#because while it’s similarly devastating to it’s main character it’s much more hopeful of a story

[timelesslords]

If you like the post-apocalyptic and worldbuilding and religious deconstruction and found family aspects of tlou I am B E G G I N G you to read parable of the sower by Octavia E. Butler it’s so good you will not regret it I promise

[victoria-rostu]

I don’t think any of the meta I’ve seen about how Penny’s death was positive or necessary is going to do it for me. I keep reading them hoping it’ll click and I’ll be able to feel better about the end of V8 but none of them have worked so far. I felt like writing out my thoughts about some of the common takes just to get it out my system, none of this is in response to anyone in particular, I just need to vent.

“At least Penny died happy”

This credits Penny with so little emotional depth, basically we’re saying she died happy because she was smiling in her final scene and nothing that happened before that mattered. The staff was gone and Cinder was about to kill her after killing three of her closest friends. Including Ruby, who was her “wish come true”, we had a whole song about that. She thought she’d totally failed. She even just cried actual tears for the first time, to drive the point home.

She never found her self-esteem. In her final moments she tells Winter she didn’t think she was ever the real winter maiden. Until the middle of V7, like half of her screentime involves her acting cheerfully while she’s actually in a situation she hates. In her final scene with Winter, she’s putting on a brave face once again to make Winter feel better about receiving the power. Maybe Penny takes some comfort from Winter’s presence but I can’t read that scene as Penny actually being happy about what happened.

“Penny got to make this one choice”

Aside from the fact that the choice she got to make was how to die, which is horrible, it isn’t even really much of a choice. She was already dying. Her only other option was to let Cinder kill her. I don’t know why we’re meant to believe she had any more agency here than on previous occasions that Penny chose something, like going with Ruby in chapter 1, stepping up to defend Ruby from the Ace Ops in chapter 3, saving Amity in chapter 5, or even just turning back to fight instead of going through the portal after Yang fell.

(If she’d actually had a choice, of course, she would’ve picked Ruby as the next maiden, that’s what she wanted in chapter 11. The scene was deliberately written so that her actual preference never mattered because Ruby had already fallen.)

“Cinder had to win to stay credible so the maiden powers were an obvious death flag”

This one originated before the finale and doesn’t make sense considering that Cinder didn’t get the powers. Penny’s death basically just shifted Winter into the exact same role in the cast that Penny was in previously. Does Winter have an obvious death flag now - is Cinder just going to get the powers from her instead? I haven’t seen anyone saying that so why was it different for Penny?

Similarly the idea that a maiden in the main cast has to die to keep the power levels in check doesn’t seem to apply to Winter either.

“Penny’s arc was done” and/or “It’s a war, people die”

And the other ones that don’t apply as soon as you aim them at another character like Sun or Ilia or even Blake. There’s a lot of plot armor in RWBY and that’s fine! This is the same episode where all four main characters lose their aura and conveniently get thrown into the soft play area instead of getting blown up or stabbed or impaled in a fight with a couple of the most dangerous people in Remnant. I’m not saying the writers shouldn’t kill off whoever they feel like killing off, but this doesn’t work for me as an argument for why Penny had to die.

I enjoy lots of character arcs (in RWBY and other shows) that end tragically! If Penny had died falling from Amity, I would still have been devastated, but I think I'd have found it much less disappointing. What we actually got was several more episodes of the hack with Penny either not present or in constant pain, one extremely weird moment of hope that we barely had time to process, then a death that sidesteps all the relationships she developed with RWBYJNOR this volume to focus on Winter.

[goldeaglefire1]

so uh

that post I made about OSFE heights is doing well

soooooo I'm going to give y'all some random thoughts on Terra! why Terra specifically? well firstly she's fun to play as, and secondly I ended up generating a lot of thoughts on her at one point for a one shot

more specifically I once attempted to write a OSFE oneshot to try and explain how a Terra pacifist route would work from a story perspective, because the logistics of why this utterly ruthless character would spare everyone and how Terrable is a separate entity in a Terra pacifist route were fascinating to me. buuuuut I never got close to finishing and uploading it before deciding "okay yeah this is way too ambitious honestly" so it's dead in the water

the ideas still bounce around in my head though so might as well get them out

note: the following is all just conjecture and headcanon based on what little lore the game gives us and also the concept documentation (this is where I got the heights from btw) so uh

yeah. also it's under a read more because this post is long as is

- You know that Yami spell you get in the Genocide routes? The one that is ultimately what lets you win against what is very clearly the most powerful being in the OSFE world? Yeah that hypothetical usage wouldn't be the first. For reasons unknown to the general populace, it ended up getting flung into a highly populated city...and whereas in the Genocide route the Yami spell pours all its energy into killing the nigh-unkillable Serif, it didn't have a target that could take that much power on its first use. As such, the result ended up being less of a single-target spell and moreso, uh. Magic death nuke. The ensuing devastation created the area we as players know as the Ruins...and Terra

- See, Terra was a perfectly normal civilian once. Nothing particularly noteworthy about her, just a woman with a well-paying office job. And then she got caught in the aftershock of the Yami spell. To be more specific, Terra was the closest one to the blast to have survived - but not without a few scars. Because for one moment, when she got caught in the aftermath, Terra saw. She saw the deadly and incomprehensible forces that powered the Yami spell. She saw them...and she knew they were hungry. To make matters worse, part of the Yami spell latched on to her, granting her incredible magical power, most notably her Terraform beam

- As you might expect, both of these factors caused Terra to snap. She forgot about her old life and it's mundanities, with who she was losing all meaning to her. All that mattered was what the calamity had made her: Terra, the Unbreakable. Terra, the Conquerer. Terra, Emissary of Death. As the apocalypse rolled around, Terra gathered the sparse few similarly effected by the Yami spell and inducted those similarly-minded (and a few who weren't by force) and became the leader of a fierce and crazed cult, turning into one of the main terrors to be feared by survivors and adventurers alike

- Then she heard about Eden, and in Terra's twisted mind, this little beacon of hope was a threat to her "rule" over the twisted land made by the apocalypse. As such, she set out to conquer the city and turn it into her stronghold...though, upon turning into Terrable in the other pacifist route, this motivation ended up turning into "wipe Eden off the map entirely." Why? Well...

- Terrable, in the context of every pacifist route save for her own, is the corruption of the Yami spell seeping further into her mind, twisting her even further and removing what little inhibitions she had left. See, Terra on her own is exactly what you'd expect from her lines in-game - cold, calculating, ruthless, and very prideful in her control and magical strength. And that last bit has led to Terra absolutely despising the very idea of being pitied. Which, to her, is getting healed after battle (much to her annoyance during the pacifist route), or being spared after being rightfully defeated. And, wouldn't you know it, the latter happens in every pacifist route save for hers! She's not really in a position to retaliate when it happens (one hp and all), so she just leaves without trouble, but the resulting anger and resentment the act causes is enough to give the lingering magic from the Yami spell an opening to get further in and turn her into its merciless agent

- Thankfully, beating Terrable is enough to snap her out of it, and even begin healing and returning back to her old self once she gets into Eden. Speaking of - that is actually fairly close to how a Terra pacifist route goes down! Going into that now...

- During her encounter with the first boss, when Terra has them at her mercy, something they do is enough to trigger a distant connection in the part of her mind buried by the insanity brought on by the Yami spell. And that is enough to get her to hesitate. Not quite realizing what's happening, Terra is able to come up with a reason to spare them, and does such, walking away (though probably planning on killing them later). Then, as her journey continues, more and more of her old self starts to come back, and she starts to lose her murderous urges and the need for dominance and control that once defined her. They don't go away entirely, though. Indeed, the part of her still under the influence of the Yami spell becomes more and more sickened by her continued displays of mercy, and eventually splits off from her entirely, along with a chunk of her magic, resulting in the Terrable that Terra fights at the end of her pacifist route

- Should the player elect to spare Terrable on the Terra pacifist route, Terra decides that she needs to owe up to her actions done while under the influence of the Yami spell, and accepts Terrable as part of her, absorbing Terrable into herself

[johannas-motivational-insults]

“Friendship” in the Horde

Season 4 raised some interesting questions about how people who grew up in the Horde define friendship. Kyle claimed that his squadmates were his friends, despite how we've seen them bully him, and Scorpia admitted she didn’t even know how to be a good friend. We also saw further developments in Catra and Lonnie’s dynamic that have some interesting implications about their bond, both past and present. However, while these themes became more explicit this season, they are hardly new. The Horde worldbuilding is really quite brilliant, as the writers have been laying the foundation for these revelations by showcasing certain patterns since season one.

This got a little lengthy on me, but there was a lot to consider. The lack of healthy emotional expression and relationship modelling is one obvious problem in the Horde, but the hostile environment has also led to some very specific power dynamics and social structures. These structures, while potentially helpful in hostile environments, are maladaptive in terms of fostering healthy relationships. Ultimately, every character who grew up in the Horde is emotionally crippled. (I’m not even going into Adora, an excellent example, because her repression and communication problems are well-documented and I wanted to focus on characters still in this environment.)

Scorpia

Let’s start with Scorpia. Her revelation that she doesn’t understand what friendship is was a big moment for her, but for those of us who have been watching closely, it’s no big surprise. Scorpia was so desperate for a meaningful connection that she latched onto the first person who showed any signs of considering her a friend, ignoring all the red flags indicating that the relationship was not healthy. Actually, she didn’t ignore them so much as not recognize them, because she didn’t even know what a healthy relationship looks like. To her, the fact that Catra invited her to her room and chose her to accompany her on a mission was enough for her to dub them the Superpal Duo.

Of course, we all know how that went for her. She continued to support Catra unconditionally despite the latter’s tendency to use Scorpia as her emotional punching bag. They did settle into a somewhat more reciprocal and caring relationship after Scorpia saved Catra against her orders during 2x05, proving that Catra was more important to her than the mission (even if that wasn’t what Catra thought she wanted). It’s sad when you think about it, because that was probably the first time Catra ever experienced her wellbeing being prioritized above all else.

Unfortunately, the revelation that Shadow Weaver had gone running back to Adora after betraying her triggered a trauma response and made her clam up again, lashing out at Scorpia and shutting her out even though she had done nothing to betray her trust. It took Catra blatantly attacking and insulting Scorpia when she failed to bring back Entrapta’s recordings (and some well timed reality checks from Emily) for Scorpia to realize that Catra was being a bad friend and she couldn’t win her over by being a good friend.

And actually, Scorpia’s confession in 4x10 that she “thought” she was being a good friend to Catra implies that she had since realized that she wasn’t actually being a good friend to Catra either. She knows the scorpions were a loyal people and she ascribes to that ideal, and she has so much love to give and always tries so hard to be positive, but not setting boundaries with people or demanding a measure of basic respect does nothing for them or you. Also, you can’t ignore the fact that Scorpia forced her affections on Catra, inserting herself into Catra’s life in a way that made her uncomfortable, and continued to ignore Catra’s attempts at setting boundaries with her (which is also very disrespectful). While Catra was certainly the aggressor, she was not the only one who failed in this partnership.

Let’s go back for a moment to Scorpia’s earliest indication that Catra might want to be her friend, when she confides in her and enlists her help coming up with and then executing a plan. Being chosen as Catra’s wingman seems to be important here, and perhaps she was wilfully ignoring how she was the only person who could make Catra’s plan work, but being confided in and trusted was huge to her. And since Horde soldiers are so used to being used, they don’t see it as a red flag. Catra actually flat out said Scorpia was the only person she could trust. How could a lonely gay not interpret that as a sign of being special to someone?

The squad

The importance of trust also becomes evident when considering the interactions among the main squad. Loyalty seems to be paramount in the Horde, not just the scorpion kingdom. Adora defecting to the Rebellion and leaving her squad behind was seen as a huge betrayal, and not just by Catra. Did anyone else want to cry when Lonnie struck back at Adora with “we were your friends” in 1x09? Lonnie was deeply hurt by Adora’s abandonment, feeding into her disillusionment with the Horde. Similarly, when Double Trouble revealed they had double-crossed Catra, her devastated reaction was not that her plans were ruined, but that they had betrayed her. That no doubt was also related to her previous betrayals, but also serves to highlight the importance of loyalty in their subculture.

While all the Horde characters were interesting to watch this season when it came to the themes of friendship, the arc was most pronounced in Lonnie. As I’ve mentioned previously, Scorpia had a short arc over one episode where her rosy worldview was destroyed, causing her to leave (much like Adora), while Lonnie was already a cynic who was aware of the Horde’s imperfections and had to go through more extreme hardships to detach from this unhappy but familiar environment (much like Catra, we hope).

Though she and the boys didn’t leave the Horde until the finale, her disillusionment was already evident in her first episode this season. After Catra berated them for something that wasn’t their fault and demanded they risk their lives to fix it (big Hordak energy), she had her first big revelation: “Catra doesn’t care about us, Adora left us. Everything they taught us in the Horde about loyalty is meaningless. It’s everyone for themselves.” In the next episode, she was frustrated by Scorpia’s naïve enthusiasm and trust in Catra, but it took a big blow up between her and Catra for her to finally decide she was done with her, done with the Horde in general.

Kyle represents a sort of middle ground between Lonnie and Scorpia in terms of outlook. He was not treated well in the Horde, but still believed in the ideals of loyalty and squad unity. He wanted to believe Catra had sent them out on a mission into the Whispering Woods because she trusted them and wanted it to be a team-building exercise. His take on it was: “She may be mean, but we’ve always had each other’s backs. Ever since we were kids.” He saw the squad as his family, including Catra (and previously Adora). It took Catra baring her claws and threatening to attack Lonnie outside of a battle sim for him to lose faith in her.

Bullying, the pecking order, and squad unity

As is clear by this point, the Horde defections this season were driven by Catra mistreating the others, but we can’t lose sight of how mistreatment is a fact of daily life in the Horde. And as I mentioned above with Lonnie, it’s those who were most aware of and desensitized to the mistreatment who had the hardest time naming it and leaving the toxic environment. Call it Stockholm Syndrome, call it the sunk cost fallacy, but either way once you’ve submitted to a system that dehumanizes you, it’s hard to admit that that system is wrong and leave it for a better life. Scorpia and Adora grew up somewhat privileged in the Horde in that they were destined for greatness, so they were never abused overtly and they had a level of protection from power-hungry cadets looking to claw their way to the top of the heap. They were already at the top and couldn’t be taken down, so they didn’t have to bully or be bullied.

The importance of pecking order is much more evident when considering people like Kyle, Catra, and Lonnie. Within their squad, Kyle is obviously the omega of the gang (get your heads out of the gutter, that is not what I mean), the one who gets blamed for everything that goes wrong and is constantly getting picked on. Lonnie shits on him, Catra shits on him, and even Rogelio gives him shit and goes along with the blame game. Despite all this, Kyle considers them his friends, his family.

This starts to make sense when you consider it in terms of intra vs. extra squad relations. Maybe the squad didn’t show Kyle any respect or treat him with kindness, but they did protect him in battle sims (sometimes lol) and rescue him from the spore storm. You also kind of get the impression that although they bullied him and asserted their dominance on the regs, they would protect him if other people tried to hurt him. You might say he’s the pet of the gang – he has no power within the structure and it may not be pleasant, but the structure still offers advantages. Having allies was still good for him even if he was at the bottom of the pecking order within the alliance.

Through a sociology lens, you might say the squad (and the Horde in general, given it’s a military society) follows the stereotypical male model of friend groups with clear pecking orders that everyone buys into (with exceptions for blatant power struggles), as opposed to the stereotypical female model that appears less hostile and more cooperative outwardly but involves a lot of underhanded infighting. (Obviously those are broad generalizations and it can be argued how much of it is nature vs. nurture, but they are observable patterns that boys and girls are socialized into in many human societies.) This ties in interestingly to @jaelav3​‘s observations about masculinity equating to strength and femininity equating to power in the Horde (a meta she really needs to write, because it’s brilliant). The hostility of the Horde forces soldiers into these rigid pecking orders in order to find protection in a dangerous place. When everyone knows and accepts their role, it is easier for the squad to function in a unified manner and protect each other, even if it’s at the cost of their mental and emotional health.

Now, when not everybody buys into the pecking order or it’s ambiguous, and/or if there’s a sudden power vacuum, that’s when things get interesting…

Catra and Lonnie, the perfect case study

Catra also suffered a lot of bullying and abuse in the Horde, but in a very different way than Kyle. She was in a unique and kind of contradictory position where she was somewhat protected by her close friendship with Adora, but she was also Shadow Weaver’s favourite chew toy and everyone knew it, which made her a target as well. If Shadow Weaver abused her, she wasn’t going to care if the other cadets abused her as well. Catra’s defensive body language and general distrustfulness and hostility gives the impression that she was bullied behind Adora’s back and Shadow Weaver turned a blind eye, perhaps even encouraged it.

This was all illustrated in 1x03, when Catra and Lonnie butted heads and Catra was forced to back down when two other cadets backed up Lonnie, then Lonnie told her to watch it because Adora wasn’t around to protect her anymore. That one line alone told so much of their story. This was also one of the few times we saw cadets using people from other squads to affect their own squad’s dynamics, as – like I said – that seems to be kept mostly in-house. It may have had something to do with Lonnie’s overall standing among the cadets or how Kyle and Rogelio rank lower in their little hierarchy and seem uninterested in getting involved with the power politics, but I digress.

The argument itself was meaningless, really - the whole thing was a pissing contest, an attempt to assert dominance within their squad’s sudden power vacuum. Lonnie fancied herself the new leader of the squad, and she ended up getting her wish in a backwards way when Catra was promoted out of the squad and given official power over her. Catra, of course, took every opportunity to rub this in Lonnie’s face, perpetuating the cycle of abuse she’d fallen victim to.

The reason they had a power struggle in the first place wasn’t just because Adora left, it was because their pecking order was previously unclear. Catra wasn’t very cooperative and tended to go rogue, so she didn’t slot nicely into the power structure. She was also perceived as lazy, as she had adopted an air of nonchalance once she realized she’d never get the recognition or praise so easily heaped on Adora. (Why try when failing hurts so much?) That being said, she was Adora’s best friend and basically her sidekick, so in a way that made her second-in-command of the squad.

On the other hand, Lonnie was devoted to the squad and was always around to provide tangible support, so she was also kind of Adora’s second-in-command. Combined with her harder work ethic, this also gave her a very legitimate claim to the throne. She was obviously pissed when her teammate she saw as a lazy asshat got promoted, but to her credit she lived up to her own personal ethics, buying in and not pushing back against Catra’s authority until late in season 4.

Despite the power struggle, however, Catra and Lonnie do seem to have a bond. Even if they don’t like each other, they have a certain level of trust in each other. When the princesses invaded the Fright Zone in 3x04 and shit started to go sideways, the first person Catra was looking for to try to get support and/or answers was Lonnie. Then in 4x10 when she was starting to lose her mind amid a lack of sleep and Scorpia’s defection, she pulled Lonnie aside and demanded to know what was going on among the soldiers, what they thought of her.

This was an incredibly interesting scene with some deep implications. Because while it was on one hand an expression of trust in Lonnie, it was also an acknowledgement that Lonnie was one of her bullies and held clout among the people who have demeaned and abused her in the past. It also showed that Catra still has social anxiety and her sense of social power (as opposed to power in terms of rank) is very fragile, which is extremely characteristic of a bullying victim. Also, the fact that Catra said, “Just leave. Like everybody else.” implied that Lonnie leaving would hurt her emotionally, which is rather illuminating.

As for Lonnie, her loyalty meant she bought into the system and expected to Catra to do her job running the place, taking care of the Horde. And Catra certainly succeeded early on, taking territory and increasing productivity. In return, Lonnie was a loyal and obedient soldier, even if she never hesitated to give Catra a bit of attitude. But she became frustrated in season 4 when Catra went on her sunk cost fallacy spiral and ended up making things worse for everyone else as well as herself. This failure was a huge betrayal to Lonnie, and it’s important to note that she wouldn’t feel betrayed or disappointed if she had expected nothing of Catra in the first place. It’s one thing to be kind of a dick about your superior rank, another entirely to endanger your squad/friends (or anyone you are responsible for, really) and run them into the ground as a remedy for your own anxiety.

The breaking point of course was the scene in the locker room in 4x12, when a lonely Catra tried to be “friends” with the squad again and was briefly successful in mending fences a little until she snapped at Kyle and then at Lonnie, calling them pathetic. This prompted Lonnie to shove her, which in turn made Catra bare her claws and rush Lonnie. There was really no coming back from that, even though Kyle intervened before anyone got hurt.

As an aside, Kyle stepping up in this scene was amazing - this season in general was everything I wanted for him. And it’s important that it was him who intervened, because he was really the only one who could ask Catra, “We used to be your friends, why are you treating us like this?” It makes perfect sense for Catra to push back at Lonnie given their history, but Kyle doesn’t have a history of bullying Catra (quite the opposite). And wow, it had an impact on Catra. You could just see the confusion and regret on her face before she brings back the façade of anger and kicks them out.

When the squad left the Horde, Lonnie said that they were done protecting Catra. This assertion is interesting, given their checkered past – since when was anyone protecting Catra? Lonnie bullied her, and none of them protected Catra from Shadow Weaver, not even Adora (though bless her heart, she tried). But this does make some sense when you consider how much of the idea of friendship is based on loyalty, and how important that adherence to the structure is for protection. In Lonnie’s mind, even if Catra was now their commander, they were still a unit in a way. And she saw standing by and obeying Catra to be a form of protection, helping her stay respected and carry out her plans. Lonnie is a good support person, and by removing her support, she was in a way removing her protection as well.

(After the series is over I might just go all out and do a huge-ass meta about Catra and Lonnie through the seasons. I am absolutely fascinated by this relationship, if you can’t tell.)

Allyship

Overall, you can’t help but get the impression that the Horde’s version of friendship is more akin to allyship. It’s protection, unity, loyalty. However, that doesn’t mean they don’t get emotionally attached, it’s more that how you feel about someone is less important than what that relationship can do for you. That’s why Scorpia doesn’t even understand what friendship is. That’s why Catra tolerates “friends” who annoy her, because they’re useful to her (not that she doesn’t get attached in time, but that’s not why she tolerates them in the first place).

Catra’s one of the few people in the Horde who has experienced real friendship, as her bond with Adora was much more emotional than practical (even if it was both). And that explains why she eventually lashed out at Scorpia and said they were not friends when clearly they were by the Horde’s definition. Her and Adora really had taken the friends thing to a different level, and she was missing that dearly.

It will be interesting to watch the interactions between the Horde characters when they are thrown back together in new circumstances, out of the Horde’s rigid power structure. Honestly, the redefining of these alliances and friendships is one of the things I am most looking forward to in the final season.

[sou-ver-2-0]

I'm curious about your thoughts on the relevance of the Hades Incident to the Death Game. My one friend thinks that the survivor from it who wrote the journal organized it and is, in a way, trying to make Sara like the girl from it through the Death Game, which is there's such focus on her. Also, we discusses who's parallel wrote the journal: Sou's or Keiji's (since the girl=Sara, lost best friend during first vitim=Joe, Boy even younger=Gin). But I just wanna hear your thoughts on the incident

The Hades Incident, the Present Death Game, and the Role of the Man from the Memorandum

I think about the Hades Incident a lot! My thoughts are very similar to yours, Anon!

Like your friend, I have a feeling that this relationship between the Man from the Memorandum and his own High School Girl is at the heart of the Death Game.

Based on all the parallels we can draw between the past participants and the current participants, it feels like the present Death Game is an attempt to recreate the past Death Game. Assuming that the Man was the sole survivor of the past Death Game, the logical conclusion is that this recreation is his attempt to meet his beloved High School Girl again, likely by forging Sara Chidouin into her by putting her through the same trials.

The fact that all of the participants have been observed by Asu-Naro since birth also contributes to the theory that they were chosen because of their resemblance to past participants, or that they were even molded to fit the personalities of past participants.

I’m also on board with the theory that the Man is most likely Meister from Russian Roulette, since they share a similar color scheme. Meister is the first villain we meet, so it would be satisfying to bring him back as the main villain. Additionally, the Russian Roulette trial is Sara’s first step to becoming a leader, so it makes sense that the Man would want to witness it. Especially since he apparently missed Russian Roulette during the Hades Incident; he would be curious to see it with his own eyes this time.

Here are the most apparent parallel roles from the Past and Present Death Games:

“17-year-old School Girl”: Sara Chidouin

“Her Best Friend”: Joe Tazuna

“A Boy Even Younger Than Her”: Gin Ibushi

“The Man Whose Views Most Aligned with Hers”: Keiji Shinogi

“The Man from the Memorandum”: Shin Tsukimi

There are striking parallels between the Man from the Memorandum and Shin Tsukimi, but there are striking differences too. So I’d love to share a theory my friend and I have often discussed:

“The Man from the Memorandum” was first meant to be played by Original Sou Hiyori. Since Hiyori died, he was replaced by a “back-up”, Shin Tsukimi. This explains why the kidnappers would give Shin such an unusual First Trial. Shin’s First Trial fundamentally changed his personality to more closely resemble Original Sou. What if that personality change was by design?

My friend came up with this theory to explain Shin Tsukimi’s paradoxical position: he is technically a candidate qualified to win, and yet he has a zero percent chance of winning. He seems to exist as both a candidate and a non-candidate. What if—my friend suggested—Shin was originally a non-candidate, but his position was shifted to fill in Sou Hiyori’s candidacy?

Ever since they shared that theory with me, I haven’t been able to get it out of my head! It would certainly explain why Shin’s First Trial is so strange compared to the others.

The part of “The Man from the Memorandum” himself would have been an important role. Since the Man left his First Trial deciding to not trust anyone, it was likely an antagonistic role. Given this role’s difficulty and importance, could it be that Original Sou Hiyori was perhaps…trained for the part?

This also leads into my other theory that Original Sou could be Meister’s son. Original Sou was a unique candidate for the Death Game who seemed intimately involved in preparations from a young age. I’m assuming that he was about Shin Tsukimi’s age since they met in high school. While it would be scarier if Original Sou was an adult pretending to be a teenager in Shin’s school, I think it would be more compelling if he was simply the teenage son of a villain. It would go a long way to explain Original Sou’s strange dedication to Asu-Naro, in spite of him being a potential victim of the Death Game. It would also explain his uniquely serious reaction to the player trying to name him “Meister.”

It could also parallel Rio Ranger’s relationship with Gashu! There’s a moment when Shin and Sara wonder if Gashu hoped to make Rio Ranger his “successor,” but they decide that it ultimately doesn’t matter. Clearly, Rio Ranger’s life didn’t actually matter to Gashu; only the Death Game mattered to Gashu. What if this was meant to foreshadow the relationship between Meister and Midori? Personally, this is one of my favorite pet theories; it would make Original Sou a more complex character and explain some of his bizarre quirks.

Similarities between the Man and Shin

I’d like to talk some more why Shin fits the role of “The Man from the Memorandum” better than Keiji.

The first thing we learn about the Man is his confession, “In the first trial, I killed a person.” Obviously, this more directly parallels with Keiji who literally kills a person, while Shin only metaphorically kills himself. But the metaphorical suicide still counts as a parallel, since the narrative treats it so seriously. (However, I still consider this a potentially significant difference between the Man and Shin. I think it could be evidence that Original Sou would have been a better fit for the role, since Sou had a harsher personality than Shin.)

The role of “The Man Whose Views Most Aligned with Hers” can only be Keiji. Keiji is an adult man and Sara’s strongest ally. He is the voice of reason who helps Sara establish order in the group.

The roles of Keiji and Gin are still important. They are two of Sara’s closest allies. Their deaths would devastate her. And they even get to be mentioned in the book! So it’s not like Nankidai is ignoring Keiji’s significance.

The clearest and simplest parallel between the Man and Shin is that neither of them participates in Russian Roulette. Shin is even deliberately barred from participating! That’s significant! Meanwhile, Keiji is one of the most important voices in Russian Roulette so he needed to be there to help place trust in Sara.

I believe the Man’s role is an antagonistic role, since he wrote, “I would never trust others. That was what I decided.” This line fits Shin better than Keiji. Even though they are both cynical characters, Shin sets himself apart from the group, while Keiji makes himself indispensable to the group.

The relationship between the Man and the High School Girl is at the heart of the Past Death Game. Similarly, I think that the relationship between Shin and Sara is the beating heart of the Present Death Game. Their rivalry is the story’s most fundamental relationship that gives way to conflict and resolution. Even in the event that Shin dies, his presence is still felt in a major way through Kanna, Midori, and the Shin AI.

The game gives us an obvious visual parallel between the Man and Shin in the screenshot I pulled earlier. Notably, both Shin and the Man have slim frames and fluffy hair. However, the Man wears an expensive suit more similar to Midori, while Shin looks like he could have gotten his clothes while dumpster diving.

The wiki mentions another parallel, which is that both the Man and Shin change their views on the High School Girl after the Second Main Game. I agree that’s significant, although we can once again point to some obvious differences in how their views change…

Differences between the Man and Shin

Beyond the question of whether they killed someone in their First Trial, and beyond their taste in clothes, the most glaring difference between the Man and Shin is this:

The Man didn’t care about Kanna.

Not once in his Memorandum does the Man mention anyone resembling Kanna. If the Man took on an antagonistic role like I suspect, he might have acquired a minion like Kanna. However, he considers the Kanna role so insignificant that she doesn’t even merit a line. And since the Man became the victor of his Death Game, he was presumably willing to throw his minion under the bus like everyone else in order to survive. When the Man weeps at the end of his story, his tears aren’t for the loyal, vulnerable little girl; he cries for the brave High School Girl and the lost romantic relationship he desired with her.

If Shin wrote a memorandum about his experience in the Death Game, don’t you think he would have written words for Kanna? He cared so much for Kanna that he would have sacrificed himself for her.

Furthermore, while both the Man and Shin share an obsession with the High School Girl, the nature of their obsessions is different.

After the Second Main Game, the man writes that he felt that “I would be fine with my own death as long as she won it all.” That’s completely different from how Shin feels after the Second Main Game, whether Sara votes for him or Kanna.

If Sara chooses to kill Shin and save Kanna, Shin doesn’t think about Sara’s chances to “win” the Death Game at all. He’s thinking about how grateful he is that Sara—the strongest character—chose to protect the most vulnerable among them, the suicidal little girl. Shin is “fine with his own death,” but not because he wants Sara to win. He’s fine with his own death because he finally trusts Sara to make the most ethical decisions and to always protect the weak. He isn’t thinking about Sara’s life; he’s thinking about her will. He realizes that he should have trusted her from the beginning, because Shin and Emotion Sara share a commitment to protecting the vulnerable.

Likewise, if Sara chooses to kill Kanna and save Shin, Shin still isn’t thinking about anyone winning the Death Game. All he can think about is revenge. Logic Sara affirms Shin’s belief that the strong will always betray the weak. I believe that this Shin has also accepted his own future death, but he seems determined to take Miss Sara down with him, along with the Floor Masters and everyone in charge of the Death Game.

In both cases, Shin is thinking outside the box while the Man from the Memorandum could only think within the rules of the Death Game. Shin is principled in a way that the Man was not. This is another reason why I think Original Sou would have been a very different kind of antagonist than Shin, since Original Sou is presumably loyal to Asu-Naro. If I’m right, Original Sou would not be likely to think about breaking the Death Game or hoping for escape.

…

Those are my main thoughts on the Hades Incident! I could be completely wrong on some of these theories, but it sure is fun to think about. This has already gotten very long so I’ll end it here. Thank you for asking!

[metamelonisle]

assorted headcanons i have (fandoms involved: Kirby, Super Mario, Sonic, Smash)

mayro hcs:

Within the three central characters of SMB, the order of weakest to strongest is: Mario -> Peach -> Bowser. Bowser is an incredibly strong beast of a king, and has the magical prowess to match. Peach is able to match Bowser in terms of magical power, as she is usually the one who undoes all of his magic at the end of the game. However, she’s still physically weaker than Bowser (it’s not because she’s weak though. It’s just that no one is as strong as Bowser). Judging from how she’s playable in some games, she is just as physically strong and agile as Mario is, which puts her dead center between Mario and Bowser. Mario is the weakest, as he has no magic of his own, and outside of external aid (Powerups, Caps, Power Stars, FLUDD, Luma, Cappy) he really only has his acrobatic skills (which admittedly, are pretty impressive) and his wits. From what I remember, Mario has never beaten Bowser in a direct straight fight. He’s always either A. aided by an external force (like powerups or friends) or uses the environment to his advantage to circumvent the power difference (like the Axe in SMB or the brick-block floor in SMB3). Peach is as strong as Mario physically and Bowser magically, but usually gets kidnapped because Bowser never plays fair (using multiple people to capture her, using sneak attacks, i mean, i’d be surprised if he didnt employ an ultimatum of “get in the koopa klown car, or i’m eating mushroom stew tonight! Gwah ha ha!”)

Dr mario is mario’s dad. he is the main protagonist of DK 81, mario bros 83 (alongside his twin brother Luigi, Sr.) and the first Dr. Mario, and the main antagonist of DK’s Circus and DK Jr.. He dated the Lady from DK 81 (no relation to pauline) but nothing came of it. his significant other/mario jr and luigi jr.’s mother is unknown, if they are even the same person. He is still practicing medicine to this day and is a vetetan in Smash, having attended every game since Melee as a fighter but Brawl and attended every game since 64 to cheer on his sons. (Don’t ask me who nurse peach is idk yet also DM64 and DMW are different)

there are two Mad Pianos. One is a mechanical trap made by Boos (64) and the other one is a real piano possessed by Boos (DS).

the Unagi from 64 suffers from anxiety and is more afraid of Mario than anything else. Peach thinks very fondly of them.

Sonic sometimes asks Mario to babysit Classic Sonic (the one from Mania) and as a result they get along pretty well. CS regards mario as a kind of “cool older brother/father figure” and Mario just thinks he’s adorable. They do extreme sports together

kriby hcs:

bandana dee is nonbinary (he/them)

king dedede probably runs a memepage on facebook about how great he is (it has 3 followers)

dmk listens to linkin park and considers them to be “way better than whatever that punk listens to”

the four otherworldy kings (parallel woods, parallel kracko, parallel meta knight and parallel dedede) are still alive for some reason and HOO ARE THEY MAD (at kirby & co specifically. they’ve chilled out regarding anyone else but if they see the dream friends or that cheeky piece of gum it’s ON SIGHT)

Kracko is related to dark matter in some form. i dont know how but they are. they’re suspicious. also kracko is scared of shrek bc they saw that one tumblr post where he eats lightning then reaches into his bag for the gun that kills clouds

dark nebula has two interpretations: first is mine: an extremely overconfident and egotistical blob of dark energy that thinks he’s lucifer. he talks with a disgusting amount of prose and a fake vague european accent bc he thinks it makes him sound refined. he calls himself names like “the lord of darkness” and “the beast within us all” and stuff and tries to get people to sell their souls to him. the thing is, he’s weak. like, PATHETICALLY weak compared to most beings on popstar. he were actually locked in a box by someone in response to being given a “proposal” to be his servant and herald. (that “someone” may or may not have been Galacta Knight) the other interpretation is that they’re a chaotic and malevolent demon with a very intense friendliness with nothing behind the eye. (like bill cipher, or tom cruise.) they got locked in a box bc Zero made them and was like “you are a mistake” and locked them in a box so they wouldn’t have to deal with them. it’s unclear if they resent zero for this and may be unaware of their existence entirely. When entities are killed, they release all of their power in a big explosion. this is why enemies “pop” when they are defeated, why mid-bosses violently explode after a while, and why bosses explode multiple times and then vanish in one last big one. the more powerful the entity and the more energy they retain at the time of death, the more powerful the explosion. This is largely the reason why Void Termina was sealed in the Jamba Heart instead of being slain by the heroes of yore, as the resulting explosion might destroy the entire galaxy. It is theorized that if Galacta Knight were to take his own life, the resulting explosion would irreversibly devastate the universe. (this remains unproven, as he only dies after being extremely worn down and eventually fatally wounded by Meta Knight.) 

galacta knight is one of the heroes of yore who defeated and sealed void before the series started. people feared and demonized him because of his power, and it made him scared he might accidentally hurt innocent people as a result. he became a hermit and wondered how he could neutralize himself as a threat to the world, and ultimately decided the best choice was to seal himself away in a crystal. Whenever he is unsealed he is extremely upset (as he considers himself a living WMD who’s very presence presents an immediate danger to everyone around him), and fights whoever he believes unsealed him (as since they revived him, they must have known about him, and why else would anyone unseal the greatest warrior in the galaxy if they’re not gonna use him as a weapon/attack dog?) He eventually dies for good in ironically, his first appearance, at the very end of Meta Knightmare Ultra. When he is beaten by Meta Knight, he’s lost so much power and strength that he can finally let go, realizing that with warriors like Meta Knight around, not only is he no longer a danger, but he can rest easily knowing that the galaxy is in safe hands. Finally at peace, Galacta Knight dies, releasing an explosion on par with Nova’s. Due to the way time works, Galacta Knight is fated to survive everything that happens to him up until his very last fight with Meta Knight in Ultra. He has known that he would die in a duel to the death with a winged masked knight in the stars since the days of yore, and used to frequently exploit the law of Forgone Conclusion up until the sealing of Void. Post-Seal, he began to believe the vision he saw was symbolic rather than literal, believing that this masked knight likely represents the darkness within his heart, and that his “death” actually meant his inevitable snapping and descent into fallen heroism and wanton destruction. When he finally sees Meta Knight in Robobot, he does not actually recognize him until he’s been badly wounded, but still escapes, as they’re not in the right place yet. He is elated to realize that the vision of the future is not describing his fall, but his actual death. When MKU finally rolls around, Galacta is hopeful (which is likely why he doesn’t kill Nova like he did with SD), as he’s knows going to die, which means the universe will be safe. Knowing that this is his last dance, he pulls out all of the stops to give Meta Knight the greatest fight he can before he croaks. When the final blow is struck, he loses control of his wings and is flung around by muscle spasms, but is able to regain control long enough to relish in his defeat. Galacta Knight and Hyness are not the only currently living heroes of yore. Given that Gooey, a piece of Dark Matter who is very loving and friendly, is clearly able to not only receive love, but give it as well, I think that all Dark Matter is capable of it, except for Zero, and possibly Miracle Matter. (I’d be willing to give them a chance, though.) They are unable to tap into their positive emotions because of their loyalty to Zero. This has changed as of Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards and Kirby Star Allies. After Zero’s death in 64 and Void’s purification in Allies, all remaining Dark Matter is free to do as they please without Zero to tell them what to do. Most have disappeared, but four major members remain. Gooey, Void, Miracle Matter, and Dark Matter Swordsman. He was the first Dark Matter to realize that he cared about others when post DL3, he questioned why he was so adamant to fight Kirby and Gooey even when it could have easily resulted in his death. He ultimately came to the conclusion that it was because he genuinely cared about Zero, and his intense loyalty to him was a result of that. Until Void’s purification, DMS hung around Gooey frequently, as they’re really the only family he has left. After Void’s purification, he was elated to learn that Zero had effectively come back, but now able to give love as well as receive it. He’s a little sad Void doesn’t remember his time as Zero, and as such doesn’t remember him, but believes it’s for the best that Void is not burdened by his past mistakes. His relation to Miracle Matter is unknown.  Now that Void has been purified and DMS has embraced his positive emotions, they are no longer weak to the Love-Love stick or the Rainbow Sword. As such, the Love-Love Stick has been disassembled back into the heart stars and returned to their owners, and the Rainbow Sword is currently in the possession of DMS, having replaced his old sword. Similarly to all native Dream Landers becoming animate yarn outlines in Patch Land, all native Patch Landers become animate three-dimensional plushies in Dream Land. The bosses from Kirby’s Epic Yarn are still around. Even Yin-Yarn is still alive! (but Shhhh don’t tell anybody its a secret) They’re doing a lot better now that Yin-Yarn isn’t around/active to boss them around. Fangora- Mostly just vibes in Weird Woods. They’re a lot less hostile then they used to be, so give em’ a visit! They’d love to eat-er... Meet you! Squashini- Still performs magic. He uses a weird mix of stage magic and actual magic and occasionally performs in Dream Land. He’s especially popular on Halloween! Hot Wings- Continues to look after her chicks in Hot Land, although they’re adolescents at this point rather than babies. She’s cooled down in terms of intensity and has begun to warm up to visitors, but only really trusts Fluff and Kirby. In Dream Land, her fire is cloth, but still burns like real fire. She has occasionally been known to barbecue as of late, complete with a cheesy apron and cheesier jokes. This has made her popular in Patch Land but she mostly just cooks for friends or her kids. Most of the time they just forage. Calimari- Resents Double Bubble and the Fuzz for ruining his cap, and has made himself a new one. He continues to hoard treasure, and will pickpocket anyone who comes by him. He could theoretically make a fortune with his knitting skills, but is too lazy to do so. A really good way to piss him off is to tell him he looks like a potato. He will hurt you. Meta Knight and Dedede - Oh You Know Fluff once ate an entire bar of ZOTE he found in Kirby’s laundry room and no one noticed until it was too late

idk there’ll probably be more but i’m kinda tired rn. feel free to add or edit as you please. i’m bad at being consistent i think so help is greatly appreciated 

[allimariexf]

crisis on infinite earths

so I haven’t been able to face tumblr for months, for a lot of reasons including the fact that Arrow after 8x05 sucked SO HARD that even the idea of looking at gifsets from 8x06 and 8x07 was really painful to me. 

And then I refused to watch the first three episodes of Crisis until yesterday. Regarding those first 3 episodes, I have two lines of thought. 

The first one is what everyone already knows: I HATE IT ON PRINCIPLE because it RUINED Oliver's rightful conclusion, it RUINED Arrow's direction and rightful conclusion. 

I HATE that Crisis is the reason they made Elseworlds, and that preparing/justifying Elseworlds and Crisis basically took over and ruined season 7 and 8. 

I HATE that Crisis is the reason Oliver left his family, that they're giving us tragedy porn as Oliver's ending rather than the culmination of his humanity. 

I HATE that they repeatedly subverted and perverted Oliver's own show, his own story, to prop up the other shows, the Arrowverse, and the crossovers - to expand the franchise  and appeal to a fanbase that was never going to be happy unless they turned their back on everything that made Arrow what it was in the first place. 

So I HATE IT ON PRINCIPLE because it is the culmination of that subversion of Oliver's show and story, and the culmination of appealing to that audience. 

That being said, the second line of thought is that as a story it's somewhat entertaining, and so far the plot mostly makes sense. Which is WAY more than I could say for the shitfest that was Elseworlds.

And then here are my thoughts on the ending of Crisis:

(TL;DR: FUCK THAT SHIT)

1. Though the Arrow portion was the most interesting and I appreciated the “walk down memory lane” (especially the Oliver/Ray scene about Felicity’s trust in Oliver, from 3x17), nothing can make up for the fact that the wrong people were there for Oliver's death. And nothing can make up for the fact that the wrong people were shown grieving for him. 

I appreciate that Sara, as the one main hero with a connection to Oliver, at least did the heavy grief lifting (way more than Barry and Kara), and it was truly meaningful. But it was unforgivable that Diggle and Mia (AND FELICITY) were not involved.

I appreciate that Lyla and Dig got to mourn, but again it was unforgivable that they didn't show OR EVEN MENTION Felicity. Like. THEY NEEDED TO MENTION FELICITY MOURNING. THEY NEEDED TO MENTION HER GRIEF. EVERYONE NEEDED TO MENTION HER. THEY ALL GRIEVED OLIVER SO SELFISHLY (with the exception of John); THEY BARELY KNEW HIM RELATIVE TO FELICITY. GODDAMMIT SO MAD. Also THEA!? GAHHHH. I NEEDED TO SEE A SHOT OF FELICITY AND THEA AND BABY MIA TOGETHER MOURNING among those shots of the randos mourning. I don’t care that it’s “impossible” because they’re not on the show; they should have made it possible.

2. While I appreciate the return of Sara Diggle, I HATE the "EARTH PRIME" solution.

the Arrowverse spent YEARS selling us on this multiverse idea, making us care for multiple versions of characters as entirely different people 

which ones of those people are "real" now, and which never existed (or are dead - depending on ... what actually happened)?? 

For example Harrison Wells, Harry Wells, H.R. Wells...which one is real? Also LAUREL!? Is she dead? Is she alive? Which one is she?

they spent YEARS building events in our heroes' lives based on the existence of multiple earths 

and so many of the events in "our" heroes' lives were shaped by the existence of the multiverse: 

for example, Oliver and Felicity's wedding happened at the end of Crisis on Earth-X; in this reality, when did they get married?

Similarly, I think the entire plot of all the seasons of the Flash depend on the existence of multiple earths?

they spent YEARS selling the idea that things turned out majorly different on different earths due to major and minor changes in each reality. Of everything, I think this is the most egregious issue with “Prime Earth”

if we bought into the idea that each earth, each doppelganger, was uniquely defined by the circumstances of their lives, then literally NONE of our characters survived. 

Because as we knew them, they were all heavily shaped by the existence of the multiverse (either firsthand or by proxy), and if suddenly there never was a multiverse, then it doesn't make sense that they'd turn out the same. 

Like, even if we say Earth-1 people are defaults (which there’s no reason to say that at all other than “because that’s how we want it to be,” but anyway) then maybe most of Arrow characters that originated in the first 3 seasons will be unchanged. But everyone else is basically fucked.

3. All things considered this isn’t even a big deal, but GOD the combat is just so fucking stupid, like it makes no fucking sense. 

wtf are "shadow demons"? they were never properly explained. 

why did the anti-monitor come back? 

why were they trying to fight him, like, in human form? (seriously, the comic book need to put problems into human shape so that they can be dealt with through one-on-one "combat" is so stupidly unforgivable. I get the appeal of one-on-one combat; it's why I liked Arrow to begin with. No fucking magic or metahumans, just mostly-realistic problems that manifested in realistic ways...and it made sense for humans to fight them when fighting was the appropriate solution).

Speaking of: wtf did the paragons actually *do*?? "Beam of pure love/hope/truth/courage" etc. (which itself is so cheeesy and ridiculous and I only allow it on Legends) but...okay, what?? Where? When? How? Like, I didn't need a carebear stare or laserbeams, but at least showing Oliver being affected in some way would have been nice.

4. And of course, the whole fucking utter terribleness that Oliver had to die.

Oliver Queen spent the majority of Arrow learning the lesson that SELF SACRIFICE IS THE EASY ANSWER. 

He spent years learning TO FIGHT TO LIVE. 

He spent years learning that he has a responsibility to the people who love him.

It was a betrayal of his character, his growth, his story for him to leave his family to go die.

ALSO narratively speaking, Oliver’s story began in tragedy and the narrative demanded that it end happily

Essentially, the Crossovers (and the last few seasons, since they completely revolved around the crossovers) UTTERLY BETRAYED Arrow and the character of Oliver Queen

Oliver Queen did not deserve to die

The “living as a hero is the hard part” is utter fucking BS

Arrow began as a “grounded” show, and began to slide into comic book nonsense (where rules of the universe are inconsistent, and consequences for actions lose their sense of meaning) in season 4; after that it just got worse with each crossover and each show added to the Arrowverse. Arrow became a workhorse, subservient to the expansion of a franchise. It was adding insult to injury that he died in support of such a fucking ridiculous, ungrounded story that would have been unrecognizable to the audience that first fell in love with Arrow.

So basically I’m devastated. But also not. Because though I did cry, I was also not nearly as moved as I should have been. The travesty of it all is what I grieve  the most. 

Those were just my jotted down thoughts. Probably will have more later. Love you all so much. 💗😘💗😘💗

[goingoverthegardenwall]

Chapter 8: Babes in the Wood

In this last hurrah of explicit homages to animation of the past, the most obvious discussion point is Merrie Melodies and its ilk: Babes in the Wood is essentially a full-episode reference to the bouncing musical shorts of yore, where everything can sing’n’dance and the villain is a blustery bozo who’s defeated with a sight gag. If we expand to children’s entertainment in general, as we did with Greg’s Beatrix Potter episode, then The Wizard of Oz is our logical next step: the song welcoming him to Cloud City owes everything to Dorothy’s introduction to Munchkinland, complete with the fact that our hero has just entered a dream.

And look, there’s nothing wrong with talking about the obvious. But as we near the end, I think it’s a little more interesting to instead explore the very beginning. So let’s go back to a newspaper cartoonist in New York—the one who inspired fellow New York newspaper cartoonist John Randolph Bray to become an animator, which in turn led fellow New York newspaper cartoonist Max Fleischer to become an animator, because it turns out that just like the birth of superhero comics a few decades later, the birth of American animation hinged on print artists who dreamed big in the city that never sleeps. 

A boy named Zenas was born in Michigan on September 26, 1871. Or maybe he was born there in 1869. Or maybe he was born in Canada in 1867. He said one thing, and a biographer said another, and census data says another, and I wasn’t there. It’s similarly unclear when or why he started going by his middle name, but by the time he took his first job at age 21 (or 19 or 17) as a billboard and poster artist in Chicago, he was calling himself Winsor McCay. They sure did know how to name ‘em in the 19th century.

McCay began his newspaper career as a freelancer, but moved to New York in 1903 to work for the New York Herald, where he wrote a variety of comics before hitting it big with Little Sammy Sneeze. McCay’s art was always brilliant, but his gag work was formulaic to a fault: the joke for Sammy Sneeze was always the same, he would sneeze and ruin everything right before the last panel. That devotion to formula would continue in his second big comic Dream of the Rarebit Fiend, where a fantastical events would occur for ever-changing characters before the lead woke up in the last panel, revealing it was a dream.

That second formula was the basis of McCay’s masterpiece. Already a successful cartoonist in the two short years since he’d moved to New York, his fame skyrocketed with Little Nemo in Slumberland, which used the same “wake up at the end” formula but with recurring characters and a running story. He toyed with the medium like none had before, playing with panel arrangement and innovating the portrayal of motion in comics, and his art skills only improved with this full-color strip. His success led to the vaudeville circuit, where he turned the act of drawing into a performance, and this combination of stage entertainment and his continuing comic work led him to seek new ways to dazzle the crowds.

By 1910, the earliest animated shorts had already started to emerge, and McCay was inspired by pioneers like James Stuart Blackton and Émile Cohl to try animating the characters of Little Nemo. Under Blackton’s direction, McCay singlehandedly drew around four thousand fully colored frames to produce his first animated cartoon, presented at the tail end of a filmed short about said cartoon in 1911. As mentioned, animated shorts were already a thing. But none of them looked anything like this. (If you’re concerned that there might be racist caricatures in it, don’t worry, there definitely are, McCay had a lot of strengths but overcoming garbage prejudices was not one of them).

The sheer quality of his work, continuing with the legendary Gertie the Dinosaur, directly led to the invention of the rotoscope as a means to mass-produce cartoons of similar finesse. The influence of Winsor McCay over animation as we know it is hard to overstate (and let’s stress again that this was his side gig, and he was just as influential over comic art): as crazy as it sounds, it’s safe to say that Over the Garden Wall would not exist if not for a story about the whimsical adventures of a little boy who traveled across a land of dreams from his bed. 

“Where’s Greg, Wirt?”

Babes in the Wood is delightful and goofy and lighthearted exactly once.

In the same way our fourth-to-last episode mirrored our fourth, this third-to-last episode mirrors our third: Chapters 4 and 7 focus on Wirt, but 3 and 8 are Greg’s. It’s not simply a matter of who the main character is, but what these episodes are about: Greg’s love of fun clashing with his drive to help others. Both times he's spurred by the desire to help others to go off on his own, both times he gets distracted by whimsical wonders involving funny animals and physical humor, and both times he ends up deciding to help out anyway. But despite switching his goal from making the whole world a better place to just helping his brother, the stakes are actually far higher now, so the fun has to be that much more fun if we want the full horror of the ending to sink in.

There’s no tonal shift in the series that’s more devastating than Greg falling prey to the Beast after nearly ten minutes of goofiness in Cloud City. It turns a moment of welcome relief from the growing tension of Wirt’s despair into a dagger in the heart, and the knife is twisted when we learn in our next episode what the Unknown truly is.

That despair is evident well before Wirt explicitly gives up. We get our second opening in a row featuring Beatrice in a hopeless search, and things aren’t much better for the boys. All sense of progression from the first episode feels lost, with Wirt reverting to mumbling poetry and Greg reverting to Rock Facts. Their boat is an outhouse and Greg uses a guitar as an oar, because (if you’ll pardon my French) they’re up shit creek without a paddle. When they land, Greg’s victorious bugle is a ridiculous sign of hope, but he soon drops it in the same way he abandons the guitar: in Schooltown Follies he takes instruments to help others, but this time he loses them.

Wirt’s frustration with Greg threatened to boil over in The Ringing of the Bell, only to be cooled when the Woodsman interrupts them. This time there’s no such interruption, so after Greg’s total failure to read the room gets to be too much, his brother finally snaps. It crucially isn’t entirely unjustified, as Greg’s antics might be funny to us but have not been appreciated by Wirt, and despite Greg’s age excusing his lack of emotional intelligence, it’s still gotta be frustrating for a teen to deal with that behavior nonstop. And Wirt’s “tirade” reflects his depression, because he doesn’t even seem that angry: he doesn’t shout or rave, he’s just openly irritated as he argues that they’ll be lost forever. This is apathy and fatigue, because he’s lost the energy to be furious.

But the most chilling part of the exchange isn’t Wirt cruelly blaming Greg for their mess, or abandoning their search. It’s when, after Wirt asks if they can give up, Greg responds with a chipper “You can do anything if you set your mind to it!”, a sentiment that the Beast will fiendishly repeat verbatim while tricking Greg. It’s such a generic positive expression that Greg hangs a lampshade on it, but it shows the darker side of the power our minds have over our well-being. Sure, it’s a great lesson that focus and dedication can help us achieve our dreams, but if we use that focus and dedication towards self-destructive behavior, there’s no limit to how badly we can hurt ourselves. 

After a goofy sort of prayer (incorporating lines from the classic Trick or Treat poem, which will become super relevant an episode from now), Greg is whisked away by so-creepy-it’s-funny cherubim to the score of a so-overwrought-it’s-funny song. His flight aboard the bed/cart pulled by a donkey across the sky feels legitimately magical, but we soon switch to the surreal world of 1930′s songs and physics.

Cloud City is such a stark contrast to the tone of the episode so far that it instantly feels delightful, and such a stark contrast to the tone of the entire series that it lends a special sort of wonder to Greg’s dreamland. References to old cartoons are everywhere in Over the Garden Wall, and before we delve into the tension of our last two episodes, we get one last gigantic celebration of the past with a sequence straight from the golden age of animation. 

The transition alone is enough to make this scene hilarious, but the actual jokes help quite a bit: Greg’s growing impatience with the numerous Wizard of Oz reception committees is my favorite gag of the night. Everything is cute to the point of being cloying, including our three angels that look and sound an awful lot like Greg, and the parade that he leads seems like such a fun and peaceful affair after so much time wandering alone. It’s easy to get as roped into it as Greg when we first watch it. But considering the events of our next episode, the scene destroys me every time I rewatch it, because there’s a very specific place Greg is being welcomed to.

Babes in the Wood gets a lot less cute when it becomes clear that it’s a welcoming committee for a dying child. Greg and Wirt are drowning, and this is the episode where the shock wears off and the cold sets in and the younger and weaker of the two looks into a bright light. Greg’s near-death experience is hammered in when we get to The Unknown, but for now it’s being rationalized in a way that brings him comfort.

The cold is Greg’s enemy, and the same childish tone is used to show that he’s willing to fight for his life: thus, the North Wind segment is ironically more hopeful to me than the parade’s warm welcome of death. This third song sounds enough like a Randy Newman number that I’m honestly still convinced it’s an uncredited Randy Newman performance, and it jolts us back to reality for a moment as we see the effect this bitter wind has on our babes in the woods. The boys are starting to freeze, and we again see Beatrice searching for them, getting so close before an owl that looks remarkably like the one we saw in our first episode scares her off. The episode doesn’t want to lose us completely to the sky, and this grounding helps keep the stakes clear as we complete Greg’s dream.

The Popeye-esque battle between Greg and Ol’ Windbag is a hoot, between the latter’s grumbling anger and the former rolling up his sleeve to get back into the brawl. Its conclusion is hidden from us, so we have no idea how Greg gets him in a bottle, but that fits right in with the weird logic of this throwback and allows us to meet the Queen of the Clouds.

I ought to bring up the theory that everything we see here is an illusion created by the Beast, even though I don’t really subscribe to it myself. The most obvious “hint” is that this sequence directly leads to Greg deciding to join the Beast with an off-screen promise, but we also have the old man in the welcoming march wearing an outfit just like Wirt’s and holding a lantern, perhaps a reference to the Beast’s intended fate for Greg’s brother. Plus there’s lines in the songs that seem like they’re luring Greg in, especially the assurance that the wonders of Cloud City “ain’t gonna lie,” which sounds a lot like what a liar would say. Both the Queen of the Clouds and the Beast pointedly call him Gregory instead of Greg, but so does Old Lady Mrs. Daniels (and Wirt when introducing him in Songs of the Dark Lantern). 

While it’s a neat enough idea, I think the Queen of Clouds is pretty clearly on Greg’s side for real: she seems upset at his fate in a way that doesn’t make much sense for an ally of the Beast. I also think it’s more meaningful for Greg to truly have the choice between happiness and responsibility, between the possible peace of rest and the definite struggle of life, and for him to choose the latter right as his brother is giving in. But I’ve got no beef with folks whose interpretation of the show is enhanced by this theory, so believe what you want to believe about this ambiguous situation.

Either way, we cut back to Wirt instead of Greg when the dream ends, and he’s still annoyed as he’s trying to sleep. Greg’s strange new seriousness is already cause for concern, and asking Wirt to take care of the frog is even more alarming, but even that doesn’t compare the horror of realizing where he’s actually going. Or rather, with whom.

This is another reason why I think the Queen is an ally: while it’s obviously dangerous for Greg to go with the Beast, that’s what it takes for Wirt to snap out of his funk. It’s a hell of a gambit, but as soon as he starts to awaken, he’s immediately concerned for Greg’s safety despite whatever anger or resentment he had, sparing no time or thought to the branches creeping over him as he runs after his brother. 

The quiet distortion as we follow his frantic search is soon met by the Beast’s song, but even as he blames himself for Greg’s plight, Wirt is no longer content to wallow in despair. Because it turns out that these brothers are more similar than they seem, and neither is truly capable of letting the other suffer. In the folk tale for which this episode is named, two children abandoned in the woods eventually die and are covered in leaves by small birds (with some versions seeing them enter heaven), but as we’ll see in our next episode, this isn’t a folk tale.

The thrumming noise intensifies as Wirt slips on the ice, then we add visual distortion as he plummets into the freezing water. He’s saved, but this isn’t water that sees him reborn: the distortion finally breaks as Beatrice asks the episode’s terrible question, and we’re left in the cold.

Every even-numbered episode of Over the Garden Wall, perhaps by virtue of airing twice per night, ends in a mood-setting cliffhanger that grows tenser and tenser with every iteration (or at least it does until the end). First we got a leaf symbolically caught in a fence, then the Beast’s introduction, then the fallout of Adelaide, and now the capture of Greg. Getting trapped has always been a threat for these roving heroes, but the greatest threat of all, that of Wirt trapping himself, has been handled. Things look bleaker than they ever have, but despite the glee of Greg’s dream contrasting with the harshness of reality, Wirt’s ability to climb out of the pit of despair keeps hope alive: even in absence, Greg’s influence looms large.

Rock Factsheet

Dinosaurs had big ears, but everyone forgot because dinosaur ears don’t have bones.

Where have we come, and where shall we end?

Most of these were mentioned in the main analysis, but it’s great that we hear Wirt’s description of Into the Unknown right before the episode itself shows us what happened.

[literarygoon]

So,

Roz Nay knows other people’s deepest secrets.

Having worked in child protection services in the Kootenays for a number of years now, the acclaimed thriller author sometimes finds herself sharing headspace with perfect strangers whose life stories have crossed her desk. A while back she was at the local Dairy Queen when she realized that the little girl sitting beside her, who was about to be adopted into a new family, was one of those cases.

“I knew everything that had happened to her, all the horrible reasons she was being relocated, and as she sat there talking with her foster parent, I desperately wanted to hug her, but she had no idea who I was. I was a perfect stranger to her,” she told Literary Goon.

“It does take a certain type of mind to immerse yourself in this stuff every day and not buckle. The nature of my job is I’m not on the front-lines, I do admin work, so most of this suffering I experience is on paper. It’s more about things that I read than things that I see, so it does feel slightly removed. But I read these transcripts that are so shocking it’s almost like I’m reading a draft of a manuscript. Something in my brain manages to compartmentalize it so that it becomes like reading a really dark story.”

And that’s where the inspiration for her latest book Hurry Home comes from. Set in a town inspired by her real-life stomping grounds of Nelson, B.C., her main character Alexandra Van Ness is working in child protection services when her estranged sister returns to her life — dragging with her long-buried emotional baggage from their past. Her second book after the bestselling Our Little Secret, this novel features not one but two unreliable narrators, and doesn’t quite fit the thriller genre mode as neatly as her previous effort.

“It took me a long time to write because I wanted it to be heavier, achy and poetic, with a bit more soul than my first book. It’s a different type of thriller because it’s not about psychopaths or murderers. It’s more of a tragedy, with multiple layers, because the nature of the story is more complex,” she said.

Much of that complexity comes from the characters refashioning their own narratives to live with mistakes they’ve made in the past, which is something that’s common in her line of work. Since she’s dealing with people living on the brink of poverty, mental health distress and deep dysfunction, she’s seen firsthand how suffering people find creative ways to cope.

“What I see a lot in my job is that people quite often change the narrative, so abusive parents will change the story so they’re the victim and it’s Family Services that’s the villain. It’s that human ability we all have to revise a story so that you can carry it, because it’s such an awful story you might not be able to go on otherwise,” she said.

“There aren’t many things worse than having your child taken away from you, and we see quite a few people who are in very serious pain.”

In Hurry Home, readers are asked to make sense of similarly conflicting narratives as they decide which of the two sisters is telling the truth. Nay said she was purposefully trying to keep readers off-balance, so they’re not sure whose voice to trust. And as the narrative builds to its world-shattering conclusion, nobody gets away clean.

But real life doesn’t always tidily sort people into villain and hero roles, either, and most people are some combination of both. Repeatedly she’s seen examples of appalling situations without only one person to blame. And most abuse is cyclical: whatever happens to you, you perpetuate. It’s these messy, morally complex scenarios that she was hoping to evoke on the page, showing how one devastating incident can have lifelong implications.

“The tragedy of child protection is that it’s rarely about parents not loving their children. It’s that they can’t protect them, or they can’t make the choices on their behalf that they need to make. There’s rarely a lack of love there, and kids still want to be with their parents — it’s  a link  that’s awful to break, even if the child will be safer if you remove them. There are all these contradictions and complications, so that even when you’re saving a child, there’s still tragedy,” she said.

Hurry Home is going after the grey areas. “This is a book where most of the action comes out of love, weirdly enough. In the final pages it’s about sisters and that enduring bond they have no matter what. This isn’t a book with a simple happy ending, and in some ways it ends tragically; but there’s still hope in the way the story closes — a kind of new beginning, especially for one of the sisters.”

Meanwhile, in her everyday life, the real stories still haunt her, but she’s sworn to secrecy.

“It’s all part of living somewhere idyllic that has a dark side people don’t want to talk about. There are other children in the community that I know things about, but I’m not allowed to ever speak about. Some of them are in the same school as my own kids. I wrote this book for the children that do get lost in the system. I have to move unseen. It’s like being a silent observer and hoping that in the end they’ll be okay.”

[aaaaamorphous-entity]

Alright so my siblings and I started discussing the possibility of a Fullmetal Alchemist/Fate (Fate Metal Alchemist?) crossover in which the 7 sins are summoned as Servants, and these are the thoughts so far: 

(It’s long so under the cut.)

Wrath and Olivier

- In the words of my older sibling, “We need at least one Master-Servant pair that’s pants-shittingly terrifying”. 

- Most likely team to win a one-on-one match against the other War participants, except MAYBE Pride and Scar.

- If not the ones to win the Holy Grail, certainly one of the three final contending teams.

- Least likely to form alliances. One of the few chinks in their armor.

- If you think going after the Master will be easier than dealing with the Servant, then you are hilariously incorrect.

- Wrath is most likely to be a Saber, but if the slot were already taken, he’d naturally be shuffled into a Berserker class.

~ * ~ 

Pride and Scar

- Tension

- So much tension

- They don’t like each other one bit, but they don’t hate each other depending on how you mash the canon of the two series. 

- Scar can and will yeet Pride at the enemy as a distraction for his own quick escape if he has to. 

- Okay maybe Pride hates Scar a little.

- Another Master you Just Don’t Tangle With if you can help it.

- Not as tactically strong as Wrath and Olivier, but in terms of sheer power, they’re pretty damn dangerous. 

- Even less likely to form alliances than the last pair.

- Despite this, their sheer power individually and combined are likely to make them one of the last three teams standing.

- Pride could easily wind up being shuffled into Lancer, Caster, or Archer classes, and all three are equally devastating.

~ * ~

Greed and Ling

- Let’s be honest, this one was obvious. 

- They butt heads a lot to begin with but they’ll bond with a little time, whether they like it or not.

- They’ll get sidetracked a lot between Ling wanting meals and Greed being...Greed. 

- Going after the Master is still a pretty bad idea if you aren’t a Servant. 

- Lan Fan and Fu work as Ling’s support. Maybe Lan Fan helps supply mana? 

- Fairly likely to form alliances, depending on who the other party is. 

- Strong, stealthy and moderately strategic between the two of them (and the bodyguards), they are likely to be one of the three final teams. Unlikely to win without alliance support, though.

- If Greed got shuffled into Rider class for lack of anything better being available, he’d be Pissed. Refuses to lift a finger until a proper mode of transport is procured. (Alchemy-mobile? Alchemy-mobile.)

- If not Rider, he’d be a fairly solid (if not super stealthy) Assassin. 

~ * ~

Sloth and Mei-Chang

- A fun unlikely pairing with some entertaining/cute dynamics.

- Mei will indulge some degree of Sloth’s laziness and let him sleep when she doesn’t need him or after he’s done some heavy lifting. But once it’s go time there’ll be shouting and stomping feet and ineffective pushing/pulling in an entertainingly useless attempt at getting him up.

- Illya + Berserker themed team because yes.

- Mei can and will ride on Sloth’s shoulder sometimes.

- In terms of strategic planning, they’re fairly weak. In direct combat they compliment each other nicely, with Sloth providing a very in-your-face distraction while Mei attacks from a distance.

- Going after the Master is much easier in comparison to the previous three, but still challenging and dangerous if you let your guard down. If Sloth gets called, then whoever’s going after Mei better hope their Servant is on hand to provide support.

- They’ll probably last an intermediate amount of time, until they run up against a more strategic or highly damaging team like Scar and Pride. 

- Heaven help the rest of the War if they team up with Scar. 

- Fair chance Mei would temporarily put aside her differences with Ling for the sake of defeating a greater threat. Just as likely, if not more so, for her to side with the Elric Brothers.

- Sloth is a Berserker.

~ * ~ 

Lust and Mustang

(Yes I’m aware of the irony of using that right pic.)

- Another unlikely pair who seem like they could have interesting dynamics.

- They get along decently. Not friends necessarily, but fairly compatible rather than combatible. 

- Lust occasionally flirts with Mustang just to get a rise out of him. He’ll typically brush her off, complain, or remind her that they’re in the middle of a war. Occasionally she manages to fluster him, though.

- Riza provides support, similarly to how Maya was Kiritsugu’s. Quite possibly also supplies extra mana to bolster Lust. 

- In terms of strategic thinking, they’re one of - if not THE - strongest teams. That being said, they’re severely lacking in actual strength compared to teams like Wrath and Olivier. 

- Highly likely to form alliances to advance themselves, just as likely to double-cross depending on who they join forces with. 

- We’re back into “laughable to even try” Masters to attack if you aren’t a Servant territory. 

- Depending on who they allied with, if they did, they might make it to the later/last stages of the War. Independently, they’d likely only get to late-intermediate stages at most, given Lust’s weaker combat abilities in comparison to most of their competition. 

- Lust would most likely be a Lancer, but Assassin would be a decent second choice for her.

~ * ~

Envy and the Elric Brothers

- Ed is the main Master and Al works as the co-master, similar to Archibald and Sola-Ui from /Zero. 

- Ed does not get along with Envy At All and it’s hilarious. 

- Al isn’t super fond of Envy either, but he at least tries to be a mediator and act as the level-headed one of the group.

- People always mistake Al for the Master.

- Envy and Ed are constantly sniping at each other and getting into arguments. They fight with each other as much as they do anyone else in this damn War. 

- You can bet Ed’s misused at least one command spell out of frustration-fueled stupidity. Al went up one side of him and down the other for it.

- They’re very likely to ally with other teams, though Ed and Envy are both highly suspicious and wary of betrayals. Teams Mustang, Mei, and Izumi are their best bets.

- If they team up with Izumi, she’ll kick Ed and Envy’s asses and whip them into shape. 

- Still not likely to last that long in the War independently, though. At best, medium-intermittent stages before they get crushed by a more powerful and competent team.

- Envy would be a terrifying Assassin primarily, but I could see them getting slotted into the Rider class more smoothly than, say, poor Greed.

~ * ~

Izumi and Gluttony

- Izumi terrifies poor Gluttony and commands his absolute obedience.

- Despite this, she does keep him decently fed where she can.

- Gluttony’s one of the weakest, if not the very weakest Servant in this War. The only reason they last any amount of time is Izumi’s prowess as a Master.

- If you even look at that Izumi, she’ll trample you to death with her hooves.

- They’ll ally with others, if Izumi finds the other party acceptable. (Mei-Chang, the brothers, possibly even Ling and Greed. As well as Izumi and Olivier got along in their own canon, I don’t know how well their relationship would fare in this AU.)

- Even allied, Gluttony isn’t likely to last long. Probably the first Servant to die in the early stages of the War. Despite this, Izumi would stay involved, likely to help the brothers or Mei. (Backstory for this crossover will determine who.)

- Gluttony would be shoehorned into a Caster class (the False Doorway in his stomach just barely fits). 

- He’s not very suited to most classes, the best fit probably being Berserker, given that tantrum he threw the night before the Promised Day.

~ * ~

Final Thoughts/Notes

- Hohenheim would be a terrifying Master or Caster, either way you cut it.

- The Father is the scariest Caster available in this AU’s roster.

- Most wishes are fairly obvious. The brothers want their bodies back. Izumi wants a child. Mei-Chang and Ling wish to save their clans. Mustang wants to rule the country. Scar wants justice for his people, or to ensure their safety and place in the world, depending on what stage his character development is at. The only one I’m not solid on is Olivier.

- Is The Truth the Grail??? I have no idea, but (incoming F/Zero spoilers) they kind of remind me of corrupted Irisviel, after she was merged with the Grail. 

- Greed’s death is tragic and heart-touching, just as it was in his original canon. 

- Envy could have been a devastating Assassin...if Ed were even remotely suited to being a Master for one. As it stands, most of their potential would be squandered thanks to Ed’s morals, ideals, and dislike of them. (Yes they/them pronouns for Envy imo.)

- Feel free to add your own thoughts. The hashtag #Fate/Metal Alchemist is just barely existent and it could really use some lovin’. 

[letterboxd]

Making Waves.

“I live in Florida, my cat’s in the movie. It is incredibly personal.” Waves writer and director Trey Edward Shults opens up about his filmmaking process, reveals the movies that made him fall in love with cinema, and gushes about fellow A24 alum Robert Eggers.

Trey Edward Shults doesn’t want to spoil Waves. We don’t want to spoil Waves either. To even begin to describe its unconventional structure would be a spoiler. We’ve said too much already. Just know it’s a sweeping melodrama that solidifies Shults as one of the defining American voices of the decade.

The coming-of-age family drama centers on brother Tyler (Shults regular and breakout star Kelvin Harrison Jr., pictured above) and sister Emily (Taylor Russell), their relationships and struggles with each other, their parents (Sterling K. Brown and Renée Elise Goldsberry), and first loves (Alexa Demie and Lucas Hedges). This is Shults’ third collaboration with A24 after his DIY debut Krisha (set in the same family house as Waves, and similarly playful with its aspect ratio), and the polarizing horror It Came At Night.

While its structure hasn’t worked for everyone, Waves has captured the enthusiasm of many Letterboxd members in a profound way. “This is the coming-of-age movie to end coming-of-age,” writes ActionTomasello. “The less you know of it, the better it is going into this one.” It’s been added to the popular ‘You’re not the same person once the film has finished’ list, and the film’s soundtrack, collected into this Spotify playlist by Letterboxd member Ella, is one of the most-mentioned contributing factors to its success. Writes Nick: “A soundtrack that’s meant for a specific group of people that I’m a part of. It feels too perfect how someone made a film filled with songs from Kanye, Frank Ocean, Radiohead and many others. It feels like one long, sad, fucked-up music video.”

But no Letterboxd review currently beats Jack’s heartfelt letter to Shults: “Your film has moved me to better myself, to love, and to meet my emotions head on. Thank you.” (He also put it in his top five of all time.)

We caught up with Shults to learn how Waves was conceived and executed, and investigate which films have hit him the hardest.

Taylor Russel as Emily in ‘Waves’.

You often draw your films from your personal experiences and you’ve described Waves as autobiographical. Can you go into some detail about which life experiences fed into this film? Trey Edward Shults: Where to start? In broad strokes, I was a wrestler and tore my shoulder in the same way as Tyler. The relationships between Tyler and Alexis and also Emily and Luke are inspired by my girlfriend and [me] in the good moments, bad moments, and everything in between. Their parents are inspired by my parents. I live in Florida, my cat’s in the movie. It is incredibly personal, but I had a huge collaboration with Kelvin, and then as more actors came on it got more collaborative, so it really started from this personal place and grew out of that.

How do you reconcile your relationship to your own suffering with the fact it’s become your livelihood and commodity? It’s very strange. When we recreated events in Missouri I think that was the furthest I’ve ever gone. That shoot was an all-consuming dread and I broke down, it was very hard. I would question: “Is this healthy? Is this right?”, but I came out the other side happy I did it. It was cathartic. My mom and my step-dad are therapists and I would be a total mess without them, though I’m not in therapy right now. Working through these movies is a bit of therapy.

I’m trying to make personal things that I hope connect with other people, especially this movie. Going through life and getting to the other side of it and having perspective informed me a lot. Whether it’s just tonally or pacing-wise, I wanted the film to spiritually feel that way.

The film’s photography is remarkable, especially the first act, when you have your fullest frame. Can you take us inside how you executed some of those spinning 360-degree shots? For the car shots we took out the middle console of the truck and put a slider that went from the backseat to the front. Basically, the dolly grip and I were crammed down hiding behind the car seats and the grip pushed the camera from the back to the front. Drew [Daniels, the director of photography] was in the car behind us with a remote, so he’s operating the spinning and I have a monitor in the back. That way I could talk to the kids in the car and I also had a walkie so I could talk to Drew.

A lot of the dynamic camera stuff was a case-by-case scenario, sometimes it was just running behind our steadicam operator or just hiding and letting them go and play. We wanted the camera to be purely motivated by where our main character’s emotional state of mind was, so it’s all coming from them, but then we also wanted to figure out the technical shit and make it feel to the actors that the camera disappeared and we’re not even there. So it was an interesting balance getting there. It’s a second skin for us and we know exactly what we’re after visually, but let’s disappear and let the kids play and we’ll adapt to them.

Since our name is ‘Letterboxd’, I feel obligated to ask you an aspect-ratio question. Can you share with us how you built this intuition to change at will—did you have films you saw that you feel did this well? That’s a good question, because this one really felt like it was building off what I did with Krisha and pushing it further. I do remember The Grand Budapest Hotel came out right before I started Krisha and it had the three aspect ratios to separate [its] time periods, which was really cool to me. I think I got really excited about using aspect ratio to echo the character’s state of mind. That was the goal with that, especially for Tyler’s trajectory.

The soundtrack is getting some acclaim. Do you have any songs you wanted to fit in but couldn’t find the room, or couldn’t clear the rights for? I realized there were so many songs I wanted in it, but the movie told you what works. If you tried to force it on, it didn’t work. It started with the writing and it worked its way organically. The final soundtrack is pretty close to what was in the script though I think a few changed along the way. We got incredibly lucky that we got everything we wanted. I don’t know how we did it. It was a long process and our last song didn’t even clear until after Telluride and Toronto.

Trey Edward Shults and Sterling K. Brown on the set of ‘Waves’. / Photo: Monica Lek

There are shades of Chungking Express, Magnolia and Moonlight in the film’s DNA. What were some other films you watched or recommended to your cast and crew as preparation? Funny thing is we didn’t do a lot of movie-watching for preparation. Drew and I lived in the same house so we’d always have a movie on. We were watching The Story of Film a lot—the giant anthology series and study of the history of cinema, incredible. What we watched would totally range, it could be things like Ordinary People and Raging Bull, to The Tree of Life and I Am Cuba, to Boogie Nights and Punch-Drunk Love. We would take inspiration from anything, even a film like Yi Yi. It’s a completely different cinematic approach.

Yi Yi might just be the best film about family, so it’s a good start (Lulu Wang also mentioned it in our recent chat with her about The Farewell). That’s the thing exactly: even though Waves is made in such a different way, I think spiritually they’re sprawling tales of family. That’s one of my favorite movies. For the cast, we didn’t actually talk about movies that much. It was more about Florida, music and the character dynamics and all that good stuff.

Which movie scene makes you cry the hardest? One that just popped in my head is Dancer in the Dark. When Björk escapes in her head doing these musical numbers and it leads to the end, to the most devastating thing possible, it broke me. That movie’s rough, man. That’s not one I could watch and have good cries or something. I can’t rewatch it because it’s utterly traumatizing. I was probably crying for hours after it, I felt dead.

Which film makes you laugh the hardest? The most recent film that made me laugh the hardest is What We Do in the Shadows. I saw it for the first time on an airplane sitting next to a stranger and I think they thought something was wrong with me. Then I got home to Florida and showed it to my girlfriend, and her brother came home and we watched it again. It never got old.

Who was the most relatable coming-of-age film character for you? It’s hard because when I was a teen I was obsessed with sports and then it was music. I’m trying to think who I related to the most. Man, I don’t know. Nothing is coming to mind. Shocking.

What film do you wish you made? I’ll go with There Will Be Blood. It’s the first film that popped in my head.

What mind-fuck movies changed you for life and why? There were three that I saw pretty close together at a young age: Boogie Nights, A Clockwork Orange and Raging Bull. I had a digital cable box in my room, so I would sneak and watch a lot of things that my parents didn’t know I was watching. They just rocked my world. Until that point it was all Aliens and Terminator and every big action movie, so then when I saw those films it was like “this is what movies can be! What the hell is this?”.

I remember with Raging Bull I didn’t actually enjoy it. I was like, “This isn’t Rocky but I can’t stop watching.” It’s like a trainwreck and I’m fascinated but I don’t know if I like it, then I was obsessed with it and it’s one of my favorite movies now. Boogie Nights and A Clockwork Orange felt like a bigger vision was at work. It wasn’t just something made out in the ether, it was a specific singular vision and I cannot stop looking at it.

Sterling K. Brown in ‘Waves’.

What’s the most overlooked movie from A24? Shoot, I wish I could look at the catalogue right now. I’m just gonna go with The Spectacular Now because I just watched it again on the airplane and I thought it was really beautiful. It’s a good one, man.

Lastly, it’s time for best-of-decade lists. What’s the greatest film of the 2010s? When we interviewed Robert Eggers, Waves was his first choice. Shut up, come on! Oh my god, Rob’s the best. I will say that The Lighthouse is my favorite film of the year, without a doubt. I’m obsessed with it. I could gush about him for hours. He’s not just one of the greatest young filmmakers, he’s one of the great filmmakers working now. Honestly though, for my decade number one I gotta go with The Tree of Life. It’s one of my favorite movies of all time so I would put that at number one, and then The Lighthouse is close to it.

‘Waves’ is distributed by A24 and is playing in select US cinemas now. Photos courtesy A24.

[skaylanphear]

The Voltron Project

What is it? The Voltron Project is a retelling of the Voltron story following Season 6. Like many in the fandom, I was left dissatisfied with Season 7 for many reasons. The Voltron Project is a fan endeavor to give others feeling similarly the content that was lacking in Season 7. I won't rehash the discourse here, as this is meant to be a positive move forward, and while I think a lot was learned as a result of Season 7, I want to carve out a positive place for both myself and others should they so wish to partake.

I also want to make it clear that this is not a project resulting from spite or a desire to hurt the creators of Voltron. It is simply a fan (me) retelling the story in a way that I will find more satisfying. It is for that reason that I invite everyone to be involved and to have fun with it. You're not unwelcome if you enjoyed Season 7, but you're definitely going to get a lot of what was missing if you didn't. This project isn't meant to spur hate, but to simply take Voltron in a different direction. An AU, if you will, though it takes off following Season 6 of the canon.

I'd also like to add that this is not connected to the "Reboot" or the Leakira stuff going around. This is something entirely different. I am not involved in any of that.

With that out of the way, I can actually TELL YOU ABOUT THE PROJECT!

Details: The Voltron Project will be a novel length fic taking place following Season 6 of Voltron. It will be divided up episodically, meaning that there will be 13 chapters in total. It is meant to reflect the best of what we've seen of Voltron, while doing away with the worst. That means focusing on the main characters and their arcs, interactions, and development, as well as keeping alive the space epic atmosphere of the show. This is not a ship-spurred project, being that the goal is that anyone who enjoys the show or any of the characters in it will also enjoy. Fanfiction is a place for people to explore the character dynamics of those they love most, which means that most fics focus solely on only a few characters. Which is great! But the goal of The Voltron Project is to bring the team dynamic of the show to the page. Each character will get their story and their spotlight, and those that have fallen on the backburner will finally get their due (yes, this means hefty arcs for both Lance and Hunk that will actually be pertinent to the story and related to the plot, though these arcs will be spread over the "Season 7" rewrite as well as the newly written "Season 8" finale book that would be written if this project is a success). That isn't to say there won't be ships at all (because there will be), but this isn't a ship driven narrative.

It is a Voltron and character driven narrative.

So what does this mean? Well, I've outlined the story fully, so I can provide you with summaries of what would be to come. If only to get y'all interested, because it won't be worth me writing if people aren't interested in reading ;)

The Voltron Project: Season 7 - Summaries

Episode 1: Keith struggles to find his confidence as leader with Shiro back, leaving him to reflect on all the times Shiro was his guide growing up. Certainly it'd make more sense for Shiro to take over the team and get them through this difficult journey back to Earth? Meanwhile, Allura struggles to find her confidence and place on the team following Lotor's betrayal. Stranded on an unknown planet, she fails to find a peaceful resolution with the local population, leaving Hunk to step forward with a new perspective and perhaps a new way of looking at Voltron's previously tried and true methods of diplomacy.

Episode 2: Having set out on the long journey back to Earth, the paladins struggle with close-quarters as well as the fear that with their lions not fully charged, they may be unable to defend themselves should the situation turn dire. Luck is not on their side, as they encounter an invisible force that seems to enjoy toying with their insecurities. Left to soul-search their way to answers, each paladin must grapple with the fears holding them hostage in the hopes that they—and their lions—might come out stronger on the other side.

Episode 3: Discovering an old altean base from the days when Daibazaal and Altea were allies, the paladins make a pit-stop in the hopes of salvaging supplies for their trip. While Romelle and Coran indulge in Altean culture and history, Allura must face the heartbreak Lotor inflicted on her emotionally as well as how his actions shook her faith in the art of altean alchemy itself. But as Lance points out, Allura must shape her own story with her own actions, not reflect on the misguided deeds of others against her. Without her abilities, they may not escape the faulty altean base alive.

Episode 4: While the team attempts to get the archaic teleduv up and running, Lance is left to ponder his own relationships with the other paladins, as well as his many mistakes. But if there's anyone who understands interpersonal missteps, it's Shiro, who divulges the many regrets he's accumulated since he'd made the decision to go to space. But the team's ultimate goal is Olkari, as that may be as far as they can get with the questionable teleduv. Personal reflections may have to take a backseat to the bad news that awaits them. Meanwhile, Haggar and Sendak strike up an alliance.

Episode 5: Since Sam Holt's return, the Earth has been informed of the war beyond its solar system and prepped as best as possible for an inevitable attack. But Earth's technology is too far behind to catch up, and so the citizenry must hope for Voltron and the coalition when Galra ships appear on the horizon. Hopes that are devastated when news that Voltron was destroyed reaches Sam Holt via the Olkari. And without an altean, the coalition can't provide aid in time. Earth is, seemingly, on its own.

Episode 6: Back on Earth, the paladins are finally reunited with their loved ones. But things aren't the same as when they left and the paladins aren't the same people they were on that fateful day the blue lion carried them into space. Pressures are mounting and tough decisions must be made, many of the paladins having to face their positions in ways they hadn't considered before. Meanwhile, Shiro attempts to deal with the politics of Earth, Voltron, and the Coalition, all while trying to work around personal obstacles from before he'd left on the Kerberos Mission.

Episode 7: All the paladins need a break, so Lance invites them down to Varadero for a day out under the sun and on the water. After all, what better solution is there for stress and doubt than a relaxing day on the beach? Yet even as the team seems to be embracing Lance's idea and having a good time, he's eventually the one left floundering and uncertain. But none of that may matter soon. The notion of peace is fleeting and everyone knew the Galra would be back sooner rather than later. Even with Voltron and the Coalition, Earth may yet be in danger.

Episode 8: Everyone is scrambling to Earth's defenses, which are far from being prepared for another attack. Team Voltron is tested both together and apart by the combined forces of Sendak and Haggar's forces. With so much to defend and so little on their side, they may have no choice but to separate their priorities if only because so much has to be done and so little is possible. But Voltron is always stronger together and Haggar's new weapon may be the strongest foe the paladins have faced yet.

Episode 9: With their focus on Haggar's weapon, Voltron depends on the coalition and Earth's own forces to deal with the assault. But even their faith in the strength of Voltron may not be enough. There's tragedy waiting in Earth's devastation. The most personally weighted and important battle the paladins have ever faced may be one that's impossible to truly win.

Episode 10: Humanity will never be the same, nor will team Voltron. In the wake of the attack, Earth has been tested in ways never before seen, while the paladins must try and pick up the pieces of their own team. With a lion and a paladin captured and another paladin overwhelmed with grief, they must continue to push forward despite the giant fractures that threaten to crumble everything Voltron has worked so hard to achieve.

Episode 11: Having located the energy signature of the captured lion, the paladins and the coalition move in. But retrieving the missing lion—and hopefully the paladin that goes with it—will prove challenging without the ability to form Voltron, and that's if things go as planned. But knowing the Galra, things are bound to go wrong.

Episode 12: The paladins are working on borrowed time. Infiltrating the Galra ships proves perilous. While Allura is faced with Haggar—as well as the misdeeds of Lotor and their effects—the rest of the team searches for their missing comrade. But traversing Galra ships is challenging, especially when they've got so much riding on such a short time allotment. That some of the team's judgement is clouded in anger and grief does little to help the situation. In the end, the paladins are left rushing toward an end with no clear answers.

Episode 13: With one of the lions having vanished through Haggar's wormhole, it falls to Keith to do something, as his lion is the only one capable of bending space swiftly enough to catch up. Meanwhile, Sendak awaits, having used the paladins' weaknesses against them to the point that team Voltron may never recover if Keith, and the rest of the team, can't find him in time.

So those are the summaries for the entirety of "Season 7." I've tried to include enough to explain where the story is going while also leaving out as many spoilers as possible ;D

This is the fic I'd like to write, if enough people are interested in reading it. But a lot of my investment in it is dependent on readers' investment in it. I'll write with or without the help of others if enough people want to read it. And in the case that others want to be involved, I have a few propositions to be considered. Different potential "packages" of The Voltron Project, if you will:

Basic – I write the fic and upload it over the course of 13 days to AO3 for everyone to read, simple as that.

BigBang – The fic itself remains a digital interface, while artists that are interested in being involved treat it like a BigBang, as in, artists work on illustrations of each chapter like they would separate stories during a BigBang. These will be released during a thirteen day period, with appropriate credits being given. But this is only possible if at least 13 artists are interested. If there are more (which would be amazing), I would like the project to be as inclusive as possible, meaning that multiple artists would work on illustrations for one chapter, etc.

Zine – The ultimate goal, which I think is unlikely, but a dude can dream, yeah? In this case, the book will be released as a digital zine (which would be free) with options for different tiers following. For example:

Tier one: Free—get a digital copy! Awesome!

Tier two: Black and white softcover copy (text and illustrations would be in b&w) with all proceeds going to charity (what charity would be up for discussion at a later date).

Tier three: Color softcover copy! All proceeds would go to charity!

Tier four: Color hardcover copy! All proceeds would go to charity!

(This is only an example of potentially what could be done and could change later)

I also imagine that different tiers would offer different extras, like pins, bookmarks, etc… But again, this is the ultimate thing that could happen and I'm really not holding my breath for this being possible.

In any case, that is where I stand on The Voltron Project at the moment! I'm looking forward to hearing what everyone has to say! 

And if y’all want this project to get off the ground, tell your friends, tell your fav artists, and, of course, REBLOG!

PS: Also, I'll need beta readers, so if people are into this idea, I'll open some kind of application for that as well, as would be done with artists ;D Just something to keep in mind!

PPS: THIS IS A HATE FREE PROJECT! ANY HATE BY ANYONE WANTING TO BE INVOLVED WILL NOT BE TOLERATED AND YOU WILL BE TAKEN OFF THE ROSTER POST-HASTE!

[douxreviews]

Babylon 5 - Series Review

"Now get the hell out of our galaxy."

J. Michael Straczynski’s Babylon 5 was the last, best hope for a rival sci-fi television franchise to challenge the dominance of Star Trek. It failed. And let’s be glad it did. Last thing we needed was another bloated franchise knocking out a never ending cycle of naff spin-offs. Instead let’s be thankful for what remains to this day as one of the finest sci-fi series ever made. But it did take some time before it became that.

[Warning: This review contains spoilers]

Season One - Signs and Portents

Straczynski envisioned the series as an epic novel for television told in five volumes with each episode being an individual chapter. JMS wanted to tell a universe changing saga of heroes and villains, epic battles and the rise and fall of empires. Something akin to Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, only in space with aliens instead of hobbits and on a limited television budget. Surprisingly, this didn’t turn out to be as impossible as it might have seemed.

The year was 2258. The name of the place was, duh, Babylon 5, a massive five-mile long space station built by humans after the devastating Earth/Minbari war -- a place where aliens could meet to talk out their differences. Straczynski presented us with a future that was a far cry from the optimistic utopia of Gene Roddenberry. Crime, poverty, corruption and prejudice still existed. The various races were constantly at each other’s throats. Many of the alien races felt genuinely extraterrestrial, not just a load of humanoids with bumpy foreheads and pointed ears, although the station did have its fair share of those.

B5 first aired in 1993 with the (not very good) feature length pilot ‘The Gathering’. A year later the first season began airing with ‘Midnight on the Firing Line’ on the now defunct PTEN network, the show’s home for its first four seasons. In truth the first season is not the series’ strongest. No doubt in an effort to not alienate a potential audience, the season is driven more by predominantly naff standalone episodes, than the show’s signature story arcs. These standalone tales were often just sub-Trek nonsense that did little to help B5 to stand out from its rivals. Nevertheless there was still some good to be found in amongst the crap. After all, as rubbish as ‘Mind War’ was, it still gave us Walter Koenig as that slippery Psi Cop Bester (still B5’s finest villain).

In the second half Straczynski gradually started to move away from alien of the week tripe like ‘TKO’, ‘Believers’ and ‘Infection’ and began to lay the foundations for the awesomeness that was to come in episodes like ‘And the Sky Full of Stars’, ‘Signs and Portents’ (the introduction of Mr Morden and the Shadows), the two-parter ‘A Voice in the Wilderness’ and ‘Babylon Squared’ in which the crew investigate the sudden and mysterious reappearance of the missing Babylon 4 station. The big season finale ‘Chrysalis’ is a veritable congregation of ‘holy shit, did they just do that?’ moments as earth shattering cliff-hanger follows earth shattering cliff-hanger. Sinclair’s final lament “Nothing is the same anymore” couldn’t have been more appropriate.

At this early stage the characters were also something of a mixed bag to be sure. While G’Kar and Londo arrive practically fully formed (despite some rough early make-up effects) the rest of the cast all needed a little more work. Sinclair was too often stiff and po-faced while Ivanova had yet to develop something resembling a sense of humour. And I can’t be the only one who thought that Jerry Doyle looked like the product of a failed attempt to clone Bruce Willis?

The first season was certainly a patchy start for Babylon 5. Much of it hasn’t dated well. While they were groundbreaking and innovative at the time, much of the CGI effects now look rather primitive but still manage to stand up a lot better than most of the shows from the time (Space: Above and Beyond for example). The costumes and alien make up are all a little rough. And the dialogue constantly veers between clunky and cheesy. But the series potential was still there for all to see. By the second season the show would improve by leaps and bounds, culminating in some of the finest TV drama of the last 25 years.

Season Two - The Coming of Shadows

It was a year of change in season two of Babylon 5.

Due to illness, Michael O’Hare amicably agreed with creator J. Michael Straczynski to depart from the show. He was replaced by Bruce Boxleitner as the new station commander, Captain John J. Sheridan. The former Tron fitted in quite well on B5 and after a few episodes you’d easily be forgiven for thinking he’d been there the whole time.

The first episode ‘Point of Departure’ serves to introduce and establish Sheridan as the new station commander and show how he handles a crisis. It’s not until episode two ‘Revelations’ that JMS got around to resolving all the cliff-hangers from the previous season. Delenn came out of her cocoon with L'Oreal hair (because she’s worth it) and instantly caught Sheridan’s eye. Garibaldi woke from his coma to expose the man who shot him in the back. And G’Kar returned to the station with grave warnings about the darkness to come (that no one would listen to until it was too late).

Season two has the look and feel of a show more assured of its self, more confident in what it can accomplish. This was the year Babylon 5 stopped looking like just another Star Trek clone and became a small screen sci-fi epic to be reckoned with. There were still a number of rubbish standalone episodes such as ‘The Long Dark’ and ‘GROPOS’ to put up with, but they weren’t as bad as they had been in the first season. Besides, when you have episodes as good as the Hugo Award winning ‘The Coming of Shadows’, ‘In the Shadow of Z’ha’dum’ and ‘The Long Twilight Struggle’ what are a few duff ones here and there?

Walter Koenig returned as Bester in ‘A Race Through Dark Places’ and continued to make us forget he was ever Chekov. ‘And Now For a Word’ looked at life on the station from the perspective of a news program. Later in the season Lyta Alexander, not seen since the original pilot, would return in ‘Divided Loyalties’ to expose a sleeper agent on the station that had devastating consequences for Ivanova. And ‘Comes the Inquisitor’ sees the Vorlons test Delenn with the help of Jack the Ripper (no, seriously).

With the addition of Boxleitner the main cast was considerably stronger this season, albeit there were still a few redundant characters that needed to be gotten rid off such as Lt. Keffer, a hotshot fighter pilot character the network insisted that Straczynski add to the line up. But JMS was not one to let even an unwanted character go to waste and used Keffer’s fate to further along the Shadow War arc. The same could not be said for G’Kar’s aid, Na’Toth, who just sort’ve vanished after two episodes without anyone, her boss included, noticing.

It’s no small thing to say that Andreas Katsulas and Peter Jurasik were the series' best actors and this season they took their performances to another level. For most of the first season Londo was nothing more than the comic relief, but this season Londo’s story went in a much darker direction as he grew closer and closer to Mr. Morden and his ‘associates’. Similarly as Londo fell further into darkness G’Kar began his long and painful journey towards redemption and spiritual enlightenment.

The season finale ‘The Fall of Night’ managed to end the season on a suitably downbeat note, but lacked the universe shacking impact of ‘Chrysalis’. While the future looked bleak for the characters the show’s future looked ever brighter. With the flaws and weakness of the first season overcome Babylon 5 would continue from this point to go from strength to strength.

Season Three - Point of No Return

In my humble little opinion season three of Babylon 5 is one of the greatest seasons of television in the entire history of the medium. This was the absolute peak of Straczynski’s small screen space opera. Admittedly, it’s not 100% perfect. It was at this point that Straczynski started writing every single episode himself (an impressive achievement to be sure) so inevitable dreck like ‘Grey 17 is Missing’ gets sandwiched in between all the great stuff. And we were pretty much spoilt for choice with great stuff this season. After two years worth of build up this was the season where things finally started to pay off.

The season started quietly enough with a group of mostly standalone tales of varying quality and significance. But by the time we got to ‘Messages from Earth’ the fan was well and truly hit and hit hard. The entire status quo of the series was suddenly turned upside down and there would be no going back. Straczynski didn’t so much as jettison the reset button as completely obliterate it. ‘Point of No Return’ saw the Earth Alliance become a fascist dictatorship under President Clark forcing the crew of Babylon 5 to break away into an independent state. This all lead to the epic ‘Severed Dreams’ (another Hugo winner) in which our heroes fought to defend the station from Clark’s forces. From now on Sheridan and company were cut off from home on their own (and got some nifty new uniforms to boot).

The season settled down for a bit after that until the Shadow war finally kicked off in full. ‘Interludes and Examinations’ sees Kosh make a devastating sacrifice on Sheridan’s behalf. The two-parter ‘War Without End’ saw the return of Sinclair and finally revealed the true story behind the disappearance of Babylon 4. After the big battles of ‘Shadow Dancing’ everything comes to a head in the season finale as Sheridan goes with his not-so-dead wife, Anna, back to Z’ha’dum. They should really use this episode in media studies classes as an example of how to write a truly great season finale. It’s simply a breathtaking 45 minutes of television that (again, IMHO) no one has yet to come close to equalling or surpassing.

With so many big events jostling for screen time JMS wisely doesn’t let the characterisation get lost in amongst the explosions. Sheridan and Delenn kept making gooey eyes at each other. Ranger Marcus Cole arrived on the station and wasted no time hitting on Ivanova. G’Kar finally found inner peace and a new purpose in life. Franklin struggled with drug addiction and resigned. And Londo’s decent into darkness continued despite his best efforts to escape his destiny.

Season three was the middle chapter of Babylon 5 and the point in which it got seriously worse for our heroes before it could eventually get any better. Creatively the show was riding on a high. From the acting to the special effects everything was at its absolute best. Sadly the show would never be this good again. Outside factors would eventually derail Straczynski’s carefully constructed five-year-plan. But season three still stands as a shinning beacon of everything that was, and still is, great about Babylon 5.

Season Four - No Surrender, No Retreat

So much for best laid plans, eh?

When he first conceived of Babylon 5, J. Michael Straczynski had a definitive five year plan for the series. By the fourth season that plan was in serious danger of falling apart. The Prime Time Entertainment Network, the series’ home from day one, was not long for this world and as such the future of the series was uncertain. Fearing that his show would be cancelled before he could conclude the story, Straczynski went in to emergency damage control and started wrapping up the all major storylines far earlier than he’d initially planned. As a result season four is the most densely packed season of the show’s entire run, as barely a single episode is wasted in Straczynski’s mad rush to bring his story to what seemed at the time to be a premature end.

After nearly three years of planning and build up, the Shadow War, the very driving force of the entire series, was over in the space of just six episodes. The whole thing raced to an underwhelming conclusion that basically amounted to nothing more than Sheridan telling the Shadows and Vorlons off for being naughty and sending them to their rooms without any supper for the rest of eternity. Babylon 5 was the first notable sci-fi series to start using extensive story arcs (something that’s practically the norm nowadays) but it was also the first to bring its story arcs to a disappointing resolution (something else that's practically the norm nowadays).

With that major arc out of the way Straczynski got to work setting up the Drakh threat, built up the growing conflict between Sheridan and Garibaldi, dashed through a Minbari civil war in record speed before finally kicking off the war against President Clark’s fascist government in ‘No Surrender, No Retreat’. The conclusion of the Shadow arc might’ve been a letdown but the Earth civil war was Babylon 5 at its absolute best. Only problem was that it was over almost as quickly as it had started. Originally the plan was for the Earth conflict to be carried over into the fifth season with the fourth season ending with Garibaldi’s betrayal and Sheridan’s capture. But with the show’s future in doubt everything was wrapped up with ‘Endgame’ and ‘Raising Star’. Straczynski was all ready to end the series then and there, but when cable network TNT agreed at the last minute to finance a full fifth season the final episode 'Sleeping in Light' was pushed back a year and a new season finale was quickly shot on the cheap.

Despite it's ups and downs season four is still a strong season. Although there are no Hugo winners, there are still several standout episodes, most notably Sheridan’s brutal interrogation in 'Intersections in Real Time'. The acting was excellent across the board this season, but if there’s a single standout star without a doubt it’s Jerry Doyle. Straczynski sent Garibaldi to hell and back this season and Doyle rose to the challenge with gusto. Sadly this would be the final season for Susan Ivanova as a contract dispute would prevent Claudia Christian returning for the fifth season. With no time to shoot a proper goodbye scene her departure is clumsily handled in voiceover, a disappointing exit for one of science fiction's finest heroines.

Season Five - The Wheel of Fire

The last minute renewal for Babylon 5 was something of a mixed blessing. On one hand it meant that the show would continue and J. Michael Straczynski would now be able to complete his much talked about five-year-plan. But since Straczynski had wrapped up almost every single significant plot thread during the previous season he was now stumped about what to do next. Sure, he had a lot of great stuff with Londo planned, but that didn’t get going until towards the end of the season. So what the hell was he going to do until then?

Straczynski had twenty-one episodes to fill up and barely enough story material to cover a quarter of the season. Rather than relinquish some creative control by bringing in a load of new writers and some fresh ideas, Straczynski continued to write virtually every single episode himself even though it was clear by this point that he’d reached his burnout stage. Granted, the only time he did allow someone else to write an episode it resulted in Neil Gaiman’s dreary ‘Day of the Dead’ but that's still no excuse for not sharing your toys, Joe. Actually, in many ways the series came a full circle with season five as Babylon 5 went back to the sort standalone filler dreck everyone thought we’d seen the last of in season one. Worst offender being the abysmal Tom Stoppard homage ‘A View from the Galley’ which looks at an attack on the station from the perspective of two repair workers who sadly, unlike Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, don’t end up dead at the end.

The lack of decent episodes wasn't the show’s only problem this season, as its previously strong characterization seemed to have vanished entirely. They might’ve looked the same, they might’ve even sounded the same, but these were not the same characters we’d been following faithfully over the last four years. Despite now being President of the Interstellar Alliance (with all the power and influence of a UN Secretary-General) Sheridan still stomps around the station like he owns the place becoming the type of character you’d rather punch in the face than follow into the jaws of hell. Delenn, meanwhile, has been relegated to the prestigious role of ‘her indoors’. Elsewhere, Garibaldi roamed aimlessly around the station in a futile search for a decent plot line, while Londo and G’Kar spend most of the season working on perfecting their buddy comedy routine. And with Claudia Christian gone (but sure as hell not forgotten) Tracy Scoggins was brought in to replace Ivanova as Captain Elizabeth Lockley, the station’s new commander and Sheridan’s ex-wife (huh?). Try as she might, it is difficult to take Scoggins seriously as a tough military leader.

Now that the Shadows were gone and President Clark had been overthrown there were no more enemies to fight and our heroes were all getting ready to live happily ever after. As a result virtually nothing happened for the majority of the season. The only significant event in the first half was a limp rebellion by Gap model telepaths lead by Byron, a walking personality black hole. The only upside to this arc was more focus on Patricia Tallman's underused Lyta Alexander and the always welcome return of Bester, who even gets his own episode this season, the disappointingly bland ‘The Corp Is Mother, The Corp is Father’. Once all the dull telepath malarkey is done with the season finally starts to pick up some much needed steam as the Interstellar Alliance goes to war with the Centauri. But even this conflict fails to provide the same kind of high drama and epic battles the show used to give us. Only the tragic conclusion of Londo’s story in ‘The Fall of Centauri Prime’ makes any kind of emotional impact.

The remaining episodes are all used for some last minute wrap up and a shed load of teary goodbye scenes to rival anything Peter Jackson could come up with. After everyone has gone their separate way Straczynski closes the book with ‘Sleeping in Light’ an elegant and beautiful epilogue to the series and one of the best series finales of all time. Although it did manage to end on a high note (notably with an episode left over from the previous year) overall season five is a disappointing dud.

Despite this less than grand farewell, Babylon 5 still remains one of the greatest sci-fi series ever produced. Admittedly it was something of a flawed masterpiece thanks to the occasional wooden acting, clunky dialogue, dodgy standalone episodes, cheap sets and a tendency to get lost up its own mythology. But with this show Straczynski created something truly unique, an epic science fiction novel for television with a definitive beginning, middle and end. Yeah, the beginning was a bit uneven and the end part didn’t work out as planned, but that middle section, boy, was that good.

Mark Greig has been writing for Doux Reviews since 2011.

[lj-writes]

The Force-Sensitive Five

If it’s true that the Force belongs to everyone, then why not have the other main heroes in addition to Rey--Finn, Poe, Rose, and “Caro”--Force-sensitive as well? They can be Rey’s first pupils (though it’s more a mutual teaching/study group situation) and, going off the books Rey got from the Jedi Temple, develop their own theory and practice of the Force. Here’s how I envision their respective specialties and powers.

Rey

Summary: The generalist Jedi and melee combat specialist

Description: Rey has the most obvious and familiar, seemingly supernatural Jedi powers. She has impressive Force telekinesis, Force telepathy, has had Force visions and dreams, and the mind trick. She is a force, or should we say Force, in melee combat. She is the tank of the party and all-purpose Force powerhouse, not to mention a potent symbol to revive hope when the Jedi seemed all lost or fallen.

Rey still has limitations, however. While her abilities are very strong, they are generally obvious and one-off in nature. She can use the Force mind trick to get a Stormtrooper to take her shackles off her, but trying to use the mind trick in negotiation, for instance, would be noticeable and end up breeding distrust. Similarly, she can be a whirlwind of destruction in combat but can’t turn the tide of a large-scale battle on her own. She needs a team, and having trusted friends can in turn help her resist the lure of the Dark Side, which can be strong for a Force user as powerful as she is.

Finn

Summary: Empath, death sense, Battle Meditation

Description: A Force user on par with Rey, Finn has the ability to sense life and, less pleasantly, the ending of life. We saw him go into a panic attack at Slip’s death, seemingly sensing him die. We saw this ability again on a larger scale with the destruction of the Hosnia system, when he sensed the mass deaths much like Obi-Wan did. Highly trained and talented at both long-distance and melee combat, he has probably been unconsciously powering his military prowess with the Force all his life. He knows how to read a situation and people instantly and use this knowledge to great effect. Particularly skilled in small unit combat, he is the undisputed tactician of their group.

His tactical genius and empath abilities intersect for devastating effect in the form of Battle Meditation. He senses the battlefield and the combatants and, with a mental nudge here and a tug there aided by his own extensive strategic training, shapes the battle like a sculpture or a Rubix cube. The Resistance/Rebellion pulls off victories out of all proportion with their resources this way, especially with Finn’s extensive knowledge of the enemy. His strong empathy can be a liability as well as an asset, however, and sensing the deaths of so many people could result in trauma and burnout. He needs emotional support from a caring network of people, and fortunately he is no longer alone.

Poe Dameron

Summary: Force-aided instinct and reflex, micro-visions, inspiration

Description: A young leader of the Rebellion and Leia’s chosen successor, Poe has been using the Force unconsciously for his piloting much like Anakin and Luke Skywalker did. Sensing events in the split second before they happened gave him uncanny reflexes and saved his life in many a tight spot. Further developing these abilities gave him an edge not only in his reflexes but in planning and leadership as well. Sensing danger in advance helped him avoid costly mistakes and, conversely, being able to sense payoffs for risks enabled him to take risks in a calculating, advantageous way.

As Leia pointed out, though, he has to be more than the pilot or kickass spy he’s used to being; he also has to be a leader. With his deep roots from his parents in antifascist resistance, you might say rebellion is in his blood. He inspires others with this conviction, and being in the same room with him or even watching a holo of him speak can electrify audiences despite--or perhaps because of--his simple, down-to-earth style. It is one of the many qualities that his enemy General Hux, known for his bombastic rhetoric, scorns about him.

Rose Tico

Summary: Machine Spirit, shatterpoint, emotion sending

Description: Loving droid owners like Poe have always known that there was more to their companions than gears and electricity, and Rose’s awakening Force power confirms this. She can sense and communicate through the Force with droids and computers, including ships that are equipped with droid brains. The Force is the connection between living beings, after all, and sentient machines are just as alive as organics if in a different sense. Rose’s exploration into this side of the Force endlessly fascinates Rey and Chewbacca, both enthusiastic mechanics, and Rose’s insights into the needs of the cranky old droid brains that run the Millennium Falcon have done much to place her in its good graces.

Rose also has the Force ability of shatterpoint, rare and once thought lost. She can sense pivotal points where a single outcome may change the course of events. In this she takes after legendary Force master Mace Windu, and some have speculated that she may have family ties to Ghôsh Windu, Master Windu’s clan which nearly died out with him. When Rose risked her own life to save Finn’s on Crait she sensed a shatterpoint, convinced he had to survive that moment no matter what. It was more important than her life or the lives of the entire remaining Resistance. Subsequent events proved her right, and fortunately the grim payoff did not come to pass thanks to the intervention of Luke Skywalker.

On the flip side of Finn who is a strong empath, Rose is strong in broadcasting her emotions, particularly negative emotions such as fear and pain. Some of her occasionally unhealthy interactions with Finn may have resulted from their respective abilities going in a feedback spiral. Now that she is aware of the effect she has on others, Rose works hard to modulate her emotions and is particularly careful around Finn. Her friendship with mechanical sentients, who are less moody than organics, helps in this regard and she can frequently be found meditating in hangars and repair rooms while curious droids look on.

Caro*

Summary: Force echoes, life powers, shadow friends

Description: Caro thrives on the balance of all things, passion and peace, anger and compassion, life and death. Rey admires how she not only understands but lives the concepts that Rey herself has only begun to grasp. Rey, Finn, and the others to different degrees can talk to the spirits of powerful Jedi masters who live on in the Force, like Luke Skywalker, but Caro goes farther. She is not only more effective at communing with these spirits, she also hears echoes in the Force itself from every being who has ever been in the Force. Not all at once, of course, which would overwhelm any mortal, but she can sense snatches that she seeks or that simply come to her. She can attempt to get more information through concentration and meditation, and this was how she found Finn: Through the memories of people living and dead who had crossed his path. Slip remembered him kindly, Caro told Finn, though he still thought him an awful showoff. Due to her powers she frequently seems to know people before she meets them, which some find unsettling.

As befitting a Jedi who is a master of the Balance, Caro has deep connection to life as well as death. She is a healer of great skill like Barriss Offee before her, and has saved many lives. An expert at integrating medical technology with her powers, she has worked with Rose to pool their strengths for better medical care in the Resistance. Though Caro is more accepting of death as a part of the Force than Barriss was and has proven more resilient to the trauma of losing patients, she can be saddened by the mounting losses. Finn and the others take care to draw her gently from her solitude where the events of her life and her unique powers sometimes lead her to take solace. She is particularly loved by defected Stormtroopers who have never experienced such caring, and quite a few are open about being willing to fight and die for her more than the Resistance. She has found a loving partner in one of them and their companionship brings her much joy.

Through great concentration and focus Caro can cause these “echoes” in the Force to take temporary physical form. They can help with set tasks and even go into battle with her, although the effort can be taxing for her and their actions can be unpredictable. Such is the nature of the Force, and she accepts that. It is key to the peace and balance she keeps with the Force.

* Caro’s powers are purely speculative at this point, of course. We don’t even know her name, to say nothing of her abilities or relationships with the other characters. But it’s fun to imagine and there was no way I was going to leave her out of this post, okay?

[reecemalone]

Abilities and Kit

In Overwatch, each character has their own set of abilities which are, for the most part, unique to that hero. Similarities in “kit,” or what abilities and features each hero has, are what create the trends in the game: shield tank, off-healer, flanker, etc... Let’s define what exactly kit is, and what kinds of play styles they give to heroes in the game. But first, what are the different abilities for all heroes?

Because Lucio is, on paper, a very complicated hero, we can use him to define the different types of abilities. Also, he has a rather unique play style, so he doesn’t really fit into the other categories I mention later.

In the photo, there’s a lot to look at: 2 weapon related abilities (in red), 1 without a cooldown (in green), 1 passive ability (in white), 1 regular ability (in yellow), and of course, 1 ultimate ability (in blue; a “signature” ability, extremely powerful and earned through playing well).

As with all other heroes, Lucio has a weapon: that weird looking boombox-gun on the left side of the photo. The 2 abilities on the far right (red) are the different ways Lucio can use that weapon. The top one blasts people away with a slow fire rate and a cooldown of 4 seconds, and the one on the bottom is regular shooting: just a little bit of damage if the projectile hits an enemy.

In green, is the ability Crossfade. This is a type of ability that doesn’t have a cooldown, because it switches between 2 modes. For Lucio, this decides whether he speeds his team up (top photo) or heals them (bottom photo). Another example of this type of ability would be with Bastion, when he switches in and out of his turret mode.

In yellow, is a very regular ability: you use it when you press the button, it lasts for a few seconds, then has a rather long cooldown (about 10-15 seconds in this case). Other regular abilities happen instantly, instead of lasting for a duration of time. For example, McCree’s Flashbang throws instantly and has a decently long cooldown.

In white, are passive abilities. Only some heroes have this, and it usually happens constantly when the hero is alive. In a way, this ability is sort-of in the background. For example, with Lucio, he can always ride off of walls, and Moira always regenerates her own health when she deals damage. For the most part, passive abilities don’t directly damage opponents, and instead benefit the hero with movement upgrades, health, slight offense advantages, etc...

Lastly, and somewhat most importantly, is the Ultimate Ability (in blue). Each hero has their own, and you earn it through playing well. While your ultimate charges slowly overtime, its charge time is primarily determined by how much damage or healing you deal. Basically, the better you’re playing, the more often your ultimate is ready. The rate at which your ultimate charges depends on who you’re playing, and therefore what ultimate it is (i.e. Junkrat’s Rip-tire charges faster than Soldier 76′s Tactical Visor). Ultimate abilities are a topic of their own, but all you need to know is that they’re a big part of the game, and they’re generally the strongest abilities in any kit.

Tracer is one of the more obvious examples of kit, as she’s a very simple hero. She has low health and is physically smaller than almost all other heroes, and teleports around enemies to evade attacks.

She only has 2 actual abilities, which let her teleport short distances (Blink), and let her regain health and leave the action for a moment (Recall).

These abilities make Tracer into a flanker, which means she runs behind enemies and tries to shoot from the sides of the fight. Because of this, you probably won’t find her standing on an objective with the rest of her team.

Her Ultimate, Pulse Bomb, supports this play style as well. She jumps in to the enemy team, throws the bomb, and teleports back out, hoping that she stuck the bomb to an important enemy. Since the bomb does 300 damage in a very small area, it generally will get 1 or 2 kills if the player aims their throw well.

Orisa is pretty much the exact opposite of tracer. Instead of running behind the other team, Orisa makes herself the center of her team by providing a large shield and pretty good protection on an objective. She has 3 abilities, which are “Halt!” “Fortify,” and “Protective Barrier.”

Her barrier is her main ability, and protects her team the most out of all of them. Fortify makes her resistant to multiple types of damage, and Halt! is a weird one: an orb shoots out of her robotic arm, and wherever it explodes, it pulls enemies together, and makes them unable to move during this pull.

As you can see here, 2 different abilities are being used: her barrier, and Halt! The barrier is the clear-blue wall on the right side, which only Orisa and her teammates can shoot through (excluding some attacks, such as punches and some “magical” abilities), and Halt! was used towards the top of the picture.

As you can see near the top, the health of the shield is shown, and if it isn’t broken after 20 seconds or so, then the shield disappears. In the same place, Halt! was used against those 2 training bots, which made them rise into the air. In game, this surprises enemies while making them easy targets, which can turn the tides of a team fight.

Mercy’s play style is different from both Orisa and Tracer. Instead of flanking or giving a shield, she (literally) flies between team mates, healing them pretty quickly. Although Mercy has been made increasingly worse with updates over time, she still remains a priority target because of her high levels of healing.

2 of her abilities, Guardian Angel and Angelic Descent, are both regarding her movement. Her Guardian Angel ability is available very quickly after using it, and lets her sort-of bounce between her team mates using her wings. With Angelic Descent, she can fall very slowly if she chooses to. This lets her stay in close range with team mates in the air.

The last of her regular abilities is Resurrect, and quite simply, allows her to revive one of her team mates from the dead, keeping them in the fight more often. Otherwise, that hero would have to run all the way back from a spawn point, which could be across the map.

Her Ultimate allows her to fly and increases her healing range. Something else I forgot to mention is that she can also increase a hero’s output damage if she doesn’t need to heal, making some Ultimate abilities even more devastating if used correctly.

These are just a few examples of heroes’ kit in Overwatch, and each of them are different in their own ways. As mentioned previously, there are some trends that determine the play styles of characters (i.e. Reinhardt and Orisa function similarly because of their huge shields), but these are basically just categories the community made up to “dictate” team composition. That being said, each hero is played differently, and understanding each of them and how they’re used is extremely beneficial, which makes this a huge part of improving in Overwatch.

[onwardintolight]

Have you had a chance to read Last Shot yet? If so what did you think?

Yes I have! I finished it the day before yesterday, and I really enjoyed it, despite a few qualms.

I especially liked Han’s emotional journey as he comes to terms with being a parent. I’m dumbfounded at how a lot of people (*cough* Reylos) have used this book to argue that Han was a terrible parent and even to insinuate that he abandoned Ben, when clearly that’s anything but the case in the book. (It’s also not the case in any canon book or source material. Le sigh.) I think a lot of people have already addressed this though, and I’ll reblog some good stuff about that later, so that’s all I’ll say on this ridiculous assertion for now. 

Anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed watching Han grow as he wrestles with his fear and insecurity, learns how to simultaneously be a dad and follow his passion, and starts to really find his place during this new time after the war. I’m sure I’ll struggle similarly if/when I become a mom someday; I can’t imagine how daunting it would be for Han, having never had a family of his own. I thought his struggles were really sympathetically and beautifully portrayed. 

It’s made abundantly clear that his love for Leia and his son knows no bounds — in fact, that’s exactly why he’s struggling so much in the first place. He wants to be what they need and is afraid that maybe he isn’t; maybe he’s not equipped to be the “perfect” dad, whatever that is. And he finds out that, no, he may not know everything there is to know about parenting, but that’s okay —he’s trying and learning, along with Leia, and he loves them deeply, and that’s what matters. Moreover, his passion for flying isn’t something that he has to give up in order to be a husband and dad. Both can exist at the same time. He can be true to himself and a family man.

I did find it irritating, however, that they show Han as struggling with all this, but Leia seems to automatically know everything there is to know about motherhood (@inelegantprose​ has said some good things about this). This to me reeks of sexism. Yes, Leia had a family growing up, but she had no Organa siblings and I can’t imagine she was ever surrounded by very many babies, lol. The birth of a child would raise a whole lot of fears and insecurities for her, as much or even more so than Han — particularly when taking into account the knowledge of who her real father was. 

The book says that Ben’s arrival “seemed to light up the whole world when he’d first arrived: this simple impossible sliver of hope amid so much death and destruction.” I like that idea, and I could imagine they both felt that, profoundly. All the same, I think it’s likely that while Ben was dearly loved and celebrated, he wasn’t planned, and if Leia had had the opportunity, she would not have chosen to get pregnant (at least not yet), fresh off the revelation of her bloodline. (Although I also think it’s entirely possible she was just pushing that information away during this time, denying it and not dealing with it because it was too hard to accept.) 

Anyway, I wish the book had showed some of Leia’s parenthood struggles, too, and not set her up to be such a natural supermom. However, I’ll concede these points: 1) This book is entirely centered on Han and Lando and their inner journeys, not Leia’s. 2) Leia admittedly has had a WHOLE lot of practice at looking poised and put together, no matter what’s she’s going through (something the book even mentions). 3) While I believe the author could have done a better job and portrayed it in a less sexist way, there’s still a lot of room to guess at what’s really going on in Leia’s mind. 4) At least this is less fodder for Kylo stans, I guess? Consequently, I’m not as upset as I might be otherwise.

My opinions of the characterizations in this book varied greatly. Most often, I felt like there was a remarkable sensitivity to the characters’ emotional worlds that rang true. And that, to me, is what matters most. Still, there were bits of dialogue and action that just didn’t feel right to me, and, like in some of the comics, the characters at times seemed rather like extreme caricatures of themselves. For instance, Han’s tendency to run things by the seat of his pants doesn’t mean he’s always spontaneous or unprepared. He came off as rather clueless at times, which I think does him a great disservice. He also came off  as overly gruff and terrible at communicating, which I think he is to an extent, but not nearly as much as this book makes him out to be. Also, just because Leia calls people names in ANH and ESB when she’s really upset doesn’t mean she calls everyone names all the time (as a sidenote, I found some of the names she called people in this book a little odd. Calling Han “you old lug” or “old man”?…I’m just not feeling it).

That being said, overall, I felt like Han and Leia’s interactions in this book were an absolute delight. There are several scenes and exchanges that I will treasure. I don’t want to spoil them, so I won’t go into too much detail here. I also appreciated that, while Leia’s motherhood struggles were not acknowledged, her trauma very much was. There were a few little hints and snapshots into that from both conversations and Han’s reflections that I thought were extremely well done (and left me with a whole ton of feelings).

Similar to how I felt about the characterizations, I’m kind of back and forth on the plot itself. Overall I enjoyed it, but there were three storylines going on in three separate timelines, and the fact that they were all mixed around throughout the book, while involving some of the same main characters, made it a little confusing for me. I felt like there were some leaps of logic, too, that were perplexing. However, this entire impression could be due to the fact that my brain was rather foggy the night I read most of it. Who knows, a second read-through might make it all fall into place! Moral of the story: don’t binge-read this book when you’re half-asleep. ;) 

I really loved the exploration of droid rights, and what that actually means, although I felt like there could have been a lot more said on the subject.

I’m thrilled we got a Latinx POC author for Star Wars. I’m sure there’s a lot I’m missing (do I have any Latinx followers who can tell me more?), but I appreciated the representation and perspective. Also certain little details, like the fact that there was an Alderaanian character who clearly speaks with a Spanish accent (putting an e- before a word starting with st-, for example) — more evidence for a Hispanic Alderaan! 

Speaking of representation, off the top of my head, I can think of a non-binary person, a gay person, and many people of color, including main characters (and not just Lando). On a much lesser note, I also appreciated the fact that a lot of aliens were represented too!

I loved Lando’s journey in regards to his relationship with Kaasha; exploring what it means to be his scoundrelly self and yet be committed to one person.

I really loved the look into Han and Lando’s pasts with the storylines set ten years before. There’s one element in particular that got me from the outset, which I’ll write briefly about under the cut so as not to spoil anyone.

All this continues to give me great hopes for the Solo movie, and that they’ll approach these characters with sensitivity and complexity (as well as fun).

TL;DR: This book was probably a 7 out of 10 for me — I enjoyed it quite a bit, though it doesn’t come near to replacing some of the other new canon SW books for me (of which Bloodline still tops the list). I had mixed feelings about certain things but overall I’m happy about this addition to canon! I strongly encourage you, if you have any interest at all in new canon, to ignore the ridiculous Kylo-apologist discourse and give this book a shot!

(warning: spoilers under the cut!)

The part I was talking about that really got to me was when we first meet Han 10 years prior. As the scene opens, we find Han nursing a hangover and a broken heart over a girl (he never says her name). While he eventually gets over it, we are given a poignant window into Han’s big heart and sensitive soul underneath the rough exterior. He can’t help but love people. He can’t help but be absolutely devastated at their loss. He’s lonely and constantly striving for human connection (we see this later in how he relates to Sana and develops a rather silly, sudden rebound crush on her). He tends to go all in, despite himself and the risk, and consequently, he ends up getting hurt a lot. THIS MAKES ME FEEL A LOT OF THINGS. Gaaaah I love Han Solo, okay? It hurts to see him hurting, but it also makes my heart so happy to know that someday, he’ll find the belonging he so desperately seeks.