it in hindsight, and especially through the lens of the previously mentioned anime, I wondered if maybe there was something more to the decision than first appeared.

Now before I start the actual meat of this post, let me disclaim that I would be among the first to admit that it's probably “not that deep.” But there's the distinct possibility that it is, and regardless of whether my conclusions were intended conclusions, the act of analyzing fiction against one's own individual interpretation is an important final step in the process of any creative endeavor.

Without spoilers, let me briefly talk about the anime I mentioned up above. Penguindrum is at its surface level a hilariously silly and ridiculous anime.  The main characters are followed around by odd penguins and their sister is possessed by a penguin hat.  But it is also an intensely deep anime, about family, fate, sacrifice, and unconditional love, which culminates to a sad, but ultimately inevitable end.  The sacrifices that are made at the end are hard, upsetting, and honestly upon my first watch through I was quite upset about it.  It didn't seem fair. I experienced similar reactions to the endings of Ikuhara's other works, as well as Arc V.  

But for Ikuhara's works, the unsatisfactory endings where something was lost in exchange for something gained, there was a thematic importance to the decision to make those endings, and I think Arc V is the same.  But to understand that thematic importance, first we must examine what the major theme of Arc V is.

In my humble opinion and in light of the ending, I think the theme of Arc V is recovery.

Certainly there are other themes, both major and minor.  The title theme of “take a step forward with courage,” is one, the idea of spreading smiles is another.  But I believe both of these and many of the other threads tie into the major, overarching and unspoken theme of “recovery.”

Yuya is introduced to us right away as a depressed child.  I don’t think there’s any way you can get around this, it’s just shy of them telling us straight out in canon.  He’s been bullied, he’s suffered terribly from the mysterious loss of his father, he’s been ostracized and held up against his dad since he was nine.  His mother says that he’s “put on the mask of a clown,” laughing at himself before others can as a self-defense mechanism.

Yuya is a hugely flawed character in the first half of the series, especially in the first season.  He is basically a living embodiment of bad coping mechanisms held together by denial.  He hides himself away when he’s hurt or upset rather than addressing the thing that’s upset him.  He gets defensive and upset when someone else Pendulum Summons, something that he was using as a crutch to make himself feel like he was worth something.  He jokes around and tries to force Entertainment instead of feeling it himself.  He forces himself to laugh to avoid facing the possibility that he is actually not okay.  He tries to force his beliefs on others in order to make himself feel like he and the tenets he clings to are actually worth something.  And very often, his attempts at avoiding his problems backfire.

Throughout the series, these issues are addressed, one thing at a time.  His talk with Shuzo helps him understand that Pendulum Summons themselves aren’t what makes him special, it’s how he continues to move forward in the future and make use of the opportunity that they gave him.  His mother encourages him to not let his anger eat him up and to continue trying to do his best without forgetting who he wants to be.  He realizes through his interactions with Jack that he was trying to force his feelings instead of just relaxing and letting go of his self-inhibitors. His Synchro character arc helps him learn how to see outside himself  and meet others where they’re at instead of seeing through his own narrowed worldview.  He is growing, changing, and healing.  He is moving out of the shadow of his father that he's crunched himself beneath and learning to stand on his own feet again.

In the third season and part of season four, we see that Yuya is, despite his situation, reaching a healthy place mentally.  His long periods of depression interspersed with highs of determination from Synchro are all but gone, leaving him at a fairly steady emotional level.  He stays true to his convictions, remains light and cheerful, and meets people where they’re at instead of viewing them from his own situation.  Yuya is healing.

Then in the tail end of the Fusion arc, we learn the final major twist: that of the existence of Zarc and Ray.  And in that discovery, we realize that this was never just about Yuya's recovery.  

Zarc, who through flashbacks and seeing bits of him in Yuya throughout the series, was just as or even more broken than Yuya ever was.  He was a lonely, desperate young man who wanted what Yuya wanted, to be able to be happy and smile and make everyone else happy with what he was doing, too.  But he was pushed too far, he didn’t have the emotional support network that Yuya did, and he and his dragons simply fed into each other’s anger and distress until they reached a breaking point, until Ray came along and literally broke him into pieces.

And then I think it’s clear enough if you take a watch through the last part of Arc V.  That whole last arc is about Yuya accepting that he is Zarc, but not only that, but accepting his healing.  Zarc was broken—so was Yuya.  Yuya learned how to grow and develop and work with his issues.  Zarc didn’t get the chance, and Yuya’s final arc is his final step for both him and Zarc to heal.  I don’t think it’s any surprise that there are two other important characters in this arc who reach some level of recovery.  Shun finds it in himself to start healing the fractures in his heart that he has harbored all this time (there was another very good post I read once about Shun’s arc following the stages of grief, which I will attempt to find and link here).  Dennis finally finds acceptance and enough security to pull off the mask that he’s kept on for self-preservation for so long.  These are two incredibly powerful writing decisions, and their place in this part of the narrative really implies to me that Arc V is reaching its thematic conclusion on the themes of recovery.

I think it's important to note before we continue that these are not the only characters who experience the need for or the arc of recovery.  Reiji is presented as a very emotionally suppressed young man devastated by the breaking down of his family.  Reira's entire character arc in Synchro is about him healing from the PTSD and loss of identity he experienced from a combination of war and abuse. Sora, and to a lesser extent Selena, are child soldiers recovering slowly from indoctrination through interaction with people outside of their “cult.”  Edo presents a more violent response to the attempt to recover, bucking and fighting against the healing offered to him until the end.  I feel that there are even more characters that we could apply this theme to, and it would easily make sense.

Finally, then, we reach the ultimate end, which spurred this meta in the first place: the contentious ending where Yuya and Yuzu do not split from their other selves, but instead remain a single fused person.  If we continue this analogy that the essence of Arc V is recovery, then…in a strange, bittersweet, and sad way, it makes perfect sense to me.

One of the things I hear a lot about recovery is that, people who have been through horrible mental illnesses or trauma should not expect of themselves to be the person that they were before the illness or trauma occurred.  To search for that is to find yourself trapped, because you can’t go back, and you will ruin yourself in a cycle of trying to retrieve something that can't be again.  That's not necessarily a bad thing, though; you are still you, but you are going to be a new you.  To me, that’s exactly what’s happening in Arc V.

Zarc cannot go back to being Zarc.  What happened to him was literally too shattering.  But he, through Yuya, found healing, and literally mended himself back together.  But he’s not Zarc anymore, now, he’s Yuya.  Yuya and Yuzu are, by word of canon, actually Zarc and Ray, but they are different, now, too.  It's incredibly telling that Yuya's final arc is about him accepting himself as being Zarc, but moving forward into being him, as well.  Recovery and healing doesn’t bring you back to the person you were.  It brings you to the new person that you can be once you’ve accepted what happened to you, and start working on the things that were holding you back.  In this manner, Zarc and Ray can't go back to being themselves, but they have been able to put themselves back together in order to give themselves a second chance as Yuya and Yuzu.

So yes…it is still incredibly sad to me that the girls and boys were not able to separate, but in the themes that I feel Arc V was trying to promote, it makes sense.  Something was lost, yes, and it hurts a lot, but something was gained as well. It's the same feeling I had of the end of Penguindrum: something incredibly precious was lost, and yet there is hope in what was gained.  I feel that the overall gut punch of Arc V was a little more intense, though, as where Penguindrum never exactly pulled away from the fact that their characters were the tools for the fable to tell the story, Arc V never pretended that their characters were anything other than living humans.  My own much heavier emotional entanglement with the Arc V cast made the ending much harder.  (It should be noted, as well, that Arc V is not the first Yu-Gi-Oh iteration to take characters away from us at the end, or end with a bittersweet tone where something was lost in exchange for something gained.)

In conclusion, reading Arc V in this light actually gave me a lot more closure about the ending.  I will quite honestly always be a little sad about it, and I will always wish that there had been a different ending.  I'll always choose to ignore it when writing my own personal canon, haha.  But I also feel in the light of this analysis that Arc V couldn't have ended any other way, or it would not have been the same story.  For the story that they were trying to tell, for the theme that was being presented, it was the ending that needed to be told.

Recovery is not an easy process, and nor is it always a happy one.  There is always something sad about recovering and about realizing what you lost along the way.  But there is hope at the end of it as well, about the new future that you can now reach for.  It's the eternal duality of sadness and joy that comes with the act of living.  “Take a step forward with courage,” is the what the summary says is the theme of Arc V, and that, I think, is the best tagline for recovery I can think of.

Go forward, because there is no going back.  And there is nothing wrong with that.

[praycambrian]

/////the exorcist 2.08 spoilers below so Look Away if you must

SO my thoughts on mouse and marcus in this ep are many and varied and detailed below, but they mostly boil down to hmm….nah.

mouse’s characterization

first of all, how come we sat through those flashbacks and still don’t know her fucking name

second, i am Bored with the characterization of nuns as meek, hesitant, fumbling innocents. especially after season 1 gave us mother bernadette and the sisters of mercy, who were badass and tart and vastly compassionate, to see mouse—fierce, angry, devout mouse—ducking and scurrying just…sat wrong with me. i think we all guessed from hints in earlier eps that she’d been possessed herself, hence the burning motivation she brings to her work as an exorcist. but here her possession wasn’t even treated like the turning point it should have been? we hardly saw it, and i’m For Sure not complaining there weren’t graphic, skin-crawling scenes of a woman being violated like that (what we did see was bad enough), but it deserved more weight than it got. 

(also >:{ at that “know your place, bride of God” comment from that other priest)

i suppose my main problem is that i suspect we won’t really get to see her develop from a to b—we won’t get the twenty years of her guilt and fury hammering at her until the soft, young, bright-eyed woman desperate for god’s full love is forged into the rogue joan of arc we know now. which is a shame, because that could be interesting as fuck.

marcus’s characterization

That Wig aside…

….you’re telling me that marcus “i exist only to be a vessel through which god kills demons” keane, marcus “i will shoot you if you try to stop me finishing this exorcism” keane, marcus “taking things too far is the only way i know” keane, marcus “we stand in the doorway and push back the darkness” keane—you’re telling me that marcus would stop an exorcism because…it was hard? hmm, nah. 

i recognize that this is flashback marcus, and that people change in twenty years. but i find it very hard to believe that marcus could run away from an unfinished exorcism, ever, at any point. sorry jeremy, he’s going to grind himself to dust before he abandons anyone to a demon, let alone someone he loves. that’s, uh. the whole Point. 

and even if—IF—marcus could somehow end up leaving an exorcism unfinished, you’re telling me all it took to push him to that point was one (1) demon taunt? we’ve seen marcus carve himself open for weeks on end to complete an exorcism. by the time he meets mouse in 1999, he’s been doing that for 23 years. if he cares about mouse so profoundly that a bare six minutes of seeing her possessed is too terrible to endure, more terrible than anything else he’s endured in his brief but very long life, then we 100% deserve to have more to show for that relationship than one (1) scene of her cutting half his hair as he daydreams about a normal life.

mouse & marcus

two distinct but interlaced issues at play here: the contextual elephant in the room that is the Great Marcus Sexuality Debate of ’17, and the episode itself. 

without wading too far into that cesspit, lemme tackle the former: i’m bi and about as desperate for good bi representation as you might imagine, but in the case of a character that was pretty clearly presented as gay from the get-go, i’m pretty uncomfortable with what seems to be some clumsy retconning to favor a past “straight” relationship over the current queer relationship(s) that are being/could be developed. do i think presenting marcus as a canonically bi character could be done well? absolutely (and i’m writing several thousand words of fic to hopefully do just that). do i think the show’s currently doing it well? no. 

exhibit a: season 2 episode 8.  

all props to ben and zuleikha, who are both very talented actors, but…no. everyone with whom marcus has shown even the bare minimum of what could be construed as romantic chemistry (peter, tomás, bennett, even the regos or the flirty nun) is someone who takes him aback, who pushes and challenges him, who has at least a little bite. flashback mouse…does not. marcus literally tells her he finds her hesitance charming. like bitch…where? 

if you want whatever happened at the abbey to be a source of profound shame, regret, and guilt for marcus, enough that it serves the plot by leaving him open to manipulation in current exorcisms, cool, awesome, bring on the angst. A Dramatic Failed Almost-Romance does not have to be the way to do that! 

Platonic Alternative: maybe marcus, in the prime of his life and flush with over two decades of successful exorcisms, succumbs to his arrogance and a desire to show off for this bright young thing (whose admiration gives him the validation/affirmation he’s literally never gotten in his entire care-starved life). so when she leaves the abbey to follow him as an apprentice he doesn’t stop her. his poor tutelage combined with her inexperience & god-desperation get her horrifically possessed, changing the course of her life and giving marcus his canonical reluctance to take on a partner. catholic guilt and drama galore, no romance needed.

or hell, if for some reason romance is a must, have marcus have a hard time with experiencing attraction to a woman after a lifetime of being attracted to men (though again i say: where). so because he has no fucking idea what to do with those feelings, he’s hot and cold to mouse, making her that much more desperate to see god’s face/become an exorcist etc in order to earn his love and respect, and driving her to the mistake that gets her possessed. there you go! there’s the guilt and vulnerability for the demon to exploit, resulting in a cruelly protracted exorcism that launches mouse on her self-loathing warpath and leaves marcus even more desperate for & terrified of intimacy/his own desire for love. i mean, as a bi person who’s struggled with doubts re: Am I Being Queer Right, i think this take could be even pretty meaningful. 

i am ALL ABOUT marcus and mouse having a sincere connection to each other. i love them individually, i love the ways they’re similar (their devotion to god and disdain for the church, their barely-sheltered soft spots, their fear & rage & love) and i want to know where they conflict. i want them to be important to each other! i just think the way this ep chose to show that—i.e. an uncomfortably forced Apparently Straight Love Story ™—was, uh. Unfortunate. 

like, recognize platonic relationships are profound and meaningful in themselves and not a stepping stone to Romance, the Ultimate Goal!! or like if you’re gonna show a romantic relationship between two characters, one of whom is CANONICALLY QUEER, (1) make sure it actually makes sense and (2) remember it’s still a queer relationship!

anyway, i have Feelings, shout at me if y’all do too

[reactingtosomething]

Reacting to X-Men: Evolution

An Entry Into the "Popular Girl Who Isn't a Bitch" Genre

The Setup: Find Miri and guest reactor Caroline’s reaction to the 90s X-Men cartoon, specifically the Dark Phoenix Saga, here. This installment directly continues that conversation and covers both X-Men: Evolution and comparisons between the two series.

Among other things, Evolution has the distinction of introducing Laura Kinney, a.k.a. X-23, who soon migrated to the comics, and whom most people now know from Logan. But as previously established, Miri is especially fond of Evolution’s Rogue, so for comparison to the 90s animated series, she and Caroline watched some Rogue-centric episodes and some Jean-centric ones: the pilot, “Power Surge,” “Walk on the Wild Side,” and “Self Possessed.”

 MIRI: Ok, X-Men Evolution!

This show was one of the first pieces of culture that I can remember loving

CAROLINE: So as a youth I was SUPER against it on principle

Because I loved TAS so much

MIRI: Because it was SO different from what you knew and loved?

CAROLINE: So I never even gave it a chance

MIRI: Makes total sense to me

I appreciate you doing so now

What did you think?

CAROLINE: BUT I watched some maybe two years ago with a friend and was surprised by how much I enjoyed them!

MIRI: Yay!

CAROLINE: And I felt that way again watching these

MIRI: It’s just so charming, right?

CAROLINE: It's a very different take but one I can definitely enjoy

Oh for sure. Super charming

And I love anything that centers on a Jean/Scott love story

MIRI: I will say they are all shockingly bad at being subtle about their mutant powers. Like, the secret would be out in no time

Yes, they do the love triangle very interestingly, because it’s doubled with the whole football boyfriend thing

(Duncan?)

Yes, Duncan. AKA Jean’s terrible football boyfriend

CAROLINE: So this my main problem with the show I think: I either want ALL the X-Men to be mutant teens secretly figuring out their lives at a normal high school. Or I want the show to be set entirely at Xavier's school where everyone is a mutant

Doing both locations is just confusing to me and feels illogical within the world

MIRI: Huh. I feel like it works the way Buffy works. But I’m very biased, obviously

CAROLINE: It feels like having Xavier in their lives is too much of a safety net

Or the high school stuff is at odds with the training stuff somehow

MIRI: I see it more along the lines of Kim Possible having her life and her missions, and the tension of both against each other make each side more complex

But I will admit that the stakes are fairly uneven

CAROLINE: I guess I'm just used to the idea of the X-Mansion being a school

MIRI: And it’s unclear the extent to which they are being trained and for what purpose.

CAROLINE: So it's weird to me that they have two schools

MIRI: That makes sense

CAROLINE: And they live at one of those schools but learn at the other

MIRI: I think they may have tried to straddle the line between training these kids to be superheroes and training them to control their abilities for their own good/the safety of others

And kind of gone back and forth as the plot demanded, which isn’t great

CAROLINE: I was super into the high school stuff though

Which is why I wanted more of it

MIRI: Yeah, I think that is what works better

CAROLINE: Also Storm 100% should've been a teen too

I was a little mad about that

MIRI: Huh, so just Xavier, Wolverine, and Beast as the adults? That would have been entertaining

CAROLINE: Or... no adults

JUST TEENS

MIRI: Ooh, just all of them in high school?

I’m into that

CAROLINE: And no Wolverine, that voice actor was terrible

MIRI: What are you talking about, bub?

CAROLINE: Ha!

K: I do prefer this costume to his classic one, though

Even Wolverine as a teen would've been fine

I mean I realize that is entirely against the canon as he's ageless

But they could've made it work

Angsty teen Wolverine

MIRI: Eh, there’s plenty that’s against canon or just outside of it

Ok, I need to take a moment to just gush about how much I love angsty goth teen Rogue

Because it is A LOT

CAROLINE: Go for it!

MIRI: She has so many feelings and she wants to be loved so badly! And she makes the ridiculous outfits work shockingly well!

Basically, she was one of my first crushes and I had NO idea that was true until like 4 years ago

M: Bisexuality in a heteronormative world is an adventure, kids.

CAROLINE: I feel like the movies and these two series give us three VERY different takes on Rogue

Yet they all work really well on their own ways

MIRI: And the voice actress is amazing.

Yes! I’d say this one is a little closer to the film one, but still pretty different

CAROLINE: Yeah she's great! I great cartoon crush all around

MIRI: Hahahah thanks

Honestly, I thought the Scott/Jean/Rogue love triangle moments at the end of the “Power Surge” episode were the most compelling storytelling EVER as a kid. Especially when Jean talks through Rogue at the end

CAROLINE: Oh yeah that was heartbreaking

MIRI: I think the way people changed from x-men to Brotherhood in this show is really interesting

CAROLINE: And Rogue's powers being a metaphor for unrequited high school love is perfect

Oh yeah that one dude was super hot

Speaking of cartoon crushes

MIRI: Which one?

CAROLINE: Quake maybe?

In my head he was Gambit, which he definitely wasn't

MIRI: Ohhhhh Lance? The one Kitty seems to be dating in the second episode?

CAROLINE: Yes! I was super into him

MIRI: Not my type of unwashed 90s boy, but I respect your opinion

I like that they can be dating or friends or whatever, which on “Enemy” teams

CAROLINE: It's a fun idea

MIRI: And Tabitha can change sides, but then also be a in a girl gang with Jean, Kitty, Rogue, and Amara

CAROLINE: And another reason I feel like the show would've been better if it were an all high school series

MIRI: You may be converting me here

CAROLINE: Aahaha

I did really enjoy Kitty as well!

She wasn't a big part of TAS or really the movies either

K: In the comics, she’s actually introduced in the Dark Phoenix arc

MIRI: The fake Valley Girl thing bothered me at first, but you get used to it super fast and I like the character a lot

CAROLINE: And this series encapsulates her nicely

MIRI: No, she was super secondary in the movies

Which is a shame because Ellen Page

CAROLINE: I love how diverse the X-Men are in terms of personality types

That's a fun conceit of the show

These people probably wouldn't have been high school friends if they weren't linked by their powers

MIRI: And on that score, the conceit of them all living in the Institute is nice

CAROLINE: And now they all have to figure out how to get along

That's true

MIRI: Because they’re pseudo siblings in a way they wouldn’t be without living together

CAROLINE: But also they're all dating each other?

MIRI: ….yes

CAROLINE: This is where things get weird

MIRI: Also yes

CAROLINE: And the amount of supervision they have is confusing to me

It's either a ton or none

MIRI: Mostly none

CAROLINE: The show probably just didn't want to deal with parents, which I get

But I don't think this Xavier is a great caretaker of teens

MIRI: I like the terrible attempts at lamp-shading like when the kids say “I can’t believe Duncan’s parents let him have parties”

Yeah, this Xavier is more of a Fun Uncle than a parent

CAROLINE: A recipe for disaster

Anyway the interpersonal dynamics between the teens were all great

Especially Scott and Jean, as I mentioned before

This Scott voice actor is SO much better than TAS guy

MIRI: Yeah, they really are fun. I totally forgot that it takes them so long to get together

In part because they’re clearly endgame from the beginning

CAROLINE: "Boring couples who take a long time to get together" is my favorite thing in the world

MIRI: And in part because my heart always lay with Rogue and I had a lot of sympathy for her doomed crush, since Scott clearly loved Jean

Hahahahaha

Also, they both have amazing hair

CAROLINE: SO amazing

Although I feel like this version of Jean is a little off somehow?

MIRI: Scott’s little floppy front bits are the most of the era thing

How so?

CAROLINE: From her comic book characterization I mean

I'm not sure I would immediately see her as a popular star athlete

Her empathy is spot on

MIRI: Yeah, I think they felt like that was a high school archetype they had to use or something

CAROLINE: But in my mind she would be a student council leader or something

Well-liked but maybe not "popular" in the conventional sense

MIRI: The perfect student who is perfect at everything and feels so much pressure from it feels like a story that was on every other show at the time

CAROLINE: True

MIRI: It is interesting to see an x-men (x-man?) who is popular

CAROLINE: But that is basically what I imagine for her

True!

MIRI: since they are fundamentally outsiders in so many ways

I wonder if a non-mutant friend/frenemy who inhabited that spot would have worked better

CAROLINE: There’s an interesting subtext in X-Men about mutants that can "pass" as human.

Especially with Kurt as a kind of POV character in the premiere

MIRI: VERY!

CAROLINE: Who obviously has such a bigger hurdle than Jean when it comes to joining normal society

MIRI: They did interesting (and unfortunately on the nose) things with that concept re: Beast and Mystique in First Class

And here it’s less explicitly addressed but I feel like I’m ok with that

CAROLINE: Agreed. And TAS doesn't necessarily delve into much at all

TAS kind of focuses on the big social metaphors

Whereas Evolution is about the personal side of being a mutant

MIRI: The opening Toad stuff delves into this a bit too--those guys made a lot of toad puns/insults for people who didn’t know he was a mutant

CAROLINE: And both are super compelling parts of the X-Men franchise!

MIRI: And I think the contrast of that kind of thing versus the loving “fuzzy elf” comments to Kurt from the other Xmen is interesting

Yeah, there’s a lot of different ways to use the “mutants as other” thing well

CAROLINE: I will say, while Evolutions is incredibly watchable, the episodes we watched could also feel a little shallow?

TAS crams WAY more story into 20 minutes than Evolutions seem to

MIRI: Yeah, I will not argue with that

CAROLINE: Even if it does so in a pretty stilted way

MIRI: I think this is a very clear shift to the idea that kids shows should be about kids and Kid Things

CAROLINE: Agreed

Kind of talking down to the audience at times.

MIRI: They do more than that sometimes, and there are episodes that deal with more serialized plot elements that we didn’t watch

But for the most part they are simple stories with not a whole ton going on

CAROLINE: But with solid nuance in the subtext!

MIRI: true!

CAROLINE: Just not maybe in the actual storytelling

MIRI: exactly

I think it was very much designed to be watched as a Saturday morning cartoon, in a block with like 5 other shows

CAROLINE: But I could still totally see myself watching more when I'm bored someday

They are fun and sweet and require very little from you

MIRI: I might be wrong about that, but that’s how I remember it

CAROLINE: Whereas TAS tends to feel drawn out

In a way that's both good and bad

MIRI: Yeah, it’s very easy to just let Evolutions play on autoplay

I did really love the concept of one of these episodes though, and it will probably surprise no one which it was

CAROLINE: Ha! The Rogue one?

MIRI: Actually not! I like the character moments in that a lot, but as a discrete episode concept “Walk on the Wild Side” may be one of my favorite things that has ever happened

CAROLINE: Oh yeah that one was abused and delightful

MIRI: I mean it’s kind of terrible and every genre show ever has done version of it

CAROLINE: *absurd

MIRI: but is adored it

*I

CAROLINE: It's very fun!

MIRI: A musical roller blading superhero girl gang getting dressed and bonding sequence is basically what’s lacking from all current superhero media.

(That and enough female characters of consequence to actually have a girl gang. SHADE INTENDED)

CAROLINE: And a random music video sequence!

Please see the amazing music video sequence at the end of this post!

Who doesn't want one of those?

MIRI: No one I want to know

CAROLINE: I also really loved the Rogue/Jean dynamic that seems to exist throughout the series

Kind of like the Cyclops/Wolverine one in TAS

MIRI: Yes! There’s always a tension, but also a love and kind of understanding

Like, we’re both in versions of the same situation and we can hate each other or understand each other

CAROLINE: They maybe don't always get along and are sometimes rivals but there's mutual respect and admiration there

MIRI: I really like that

CAROLINE: Not making the two "rival" female characters hate each other feels pretty progressive for the early 2000s

Or for now

MIRI: Sadly true

The gender stuff is handled super clumsily and I’m pretty sure Tabitha is a full 7 years older than Amara, but I just love the girl gang dynamic they get to SO MUCH

CAROLINE: Ha! I was really not into Tabitha

But I did love Amara

MIRI: She’s annoying, but I love that she can be well intentioned and also bad at it

I mean, she’s an asshole. Honestly, stop blowing people up in the shower and shaving people’s heads

CAROLINE: Yeah she was way too much for me

MIRI: But her destroying the car and thinking that was helpful seems very true to form to me

CAROLINE: Jean's feminist rage was amazing

MIRI: Defintiely

(I cannot type that word correctly today!)

I also really loved Scott falling out of his chair

CAROLINE: And as much as I don't fully buy into Jean's characterization I do like her as an entry into the "popular girl who isn't a bitch" genre

MIRI: A rare and compelling genre!

CAROLINE: See also: Liz in Spider-Man Homecoming

MIRI: LOVED her

CAROLINE: That blonde girl in Princess and the Frog

MIRI: Also a fave

CAROLINE: It's an underserved genre

And, again, an asset of having a big ensemble cast

Lots of POVs to sympathize with

MIRI: They did a good job of letting the focus shift in different episodes

CAROLINE: And some really solid high school metaphors! The idea of being along onstage and being able to read everyone's critiques of you is legit terrifying

MIRI: There’s a pretty reliable core of Jean/Scott/Rogue, but there are definitely episodes that focus on Kitty and Kurt, or Spyke or whoever

CAROLINE: *mentally read

MIRI: This episode and the Buffy telepathy episode combined to convince me that telepathy would be a horrifying super power

CAROLINE: I remember liking Spyke a lot, although he wasn't in any of the episodes we watched for this

MIRI: I know! I’m sorry about that

CAROLINE: Although I still maintain they just should've made Storm a teen rather than giving her a nephew

MIRI: I did get to be reminded of the fact that he SKATEBOARDS INTO BATTLE though

hahahahaha noted

CAROLINE: Keep Spyke, just make her Storm's cousin or something

*him

MIRI: I like how adamant you are on this point

CAROLINE: I feel VERY strongly about it

MIRI: Does Storm being one of the adults in the (earlier) movies bother you?

CAROLINE: No because it felt like we were supposed to be equally invested in the adults and the kids there

Although Storm was definitely underutilized, which sucks

But this is CLEARLY a teen show first and foremost

MIRI: Ahhh, it’s the sidelining that bugs you. That’s a good point

Yeah, I’m with you there

CAROLINE: Although going back to costumes, Storm's costume here is pretty cool!

MIRI: The adults don’t have plots, with the sort of exception of Mystique

CAROLINE: Not as iconic as in TAS but a sleek update

MIRI: Yes! Basically Storm is always amazing looking

CAROLINE: I was pretty happy with all the designs

Kitty's collar was adorable

Jean's costume is MUCH more flattering than in TAS

MIRI: I have serious questions about Mystique’s little skull details around her waist

Yeah, Jean upgraded

Rogue’s goth outfits are obviously amazing

CAROLINE: I have serious questions about Mystique in this series

MIRI: YES, please ask them

I do too

How long did Mystique raise Rogue? Like, did she take 5-10 years off of being Magneto’s henchwoman? Was she a stay at home mom? did she have a day job?

CAROLINE: I guess mainly just: Does she need to be here?

Ahahah

Different lines of questioning

But those too!

MIRI: Let’s do yours first, because there’s no way to answer mine

CAROLINE: She just felt out of place to me

Not sure if it's a performance thing or what

MIRI: I like her as a betrayer for Rogue, and the danger being right there in the school in a way they couldn’t fight

I feel like it may have worked better if we’d watched the whole arc, but I may just be being generous in my recollections

CAROLINE: No that's super fair

I think she was just WAY too much of a cackling villain in the premiere

And I kind of tuned out

MIRI: The moments where she talked to shadow monster Magneto (which, what even??) did feel really out of place to me

CAROLINE: Again, I kind of just want it to be a low stakes (but high for the characters) high school show

MIRI: I wonder if it was a case of the writers wanting to do the big plotty arcs like Apocalypse but not knowing how to marry them with the high school problem of the week thing

CAROLINE: Without the mythology stuff

Yeah there's clashing creative impulses there for sure

MIRI: Yeah, I think you’re right

Honestly, I didn’t remember anything about magneto or Apocalypse in this series

Not a bit

But I could have described the scene where Jean is floating in the air surrounded by stuff and they all try to help her in perfect detail

CAROLINE: Totally

MIRI: They definitely did a much better job with the teen stuff, you’re right

CAROLINE: Secretly I don't care about plot at all

I just want character moments

That's how I feel about TAS too

I don't remember storylines but I remember Storm's claustrophobia.

MIRI: I didn’t know she was claustrophobic

That’s so relatable

I love it

CAROLINE: Yes! It's SUCH a great character detail

She's an all-powerful goddess

But also has a completely relatable fear

I think there's an episode where a building collapses and she's trapped in rubble

MIRI: Also it makes total sense because her powers would not help at all

CAROLINE: I remember finding that SO compelling as a kid

MIRI: Ahhhhh that is a nightmare to me

(I actually am claustrophobic)

CAROLINE: I always relate to characters way more through their weaknesses than their strengths

YOU ARE STORM

MIRI: I HAVE NEVER BEEN SO FLATTERED

M: Look at Storm, living her best life, raising some plants, being an inspiration

K: One of the great sorrows of the movie rights separation of the X-Men from the MCU is that we may never see Storm as the Black Panther’s One Who Got Away (or, well, The One His Marriage to Whom He Annulled Because an X-Man Flooded the Capital of Wakanda While Possessed by a Fragment of the Phoenix Force)

M: I have a lot of questions

Actually that’s a lie: I was once told that I looked like the female leader of an otherwise male motor cycle gang

CAROLINE: Ha!

MIRI: And while it’s utterly untrue and ridiculous, I hold that compliment close to my heart to this day

CAROLINE: As you should!

MIRI: I look like a preschool teacher more than anything else, but I want to look like a motor cycle gang leader

At least the tv version of one

CAROLINE: You can be both

MIRI: Thank you ❤️

CAROLINE: Preschoolers are just a mini motorcycle gang

MIRI: that is SO true

Ok, one more episode that I do want to talk about specifically--the Rogue one, aka “Self Possessed”

I like that this storyline totally follows the same early beats as “Power Surge” and they have zero shame about it. They even show flashes of scenes from “Power Surge” in the cold open

CAROLINE: And I enjoyed both episodes!

MIRI: Same!

I’m also really impressed on an animation front--all of these transformations must have been a job and a half

CAROLINE: The Evolutions animation style is just so much more pleasing to watch

MIRI: Yeah, I’m way more into this one visual

CAROLINE: Even as I can appreciate the detail of TAA

MIRI: *visually

CAROLINE: *TAS

I do think "Self Possessed" gets a little style over substance at the end though

As I think Evolutions often does

MIRI: Yeah, it’s that light on story, heavy on Coolness thing again

CAROLINE: Yeah they could've crammed a lot more story in there I think

As TAS makes clear, even separate from the multi-episode structure

MIRI: The amount of story they did have definitely could have happened in 12 minutes or so

Made super clear by the way they reused clips--we only watched 3 other episodes, and we’d already seen several chunks of this episode

Also, I really can’t tell if Sabertooth has plot lines or if he just shows up to cause some indiscriminate violence whenever they need it

CAROLINE: I feel like that's what Sabertooth is best at

MIRI: I know that’s not super relevant in this episode, but it reminded me of it

That’s fair

Also, he seems to be Wolverine’s dad in this iteration??

CAROLINE: I love how drastically storylines can change between iterations

MIRI: Or maybe it was brother, which is what I think they are in other versions. I don’t know.

K: Just in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, which was so bad that the Days of Future Past movie retconned most of it out of existence.

M: I may have read the graphic novelization prequel to the Wolverine origins movie.

Yeah, same toys in drastically different sandboxes

Oh, on that score--Can Mystique transform into animals in other iterations?

CAROLINE: Ooh good question!

I'm not sure

K: Not originally, but I haven’t gone through all the alternate reality versions

MIRI: It was very cool but also kind of felt like cheating to me

CAROLINE: She changes into a statue in the first live action movie

So there's that

MIRI: Ohhh, the mini state of liberty? Am I remembering that right?

CAROLINE: Yes!

MIRI: Hmmmmmm, but did she actually change to statue, or just to be a woman who looks like a statue?

Either way it’s very cool

CAROLINE: Very

Okay so I think my thesis here is that TAS and Evolutions are different in intention and flawed in different ways, but they're both GREAT with characters in their own ways.

MIRI: Agreed!

For all “Self Possessed” is story light, I do like the question of identity Rogue is always wrestling with in the face of multiple people in her head

That’s very high school/human

CAROLINE: For sure! And they do cool stuff with that in the movies as well

Kind of

MIRI: Yeah, especially the first one. Then they move more into how do I be myself when I’m so limited in how I can touch people and express myself to the world

Which is also cool and important

CAROLINE: God, X-Men are just the best

I love sci-fi as metaphor

Or superheroes as metaphor

MIRI: Me too

Honestly, one of my least favorite things about the MCU and now the DCEU is that superheroes are so Adult now

Because the exploration of it all as metaphor for teenage things is so right to me

But obviously that’s not all they can/should be used for!

Look at the government business in the beginning of the first Xmen movie

CAROLINE: X-Men as a franchise is truly always relevant

In so many ways

MIRI: That’s such solid use of sci fi as 1:1 metaphor for real life. And it’s done SO well

I really just love the Xmen franchise a lot

CAROLINE: I must say, there's one area in which TAS is CLEARLY superior to every other X-Men iteration

And that's the THEME SONG

MIRI: hahahahahahhaha

CAROLINE: Maybe the best superhero theme song ever

K: So good that this fan-made alternate title sequence for X-Men: First Class riffs on it in a cool-yet-unsettling way. (But my favorite superhero theme is probably Shirley Walker’s Danny Elfman-based Batman theme for the 90s-early 2000s DC cartoons.)

MIRI: BUT you must admit that the individual stylings of the names in the Evolution credits are delightful

CAROLINE: Sure sure. But it has nothing on that music

MIRI: Also the fact that the “credits” have their mutant names, not character names or actors’

CAROLINE: Which I was truly jamming out to while watching these eps

MIRI: Yes, the TAS music is better

CAROLINE: I had the same thought!

About the names

It's adorable

MIRI: Yes!

CAROLINE: And genuinely helpful for new viewers

MIRI: I am utterly mindblown that the two shows were so close together chronologically, because they’re so stylistically different

On every front

CAROLINE: The 90s to early 2000s was a surprisingly big shift

MIRI: TAS ran from 92-97, and Exolution was 2000-2003

(I saw that typo and left it in because I love it)

CAROLINE: And I think both series are REALLY tethered to the eras in which they were released

MIRI: Yeah, they 97 to 2000 jump sounds short, but it looks like TAS stayed very true to itself, so it’s really a difference  between a show started in 92 and one started in 2000, which is much more different

CAROLINE: Agreed

MIRI: Honestly I thought TAS was 80s at first

CAROLINE: It very much feels like that

Again because I think it was so influenced by the comics

MIRI: Whereas Evolution is so self consciously “current”

CAROLINE: And pulls almost entirely from that aesthetic

MIRI: Like, Scott has his stupid sunglasses

Which are so early 2000s and so clearly too flimsy for their intended purpose

CAROLINE: Ha! Totally

Okay: Have we reach any grand X-conclusions here?

MIRI: We seem to mostly think that all X-iterations are good X-iterations

Which may not be earth shattering, but I think is a good thing to explore

They’re trying to do very different things and mostly succeeding

CAROLINE: And that X-Men are a flexible enough idea to handle many different concepts

MIRI: Also, media creators should trust their audiences more than they usually do

CAROLINE: Which I suppose is why they were invented in the first place!

MIRI: Which is true both in TAS and Evolutions, but in different ways!

True!

Basically, it’s a great franchise and should be in everyone’s top 3 at the very least

CAROLINE: There's something for everyone in X-Men!

K: I have a special fondness for Colossus, whom I always played in the old arcade game, and who is the best part of Deadpool. Something something afraid of vulnerability something...

MIRI: What surprised you the most upon rewatch of each?

CAROLINE: Probably the depth of the character drama in both actually

MIRI: Yeah, I would have to agree there. That and how much I loved TAS Rogue. All Rogues are good Rogues, apparently

CAROLINE: #RogueForever

#BlastedSalami

MIRI: Oh, I meant to ask you--why is Jean Grey your favorite character?

CAROLINE: I really love female characters who are super powerful but also afraid and uncertain about their powers

Going back to the "flaws are relatable" thing

And I love that she's fundamentally good

Which I think some people dismiss as "boring"

But which I really love in superheroes

MIRI: That makes total sense and I think I have not given Jean Grey her due in the past

CAROLINE: She's a very easy character to overlook I think

MIRI: I’ve never been anti Jean, just never thought about her that much

Exactly

Well then I’m glad we got some good Jean focus in here!

CAROLINE: Also I feel like the male X-Men always get the most focus

MIRI: Ughhhhhhh so true

CAROLINE: So I'm glad we took a different approach

Rogue and Jean forever!

MIRI: Rogue and Jean forever!!!

CAROLINE: Separately or together

Thanks so much to Caroline for joining us! Remember to follow her on Twitter, and if you feel like it, us too.

X-Men: Evolution is streaming on Hulu.

Of course, we couldn’t leave you without the very early-aughts opening titles:

Plus, the entirety of Bayville Sirens musical superhero suit-up sequence. Please watch it, because life is hard and you deserve good things:

[elizabethrobertajones]

So basically you can’t talk to @mittensmorgul about anything, or it just goes all

And in this case it’s trying to explain, like, the ENTIRE tangled web behind the whole “crypt scenes” thing and why we even call it that when it starts with a thread beginning in 1x22 with John throwing off Azazel to save Dean, and ends up with me yelling at my screen when a tan-coat-wearing brainwashed dude answering to a heaven-like organisation is waving a gun at some random hunter whose only crime is being adorable and loosely romantically connected to Sam, and declaring it Prime Destiel Subtext.

This is the wire tangle in my brain that explains it :P 

Details under the cut with the image above just so you can visualise all the bits of string, I guess, unless you can read my handwriting (on a browser, anyway, you can click the image to get it in a pop out, then right click, view in a new window, and view it in life size, and I used a LARGE sketchbook for it so life size is big ass spaghetti ramblings), in which case you get a prize. 

Act One:

1x22 - John overcomes Azazel possession to save Dean

This is repeated with a better father figure in

5x01 - Bobby breaks possession to save Dean

This is direct start of season to end of season foreshadowing for 

5x22 - Sam overcomes Lucifer’s possession because of Dean 

A final repeat of it in this direct thread is in

7x23 - Bobby overcomes possessing the maid so as not to kill Sam

This starts with an act of obvious parental love (all other judgements about John put aside for now) that John would break the most terrifying possession and biggest stakes the show had ever seen at that point for Dean’s sake. This is the theme here for the Kripke era uses of it. Bobby was tied into this in 5x01 because he is the replacement father figure and to show he is equal to this love. He does it for Sam too, in Gamble era, which is the only notable moment of paralleling this I can think of, when it comes to following a thread of subtext. I think it was a pretty final conclusion, allowed Bobby to do it for both his boys (setting aside a good cry about that) and wrapped this all up pretty conclusively for what this was ever meant to do. 

The final Bobby instance off in Gamble era shows the shifting themes from external evil and possession as a thing done by a totally separate thing, to loss of control, internal evil and darkness, and transformation to evil (4x21 where Sam beats Dean down while totally lost to demon blood and Ruby’s manipulation would be the obvious “crypt scene” of this time, but it is not framed this way, with no strong emphasis on the same gooey “I know you’re in there” sentiment - Dean assumes Sam has become a monster, is lost to him, and tells him something echoing what John once said to Sam about leaving and never coming back, so emotionally it has no real overlap with what these scenes are being used for, namely to convey the love between the people who are possessed and attacked)

Act Two:

8x10 - Cas kills Samandiriel while mind controlled

8x11 - Gilda controlled by the book & Charlie saves her from control

8x16 - small parallels with the staging and shifting loyalties with Artemis and Prometheus

^ these both add romantic subtext through mirrors before the Big Day to help change its tone

8x17 - CRYPT SCENE: Cas breaks through brainwashing to not kill Dean

“What broke the connection?” is left hanging while being bloody obvious

9x04 - Robbie continues throwing in small scale mirrors, this time showing that sibling and other platonic relationships have no effect on a “I know you’re in there” which is becoming a key phrase.

9x17 - confirms Henry only feels like Josie is a sibling, adding the 8x12 “I know you’re in there” to this list definitively.

Cas’s arc carries on relying on all this in the background as it builds up to

9x22 - low-key reverse crypt scene with Hannah echoing Naomi to ask Cas to choose between Heaven and Dean. He is NOT brainwashed, so struggles probably more with finding a way to have his cake and eat it, before admitting defeat that he “can’t” kill Dean. Especially not in sound mind. 

This answers the “what broke the connection” question from the last crypt scene by showing how important Dean is in a different set up, and leads into the 9x22/23 “he’s in love... with humanity” “- all for Dean Winchester” thing, confirming with words some more of this unspoken subtext.

This of course is over Dean with the Mark causing problems, and everything’s swinging around to this as the main problem, with Dean succumbing seemingly to his inner darkness but of course it’s a literal external darkness affecting him, though on a deep, intrinsic level that’s filtered through his own personality and makes it hell to have a solid answer on what what Dean and what was the Mark.

Notably, Dean just takes a swing at Sam with a hammer, and Cas swoops in and saves Sam, and they cure him together, invoking no tropes from this thread whatsoever as Cas and Dean pointedly never look at each other once while Dean is a demon, and Dean never says anything to Cas. This plays off a thread of Cas restraining Dean in 9x23, 10x03, and finally 10x22 in the same way, with a 3rd time failure to control him, leading TO the crypt scene reversal, but I don’t think is properly connected.

While Dean is succumbing to the Darkness, the Colette Parallel comes into play, which strictly speaking is entirely other fuckery in the Destiel subtext, but dips in to converge on

10x13 - parallel in the MotW with the trenchcoat wearing wife talking her murder-rampaging ghost husband into peace, right before Cain returns, and is a crypt scene direct mirror

10x22 - REVERSE CRYPT SCENE: directly parallels the original, with the same director, flipped participants but nearly identical choreography (and this is where you play the Thomas J Wright card and point at the Dark Angel episode with the exact same staging of the end of the fight in similar circumstances). Dean manages to break out of the darkness fugue state just enough to not kill Cas, and to continue to defy Cain’s prophecy. 

Literally textbook what everyone had been predicting a “reverse” crypt scene would be since Dean was affected with said external/internal darkness issue

Act Three:

11x03 - smol crypt scene parallel with Cas controlled, riffing off 10x22 for the theme of Cas’s lasting emotional damage from this

Cas ends up possessed by Lucifer as a result

11x18 Cas does not throw off the possession

this does however parallel 6x20 in the confrontation style

And ends a rule of three on wandering into someone’s head and saving them, PLATONICALLY, from 8x08 (Sam and Fred Jones), 9x10 (Crowley and Sam) and here (Crowley and Cas)

He has his Swan Song moment to show how much he loves Sam in 11x14, swapping right back to the classic “I am possessed by Lucifer but do not want to kill you” model (hence these more and more nested bullet points as we detour from The Point, but on the diagram, one long wobbly arrow back up to the top to show it is ALL STILL CONNECTED)

11x16 - Incidentally Robbie’s on his way out and sticks in one more failed brotherly “I know you’re in there” just to make a point I guess, while they’re working on new and better ways to resolve everything that are no longer like the past (represented by Bobby, and another arrow up to 5x01/7x23, just for him being around reminding us)

Meanwhile this all follows in the background of The Point, dealing with Dean’s internal/external Darkness problem, now manifest as Amara. Which leads us to the first break in the absolute rule of possession/internal darkness as he confronts his darkness externally with Cas absent from the action entirely in

11x21 - REVERSE REVERSE CRYPT SCENE: “Where are your thoughts?” Amara asks, realising her sway on Dean has all gone, and Dean is thinking of saving Cas, acting as decoy to rescue Lucifer - and by Lucifer, he means Cas. Notably, this is part of the TJW directing fuckery, and he’s not done yet. 

Amara also uses the image of a bloody beaten Cas (echoing the haunting of a similar Cas as a result of 10x22 to Dean in 10x23) to motivate Dean to do as she wants in the first part. 

Cas’s absence and the lack of interaction between them, by this point, is not essential for thematic Crypt scene parallels, especially as at this point Amara is still a romantic rival, subtextually, and clearly entangled in that love triangle, via the visual subtext of the episode, with her using Dean and Cas’s personal connection to communicate with Dean.

The Amara connection breaks, and is revealed to have been completely platonic in her heart after all, in 

11x23 - Swan Song again! Dean goes and breaks up the cosmic sibling row on a scale one huge step above Michael and Lucifer, this time bloodlessly, this time about resolving the conflict peacefully, and with no heightened proving love drama except the hugs in the graveyard between Sam and Dean and Dean and Cas and whatever THEY tell us. It extracts the original Point of 5x22 and finally resolves it. 

At this point there are now clearly 2 completely distinct branches of this subtext; the Swan Song parallels on one side and the Crypt Scenes ones on the other - the heightened love-proving drama has two completely distinct languages born from the same point. 11x21 resolves one, 11x23 the other.

Act Four:

(I didn’t separate them on the diagram, because I think it stopped *just* following on from itself and became more of a fractal in season 11, but you know what, for the sake of having a clear Dabb era section... Here, it fractals out from the previous versions and I was half-tempted to glue these all onto much earlier episodes, but went with a chronological layout. None of these remotely resemble the others OR the original crypt scene, and yet they ALL tripped my radar for the same train of thought...)

12x02 - going RIGHT back to the start, Mary parallels 1x22 with the ghost possession and not wanting to kill Dean. Again, platonic, and in the model of the Swan Song series of subtext, which 11x14 showed the pattern is still around and clearer than ever.

12x10 - TJW is at it again. Paralleing the 9x22 iteration, Ishim asks Cas to choose between himself and Dean. When the choice is too obvious, it swaps to paralleling 10x22 with the choreography and obvious importance to show Cas’s state of mind by using the similar shots of Cas feeling defeated and relating to Dean being in a POSITION to kill him. Of course this also, like 11x21, uses an externalised evil to make it all happen, lightening the direct interpersonal trauma, and obviously Dean chooses not to kill Cas as well when faced with the choice.

12x12 - Cas again hurt, working with 12x10 for Cas’s arc, as they were a set of episodes. The dialogue including an “I love you” finally includes the infamous dropped line from 8x17′s crypt scene, in a broadly applicable family setting, but also with room to wonder how much Cas meant it about Dean first, then everyone else. It’s at least an answer to 8x17. And “What broke the connection” - thematically it does not, however, look anything like a crypt scene, and yet EMOTIONALLY overlaps so much I can’t not mention it. Hence my thoughts about this thread becoming fractals of itself.

12x17 - Mick, an external (12x10, 11x23), brainwashed (8x17) threat, heavily mirroring Cas in his coat, threatens Eileen because the Code demands he kill her as punishment (9x22), and Sam talks him down into questioning his “Code” enough to allow them to escape. Sam and Eileen are coded as potential maybe one day love interests, because of Robbie fucking Thompson back in season 11, and general adorableness and laser focus on their interactions in this episode. Dean is present but Sam handles it because he has the stake in Eileen.

Semi-unrelated but Mick then goes on to die for “The original Mission” in almost identical form to Naomi (8x23), Gadreel (9x23) and Metatron (11x21), going out as he lived: one heck of a parallel to angels and their loyalty to Heaven... with Dr Hess as a Naomi parallel herself, making this emotionally pretty much an 8x17 Cas moment for Mick himself, flipping around the point of crypt scenes instead of revealing how he CARES as a proof of love (unless he really did fall in love with Sam while bonding as nerd-soulmates) but instead seems mostly to be platonically, as a moment of personal growth for him on this “original mission” thread instead. Of course, angels returning to the ideals of the “original mission” become Cas-aligned for however long they last while back on the good guys table... 

Which I just like because it’s a double Crypt Scene parallel for both the romantic side and the threat, but they have fuck all to do with each other in that respect, this has just become so ridiculously layered you can’t walk into a bar without having to talk down a mind-controlled acquaintance, and at which point I stopped, looking hard at Mick and was like, what the fuck this started with John and Azazel and Dean. 

[dustydreamsanddirtyscars]

“A Rose By Any Other Name Would Smell As Sweet” - On Dissociation, Duality and Identity on Supernatural

“The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven…” - John Milton / “Paradise Lost” 

After reading an interesting article on the 350th anniversary of Milton’s “Paradise Lost” I found myself pondering one of the themes prevalent in the poem and how it translates to one of the themes I love so much on Supernatural and how it has been especially explored during Carver Era: The Topic of Duality and Identity.

One of the key aspects of Lucifer as a character in Milton’s poem is how the archangel sheds his original name and by that also crafts a new “life” for himself along with it. He no longer calls himself or is addressed as Lucifer but as “Satan” or “the Devil” (interestingly enough that is something Supernatural’s longest standing villain rejects completely, and despises these names which is an interesting aspect to keep in mind and one I’ll come back to later). This re-invention and the power of names is an intricate part of shaping one's own identity and reality. It’s something we have seen countless pop culture figures go through for very similar reasons.

The pattern can be traced all the way back to fairytales like Rumpelstiltsken, but it can be found in a multitude of modern pieces of literature, art or television too. Think of Tom Riddle vs. Lord Voldemort, Dr. Jekyll vs. Mr Hyde or Walter White vs. Heisenberg. They all create alter egos for themselves in a fashion comparable to the renaming process that happens to demons in Milton’s work, because once they lost their positive identity, they also lost their names. It’s very much in line with what we see happening on Supernatural as all the more "run of the mill”-demons we have met thus far have been addressed by the name of the person they inhabited, Meg is probably the most memorable example for that. And it’s also of course a transformation the King of Hell himself underwent when he died as Fergus McLeod and emerged as Crowley.

Much like his mother, who always tried to escape her past and shape a new world for herself in which she possesses the power she lacked before when being rejected, so Crowley tried his best to forget about his past altogether and shape a new world and identity for himself. And all that went well and good until, well, the Winchesters came along. Until then Crowley was able to craft his new self and by shaping himself shaping also his own reality, how he perceives and thinks of himself (unintruded) and by that trying to infer how people perceive him. In the end however the dilemma comes down to what Kurt Vonnegut once described as: “Be careful what you pretend to be because you are what we pretend to be.” Because sometimes that - or rather the way we think about ourselves - can turn into your Achille’s heel or something like a self fulfilling prophecy. And on Supernatural, I suppose no one fights that battle with himself harder than Dean Winchester. That battle of how he thinks about himself and how/who he really is (and that aspect is drawn attention to again with Mr. Ketch insinuating that Dean and he are alike or that Dean is merely an unhinged killer (see meta and gifset here) - something Dean may think of himself at the worst of times, but which hardly can be counted as a realistic picture of who he truly is).

And in this regard I feel it’s important to remember that Dean went to Hell, was well on his way to becoming a demon, but got rescued before his soul may have been twisted too far to dip back. That doesn’t change anything about the fact however that Dean remembers that time, remembers what happened to him, what he did and what he became. It left a taint, some darkness within him and one he is deeply ashamed of. Now, question is how far along the transformation or dissociation went when he was in hell. Was Dean close to forgetting his own name, his own positive identity? And is that possibly the reason why Dean’s struggles in terms of identity and perception of self has gotten all the much worse post Hell too (while also of course taking into account the trauma he faced there)? Because Dean thinking about himself merely as a killer definitely stems from his experiences in and post Hell.

“We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell.” - Oscar Wilde

Now following that line of thinking I think it is interesting to bring the aspect of duality into the mix, because all the characters mentioned before: Voldemort, Crowley, Walter White or Lucifer in Milton’s “Paradise Lost” give their inner duality a physical quality. Voldemort grows more snake like the more he gets drawn to evil, Crowley doesn’t inhabit his own dead vessel but someone else, Walter White as Heisenberg makes a hat his statement piece and Lucifer in Milton’s “Paradise Lost” famously turns into a snake to bring about the Expulsion from Eden. Meaning, their transformation, their reinvention of self, their identity shaping is connected to a visual change as well, which might make it much easier to distinguish and dissociate and distance yourself from your more sinister actions for example. It’s easier to operate with such alter egos as separate to yourself, because in part it may “absolve” you of your wrongdoing. That split between good and bad, that duality, that inner fight, surely wasn’t captured any better on Supernatural than by Charlie returning from Oz split in two - a parallel to the struggle Dean faced and still faces within during this “coming of age / individuation” arc.

Charlie was a great mirror for Dean here as she shares his predicament because unlike all the antagonists mentioned above she feels responsible for her dark self running amok - and yes the fact that they of course look alike just contributed to that. Now just like Charlie wasn’t able to sort of distance herself from her alter ego, so Dean is unable to do the same as he never undergoes a change in physicality for example - except for the back eyes and slightly longer hair. So when Crowley raises Demon!Dean with the words: “It’s not death. It’s life. A new kind of life. Let’s go take a howl at that moon” he may have thought Dean would have shaken and forgotten all about his former self and morals (but of course he hasn’t).

But the problem is Dean didn’t change. Not really. At the very least not like Crowley in how he shaped a new life and identity for himself. Where Crowley left behind his former human self (until he reconnected with it during S9 where as a parallel to his growing humanity Dean followed the opposite direction - Crowley hasn’t been the same ever since and a lot of the struggles he faces to this season are based in a struggle of identity and him failing to distance himself or dissociate Crowley from Fergus, which was a central aspect of bringing Rowena into the mix imo) even physically, Dean did not as he was a demon inside his own body. His humanity was simply muted, but it wasn’t completely gone or forgotten. This transformation and rejection of his past turning into a reinvention didn’t happen for Dean.

He turned into his darker version, but just putting a “Demon!” Prior Dean hardly can be read in a comparable fashion to Fergus McLeod vs. Crowley (Cas going by the name of Steve doesn’t feel like a fitting other example as Cas didn’t shed who he was as a person and his personality, but his name change attributed more to the metaphysical change from angel to human - which is kind of the direct opposite to Crowley or Dean where an emotional and inner aspect sparked an outwards transformation). Dean became a demon but a true dissociation and distancing didn’t happen. And that’s what he struggles with, because he remembers. That was all him, he can’t and won’t distinguish between himself and his "alter ego" that was compromised by the mark like Crowley would for example. He did what he did when he was a demon inside his own body, there was no dissociation, no re-naming happening and arguably even though thoroughly disinterested in being what he thought others needed him to be (which is still the problem even now and I do wish Dean could allow himself to be a bit more like Demon!Dean in this regard - but hell maybe the continuing betrayal by his loved ones will finally get him there and finally will make him put himself first for once – who am I kidding the show would sadly never let Dean be this independent *sighhhhhhs*) and for that reason much more careless or rather much more carefree, there still was a lot of Dean in him when the mark was calling the shots and his eyes were pitch black. The problem for Dean in dealing with his dark side was even worsened when this inner struggle was externalized when Sam had the mark removed and Amara was freed - and even though Dean managed to reunite God and Amara and save the world in the process - he himself unlike these divine siblings or Charlie didn’t have the chance to truly reintegrate that (lost) part that was split from him with Amara again and being able to heal (and sadly the show is also not even trying to resolve this issue for Dean it seems in order for Dean to be able to finish the Individuation process, though him walking away from Sam and Mary could count as that (though again the show would never allow Dean to do that) - the externalized struggle that was meant to be fought within however still wouldn’t have been resolved though).

And this is where Lucifer from Supernatural and Dean make such compelling cases in how they compare and contrast. Because where Dean struggled with this burden of duality and didn’t have the chance to possibly distance himself from his actions while compromised by the mark because he was himself the entire time, Lucifer embraces that fact, he thrives on that. He despises the distinction people made when calling him devil or Satan. He is taking his actions in stride, grows more confident through them whereas for Dean the opposite is the case. So in the end it comes down to perspective and perception. Lucifer knows he’s evil but he’s alright with that. There is no struggle, no illusions. He walks the earth like a hero because that’s how he sees himself. A champion who was treated wrong, but not the villain. He is the hero in his own story. Compare that to Dean who struggles to see his own self worth due to the mistakes he made and thinks of himself as a burden, as someone less. This negative perception of self has shaped his reality and even made him take on the mark for example. And it’s also the reason why he is unable to see himself as the hero he objectively speaking absolutely is, because he is walking through life thinking of himself as a failure, the antagonist in the story. And unless he will be allowed to express himself accordingly and be embraced for all that he is (and not how others want him to be or react - like for example just simply working with the BritMoL) and not just what people think he is due to what Dean became because of who he thought others wanted him to be (big brother, good little soldier, little angel), hell likely never get a chance to heal and make that last step of individuation to truly shape and allow himself to be the person he truly is.

“Show me a hero and I’ll write you a tragedy.” - F. Scott Fitzgerald

[miss-pettigrew]

(1)a BUNCH of long asks coming your way, i'm so sorry I just love discussing KS with other people so I run my keyboard down lol.... so I finally read your latest post on KS. Anyway, I thought it was mind blowing on the point that the current story is almost always being narrated by Bum, so perhaps all the images are in Bum's perspective--which makes complete sense to why Sangwoo is always 'yaoi' sized compared to poorlittle Bum. I threw my hands up in surrender to you after that paragraph

Firstly,here’s the rest of the asks: 

To move onto my question, actual penetration seems to be the next step between Bum and Sangwoo in their 'physical relationship'. But part of me thinks that Sangwoo will never do it with Bum. Many times in the past chapters, Sangwoo has expressed dislike for homosexuals. Hell, he even dresses Bum as a country gal to (imo) remove any masculinity from Bum and sort of 'project' this image that Sangwoo is holding hostage a woman, not a man (imo again). 

There was only one time (I think) during a sexual act when Bum and Sangwoo exposed their dicks to each other, which was that one BJ scene where Bum gets Sangwoo off and pulls out his own dick. Honestly I can't remember if that was accurate or not cuz it's very hard for me to read those earlier chapters (I get so nervous and disturbed omfg). But going back to that BJ scene, Bum is still dressed like a girl as well.

So for my question (finally) I know you said that Sangwoo will /most likely/ give Bum some sort of sexual reward after all this, but do you think that Sangwoo will some how 'feminine Bum' in order to justify their sexual acts? Perhaps slapping that bra onto Bum?? Another question that just came into my mind was this.. it's goes back to your point about how Sangwoo looks so much bigger and whatnot.

You've said that you're not a sensitive person in your post and I also agree with that for myself. I've seen a lot of things in the past and I don't get too affected by it all. I usually can shrug off things pretty easily. But what I can't shrug off is rereading those earlier chapters.

As I stated in my past question, I get deeply disturbed and really anxious even /thinking/ about the situation that Bum is going through (don't get me started with the arc where Sangwoo was acting kind to Bum--I was hyperventilating the entire time). Do you think that because the story is most likely viewed through Bum's eyes, that the anxiety and panic or any emotion anyone gets when reading these chapters is a mirror to Bum's?

It's probably an obvious answer but I'm curious to reading your response. And also, if you believe that it is a mirror, what about during the short time Ji Eun took control of the narration? Is there something different? Sorry again if these are stupidly long asks and that I spammed you with all of them, but you pose such good analysis that I feel like I wanna dive deep with you on it as well LOL... ANYWAY THAT'S IT I'M GONE NOW LOL.

Secondly - hehe, thank you! I really am enjoying this even if it is slightly embarrassing how much I think about all this stuff. It’s interesting because nowadays I don’t normally need to wait for anything - media wise (except videos games but that’s on me). Like, with Netflix, all the episodes come out at one time and there’s no time for speculation or analysis. Until YOI, I hadn’t waited on anything, so I found myself reading a lot of meta and analysis and I guess I figured this is the time to get involved and do my own.

Thirdly, this is a great ask, and there’s stuff in here I hadn’t really thought about and there stuff in here that I have so I’ll do my best with both of those.

So that next step question? It’s an interesting one, and one that I don’t have any final opinion on, but rather a few directions I could see where it could go. Because you’re right, Sangwoo is homophobic and that does manifest in the sexual encounters with Bum. And yet, he also just clearly doesn’t give a fuck as long as he’s getting something out of it. So it’s a very unique mindset to be in when it comes to sex. Because nothing outside of how Sangwoo thinks, feels or reacts matters. He’s not completely homophobic because society, as a whole, tends to be homophobic. But because he sees it as a... difference? weakness? something to take advantage of and look down on. Like for him, it’s just so weird that this little freak likes men wow he’s such a freak but that also this freak surprises me and will do anything for me and I’m into it.

So the panel that keeps coming to mine is the “have you even had sex yes” panel with the dildo. And that concerns me because, well for one, Bum has had sex - and I don’t think a single time has that sex been consensual - just rape. And he and SANGWOO have had sex? And I sort of talked about this before, but clearly Sangwoo doesn’t consider what they’ve as “sex” despite it definitely being yes. So maybe he’s just one of those penetration=sex or maybe what he and Bum are is completely outside of anything he would normally define. I’m not sure. 

So, my concerns lie in how does Sangwoo expect Bum to participate in this sexual portion of the murder? If he involved Bum as anything more than shock value for Jieun or will he try to have him lose his supposed virginity? Eh, probably not but maybe. And I realize I’m not answering your actual question here so let me get to a point.

I, personally, hope that “penetrative sex” is not the next step in their sexual relationship. Now - or ever. Because Sangwoo will hurt Bum. There is no gosh darn way he knows how to sleep with other men. He’s probably never even heard of lube - women are supposed to be doing all the work for him here. Plus, prep and going slow, like we have literally just seen how little time or care he takes when sleeping with someone because with Jieun he sort of just gets right in there - at least according to my reading of their intercourse. Time is a funny thing when it comes to sex scenes though. But, to get to your point, penetrative sex sort of makes sense when it comes to Sangwoo and his idea of power and control and homophobia. He simply wants to Bum submitting to him. That’s really what any sort of sexual interaction with Bum requires, I think? 

But you bring up a good, and interesting point. Bum has never been sexually naked in front of Sangwoo. And I think that’s on purpose. But not necessarily because Bum being naked would remind Sangwoo that he’s in fact, a man, but he had no problems messing around with his flat chest before. So the lack of boobs aren’t an issue. Instead, it might be more, he just doesn’t consider Bum’s pleasure a priority. He just assumes Bum’s gonna get all the pleasure he needs out of pleasing Sangwoo and that’s not really Sangwoo’s priority to solve.

So if he and Bum do have sex again post-Jieun (and I expect they will) it’s important to note that it’s not really a “reward” for Bum. But rather something Sangwoo will want to do because he feels close and intimate with Bum and wants to get his rocks off again, and Bum is expected to go along for the ride. And that’s the thesis of this. I’m so sorry how much I ramble. I guess, in short, the feminization won’t really... come into play here? Or rather it will but because submission is the key.

To your second question, I’ll put the thesis right up front.

AB-SO-FREAKING-LUTELY. Like, y’all, that’s the entire point of reading this story. And that’s why I started off my whole meta series over how GOOD Koogi is as a story-teller because she does a near flawless job of getting you into Bum’s head/mind without you having a single clue. Why were we all so upset at Sangwoo sleeping with Jieun? I even admitted if gave me the actual feeling of that time I was cheated on because for us, we had just been cheated on too, through Bum. Even though, taking even half a step back - um, they are not in a romantic, consensual, healthy relationship. Sangwoo can and will have sex with whomever we wants. But for Bum, not one whole chapter ago he made Sangwoo tell him what he and Jieun had done together. And for him, his assurance that Sangwoo had not slept with Jieun has been both betrayed and thrown right in his face, can we’re only getting a taste of that betrayal. Bum is breaking, and we are along with him. 

I can’t decide if I think Bum knows what’s coming. If he’s going to have to help kill her. I have a feeling he doesn’t, especially now when the fact he’s watching Sangwoo sleep with her is all he’ll be able to process, and obsess, and destroy himself over. 

Every step of the way, we are meant to feel a little what Bum feels. That’s good, psychological horror at its finest. All of our sane rational selves know that this story is horrific, and abusive and something none of us would want any real part of. But hip hip hooray this is fiction and the point of fiction is to explore parts of ourselves (and I mean this holistically, like us a species) in situations and relationships and terror that we hope  to never find ourselves in. That’s why humans have told stories since the dawn of time (and to like, pass down history and shit but you get my point).

And as far as Jieun, I mentioned it briefly before, but Jieun is 10000000% a foil/mirror for Bum. Break down their roles in the narrative and they are the EXACT. SAME. PERSON. Both love(d) Sangwoo, they’re devoted to him. They WANT him. Both have consciously placed themselves right into Sangwoo’s hands. And like, think about that dinner scene. People are making such a fuss because Jieun is being “mean” to Bum. But she’s acting like literally anyone would. She’s acting like Bum would if the roles were reversed. Nevermind, she’s acting like Bum IS ACTING because they’re both jealous, and possessive and wanting Sangwoo’s attention and affection. 

We got into her head because narratively, we’re basically still in Bum’s. No, Jieun and Bum are not the same person. But the distinction we’re meant to see, I theorize, will be the moment when Jieun finds out who Sangwoo really is. I seriously doubt she’ll react like Bum did. I imagine she’ll reject Sangwoo instead of getting on her knees and confessing love for him - like she even has the opportunity. 

I admit to being a little bit disturbed by the fandom’s overall reaction to Jieun. But in the same note, I doubt most are stepping back to see her as a mirror to Bum because Bum doesn’t see that. He sees her as a threat to him and to his relationship with Sangwoo. So I get the defensiveness on the part of the fandom, especially since most of y’all seem to be pretty young and it’s hard for your brains to take a step back. Hope that doesn’t offend, but it’s true because I was a teenager once too and I know what it’s like. lol.

This was long, but it’s also sort of my brand. Hope this was good!

[neverlearnedtoread]

Soul of the Sword

⭐⭐⭐⭐; yumeko ignores everyone as they try to make her do stuff for them and does what she wants anyway, which is real gucci of her

Oh?? 👌😉😏

japanese-inspired fantasy! while i would have preferred physical descriptions (that way, if you know japanese folklore, you can pick up on the cues, and if you don’t, you’ll still know what it looks like), i felt like the worldbuilding was a lot more manageable this time around

lgbt rep! though i personally found it heavy-handed, the lgbt side couple was cute, and im here for that

like any self-respecting weeaboo, ive read fullmetal alchemist, which means if you have any remotely greedling-esque character, im obligated to stan. it was fun to see hakaimono and yumeko go head to head! very ‘unstoppable force meets other unstoppable force’

the maturity of the main romance - yumeko decided tatsumi deserved to have someone in his corner, and held true to that. steadfast loyalty wins over witty banter with a hot guy for me any day

i flew through this plot so quickly, i probably left the pages smoking faintly. a lot of trilogies have their 2nd title as their weakest link, but for me, this book was the strongest out of the three

No.. ❌🤢🤮

yumeko’s innocence still gets used as a gag, which is annoying - it also drives a disconnect between her intuitiveness in tricking others with her lack of understanding regarding obvious social cues

the side romance can get pretty...over the top with the sweet. it made me cringe a little, especially because yumeko’s obliviousness made it all the more glaringly obvious. still, it was a side romance - the plot was moving fast enough that we didn’t have to spend too long being embarrassed during these scenes

Some spoilers under the cut - this is the second book in the series!

Summary: Yumeko, a half-kitsune tasked with safeguarding one of three pieces of a powerful dragon-summoning scroll, has an ever-growing list of things to do before Dragon Bullying Season starts in earnest - and random people keep on popping up out of nowhere to make more demands. One of these people is Lady Hanshou, the mysterious matriarch of the shady Kage clan, who requests Yumeko’s help in neutralizing the demon Hakaimono, currently running amok after possessing her personal demonslayer, Kage Tatsumi. Lady Hanshou’s perfectly happy killing her loyal servant to retain control of the cursed sword Kamigoroshi, but Yumeko can’t accept that outcome - Kage Tatsumi promised to protect her from harm, and she’s not going to turn her back on him now. Knowing that Hakaimono intends to come after the Dragon Scroll pieces in his quest to free himself from the mortal realm, Yumeko prepares to face him, and win back Tatsumi’s soul in the process.

Concept: 💭💭💭

I had my reservations about how this book was going to go! Part of what made the beginning of the first book tough for me to get through was how 2D the main characters were before they started travelling together - their dynamic smoothed out a lot of the grating aspects of their personalities, making them more enjoyable to read. So starting the book with the two of them split up from each other, travelling separately throughout the whole book and not likely to meet until the very end - I was expecting to be frustrated.

Execution: 💥💥💥💥

Instead, I was pleasantly surprised! The new character interactions that opened up once the main leads were split up created a new layer for me to appreciate, while still never overshadowing the relationship the two leads had built from the first book - they still thought about each other, and the author didn’t withhold them crossing paths again from the reader like stick with a carrot in front of a donkey. I kept thinking how respectful the author was to build her main leads up as individuals first, with their own character arcs to pursue, before she was going to bring them together again.

Personal Enjoyment: ❤❤❤❤❤

This trilogy has great consistency with its characters - a subtly difficult thing to do, balancing the character arc and development with a character that still feels the same. I had a lot of fun watching Yumeko consolidate her character - it never felt like she was changing, more like she was becoming who she was supposed to be. And of course our new star - Hakaimono, my man! I thoroughly enjoyed his chapters in this book, which I wasn’t expecting at all, because of the distinct perspective he offered. He’s probably one of the only characters we get to know that has been present for multiple wishes, and it shows in the way he interacts with all the other mysterious players that were only hinted at in the first book. It elevates the story from Yumeko and Tatsumi’s pawn-level perspective of the board, although you can tell that for all of Hakaimono’s immense power he’s still no higher than a knight or a bishop, and it chafes at him.

Favourite Moment: the scene at the steel feather temple when yumeko tricked hakaimono and managed to use her diversions and illusions well enough to actually lay her hands on him - the bde of it all was choice 👌👌 im really enjoying watching yumeko take her ‘silly illusions’ and apply real power to them - we love to see a main female character develop her powers and her range!!!

Favourite Character: Yumeko - what a lovely main character to have; there are so many things to like about her. i love "”bitchy”” female characters as much as the next person but its nice to see variety, since everyone seems to think there are only a few ways to write ‘wormenn’ realistically - i loved yumeko’s strength and steadfastness of belief that she can do the impossible because its the right thing to do, without her becoming harsher or more cruel in the process. she even asked permission from tatsumi first! that’s another thing i really liked about yumeko - she listened and valued everyone’s opinion, even though it didn’t necessarily sway her final choice. we stan a woman who said my pussy pops severely and at the end of the day, im making that everyone else’s problem

[biofunmy]

Why Does Everything Smell, So Peacefully, of Lavender?

Not long ago Erin Wexstten, the 35-year-old founder of Oxalis Apothecary, a plant-based skin care brand, ticked off all the ways she uses lavender in her life.

“I personally have lavender everywhere,” she said. “Hand soap, dish soap. I have sachets you stick in the drawer. It makes the underwear smell nice. Dried bunches. They make for a beautiful piece in a vase.”

Ms. Wexstten has spread the lavender love through her products, including Feel Good Potion, containing essential oil of lavender, and Reverie body oil, deodorant and a wildflower clay mask, which contains lavender in powder form as a gentle exfoliant.

“I call lavender the quiet queen — she’s purple majesty,” Ms. Wexstten said. “It’s an abundant plant. It isn’t a precious, exotic plant. It’s used everywhere.”

Indeed, these days there’s hardly a household, grooming or wellness product that hasn’t been infused with lavender’s sweet, antiseptic-clean aroma: candles, diffusers, shower gels, liquid hand sanitizer, face mists, eye masks. It’s even in food and — shudder — cocktails.

To feed the demand, hundreds of lavender farms have sprouted up in recent years far from their well-known location of Provence, France: in places like Maine, Kansas and West Virginia, where growing lavender on coal-stripped mountains is being explored as a land reclamation project.

The lavender selfie, typically a young woman wearing a prairie dress and a straw hat posing amid rows of purple blooms arcing to the horizon, has become an image ubiquitous on Instagram every June and July during harvest season.

The lavender field has become such a visual cliché on social media that Simon Porte Jacquemus, the French fashion designer, decided to subvert it by holding his spring 2020 fashion show in an actual field in Provence. “I wanted a place that looked like a postcard — almost too much like a postcard, even,” he told WWD.

Even when you’re not seeking it out, lavender has become hard to escape. A look around my own apartment revealed three bars of lavender bath soap; a lavender “relax” aromatherapy bar by Treestar; a vial of Ms. Wexstten’s Feel Good Potion; Sleep Well Therapy Balm by Scentered; Dr. Kerklaan Natural Sleep Cream with CBD extract and calming sensation citrus and lavender; a lavender-scented candle; a bouquet of dried lavender in a vase in the bathroom; and a small pillow stuffed with lavender to be placed under one’s nose at bedtime.

Many of these items are my wife’s. But lavender has entered the men’s grooming world too, in products like Jack Black post-shave cooling gel and overnight balm from the Art of Shaving. (And the bath soap was mine.)

Nature’s Chill Pill

If not a precious plant in modern times, lavender once carried the whiff of semi-luxury. If you stayed in a nice European hotel, your room had crisp linens scented with lavender. That bath soap would have been a special imported treat costing $15 a bar, not something I might have gotten at the corner CVS.

Lavender was a key ingredient in the bougie domestic fantasy sold by retailers like Williams Sonoma and L’Occitane en Provence. It wafted gently over the entire oeuvre of Peter Mayle, the author of “A Year in Provence,” among other books.

Now you can buy Downy Infusions Lavender Serenity fabric softener.

Linda G. Levy, the president of the Fragrance Foundation, an organization that promotes and supports the perfume industry, has noticed lavender as a highlighted ingredient in luxury fragrances like Libre, new from YSL, as well as popular perfumes like Ariana Grande’s Cloud, which features a top note of lavender and won the foundation’s fragrance of the year award this past June.

“Lavender is easy for consumers to translate,” Ms. Levy said. “It’s something they can understand without having to do a lot of research.”

Unlike ylang-ylang or vetiver, two other frequently used botanicals, “you hear ‘lavender’ and a visual comes to mind,” she added.

For Ms. Levy, it conjures a trip she took to Fayence, in the south of France. “Litter on the street there is lavender,” she said. For someone else, lavender may bring to mind a grandmother who used a sachet to freshen a dresser drawer.

Jeannie Ralston, a New York journalist turned Texas lavender farmer who wrote a memoir about her experience, “The Unlikely Lavender Queen,” believes lavender’s popularity comes, in part, from the way it activates all the senses, especially when standing amid rows of it.

“You’ve got the smell, but to look at it, it’s almost like a pointillist painting,” Ms. Ralston said. “It’s a beautiful, sensual experience to be in a lavender field.”

Dahlias planted tightly to the horizon can be beautiful, too. And roses also evoke grandmotherly nostalgia. But lavender promises something those plants don’t, something very much desired in this age of fractious politics, climate dread and unceasing demands on our time: escape.

Though the ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans believed in its benefits, as both a cosmetic and a medicinal plant, lavender’s true time has come in the stressed-out early 21st century.

Clinical studies in both animals and humans have shown the plant to have calming effects, reducing anxiety and helping to bring on sleep. The key ingredient is linalool, an alcohol component of lavender odor. Sniffing it has been likened to popping a Valium.

Dr. Andrew Weil, the integrative medicine guru, hangs dry bundles of lavender in his bedroom as a sleep aid and cooks with the herb. In yoga studios, it’s a common practice for the instructor to end class by daubing essential oil of lavender on spent students’ temples. And the oil has long been used in aromatherapy.

Now, artisanal wellness brands and billion-dollar pharmaceutical companies alike have packaged and marketed lavender to a freaked-out populace. No longer is it just a nice way to freshen your linen drawer. It’s become a magic ingredient: a plant-based Prozac put into therapy balms, sleep creams and stress-relief moisturizing lotions, like the one from Aveeno, a division of Johnson & Johnson, which claims on the purply bottle that it “calms & relaxes.”

For consumers, especially millennials fluent in Goop-speak and hungry for ways to unplug from 24-7 work and digital lives, lavender has come to mean calm.

Anit Hora, 39, the founder of M.S Skincare, a vegan skin care line made in Brooklyn, sprays lavender mist around her office when things get hectic, and has hung dried bunches in her bathroom, pressing them to scent her shower. She also named the brand’s restorative lavender body oil Aum, after the yoga chant more commonly spelled “ohm.”

“It’s very calming to chant ‘ohm,’” Ms. Hora said. “And that’s the effect I wanted this to have.”

Ms. Wexstten’s Feel Good Potion is “there to reduce stress and anxiety in a world full of chaos,” she said. (The label instructs users to “apply to temples, third eye and wrists. Breathe deeply.”)

While Ms. Wexstten doesn’t think there’s a lavender boom, she said, “I think people are paying attention more, handling their self-care. In an old-world apothecary, lavender is not a new thing.”

Barbara Close, 59, grew up going to such apothecaries with her aunt, who lived outside Paris, and became familiar with the European tradition of using lavender and other herbs for grooming and health purposes.

“She loved to take me to these little herboristeries,” or herb shops, Ms. Close said. “They’d make her passion flower tincture.”

In 1995, Ms. Close founded Naturopathica, which operates day spas in Manhattan and East Hampton and sells skin care products and herbal remedies. It began as an herb shop like the ones she had known in France. “We had tinctures and teas, essential oils,” she said. “Back then, it was a strange concept for most people.”

Twenty-five years later, once-obscure herbs like echinacea are sold at CVS, adaptogens like Siberian ginseng and reishi are being touted as answers to any number of problems, and don’t get us started on turmeric. “Lavender,” Ms. Close said, “has gone along with that growth.”

According to the alternative medicine guides and lavender farmer websites, the herb is a cure-all for many, many ailments: anxiety, insomnia, migraines, depression, flatulence, hair loss and more.

“Some books have two, three pages of attributes that lavender possesses, and a lot of it seems far-fetched,” said Charley Opper, 68, an owner of Cache Creek Lavender Farm in Rumsey, Calif.

Mr. Opper makes body mist, bath soap and 21 other products from the lavender he grows, and he sticks with the folkloric wisdom that dates back to Pliny the Elder. “What I tell people is it’s a sleep aid, a relaxant and it does have anti-bacterial properties to it,” he said.

In all his years, Mr. Opper said, “I’ve only run into one or two people that said they did not like” the scent of lavender. And he has found a receptive audience for both his products and his message by driving three hours south each weekend, where a demographic of plugged-in, maxed-out tech workers are eager to buy nature’s chill pill.

“I go to Silicon Valley, and I market my products in Palo Alto and Menlo Park,” Mr. Opper said. “The essential oil that I sell at my stand is well sought after at this point.”

Crop This

But where does the most special, elite lavender come from? The royal purple fields of Valensole, France? Partly, yes. But also: Bulgaria.

Though the country has been slow to catch on as an Instagram destination, its temperate climate is ideal for growing lavender. To some noses, the Bulgarian strains are preferred over the French.

“It has a more distinct, exotic scent,” said Ms. Wexstten, who sources Bulgarian lavender for her products. “It doesn’t have that candy-like scent that a lot of lavender can have.”

The largest seller of essential oils in the world, the Utah-based doTerra, operates a distillery in Bulgaria, and production has increased exponentially to match demand, said Dr. Russell Osguthorpe, the company’s chief medical officer. The company sold about 38 kilograms of lavender oil in 2008, and sourced 152,000 kilograms to support sales in 2018.

“We have spent a long time optimizing our lavenders for their aroma because we use them in aromatherapy. You might even call it a pharmaceutical standard. Not all species of lavender are created equal.”

(Not all lavender is even grown in a field: It’s likely that the $3 bottle of lavender oil at the chain drugstore, or the liquid hand sanitizer at the supermarket, derives its lavender scent from synthetic perfume made in a laboratory.)

If the small and medium-size lavender farms stretching from the Sequim Valley in Washington State to the East End of Long Island don’t significantly contribute to industrial-scale production, they perform another role. No longer do Americans have to go to France to stand in a lavender field or picturesquely fill a straw basket with all-natural products.

When Ms. Ralston and her husband, Robb Kendrick, a photographer, started their commercial lavender farm in Texas, back in 2000, the couple had little experience with lavender. But the herb proved easy to grow and easier still to monetize.

“We ended up with 97 different lavender products,” Ms. Ralston said, ticking off a list that included bath balms, bath salts, bath oils, essential oils, eye creams, sachets and “lavender smokes,” or dried and bundled stalks to put on a fire. “We actually sold lavender-scented pencils at one point. And my husband said, ‘That’s enough.’”

One year, at the annual lavender festival the couple started, 17,000 people tramped through their fields in the Texas Hill Country.

“Lavender seems to be crack cocaine for a certain set of the population,” Mr. Kendrick said to Ms. Ralston at the time.

Thy sold the lavender farm to an employee in 2006 because they wanted to live for a time in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, and raise their sons to be bilingual. But Ms. Ralston, a founder of the digital magazine NextTribe, said there are times she wishes they had held on, watching how the American lavender craze has, yes, blossomed.

Aimee Crane, who four years ago started Bee Loved Lavender farm, has brought culinary lavender to northeast Ohio. Jim Morford has brought homemade soaps, lotions, creams and infused teas to Kansas (“You really have to want to grow it in our hot climate,” Mr. Morford said). And Kaia Nustad has brought the joy of lavender to the Carmel Valley in California (and to Etsy).

Last year, Ms. Nustad hosted 54 weddings on her eight-acre plot, and has sold thousands of lavender bouquets to brides. “Millennials love it for weddings,” she said. “It’s the new boho thing.”

Ms. Nustad discovered lavender’s popularity by accident, in 2014, when she visited a farm near the “lavender trail” in Washington. And two years after planting her own farm, she still asks herself what it is about lavender that makes people respond the way they do.

But, she reasoned, “I’ve never had a sad person on my farm. When you look out over the fields, it’s calming. It’s that serene calming feeling, like when you stare over the ocean.”

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