#i just feel this aspect of the debate has yet to be explored in depth

[elvisqueso]

okay but see the thing about the 'walrus v fairy' debate is that the terms 'walrus' and 'fairy' are not always specified to mean, precisely, the common name for odobenus rosmarus or the umbrella term for several types of supernatural/mythical being identified in European folklore. Anyone attempting to answer the question could, very rightly, have taken the poll to refer to any number of definitions for the words 'walrus' and 'fairy.'

For instance:

[plutoswrath]

The blessing in evil: harsh aspects

I decided to make this post, since I get a lot of messages of people being frustrated in some way or another with their challenging aspects. Astrology is neutral at its core and will forever consist of the positive and the genative, both live together in unison and always will. I think it goes without saying, that difficult aspects have (of course) their positive sides to them, and can be just as much of a blessing as naturally positive aspects: but how to deal with them and how to look at the challenge harsh aspects provide?

I decided to list the aspects I get asked about the most, as well as a few of my own selection that I’ve have seen people in real life struggle with a lot. Keep in mind, that the specific interpretation of the aspects can differ depending on the planets, signs and houses involved. This is a general post about them, but I’ll try to go as much as in depth as possible. Some of those aspects listed are still debatable in their interpretation, it seems to me.

The Opposition

This aspect has an orb allowance from approximately 10°, it is formed by two planets that are seperated by ca. 180°. The Opposition is self explaining, somehow. It’s the other side of the coin, two siblings starring at each other, so similar, yet unbelievably different and none tries to give in to the other. The cold sholder they think another rightfully deserves. Imagine it as two quirling siblings, that stand in front of their parent (you), explaining and justifying why they are in the right. You on the other hand have to find a middle ground and make your children understand that both of them are right and both of them are wrong. While every aspect is somehow in a way about balance and power dynamics as well as structures, this one is especially about balance and a dynamic balance only. Oppositions force you into extremes easily. One time you handle exactly like one energy, neglecting the other, then you go after the other energy, leaving the first energy out in order to satisfy both needs. This can ultimately lead to stagnation, being irritated to the point that you can go after any energy, identifying with both and yet with none. Key message behind the Opposition: Balance is dynamic, an never ending ungoing process, a status we have to create and that won’t last forever, once we realized our problem or thought about a solution. Both energies are right and need each other in order to find harmony, they ultimately have been born somehow on common ground, it’s a beautiful symbiosis, that lets you unravel and discover lifes lesson of regenerating the self, self healing and how to connect two dots to create the full picture (imagine it like coloring by numbers!). The Opposition is often about getting to know what one wants and needs, it’s undeniably equally important for one to figure it out in order to fully focus on ones destiny or at least to fully visualize all the opportunities and chances in ones life path. More than often, the Opposition takes time to figure out even when the answer seems to be clear and obvious - don’t pressure yourself, take your time and be kind.

The Square

The Square is an aspect that is created by a difference of 90° with an orb allowance of 7.5 degrees. The Square is different compared to the Opposition, here the energies seem to not even bloom from the same family or at least have little similarities. Now, the square is usually two different ideologies clashing, they create a melting pot of frustration and even agression, where the Square sits the native will find themself unconsciously falling back into difficult behavior, thoughts and situations. The square is about questioning what energy is rightfully here, demanding to be pleased and lived out and which is wrong. Of course, none of them is wrong, but really, the native might ask themself: how can they ever work together? Extreme neglect and totalities might be a consequence, wanting the problem to ‘vanish’ already, pleading for growth. It’s really about appreciating the total differences and using them for the best. The individual might feel like they can’t fully chose one ‘option’, but this constant ‘figuring out’ how to channel their energies and when to rely to them, as well as to accept them as strong and reliable forces, keeps the individual active and on the go. They are forced to be quick and clever in a way, to explore people and the self, to assert the self and to overcome an inner blockage. This blockage makes you either disarm yourself - unable to move on and to let yourself be washed away by the rough and wild sea - or you become the boat that wisely reads the sky and water and moves forward without sinking and so is able to see the wild unknown places that the world has to offer. Key message behind the Square: Master of the forces that seem to hold you in a tight grip, seeing the benefit in even the worst and constantly developing the self and setting an example as the master of self understanding and development.

The Inconjunction or Quincunx

The Inconjunction is an aspect of 150° and has an orb allowance of 2 degrees. This aspect feels unable to ‘balance out’ or to find common grounds, since modality and element are both not compatible. More often the Inconjunction can lead to acceptance. We don’t need to force desires and wishes together only for the sake of apparent constant harmony. Both these energies have their own area, both need to live their energies out and have the right to do so. In a negative way, an individual might develop an unhealthy behaviorism in order to satisfy both needs. When being true and honest with the self, the native will think about neutral/benefitting/healthy ways of secluding both areas of the planets energies and needs in their life. Key message behind the Inconjunction: Acceptance first, be honest with yourself and let go of the constant need to create a harmony that can not be reached. Be greatful for the differences and allow yourself find ways to enjoy both with a good will, heart and gratitude. Adjustment will come naturally then.

The Semi-Square

It is an aspect of 45° with an orb allowance of ca. 2 degrees. The Semi-Square is a harsh aspect that manifests as an emotional/inner blockage and inner pain that will manifest subconsciously as outer problems that reoccur, similar in its outcomes and how they happen. The Semi-Square can easily lead to losing the self, losing faith in the self or self-pity but whilst the native struggles with inner blockage and adjusting, the external events will put them in the position to actively take action: one can not not ignore the problem inside the self when it’s presented right in front of them, however if you choose to keep on hanging on to your frustration and desires, if you keep on pushing it aside, wanting to deal with it later or purely neglecting lifes offers for growth one might find themself left behind at times. Another problem might be a lack of discipline, holding on to old, bad behavior or attitude. Key message behind the Semi-Square: Don’t ignore your inner pain, even if it seems small at first. Be open and observant and willing to deal with problems. It’s normal that adjustment will take time, don’t decide where’s the limit when it comes to growth. Be open and content about changes to expand your mind, challenges by life that test you. Be persitant.

The Sesquiquadrate

The aspect in a degree of 135 with an orb allowance of 2-3. This is about holding the self accountable for our actions and problems,  to not ignore them. It’s about inner control and to accept aid. The energies of the Sesquiquadrate are subtle, sometimes not noticed by the native. Usually it’s when we want to break free of negativity/a problem but know for a better that we are bound to something holding us back, hence losing our courage. It offers creativity, since this aspect is usually easier mastered by strong positive aspects in the natal chart, that strengthen your decisions and actions. If this challenging aspect is noticed, the feelings of being unable to do anything leads easily to ignoring the problem. Now, this is the point, that’ll potentially make it bigger emotional baggage than it has been before. There is a desire to act and it involves the self, to combine to sides inside of you, to stimulate two sides that have strong expectations. To break boundaries by combining them. Key message behind the Sesquiquadrate: Reflect on the self and acknowledge your flaws and problems. Be active about them, don’t pile emotional baggage up. Be open for guidance and be open to think constructively. Seek out outer guidance/help/opinions, it’s not a shame, at best they will only heighten your intuiton. Embrace oppositions.

[metvmorqhoses]

Hi. It's quite early here... 3:33 AM and I should probably go back to sleep. But I read your response to the anon about Mal and the darkling. And I still have to read the books and enjoyed the tv show. But I was wondering if there is an analysis on his character somewhere? Or if you had one? He is really an interesting character together with Wrath from Kingdom of the Cursed by Kerri Maniscalco. Villains, their personal relationships and why they do what they do is so interesting to me. I have a soft spot for villains... Thanks for reading this ask. Hope it's not a bother. Love your blog btw! Just started following you!

i guess if you dig the internet you are sure to find plenty of analyses and meta regarding the darkling, i’m just not sure about the quality you might encounter. i have personally never read anything about him but the books, and everything i wrote about his character is what i personally gathered from the novels and the show. but it can be absolutely true that this is just how i, aficionado of complexity, like to read things i find interesting in general. i’d already have to probably call my analysis in a way far-fetched, since the grisha trilogy is not only a children's saga, but i can assure you, even a very badly written one. the books bored me to no end and everything was painfully predictable, i don’t know your age but i would have really found them mediocre even as a teen.

yet, the darkling is indeed a villain with beauty and potential and i completely share your interest in his character, especially since the show finally gave him much more dimension and the potential to be finally really explored - so long they don’t waste it. in the books he is hardly ever there, he’s more talked about than seen, more despised than known, and as much as this fact is the only real page-turner of the series, it’s at the end of the day wasted potential and annoying af, not to mention an overall disappointment. in the show as well he’s not as there as the other characters, but at least he owns every last second of his time on screen, it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say he has more emotion in a single scene of the show than he has during the majority of the books lol - and i honestly don’t know if i like the choice or not. it certainly makes him more human, more multidimensional, but at the same time the key aspect of his character is that he’s an ancient creature hardly pretending to be human anymore, until alina reminds him, making him hate and adore the feeling in equal measure - and that’s the beauty of their relationship. the show oversimplifies this, the only real depth the books have, giving him a title when in the books he’s just a scary, stone-cold entity to the entire nation, it gives him in other words an emotional expressivity that makes him more approachable but that at the same time takes away what is so special about his relationship with alina, the only one he lets close, that he tries to be known by, the first whom he confesses his real name to after thousands of years.

so, even if i definitely liked this aspect better in the novels (it was way more heartbreaking and poetic), the show really exceeded my expectations and i find it way superior to the books, if you are debating whether to read them or not. i hope this helped :)

[maxwell-grant]

You are your top 5 Shadow agents

I don’t talk about the Agents as much as I should, even though I constantly try to stress their importance, because I’m working on essays for them individually. To be honest, I think about the Agents practically every day to the point I have a hard time separating my headcanons from the actual canon material, but I have to stay true to it, and the lack of material regarding them means that the only way I can truly talk about their characterization is by diving deep into the novels and taking notes, which I don’t have much time to do, and then finding the right books or moments to talk about, which is even more difficult. 

This by no means constitutes my big thinkpiece on them, but it’s a start, and ultimately narrowing it down was a lot harder than I expected. This order is by no means final, if you asked me this question next week or next month I’d probably have a different answer, but it’s the 5 that I find myself thinking on the most. 

Honorable mentions: Jericho Druke and Myra Reldon, who are incredibly awesome characters conceptually and who have great moments each, and whom I definitely think deserve big turns on the spotlight if the Agents ever get put on the spotlight again, but are held back by issues with their presentation and lack of prominence. Margo Lane, whom only just narrowly missed the cut because, as much as I like her and think she gets an underseved bad rep and definitely has great things going for her, I sadly have to concede isn’t as consistently great or well-written as she should be. Clyde Burke, whom I definitely like a lot based on what I’ve read and consider an integral part of the line-up, but haven’t read enough of the novels he’s in to really solidify him as one of my favorites just yet. And Slade Farrow, who is a bit too complicated to talk about superficially.

Allright, so here they are

Number 5: Burbank

As the center of all communications within The Shadow’s network and the only character in the series who is even more mysterious and elusive than The Shadow himself, Burbank is fascinating and the kind of character who simultaneously seems to be both begging for an in-depth exploration and yet who also should be dead last on the list of mysteries about the series we want spoiled, because nobody wants the mystery ruined. He’s a bit of cipher personality-wise compared to the other agents, but he kind of has to be, and I think it helps to illustrate the many forms the agents of The Shadow can and should take, that one of them is this total mystery whom we know nothing about and yet is so vital to the whole thing. And it’s interesting also because, for all the many variations we’ve had on The Shadow’s life and thoughts and feelings and etc over the years, Burbank has stayed more or less the same. Whatever variations he’s had in design aside, Burbank just is. 

The pulps did often have moments where we would get to see moments that told us a little more about Burbank, gestures he did, capabilities he had and didn’t have, little details Gibson would sprinkle in to keep people fascinated. Several scenes with Burbank are almost presented like you’re watching a movie, in the way Gibson keeps describing his face being mysteriously blocked from view by objects or lighting, like not even in your mind you are supposed to know what he is. And it’s all the more fascinating because, unlike The Shadow, as far as we know, Burbank is just some guy who’s good with tech, who was only recruited in the 2nd story but apparently knows The Shadow from before it, and whom The Shadow entrusted with virtually every secret necessary to keep his operations running. 

It’s kind of a sign as to how utterly neglected the agents are that, to this day, few writers who’ve ever touched The Shadow has ever come close to giving us any sort of explanation or backstory or anything on Burbank, and I refuse to believe these people had that much self-control. Of course I have my own ideas for Burbank, but even I would hesitate to put them on a story, because Burbank epitomizes that double-edged sword that comes with a solid narrative mystery. Burbank just is, and hopefully he will stay that way. 

Number 4: Dr Roy Tam

Mention of Dr. Tam meant much to Sayre. He was acquainted with Roy Tam, the Chinese physician. He knew that Tam was a power in Chinatown; one who worked for good

Unrolling a map, Tam showed the entire Manhattan area, studded with tiny dots in districts quite remote from Chinatown.

"These represent my outposts," he said soberly. "They are places, owned by Chinese - restaurants, laundries, curio shops, other places of business. In each of these places, I have a friend."

The Shadow understood. Dr. Tam was the motivating factor among the Chinese who adapted themselves to American ways. His mission was to create good will among races, to put an end to prejudice and superstition.

A newer and more sober spirit had replaced the old and dangerous festivities. Feuds in Chinatown were a thing of the forgotten past. Dr. Tam and his associates had done much to bring about the present sentiment; but there were persons - even among that group - who felt regret at the passing of old traditions.

Dr Tam is a remarkably layered character for one that only appears in about ten stories, and he’s one of the agents I’m most eager to discuss in-depth. He’s another one of those agents that Gibson introduced by tricking you into seeing him as a villain, as a Yellow Peril cliche, until he is revealed to be in fact a good man. Not just good, Roy Tam is presented as a powerful, influential and cunning Chinese man with a lot of assistants secretly working for him, and who is consistently presented as a progressive, pacifistic, benevolent civic leader and ally, even friend, of The Shadow. 

Tam is very much westernized and the stories paint that mostly as a good thing, and this is one of the areas that I think could very much result in an interesting story that looks at the ramifications of his role, because of course not everyone is going to agree with his viewpoints, of course him being an advocate against superstition and tradition isn’t necessarily a good thing (and it’s not how Yat Soon, The Shadow’s other major Chinese ally, works, which puts the two at odds), and of course it’s a complicated situation, but the fact that Tam invites this kind of debate at all I think is something very interesting

Largely because of the movie, Dr Tam is one of the few agents of The Shadow who’s managed to sustain appearences in modern stories, and none of them have ever really went with his original angle as a powerful civic leader. Instead he’s been largely painted as either a scientist, like in the movie, a general practitioner, and a psychiatrist, and his age has been all over the board. 

I prefer him in his original form but I also very much like the idea of Roy Tam being, like the Chinese supervillains he was created to be a subversion of, an incredible genius who’s got skills in all fields that can fit under the “Dr” part of his job and is also an incredibly capable leader able to unify splintered communities under a cause of unity and cooperation, someone who absolutely could be the adventuring genius so many other pulp heroes are, except he dedicates himself wholesale to his community and the fight against prejudice and the betterment of lives, even if he’s misguided or wrong at some of the causes he takes up. I really think this character could partake in really great stories if ever brought back.

Number 3: Cliff Marsland

(Fan-art by @cryptixcreations)

Cliff may have actually been the first agent I really fell in love with based on concept alone, even before I read the stories he was a part of and started loving all of the others. He’s one of the few agents who has prior history with The Shadow and we get ever so tantalizing hints at his background that we ultimately never get to learn about in full. He’s the resident tough guy and underworld contact of The Shadow, which in any other series might have made him the biggest badass and a loner action hero who’s too cool for things like thinking and relying on others for help. But here, trying to be that only gets Cliff into trouble, and circumstances gradually morph him into the series equivalent of a Team Dad. 

He was one of the agents who we got to see develop as a character. As he appears more frequently past his introduction, he grows from a headstrong, careless jackass, mostly interested in the action parts of the job, who “resigned himself to an adventurous career with violent death as its inevitable termination”, into one of the most reliable and capable agents, taking the lead during action scenes but otherwise fully defering leadership to Harry, and being the agent most likely to partake in gunfights and rescue The Shadow out of trouble, joining in missions like infiltrating circuses or high-society clubs and forming very strong friendships with Harry, Clyde & Hawkeye, who almost kills a man with his bare hands when he thinks Harry’s been killed. He’s the hardass, square-jawed ex-con who plays the reputation of a brutal killer, and is in reality a great friend, ally and husband (Arline has sadly only been mentioned in three stories), on top of being an invaluable fighter and secret agent.

Cliff could have easily been the protagonist of a long-running series all his own and that’s one of my favorite aspects of The Shadow’s agents. They are people with agency, goals and dreams and relationships and lives beyond the roles they play, they all have strengths and weaknesses and faults and positives that bring them much closer to us than The Shadow could ever be, with no end to the variety of roles they can take, and Cliff in particular is a character I’m very attached to. 

I do hope that he eventually found peace in a quiet life with Arline once his business with The Shadow was over.

Number 2: Harry Vincent

The Shadow as a franchise has been vastly worse off as a result of Harry Vincent being completely sidelined and mischaracterized in virtually every adaptation since, and the sheer love that Shadow fans hold for Harry purely may be the closest thing to a true universal opinion in the fandom. 

Harry is a lot of things: the audience surrogate, the protagonist of much of the early stories, the leader of the agents in field duty, the dude in distress who gets kidnapped far more than even Margo, a hopeless romantic, an action hero, the one who gets sent to recruit agents because all The Shadow has to do is send Harry on an assignment and wait for him to come back with a new friend. He is a competent, resourceful, strong, extremely kind ball of sunshine who's got the potential for greatness, even if he can't see it. 

And for this post I’m going to highlight this: Harry is, on top of all that, the ultimate embodiment of what The Shadow strives to protect, help and uplift. He is the living proof that The Shadow's mission has a good, positive effect in the world, long after criminals are brought to justice and plots are failed and victims are rescued, purely by the fact that he’s alive and helping others who were once like him. Someone who, despite having so much to offer, could have easily been swept away by the world’s callousness and cruelty, if The Shadow wasn’t there to rescue him and uplift him.

I liked The Shadow pretty much at first sight after seeing the character’s design and listening to episodes of the radio show, and my appreciation for the character grew after reading The Shadow’s Shadow, but it wasn’t until I encountered @oldschoolcrimefighters and her brilliantly informative writings on The Shadow and Harry that I not only fell in love with the series, but decided to do everything in my power to try and get other people to love it too and see the potential it has. I think a lot more people should at least be aware of why Harry matters. 

Number 1: Moe Shrevnitz

I was honestly a bit surprised when I rounded up all of the agents to make this list and Shrevy here ended up in Number One, but in hindsight, it may have been obvious all along. 

My reasonings as to why Shrevy is my favorite agent do get a bit too personal, especially because of something that happened to me as I was writing this post, so I’m putting it on a separate post here. 

[metawish]

Family x Hunter: My mini analysis about family relationships in HxH

I am a HUGE sucker for found family troupes and family-oriented stories. There just aren't enough stories to explore the nature of those relationships and how influencial they can be to our development as people. For those of us who's primary relationships are our families, we're left out of the dialouge.

So imagine my surprise when Hunter x Hunter ended up being the anime I can't stop thinking about precisely because of the MULTIPLE family relationships and psudorelationships that happen throughout the plot. Imagine my double surprise when it turns out those family relationships are prioritized and emphasized in the anime over others like the all too popular friendship.

Written for the Carnival of Aro’s Jan 2021 Theme: Stories

Take the premise as a starting point. Gon decides to become a hunter, not because it's cool or because he wants to find some rare cool thing he's never seen before. No, instead, he wants to become a hunter to get closer to his absent father. The ENTIRE show only happens because Gon is driven by a desire to connect with and forge a relationship with his father. I think I can safely say that the family aspect of Hunter x Hunter is embeded into it's core.

Then take a look at the reasons the other main four choose to become hunters. Kurapika is hoping to avenge the massacur of his family clan, a clan that does not interact with the outside world. His entire character arc and development is based on this goal of seeking revenge.

Killua is at the Hunter exam because he heard it was easy. But then we learn, he left home because he wants to REJECT his family obligation to take up the family business.

"Okay, fair," I hear you all say, "but what about Leorio? He just wants money."

Let me help you connect the dots here. First, he claims he wants to become a hunter because of the money. Then we learn he wants to use that money to become a doctor and then provide free medical treatment for those who cannot afford it. THEN we learn that this motivation STEMS from a childhood incident where a best friend of his ended up dying from a treatable illness because he couldn't afford the medical treatment neccessary. Leorio decided then that he did not want anyone else to experience that, tried to go at it the normal way, and realized that it would be nearly impossible for him to afford it. Any average person might end up giving up on this dream, but Leorio was so dedicated to his goal that he ended up training to become a hunter, a physically and mentally strenuous task. JUST so he can get access to more money.

If anything, Leorio's the one who's most motivated by platonic relationships! While Kurapika,Gon, and Killua's motivations are based on obligations to family, Leorio's motivation is only suggested. It isn't like this friend is still alive and Leorio is obligated to save him. No one but Leorio is beholden to the completion of his mission. The strength in that bond has to be strong for him to go to the lengths he did.

AND THIS IS ONLY THE VERY BEGINNING!

Gon's arc goes from becoming a hunter to finding his dad. Kurapika disappears from the story precisely because he is off getting revenge. Killua's development as a character entirely rests in the way he navigates between his family, with entire plots surrounding the Zoldyks. Leorio reenters the narrative JUST to show how deeply he cares for Gon and Killua, and serves as a nice foil to Ging, Gon's father.

I physically cried during Killua's final arc, when he apologized to his youngest sister, asking for her forgiveness after being a "bad big brother." Killua went from essentially running away from home rejecting his family, to asking for forgiveness from a cherished family member. And the nuance inbetween! Freeing himself from his oldest brother's mind control. Finding common ground with his father that, at least in the anime, never gets used against him. Rejecting the family business without rejecting the family. While it still feels incomplete, the joy at seeing him reconnect with a family member and promise to always be together forever made the little shrivelled starved heart of mine swell satisfied.

Killua is a perfect example of the story focusing on his family relationships over his friendships, or at the very least, implying that those family relationships are more important than those with his friend. Does Killua leverage the fact that he made a pact with his dad to never abandon a friend? Yeah. But the fact is that he still went to his family for help.

In the last episode, he tells Gon, his first and only friend, that they have to part ways since he has to protect his little sister. He even says that she comes first before Gon. After struggling to understand if Gon is as committed to him as Killua was to him, he finds closure in his little sister's dedication and wholesome affection. (When he asks Alluka if he was the only one in the whole world that loved her, would that be enough, her response was that she couldn't stop smiling. Because the answer was yes. And perhaps, it was also a question for Killua. Is Alluka's love for him enough?)

And Leorio. LEORIO. As I said, he disappears from the narrative, largely because his mission and Gon's are not the same. But when Gon is out of commission, Leorio comes back into play. The PLOT is affected by this decision and MOVES because if this. Leorio was simply trying to find a way to help his friend, and decides to publically ask his father where he is during such a critical time. Leorio's emotions at Ging's lack thereof ends up putting him in the spotlight, a spotlight he uses every time to seek answers for Gon and to reaffirm his commitment to saving Gon. As much as I HATED the slowmotion, the reunion between Leorio and Gon after Gon's been healed was felt deep in my SOUL. Contrast that QUITE LITERALLY with Ging's reaction and we have the potential for some major character development and storytelling about what a family relationship really is about.

Do we have to earn those familiar relationships? Are we expected to commit to people who are not committed to us simply because they are blood? Can we reject them? Is Killua's reject of his oldest brother over their younger sister a conflict that cannot be solved? Can we form them with strangers? Who is more of a stranger to Gon; his absent dad or the guy he met on a ship headed to an exam? Are we obligated to our family duties like Killua and the family business or Kurapika and his life destroying hunt to avenge his dead family?

Kurapika's story felt a little flat, which is a shame because there is so much potential to explore! The struggle to avenge his clan stems not from his clan, but from his own trauma and pain. His family was ripped right under him, leaving him no one to rely on. Instead of form new relationships, he rots along with his family. In a sense, his disappearance from the narrative represents his character regression, fading from existance like his family.

From a family taken away, to a father who was never there in the first place. Gon's story feels incomplete. Feels a bit like Gon's growth as a character is secondary to the advancement of the plot. Feels like sweeping major issues under the metaphorical rug and calling it a fun show. This man never once visited his son. When leaving a recording for his son, he flat out told Gon he did not want to see him at all. During his time in the hospital, never once did he visit. Sure, we see him remain confident that Gon is alright, but is this confidence misplaced? Is this even true confidence in a person he's never met before? I feel like I am missing a giant piece of the puzzle explaining why Gon, a 12 year old boy who had no male figure in his life, easily accepts Ging.

Let's not forget how Gon didn't even WANT to learn more about his birth mother, a mystery that we will never solve. Just another example of trying to answer what family means. Mito is an aunt, but to Gon, Mito is his mother. (Yet Ging can still be his father? Why not Leorio? A far more deserving man of any affection whatsoever.)

How the story should go. After meeting up with Ging, he continues to go on an adventure with him. As they travel through the far more dangerous continent, Gon faces death multiple times. All this while Ging continues without regard for his safety. Gon reflects, thinking back to his friend Killua, who would attack Gon if it was to protect him. Who called him the sun. Back to Leorio, who hugged Gon like he mattered. Who said he was sorry for not being there for him. As they continue on, he reflects on who really matters. A call for help from his friends. Does he answer the call or remain by his father's side?

What makes a familiar relationship? Blood? Obligation? Depth of affection? Trust? Who makes or breaks those ties? How much do we grow from those relationships?

Hunter x Hunter exceeds my expectations, but also fails to live up to the story it sets itself up to be. I never thought I'd see such an incredible character development that centers on family. I hoped for something on the Ging & Gon front, perhaps as a means of exploring my own thoughts on the matter. Sorely disappointed. I think about this anime often because there is still much left to the imagination. A story unfinished. Perhaps that's what makes it a good story; especially one that decides to kick the standard and focus on a relationship that all of us have dealt with, but many of us overlook.

Is this show good? Debatable. What isn't debatable is how important family is to the plot and character development of the show. Maybe, in an alternative world somewhere, there is a satisfying ending where Gon acknowledges his own family trauma. He realizes how important his friends are, maybe seeing them more as his own family. Kurapika's revenge slowly fizzles out, instead replaced by the need to protect what's still alive. Killua resolves his family issues while remaining true to himself and Leorio adopts Gon.

Maybe the real family is the one we make along the way.

[soldouthaz]

Hey love! Can you give us a quick summary of all the fics you’re currently working on and also of those you kind of have ideas to write about in the future but haven’t started yet? I’m so interested in your writing 💕

ahh of course!!! I'll put it all below the cut in case anyone wants to be surprised :) thank you so much for your interest! I hope you’re doing well! 

okay, so aside from a couple that I'm keeping secret for now, these are all the ones that I'm currently working on! (I'll put my other ideas that I haven’t started yet near the bottom of the post! 

1. single dad fic 

this one and the next one will most likely be out sometime in the beginning of 2021 since I’ve already got a bit of them written! this one is abo too, which is also still kind of new to me! L moves in next door to H who has a daughter, and quickly becomes caught up in their lives, getting attached to both H and the little girl. there are a few twists and turns along the way though because I can’t help but write in some angst, and I’m excited to write these characters! I don’t think I've ever written a kid fic before, so this one is full of new concepts for me! 

2. look after you iii 

this one has been a long time coming, but I'm hoping to get it out sometime before march 2021 if all goes well! it’s the final addition to my look after you series, and I feel like it wraps everything up really nicely. it also shows a more serious and domestic side to those characters than any other part of that ‘verse, and touches on some important aspects of my own life like adoption and a few other things yet to be revealed. I always say that this series began as an excuse to practice writing smut, but it’s turned into so much more to me :) 

3. science & faith

I've mentioned this one a few times before as well! it’s STEM major L who has dedicated his career to proving that love doesn’t actually exist. H is a philosophy major that challenges him from the beginning, and through several interviews they become unexpected friends. cue major character development and wayyyyyy too much psych/philosphy conjecture because it’s my guilty pleasure. some of my favorite fics are the ones where they’re both insanely intelligent and debate a lot, so I've tried to mirror some of that in this! 

4. sitcom au 

okay, this is the first of several long fics that I want to write this coming year! this one is an idea that I've been obsessed with for nearly two years now, and I'm finally getting around to writing some of it! it’s loosely based around Friends, but very different I'd say. the entire gang are on a new-age sitcom and the fic explores their lives both on and off screen. it’s enemies to lovers (sort of) and has a bit of side ziam because it’s my guilty pleasure, and I feel like it’s one of the most real, raw, emotional pieces I've ever written. I am so so so so excited about this one, and I feel like people will really be able to relate to many aspects of it!!! 

5. love & monsters 

this au is loosely based around the movie that came out earlier this year (Love & Monsters) in which the world ends, but not entirely. I'm changing quite a few details about it though! the vibe here is very dystopian, everyone lives in bunkers, and there are giant, radioactive insects as a result of the world ‘ending’ (lots of world building which will be explained in detail in the fic!). this one features bunker leader H and traveler L, and it’s another one that is unlike anything I've ever written before! I have so many ideas for this one, and I've always wanted to try my hand at a dystopian type world! 

6. speakeasy au 

this one was inspired by the lovely, talented @loubellies !!!!!!! her fic was phenomenal, and it immediately inspired me to want to write a fic that took place in a similar ‘verse! mine will take some slightly different turns and hopefully won’t be too similar! as the rough title suggests, it’s based around a speakeasy and it’s also a historical au (I am going to try my best to make everything historically accurate, but I made a B- in history in school so - we’ll see!) so far it’s got lots of prohibition-era type themes, suspender-wearing H, and one of the most interesting L’s I've ever written, I think. oh, and LOTS of alcohol! I'm excited to try to write some crime/action more in depth! 

7. married in vegas au 

for this one I wanted to go back to my roots for another road trip fic! it’s strangers to lovers to enemies and then back to lovers (sorry for the slight spoiler, but you know I'm incapable of writing anything other than a happy ending) and features H&L both flawed and at some difficult parts of their lives, and they both find themselves in vegas hoping for a distraction. on the trip back to their old lives they both are forced to confront some things and improve themselves, and maybe also learn to love again while they’re at it. I adore road trip au’s and character development, so this is another one I'm really excited about! 

8. abo royalty au 

the last I'll share of my current wips for now is one that I've had in my idea list for a while, but randomly wrote a few thousands on over the past few weeks! it’s a historical royalty au that’s abo, featuring royal H. I don’t want to give away too much of L’s storyline just yet, but his character is one of my favorites in this one for sure! also, may or may not be written with my lovely friend @falsegoodnight .... let me know? ;) 

that’s about it for now! I have nearly 30 wips but I only counted the ones that have significant word counts here, and I'll put some below with the ideas! 

and then here are some in my list that have 10k or less that I want to write in the future (feel free to send me ideas or things you’d like to see in them, or to ask me for more info if you’re curious!): 

- ziam au 

- sterek au 

- fashion designer!L 

- rival CEO’s (this one has over 10k but it’s been abandoned for a bit! I need to get back into it!) 

-superpowers au 

- ghost writer!L / popstar!H au 

- *possibly* a triplet fic (nothing weird! strictly X/L | X/L | X/L) 

- witch!L 

- more vampy drabbles 

- a pride and prejudice au where L is mary

- phone sex operator!H but the hotline is for aftercare

- H is engaged to someone else (although ris @falsegoodnight knocked this trope OUT OF THE PARK and I don’t think I could ever do it justice after reading hers!) 

- some modern day fairytales 

- I'd like to do some more uni au’s as well! 

- a loosely inspired reversed Grease au where L is preppy and pretends he doesn’t know H when they get back to school, and H is from the ‘wrong side of the tracks’ and falls head over heels for L 

alrighty, I think that’s about it! these are most of my plans for the next two years or so, with the exception of some drabbles/pwp’s/some other works that I'm keeping private for now! if you see anything you’d like more info on or make any suggestions for, please don’t hesitate to reach out or send me an ask! 

and thank you again for asking me this, I've really been uninspired recently and I feel like I'm kind of dragging, but getting to talk a little bit about them has made me very happy tonight! thank you so much again for your interest, and I hope you have a lovely rest of your day/night! <3 

[12housescorpio]

What are your favorite placements of all time, and why?

Oop this might take me awhile to do, sorry anon if this is like a week late. It’s especially hard because most of these placements have the potential to be really good but also really bad. Spoiler alert you’re gonna see a lot of Sagittarius and Aquarius because they’re my favorite signs ahaha. Also you said placements and not aspects so I won’t be including them in this list. And as a final note I will only be talking about the developed versions of these signs, undeveloped will not be mentioned.

*also there is a link to a more in depth explanation on each placement*

Rising Cancer - these people make me smile and my heart warm when I think about them. They’re the sweet old man buying flowers for his wife while she’s in the hospital. They’re the tough biker guy helping a kitten to safety. They really see the world in a kind, nurturing, empathetic way. They always make people feel equal to, and included. They are just genuinely kind hearted.

Rising Sagittarius - rising Sagittarius have the “optimistic nihilism” energy that I fuck with and try to exhibit in my daily life. That big lets go on an escapism adventure that I stan. Big sunglasses finger gunning on a skate board energy. Very “you think I won’t?” Type of people. I love y’all crazy asses. We are the SAME I don’t care what my chart says lol

Rising Aquarius - please marry me because I’m in love with you. The way rising Aquarius sees the world makes my venus in Scorpio melt. I love how unique you see situations and perspectives, the way you’re patient and perceptive. You don’t react, you watch and you add a point of view to the situation that no one throught about. You have a detached yet open way about you that makes me wanna chase y’all asses just so I can figure out what you’re thinking.

sun Sagittarius - I love y’alls optimism, how bubbly you are, how funny and pleasant your energy is to be around. I love how blunt and honest you are.

sun Aquarius - I love your weird way of being, existing. Everything about you is different, quirky, eccentric. And I love that. You’re also so funny and intuitive

moon Gemini - ok here I am.... BACK ON MY GEMINI MOON FANCLUB BULLSHIT. I love the way you think. The way you analyze, and intellectualize your emotions. You feel anxious, but you don’t like to let your emotions get the best of you in social situations. You try to be logical instead of emotional. You’re a fucking super human.

moon Leo - you’re so fun, humorous, preformative. You always make people laugh and feel comfortable and good about themselves. Self deprecating and always willing to help others. Attention seeking in an enjoyable way.

moon Libra - diplomatic, caring, generous, can be push overs but mostly is just self sacrificing. Wants to help people, genuinely loves and cares about others, extremely sentimental, loves memories and moments.

moon Sagittarius - adventurous, playful, goofy, innocent, not really thinking abt how they’re acting, very authentic. Honest with how they’re feeling but also afraid to be a burden. Won’t bring up how they’re feeling but if asked will tell the truth. Can have unhealthy escapism habits. Always down to party. Issues with sex. But I love y’all tho

Moon Capricorn - my babies. So amusing, sarcastic, cynical, but in the most entertaining and adorable way. Because they’re genuinely moral and wonderfully funny people. But they are really hard on themselves and when it comes to “bothering other people” with their emotions, I wish they would let me help them :/ bc they deserve it

moon Aquarius - deep thinkers, dreamers, constantly fantasizing, stuck in their head, always has something profound to say, Philosophical, wants everyone to be happy and get along.

mercury Libra - the BEST at communication hands down. the most honest, caring, diplomatic sign of all time. Good at being perfectly objective and fair, making others play nicely. Kind, understanding, gentle. Always tells people exactly what they’re thinking.

Mercury Sagittarius - doesn’t say anything unless asked, but never lies. And if they do lie it has to do with something else in their chart. Bubbly communication, always gives things to people on a silver platter, it seems like sugar coating but it’s really just giving it to you as optimistically as possible so you don’t think of it negatively. Always the one saying “but-“ followed by the good side of things. Mercury Sagittarius are curious, always asking questions out of genuine curiosity.

Mercury Scorpio - can come across as harsh but they literally aren’t harsh at all. They’re just very “tell it like it is” people, sometimes can be slightly negative but they’re like crows: they warn people. They want to warn others. They’re deep thinkers, constantly thinking about the unknown, solving problems, reading between lies, they’re truth seekers. They’re the same as Sagittarius but Sagittarius wants the light truth, and Scorpio wants the dark truth. Scorpio mercuries are the best hands down this isn’t a debate ok next!

Mercury Aquarius - intuitive, knows what to say and what not to say to people, the best at keeping secrets, never in drama because they know how to stay out of it, smarter than any other placement hands down.

Venus Gemini - wants to talk to the person they have feelings for, wants to explore, communicate, get to know, and gushes over them. Most likely to write a love letter or poems to their s/o

Venus Cancer - cuddly, homey, least likely to cheat imo. Faithful, emotional, you are their everything. They love with the moon, you might not know how much you mean to them and then one day they make you pancakes and kiss your nose and you’re like oh word??????

Venus Scorpio - HI HELLO my time to fucking SHINE we’re the best okay. We love with our soul, gravity, world, body, heart, brain, everything we have to offer. We put EVERYTHING into the relationship, we give the other person everything we possibly can. Our energy, love, physical existence, we would literally die for the people we love. We love intensely and expect the same. Strap in!

Venus Capricorn - hard workers in relationships, wants to see that the other person will put in the work before deciding to invest but then you’re stuck with them once they’ve decided. WILL NOT LEAVE. Will stay until it’s fixed. Practical in love. Giving, always so so giving. Doesn’t want to admit it but loves to spoil.

and no mars placements are really my favorite so imma just skip that bad boy

[tammyhybrid21]

Do you think that in the Tadeo Jones universe, some people (average or rich people) think living mummies aren't persons but some creatures they can capture and claim as their own 'cuz they have no rights? (as mentioned by Tad in Movie 2) Kind of like the Apex's view of denizens in IT. I think this could be adressed in Tad 3. But I'll be sad because Mummy is going to find the hard way that for powerful people, his feelings and opinions doesn't matter (Twice, if we count the Spanish conquista)

Ohhhh man!

I have been-- stewing over how best to answer this since I saw it yesterday, because part of me has IDEAS-- the other part has a rant that has kind of been building for a while in general when you just examine the movies and the setting and even the actual community represented in reality(that being Archaeologists not-- well)

And LOOK-- I have TEA!

Frustrated, frustrated tea regarding other aspects of how this all could play out that basically boils down to the one major issue that a lot of those groups has is the issue of "But WE all know!" and the we've boxed this in already.

Which-- Debatably, Tad isn't the only one with some issues... But Sara has-- at least insofar as her reactions to Mummy in movie 2, come to terms past her more nebulous in concept repeated line.

"Mummies can't be alive, it's a contradiction in terms" 

Which-- actually might be an issue that's just on the question of the life/death binary more than it is actually a question of whether someone is human/a person or not. And we ALL know she's definitely got Major Respect over Tad--

Like, I will write a proper analysis over their "Mummy gives advice/pep talk" scenes later-- but--

Sara doesn't just take it and run how Tadeo does-- and she doesn't get hyped about it either. It's soft and subtle and just ARGH--

--

Which, okay beside the point, but I have-- so much on this idea of how people view Mummy-- Because let's for a moment consider what Tad actually says-- in answer to Mummy's "What is with you?" and I want to also talk on what people tend to associate with and call monsters... and how... that might also factor into this whole mess.

"Listen you're a mummy, you scare people. In my world you're a zombie!"

Which-- okay, on the surface this is just an on the nose point about how well, Mummy is undead. Ahahah, the living dead and I suppose living mummies are their own form of zombie-- although really it's more like they're cousins as zombies are usually more... in process of decay while mummies are preserved/petrified... Buuuut in any case... not the point here really.

But rather...

Let's talk about how "Monster Movies" come in here. And what zombies tend to be synonymous with nowadays. You know-- for the most part. Mindless, brainless, sometimes killers though not always-- But ultimately-- Does... anyone actually watch zombie shows for in-depth exploration of zombies ever anymore? Aside a few exceptions, and same in games-- Zombies are relegated to just brainless/mindless monsters.

Which--

On the other side of that-- monsters.

Tad never quite uses that word but--

"First, you're not human"

Mummies-- are monsters. In stories and fiction. Used to scare, used to awe, used to add scenery dressing, spooky, freaky, creepy-- and when they're not-- well it's rare. But if they're not the villains, they're not "human". Which think about that for a moment, in all the monster stories we have but a few where the monsters aren't outright put in that position.

But a monster is usually in a story put into one role and box. And if they're not outright there just to be spooky, or the whole new misunderstood monster trope-- which well, that's a whole other thing. But we all know the usual "monster shtick".

Violent, scary, simple, dumb, driven by base impulses, nonhuman, Very, very often as lesser, other, and something to be feared/hunted/destroyed.

And while modern day does move away from that--

ISSUES still prevail.

And I have-- just got to aside here, but like, thinking on this but-- the Phone Mummy sign outside of Tad's window as a child has some... other weird things. Because as a wild aside, my dumb brain has decided to A - B link this with a series I watched on television from 2005-2007

Because of THIS stupid Mummy Scam Artist character. And it's dumb, has nothing to do with the issue of mummies(and other potential beings and creatures of myth and legend) having less rights. But this whole phone billboard-- with the Mummy, it's legit right up this character's kind of scam alley and I may or may not one day just rewatch his two villain episodes to get his personality clear in my head JUST to do a dumb crossover.(And for nostalgia, but that's not news)

BUT--

Advertising does tell us some things already. In how people possibly think and could respond/react.

Yet still-- there is something more I think that we're missing in this conversation on how people will potentially treat the discovery of a living mummy. Or really any supernatural being. If not with fear(which look-- fear the unknown, fear different, fear of monsters), arguably those who're intrigued, interested could be far, far worse.

Also-- I just have, much tea on other responses for even those who might briefly "respect" him. Because look-- Mummy would be a priceless artefact in a way, treasure and discovery all on his own-- BUT also a new potential source of information of a culture that for the most part has been lost and erased by history.

People could and would ask questions.

Whiiich is where I have doubts about how they will accept the answers to those questions. Because here's the thing, for all the Archaeology community loves to act as if they let discoveries speak for themselves, and even I suppose historians-- There are just-- so many times I watch and listen to documentaries and get SO FRUSTRATED-- because they're stubborn IDIOTS, who actually refuse to take in the evidence in front of them of any truths outside of what they're SO SURE has to be the TRUTH!

For those who speak of learning all about history and it's secrets, they're so damn high and mighty to reject anything that doesn't immediately fit with already established "facts". It must be an anomaly, aliens, can't be what we're actually seeing right--

And well even people today interacting-- Like-- I've seen people try to correct someone on the pronunciation of their own name before.

So I am almost certain there would be at least one idiot who'd be all high and mighty and just-- Mummy has LIVED it. It's his culture he grew up in and some idiot speaking over him saying his lying, which I just-- I am certain would happen(but probably not in canon because who would DARE?!)-- Just "EXCUSE ME?!"

Which is it's own kind of disrespect and hell, crash Tad's pillars again. Yes please!

Which... on that account--

I kiiiind of want to talk about how Tad needs a smack on this... and that wake up to the truths of the high and mighty and bloody prideful issues of the community. BUT more than that-- I actually want to think about that point you made about how Mummy's supposed transformation in movie 3 comes across and the further themes of this question of humanity and rights is in regards to this whole issue.

Because yeah, there's the issue, front and CENTER.

The question/implication of this resembling Ammut, and implied loss of humanity. Along with the fact that Tad's the likely TRUE CENTER of the curse-- since he's the idiot who opened the sarcophagus in the first place...

WHICH CAN I JUST SAY--

There's a very good possibility in regards to that issue-- potentially having to do with some of Tad's more... subtle issues. Or even the ones that are close to the surface and yet not. I've screamed already on Tadeo's Internalized Ableism... along with some small nods to Mummy's own less severe cast with that but-- This is directly playing into that image of monsters and nonhumanity--

And I could probably add an additional few pages of speculation onto this but--

I actually am... also worried for the pets. If only because uhhh, have you seen the original two Tadeo Jones shorts from before it become movies? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XxhNMbpE2A & https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoJBzI2AUOw

I mean not assuming anything, but I can definitely believe they wouldn't be above having that threat present at the least.(I mean just that second one... with what I guess is concept-Jeff) Even if Mummy is most definitely going to be the one at the MOST RISK. But with that-- comes the question of humanity.

And while yeah-- I do imagine, all too easily there will be many people more focused on the discovery-- I think there's an interesting mess that Tadeo is going to be FORCED to confront with this-- in how he has that displaced view.

Because here's the weird thing.

I've kind of mentioned it before but not really expanded or explained very clearly-- but for all of Tad's issues... he cares about Mummy probably more than he even really realizes. It's in small to big things as well. Again-- for all his trash behaviour in movie 2, I do think a lot of it is very, very misplaced attempts at some form of protection...

Which I also really want to at some point make a post that's just...

"Tad's I'm Helping moments and how they made things worse for everyone"

But that's for later... For now...

I kind of want to grab a few things.

"You're already dead, RUN!"

I also actually counted how quickly he ran back to Mummy for this moment, and it's LITERALLY two seconds, from when Mummy collapses to Tadeo's check on him. Also I'd like to mention with this-- he's supposedly tunnel visioning on Sara(and he ruins it within the next scene pretty quickly)

...

And for all they're kind of dumb decisions.

DEBATABLY-- when he's trying to hide Mummy.

"Hide"

Ugh-- BUT Tadeo has a very... complicated issue here really. Because yes-- Tad very much has that nonhuman issue, but he CARES. And then-- there's how the whole Ammut thing feels set and the symbolic meaning there(ALSO INTERESTING SARA SEEMINGLY ISN'T CAUGHT BY THAT). But here's the thing--

With Ammut kiiind of come those scales and the feather.

It's not like that mythology isn't unknown-- but more to the point-- it feels kind of like force Tad to confront his mixed up view. On Mummy's humanity or lack of-- But really as the audience Mummy feels the most human at this point in time-- whiiich we can get into a debate on what even is human nature later-- but--

I am kind of hoping that we get a callout of a number of things regarding Tad's behaviour.

With some primary focus on this dynamic between him and Mummy and really seeing how he responds to that idea that Mummy is nonhuman to really be thrown into full view and scope. And listen...

You cannot cheat the scales.

...

As an aside generally, if he is turning into a form or version of Ammut even if initially the community is a danger because he's a living mummy that creates a whole other issue of how he'd be viewed as a danger due to the role that's possibly growing more and more of an instinct.

But yeah... I will probably now make a more formulated rant on this later, or like, minor expansions on the topic but-- yeah.

I have been CHEWING on these thoughts, ideas and concepts for a while.

With additional tea. Because when people think they know something too often they refuse to see differently.

(Also at some point I am going to make a personal rant on duality verses binary due to insistent terminology issues I have but ugh)

[katiebees-creations]

Art History -  Message lesson 1 

Chosen Genre: History Painting 

Chosen example: QUEBEC by Adam Miller, 2016, Oil on linen

IMAGE REFERENCE https://brooklynrail.org/2017/06/criticspage/Temporal-Nomads-The-Scandal-of-Postmodern-History-Painting RESEARCH REFERENCES https://www.britannica.com/place/Canada/Quebec-separatism https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/new-york-artist-adam-miller-depicts-quebecs-role-in-canadianhistory/article35281470/ 

Being introduced to Genres in our first week of looking at messages, we were asked to question how contemporary values and media have impacted upon the classical definitions of that genre. I have chosen to explore History Painting. History painting was introduced as a genre term in the seventeenth century that would cover subject matter such as classical history, mythology and the Bible. It became a term for more recent historical events in the eighteenth century. The painting I have chosen was created in 2016 by Adam Miller. Miller is part of the loosely called New Old Masters Movement. In view of analysis of his painting, some historical background is required. Quebec has had past debates with Canada and its central government about either being given a higher status within the collected Canadian state or to end their connection completely and form an independent sovereign country, not unlike Scotland and the United Kingdom’s disputes recently. This was informally rooted from 1791 to 1841. Economic issues in Quebec were the main motivation in the 1960s and later when the economy had improved was changed to linguistical and cultural differences in 1990s. Now to look at Millers painting, Quebec. At am initial first glance this artwork has a striking resemblance to classical works such as Liberty Leading the People by Eugene Delacroix in 1830 depicting the French revolution and yet also has a feel of a mythological or biblical element. A good style to convey Millers message of Quebec’s search for independence and celebrated history. In an interview with Miller himself said he wanted to show Quebec as a microcosm and broadly relating it to the rest of the world as a place that struggles with sense of identity and nationalism. The painting depicts a collection of key figures and historical events of Quebec’s history. Unless you know the identities of the figures this painting could be classed as just an historical look at Quebec yet the stance and composition of some of the figures shows a sense of importance in who they are, especially the ones in the sky and the single highlighted figure centred to the painting. They are composed deliberately in certain ways. The figures that float above in an angel like manner are to show the leaders and key figures of the past and include nationalist Lionel Groux, Aboriginal Chief Donnacona and Sir John A Macdonald. The central figures are that of Rene Levesque and former prime minister Pierre Trudeau. Miller chose these as the prominent aspects of the painting due to their in depth connection to almost creating Quebec independence. They are looking above to the leaders of the past as if asking for guidance and divine intervention. You then see various snapshots of quebecs history on the ground with a woman carrying the Quebec flag, a strong connection to the French revolution style paintings. So, onto the question at hand, how has contemporary values and media Impacted the definition of History Painting? Classical historical painting of the seventeenth century could be argued as imaginary creations of legendary stories for which the painter did not witness for themselves, especially when looking at ones that depict mythology and biblical stories which in current times could be labelled as fictional. Paintings such as Millers are more factual in the message they try to convey. The use of media I believe is not just a respected nod to the masters of the past but also deliberate in catching the viewer’s eye. Due to the automatic assumption the brain makes when looking at paintings in this media and style with that kind of muted palette, the viewer could mistake this as a classical fictional story telling history painting, until they look again and see a modern dressed soldier, trench coats and business suits. We generally do study classical art more than we do to contemporary and so I believe Miller wanted exactly that, for the painting to be studied, thought provoking in conjunction with the simple title. To consider the parallel, lets transform this painting in our minds into an abstract or surreal piece of work. Could it have possibly had the same strong, bold impact that it has in this style? Probably not. We associate history paintings as serious depictions of past life without humour In conclusion I believe contemporary values allow for historical paintings to be more factual and evidential of past events rather than that of indirect fictional assumptions such as those depicting from the Bible which are built on belief, not fact. I don’t believe media, in this painting as an example, has made an impact as I believe historical paintings work best when in the style and palette of past masters to give that serious bold impact as well as a striking contrast between the style and more modern subject matter.

[lordeasriel]

Let’s talk about The Book of Dust, The Secret Commonwealth and the challenges of The Book of Dust 3. Under the cut because it’s long and a bit ranty.

I’d like to state that I have the utmost respect for Philman’s work and his writing; I think he’s a great author and a great storyteller. That being said, I don’t think he’s beyond making mistakes, no one is and I think he made a big mistake by splitting the Book of Dust the way he did.

Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE La Belle Sauvage, it’s my second favourite book, surpassed only by Northern Lights. It has great lore and depth and incredible characters, that sadly, get lost after the 20-year gap we have between LBS and The Secret Commonwealth. That was expected, though, all things considered; Philman is used to creating characters that he end up leaving aside for the sake of the story. He actually abandons lots of things for the sake of the story; logistics, consistency, character development... I mean, there’s lots of debatable things he has done throughout the whole His Dark Materials for the sake of a good story. Whether that’s bad or not, I cannot really say, but he definitely still managed to sell lots of books, so on its own, that’s a good payout.

LBS is a great opener to what could have been an incredible prequel story. If he had decided to write a whole trilogy focused on that, he definitely would have done a good job with that book, except he chose to have it as the first book of a trilogy that actually surpasses the original story too. I’m not even touching the touchy subject of “He has absolutely no timeline” because, I mean, that’s practically an issue on its own. But the biggest problem is time, as in, the amount of time each book covers.

LBS serves to introduce us to lots of different concepts, characters and to go in-depth into the separation of daemons. It introduces Oakley Street, it establishes the Magisterium role in the world, it expands on what it means to have a bond with your daemon, plus the introduction of mythical things. It does all that very well, and on its own, it’s a great book. When we get to TSC, we already know about Oakley Street, about Lyra, about Malcolm, so we know these key concepts from our previous reading; yet TSC fails to do the same.

It has a poor ending, very anti-climatic, and while I get it’s supposed to be a cliffhanger to the next book, it’s not the feeling it leaves us with. Instead, it feels like the story was actually cut right in the middle, after 700 pages of a long and somewhat tedious journey, that expands on almost nothing but pointless trivia. There are a few moments that make the reading worth it, but as a second installment, this book did not deliver nowhere near enough to make up for the lack of a first one. I know this seems crazy, but when you lay down all the plots, and you analyse them all, you notice that there is a huge gap going on in some of them. And I say “a lack of a first book” because technically, Lyra’s story does not have a first book; TSC acts as both first and second volume and it is why it ends like that.

Some of the issues that I have come mostly from characters that shouldn’t need to be lacking all that much. As much as I love Marcel, I find him to be extremely predictable; while he retains some degree of fun, even though you can tell what he is going to do, it’s upsetting when you consider other villains such as Bonneville, Mrs. Coulter, MacPhail, Metatron. He is built to be as terrifying as any of those, and I don’t think being predictable it’s a bad thing on its own, but Marcel doesn’t have the time to live up to his potential, and that’s because, again, he’s written into a second book when all of his scenes from TSC are clearly from a starting POV. And he’s not the only one, this happens with pretty much every new character, from Glenys Godwin to Bonneville Jr.

Malcolm gets away with this because we’re familiar with his character from LBS; that whole book essentially covers his character, his personal Aurora, his daemon separation, how he relates to Lyra and all that. He has a whole book to develop himself, even though we don’t see him getting into adulthood, but from what our perspective of him as a child is, it’s easy to translate into the man he has become in TSC. He essentially stays the same; he’s more mature, but from a behaviour perspective, Malcolm is pretty much the same person he was in LBS. This isn’t bad, but it’s also a little disappointing to me, because I expect adults in this universe to be a little more complex.

With all that being said, I worry for TBOD 3, because Philman now has - technically, as he clearly sometimes doesn’t care about consistency lol - to write a lot to cover all the plots he has started. I’m not even considering smaller plots, but essentially he has 3 main plots going on (this is me saying this from a reader’s POV, so he could totally change this in the future or maybe he is aiming for something else and as a reader I might have overlooked it): Marcel and the Magisterium, Lyra and the Secret Commonwealth, Malcolm and the Rose Oil. These three plots have and will merge or collide, given that Malcolm has already been through Geneva and is currently after Lyra, while Marcel is also after Lyra, and now Malcolm too, and given the three of them are all drawn to the rose oil and the red building, for different reasons and probably with different outcomes.

Philman mentioned Book 3 is meant to continue right after TSC, not unlike TAS I suppose, so in my opinion it’s either gonna be very big or very direct book. I don’t think filler chapters are bad, but when you’re trying to set up new characters like Marcel, Godwin, and even Malcolm, he simply just didn’t give us enough, instead narrating Lyra’s journey even when nothing remotely interesting happened. I like some of these, like Lyra helping the refugees, I think it’s an interesting chapter for worldbuilding, but in essence, nothing there really affected the plot. She later finds out about the rose farmers anyway, so that chapter was really there for the social aspect, which I think it’s important, but it didn’t need a whole ass chapter for it, especially because nothing else happened (iirc, I’m still rereading it).

Another useless chapter is the train assult scene, that was fucking ridiculous and for such an educated man, Philman really did something stupid there. That chapter - and I’m not going into the female character aspect because I’ll get angry again - adds absolutely nothing to the plot. He could’ve used it to expand on Malcolm, to explain how Olivier catched up with Lyra, he could’ve added another scene to establish Marcel closer to the conflict, he could’ve explained what Oakley Street was doing, or give us an insight on Pan, I mean, I could go on forever here, that chapter is a waste of space that could’ve been used for something better and more useful.

My concern, besides Philman’s old age and his frail health, is that he ends up not writing a complete book again (as apparently happened with TAS, when he was rushed by his editors), and that we end up with no answers again. His big promise was to explore Dust in this trilogy, yet so far we’ve only have more questions, or at least I do, and I appreciate  the rose oil because I’m really interested in it, but all this fantasy talk it’s been putting aside what I like the most about this series and it’s the metaphysical stuff, the science and philosophy of it all. I think that, above all things, what I want the most is at the very least a good conclusion, not necessarily tight in all aspects, but something that at least helps us define what Dust is better, and that Lyra gets a proper ending, that isn’t bound to female character tropes.

[littlepurinsesu]

V Watches MagiReco - Season 1 Review

*Spoilers for Magia Record Anime*

If you’ve been been following my weekly reviews on the Magia Record anime, you’ll know that my “reviews” are really more like general impressions, thoughts, and fangirling as I mentally recap the episode after my initial viewing.

For this final review of the season as a whole, however, I’m actually going to try and make it more like an actual “review" and discuss each aspect of the anime separately. I’ll be splitting my points of discussion into individual sections and giving each a score out of 10, before rounding it all off with an overall score/grade.

Oh, not sure if this needs to be emphasised, but these are just my opinions! You may agree and you may disagree, and either way is cool!  (・ω・)b

Before I begin, I just want to make it clear that one very, very important thing to keep in mind when watching and reviewing MagiReco is the fact that it isn’t a direct continuation of PMMM. So many people find themselves unable to enjoy the series because it’s “not the same” or “not the PMMM they know” etc. But it isn’t and was never intended to be. It’s a spin-off, not a sequel. To expect a spin-off to have the exact same impact and level of quality as the original is unrealistic to begin with, not to mention that although comparisons will be inevitable, the original PMMM anime has reached a legendary status where it isn’t really fair to compare anything with it xD

(And for the PMMM fans who are unhappy with MagiReco simply because it isn’t “dark enough” and there isn’t enough “suffering”, all I can say is that if a lack of darkness and suffering automatically means the show is bad, then this one just isn’t for you. Dark doesn’t equal good, and suffering isn’t essential. MagiReco is not intended to have the same tone as PMMM, and those elements do not entail everything that defined PMMM to begin with anyway.)

For these reasons, I’m going to try my best to review the MagiReco anime as a standalone piece and try not to make too many comparisons with PMMM, unless explicitly necessary. Also, as a game player, the inevitable curse of “expectations” was a major issue I needed to overcome when watching the anime. I will therefore also try my best to look past these expectations and try to see the anime as a story of its own. However, there will be discussions on the changes that the anime made and how I feel the anime did in adapting the game story for a television series.

Anyway, sorry for all the additional rambling. Let’s jump into the review before I lose everyone’s attention ^^;; 

Plot: 8/10

One thing I love about the MagiReco plot is that they take the original world and concepts of PMMM and actually come up with a whole new story. It’s familiar yet different, and a perfect way to please the nostalgic fans while also offering something fresh. The PMMM world always had a lot of potential to explore other girls’ stories, considering how many Magical Girls there are, and it’s nice to meet a whole new cast of characters with their own story that’s still set in the same world and uses the same concepts we’re familiar with.

I think my favourite thing about the MagiReco plot, which is the same both in the game and in the anime, is the idea of the Wings of Magius. Any story that involves Magical Girls somehow trying to undermine or overthrow the Incubators’ system always has a lot of potential, in my opinion, and it’s a creative way to delve even deeper into PMMM’s unique take on the magical girl genre without being repetitive. But the key to what makes the Wings of Magius so compelling and intriguing as antagonists is the moral issues it raises. The grey morality going on with the Wings of Magius is not too different from the issues presented by Kyubey, and these kinds of moral debates get the audience really thinking about what’s right and what’s wrong, what’s good and what’s evil. The Magius are presented as being very similar to the Incubators in many senses--sometimes even worse--and I always love a compelling villain or villain group that actually gets the audience pondering whether the bad guys really are that “wrong" after all. Plus the whole idea of salvation and liberation and the whole cult impression we get from the Wings of Magius really adds another layer of that dark and creepy atmosphere that PMMM does so well.

However, I do strongly feel that many of the important scenes and major plot points were presented much better in the game. As mentioned earlier, having played the game meant I was going in with expectations for how I wanted/hoped/expected certain things to be done, and this is a common issue that adaptations have when there’s an audience familiar with the source material. I’m okay with completely changing parts of the game’s story to create something new, but there were instances where the anime intended to replicate the scene as it was in the game but somehow fell short in its presentation. These cases of inadequate storytelling thus hinder the unfolding of the plot, ultimately creating problems with coherency and pacing. (I mean, if you think about it, the “main plot” doesn’t really even truly begin until all five main characters have been introduced.) I have dedicated a whole section to this pacing issue, so I’ll go into detail when we get there xD

Characterisation: 7/10

The anime’s presentation of the characters ranges from fantastic to extremely lacking. Iroha has moments where she’s extremely passive, but also times where she’s shown to be quite proactive and brave as well. I’m honestly not too sure what to make of Iroha’s characterisation so far due to this big range, but I’m hoping that she’ll show more growth and that her changes will be written in a way that actually makes sense, rather than abrupt shifts that make you question how and when she had it in her. Either way, she’s a lovely sweet girl and a very likable character, and I do like that even if she isn’t necessarily always doing anything or contributing to a fight, the sole reason she’s in Kamihama in the first place (to look for her sister) is a good sign that she knows what she’s doing and has taken the necessary measures to go about her quest.

Yachiyo didn’t seem to display much uniqueness until her past was unveiled, and that wasn’t until we were well into the second half of the first season. In my opinion, this took way too long. I find this to be a slight problem because of how central to the plot Yachiyo is, and while I understand that backstories being revealed later on can have a bigger impact (like Homura’s in Episode 10 of PMMM), the way they portray Yachiyo throughout the majority of the season doesn’t have that constant loose thread hanging. She almost seems too “normal” at times, blending into the cast, and only when certain things happen or when someone says something in particular do you actually remember that we still don’t know what her deal is yet. I guess what I mean is that a more looming sense of “mysteriousness” could have justified the late reveal a lot better. The reveal of her past and her wish were slightly underwhelming, too, seeing as we hardly got to know Kanae and Meru before they were killed off, making it difficult to connect with those characters and thus relate to Yachiyo’s grief at losing them. And as for the revelation of her wish, I’ve ranted enough about it in my review for Episode 13, so you can check that one out if you haven’t already xD

Tsuruno has it even worse than Yachiyo because they literally haven’t revealed or even teased anything about her. All we know is that she works at a Chinese restaurant, was already friends with Yachiyo in the past (this “mystery” was later explained in Yachiyo’s flashbacks), and is super cheerful and energetic. Her backstory is the only one that hasn’t been shown yet, and they never really even hinted at there being something deeper about her character. While I completely understand that they’re intending to leave all that for the Rumour Tsuruno arc (which will most likely be done next season), I feel that they really needed to give us at least something for now. Even in the game, we got a better sense of who Tsuruno was as a person before the Rumour Tsuruno arc revealed her hidden sadness. I guess I can’t really fault the anime for this, since they’re just going in chronological order, but a little more insight into Tsuruno’s character would have been a better decision so that we don’t get another round of “info-dumping” when we do get to Rumour Tsuruno, and the reveal about her inner emotional turmoil would actually be a slight twist that adds even more depth to her character, rather than random information that never seemed important because there were never any signs of it.

But while Yachiyo’s and Tsuruno’s characterisation could have been better, Felicia’s and Sana’s were handled superbly. The anime actually made me adore Felicia as a character when I merely “liked her enough” in the game. She’s so much more than just the spoiled and rowdy child who goes berserk when seeing a Witch, and her introductory episodes (namely Episode 7) actually managed to move me to tears. Her bond with Iroha is also portrayed even more nicely in the anime, and I have a newfound love for the friendship between these two, which is quite underrepresented in the game. Felicia manages to retain all the lovable traits she displayed in the game with just the right amount of brattiness so as to not seem too annoying, and the anime hasn’t even really touched upon the cruel reality behind her wish. Whether or not they venture into that territory at some point, I just hope they continue doing as amazingly as they’ve done with Felicia so far, because she really is super cute and a lot more likable in the anime version <3

As for Sana, she’s more or less the same as her game counterpart, but something about the way the anime unveils her past makes it even more tragic. We’ve always known of her terrible “family” and the unfortunate circumstances of her home life prior to joining Mikazuki Villa. But the episodes that detail her story did a stellar job at bringing out and actually showing the sheer horror of having a family like Sana’s, and just how deep and suffocating her sense of loneliness was. Her story is absolutely miserable, but the anime manages to present it in a way that doesn’t make it seem like they were “trying too hard” just to make it as sad as possible. The things happen for a reason, and the consequences it has on Sana as a character are all realistic and believable, and even a wish as extreme as hers made perfect sense after seeing everything she had to go through.

Other characters don’t seem to have as much of a presence to warrant a paragraph of their own, but I will give honourable mentions to Rena and Tsukuyo. Rena’s Magical Girl Story made me a sobbing mess when I first read it, and while the anime obviously couldn’t sidetrack and include all the details, I think they did a pretty good job considering the limited amount of time they could spend on a supporting character. The anime also did a really nice job at giving Tsukuyo that humanising moment during her conversation with Iroha at the cafe, emphasising the good inside of her despite being an antagonist, and also taking the chance to give her a sense of individuality so that she and her sister are not always seen as an identical and inseparable pair with no personal lives or traits, so props to them for that :) Mitama has hardly made many appearances and doesn’t even seem very story-relevant at this point, so I’m wondering how they’re going to build up her importance in the next season so that she doesn’t seem like the “token shopkeeper character” who’s there for no real purpose outside of gaming mechanics (because we all know that Mitama is so much more than that). And as for characters like Kaede, she’s been changed so much that I’ll reserve my judgment for now because I simply don’t know where they’re intending to take her character. Same goes for Kuroe and her still-unclear purpose in the plot lmao

I think it’s important to remember that a lot of characterisation we get in the game is from Magical Girl Stories and Event Stories, both of which are obviously not viable to delve into too much in the anime. As a result, I guess it’s “to be expected” that the anime will have to give up quite a bit of the details that make all these characters so real, likable, or relatable. I’m not an anime writer, nor do I know anything about adapting games into anime, but I do feel that it would have been so much better if they had come up with some other way of compensating for the lost characterisation moments that are only shown in the game’s side stories. Not sure how else they should have done it, but simply removing some of these vital bits of information does harm the portrayal of these characters, especially when they’re part of the main cast.

But yeah, mixed feelings because while some characters really needed more work in the characterisation department, others were handled amazingly well xD

Pacing: 4/10

Okay, let’s be real. The pacing was almost definitely the anime’s weakest point, and possibly one of the main reasons why someone would find the show hard to enjoy or even understand. I’ve seen people complain that the story is too fast, and I’ve also seen people complain that it moves way too slowly. In my opinion, it really is a combination of both, and I’m honestly quite fascinated at how the anime somehow manages to pull off being both too fast and too slow at the same time xD

The story is almost excruciatingly slow in that it takes a whole ten episodes before the main cast is fully assembled. I thought a bit about this and, to be fair, some classic magical girl shows also take many, many episodes before all the main characters are introduced, such as Sailor Moon taking a whopping 33 episodes before all five Inner Senshi have gathered. So I guess this slow episode-by-episode “collection” of team members really isn’t something new. But MagiReco isn’t really a long-running anime that has filler episodes back-to-back to justify the slow pace of the plot. The plot is moving every week, yet it still feels like it takes forever to get the main cast together, which is slow enough to make the viewer question what they had been sitting through all this time when it’s been ten episodes and the story is really only “actually beginning” now.

And at the same time the plot somehow manages to feel too fast at the same time. How is this even possible? My answer to this is simply the fact that they introduce conflicts and mysteries, only to quickly resolve them and then immediately jump to the next one before the audience has even had a chance to really process or understand what they just watched. We’re not given the time to really absorb the development of the story or the subtle changes the characters are undergoing before we’re immediately thrown into a new mini “arc” the next week. In some ways, it almost seems like the “Monster of the Week” formula that many magical girl series adopt, only instead of being aware that we’re seeing trivial conflicts that are intended to last for one episode with characters we are likely not going to see again, MagiReco is throwing out new ideas, new terms, and new plot-relevant characters almost every episode, vomiting out information in a way that viewers who haven’t played the game will find very difficult to keep up with.

And that brings me to one of the biggest problems I had with the anime: important terms and concepts are often thrown in as a “by the way”. (This is most apparent with anything to do with the Wings of Magius before Episode 10, most notably Alina’s introduction.) Game players will obviously know what they’re talking about, but anime-only viewers are left confused and lost as to what exactly is happening half the time. I’ve seen more than a few instances where a viewer who wasn’t familiar with the game needed extra clarification and explanation before they understood certain things, and honestly that isn’t a good sign. All the important stuff should be made crystal clear so that even anime-only viewers will be able to grasp all the concepts without game players to spell things out for them. The anime should be a standalone piece on its own, not a “supplement" to the game. And the consequence is that anime viewers are constantly raising their eyebrows and wondering what the heck just happened or when the heck something was ever established, because crucial information is thrown around with no emphasis and the fast pace doesn’t allow viewers to digest anything properly. This unclear storytelling wastes the opportunity to present mysteries that are intended to keep the audience invested; rather than continuing the series because you just have to find out what something means or why something is the way it is, you’re left with question marks popping up all around your head because you’re confused af and wondering if you forgot or missed some crucial information at some point.

Another issue I had with the anime was what I’ve decided to dub the “one-shot curse”. Witches and Rumours alike are one-shot-ed so quickly and fights resolved so suddenly that I was often left wondering what the point of that fight was. Not to mention that a lot of the battles lacked real “action”. Witches appear, get one-shot-ed, and the characters return to whatever it was they were doing before as though nothing had happened. So... what was the point? I guess they really wanted to emphasise just how many Witches there are in Kamihama and just how easy it is to come across one everyday? Or maybe it was just for the sake of including an obligatory battle in each episode so there’s at least some action each week? Either way, if you’re going to include Witch battles, you may as well do them properly. For crying out loud, InuCurry, the guy who designs the Witches, is the director of the MagiReco anime! You’d expect a bit more emphasis and flourish to highlight what he’s so good at! But to be fair, there were some good Witch battles, such as the ones in the first episode, the ones in Yachiyo’s flashbacks when Kanae and Meru died, and of course, the epic battle between Holy Mami and Sayaka in the final episode. So they’re not all that bad, but I just feel like there was a lot of wasted potential.

I find that the main problem is a lack of balance between the battles, the exposition, the plot, and the fluffy slice-of-life stuff. All these are crucial to a good anime, and a lot of these moments were done quite nicely as standalone scenes. But the way the MagiReco anime has packaged them together and tied a very unattractive Bad Pacing ribbon on top just doesn’t work. It’s like a giftbox that has some lovely things inside if you look carefully at them one by one, but the way the gift is presented just isn’t very appealing and ruins the goodness of the content inside.

I get that the anime probably has issues with pacing because it’s essentially adapting a mobile game. I’m not sure if the pacing would be better if this weren’t the case and the MagiReco story was scripted for an anime to begin with, but I really, really hope they fix these pacing issues next season.

Visuals and Animation: 8/10

To me, the visuals were nearly always top-notch, and definitely a huge improvement from the original series. They managed to retain the art style of PMMM while also updating it so that it looks a lot more sleek and polished. The characters looked great, the scenery is gorgeous, the labyrinths all unique and intricately designed, and there was a lot of clever visual symbolism going on in the still shots and subtle scene transitions. I’m not an expert on animation or visual arts, but I definitely think this series deserves a very high score for this section.

There were a few instances where we saw some wonky “meguca" shots, but those were rare and nowhere near bad enough to detract from my overall enjoyment of the series. I don’t really have much else to say because, like I said, this really isn’t my forte, but I genuinely loved most of the visuals we got.

Music and Soundtrack: 9/10

I know a lot of us were disappointed when we learned that Yuki Kajiura would not be returning to do the music for MagiReco. And we all knew that whoever they hired would have very, very, very large shoes to fill. And I can definitely say that I was not disappointed at all.

Guys, the music for this series is AMAZING. Takumi Ozawa managed to capture the style that Kajiura used for PMMM in a way that retains the original tone of the franchise without seeming like a mere carbon copy of her work. I don’t think there was a single musical piece in there that didn’t make me feel like, “Ah, this is no doubt a PMMM anime!” And none of them gave me the impression that he was “trying too hard" to “rehash” Kajiura’s style. No, there’s familiarity and there’s originality, and it’s all packed together in a way that allows MagiReco to retain the charm of its predecessor while also standing strong as a work of art by itself.

I only docked one point because there were so many amazing tracks from the game and I don’t really understand why they didn’t use them when there were moments that seemed perfect for those tunes. It would be a nice sense of familiarity for game players, and it’s still considered “new stuff” for anime-only viewers too, so I really don’t get why xD Maybe they really wanted to separate the anime from the game? Which is also fair enough :)

I wasn’t so sure about “Gomakashi” as the OP when I first heard it in the trailer, but it’s definitely grown on me! While I still think “Kakawari” is superior and has a more catchy and iconic sound to it, “Gomakashi” is sweet and girly, very much like the kind of song you’d hear in a magical girl series. I don’t think this is an OP that will be legendary enough that everyone knows the tune (like the theme song for Sailor Moon, for example), but it’s a lovely song and I do like it a lot ^^

“Alicia” was beautiful from the very first time I heard it, and I’ve only grown more and more fond of it with each listen. Definitely one of my favourite EDs of all time, and perhaps my favourite OP/ED song out of the entire PMMM franchise.

And that ED song for the final episode? Gorgeous, too. Almost has a “Magia” kind of sound, and definitely sets a darker tone for the upcoming season where (I assume) sh*t starts getting real.

Overall: 7/10, B+ or A-

Despite my criticism and picking the anime apart in this review, overall I still genuinely enjoyed it a lot :D It’s far from perfect, but I was nowhere near as disappointed as I’ve been in the past with other anime adaptations, and while some parts could definitely have been handled a lot better, it was mostly still decent in my opinion. Get rid of the pacing issues and I’d probably give it a solid 9 (for context, I rate the original PMMM anime a 10/10, perhaps even higher if possible).

Again, I think my experience and knowledge as a game player definitely influenced my view on the anime as an adaptaion. For example, I already love the characters and know enough about them, and so I probably didn’t really feel the consequences caused by the anime’s sometimes lackluster characterisation. I also often have ideas of how I want or hope a part gets adapted, and then get disappointed when it’s done in a different and underwhelming way compared to what I imagined. I’m sure my impressions, comments, and scores would be very different if I were an anime-only viewer and had no idea how things went in the game. But alas, you can’t have both experiences to compare, so it is what it is xD

Anyway, no matter how much I nitpicked, I still love MagiReco a lot, both the game and the anime, and am really looking forward to Season 2! With the obvious changes they made in that last episode, I get the feeling that it’ll only diverge even further as the story unfolds. I’m okay with these new surprises and new takes on characters, but I do hope that they aren’t changing it all completely, because there’s a lot of good stuff in the later chapters that I really hope gets animated, e.g. Kanagi’s entrance, Rumour Tsuruno, Yachiyo vs. Holy Mami, basically everything that happens at Fenthope in Chapter 9, and of course, the big reveal about Ui, Touka, and Nemu’s wishes in the final chapter. Just imagining these things animated already gets me super excited, so hopefully we’ll at least still keep the core of the game’s story despite the changes (and hopefully these changes are all improvements!) ｡^‿^｡ 

~~~

And since the anime is taking a break, my reviews will also be going on a break ╥﹏╥ I’ll probably still pop up in the MagiReco tag every now and then if I can think of something to talk about, though? Depends on what I can come up with xD But yeah, I don’t really post updates about my gameplay here (unless it’s something major like pulling my favourite character lol), so if you’re interested in seeing any of that stuff, you can follow me on Twitter instead, since I’m much more active there nowadays. I’m always happy to discuss things and scream with fellow fans, so whether it’s here or on Twitter, please feel free to approach me anytime if you want someone to fangirl with (๑ゝڡ◕๑)

I’ll be ending this post here! Thank you so much for reading, and please continue to love and support MagiReco while we wait for the second season ღゝ◡╹)ノ♡

[the-desolated-quill]

The Darkness Of Mere Being - Watchmen blog

(SPOILER WARNING: The following is an in-depth critical analysis. if you haven’t read this comic yet, you may want to before reading this review)

Watchmen is often called a groundbreaking work of literature, and I very much agree with that sentiment. It’s also often described as a masterpiece. This I take issue with. While the graphic novel explores some very compelling ideas, I do honestly think the last few issues are where Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons... I wouldn’t say they dropped the ball, but they were definitely fumbling with it a little bit.

So just to forewarn you, these reviews are going to be a tad more critical from here on out.

The Darkness Of Mere Being continues directly on from the events of Old Ghosts after Doctor Manhattan has taken Laurie to Mars. It has apparently been predestined that the future of Earth and of mankind would be decided there as Laurie has to try and convince this emotionless, all powerful entity that the world is worth saving.

From a conceptual standpoint, this works really well. You feel Laurie’s frustration and desperation as she tries in vain to convince her ex that humanity has value. Over the course of the graphic novel, we’ve seen Manhattan grow more and more distant from humanity, and now that he’s been accused of giving those closest to him cancer, the last remaining ties to his humanity have been severed. He’s distanced himself from Earth because he finds life too complicated and tiresome. He’d much rather live in exile on Mars playing with atoms because, unlike people, atoms have structure and order. Once again, it’s a meditation on the nature of power. How Manhattan is paradoxically both powerful and powerless within the world of Watchmen. He’s a godlike figure and yet is completely at the mercy of predestination theory. As he himself puts it:

“We’re all puppets Laurie. I’m just a puppet who can see the strings.”

At the core of this issue is the question of what possible reason could a superhuman have to care for mere mortals like us. And the answer is... there really isn’t. As we’ve discussed before in my previous reviews, the only reason Manhattan stuck with Laurie was more out of a sense of obligation rather than genuine love or affection. So this isn’t like Superman and Lois Lane where Kal-El/Clark Kent was raised on Earth and became humanity’s champion with Lois being his main source of inspiration. Whereas Superman’s perspective is focused exclusively on the people around him, Manhattan’s goes beyond that. He understands the whole of time and space. He can see the very atoms of everything around him and control them at a whim. He has no reason to truly care for anyone because humans, to him, are mere atoms in a sea of atoms. Again, as he himself puts it way back in the very first issue:

“A live body and a dead body contain the same number of particles. Structurally there’s no discernible difference.”

Even his change of heart at the end isn’t motivated by emotion or a sense of moral duty. As the two discuss Laurie’s life, she discovers that the Comedian, the same man who raped her mother, was her biological father. While she understandably breaks down over this revelation, Manhattan sees inspiration in this. That a woman is capable of falling in love with the man who raped her to the point where she would give birth to his child proves, in Manhattan’s mind, that humanity is worth saving after all because of their unpredictability, comparing it to a thermodynamic miracle of turning air into gold. So he’s going to save humanity. Not because he cares about us, but because of a newfound fascination with them. His goals may have changed, but the character is still just as cold and uncaring as he was before, seeing us like microbes under a microscope to be studied rather than actual lives.

The ideas are all sound. I even like the idea of the Comedian being Laurie’s real father because it ties in with the overall themes of Watchmen. Sally Jupiter falling in love with and having consensual sex with her rapist is similar to Nite Owl partnering up with Rorschach despite his ultra right wing, bigoted and extreme views. It all speaks to the nihilistic nature of both the characters and the book. There’s no black and white and things are often much more complicated than we would like. Also credit has to go to Dave Gibbons for his stunning artwork in this issue, including the final image of the real life smiley face crater on Mars, which hammers home everything I’ve described very effectively.

However...

Yes, this is where the criticism comes in. Brace yourselves.

One aspect I find very suspect is the revelation that Manhattan may not quite be as omniscient as we first thought. You see despite being able to predict future events willy nilly throughout the graphic novel, when Laurie asks him to just tell her how the debate ends, he’s conveniently unable to do so because of a sudden burst of tachyons blocking his vision. Now I don’t know about you, but this has the tiniest whiff of bullshit about it. It’s like Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons were halfway through writing the story when one of them suddenly realised that Manhattan’s omniscience could potentially lots of plot holes later on, so they just pulled this out of their arses to cover it up. It’s kind of stupid, especially when there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation without the use of tachyons. Like with the Kennedy assassination, Manhattan could have been aware of what would happen at the end of the graphic novel, but doesn’t do anything because of predestination theory. That would have been fine. That would have been perfectly in-keeping with the character and his themes. Instead we get the biggest bloody plot convenience this side of the pissing Sorting Hat from the second Harry Potter book. I mean if his vision is being blocked by tachyons, then surely he shouldn’t be able to see the future at all, right? Why is it only affecting him now? Utterly ridiculous.

My second complaint centres around Laurie herself.

Up until I’ve been very much enjoying what Moore is doing with Laurie and her alter ego Silk Spectre. Using her sexualised, impractical costume and the clash between her and her mother as a way of exploring and critiquing how women are often viewed and presented in comics. The problem I have however is, having now thoroughly explored it, at no point does Moore ever try to challenge it. This problem first emerged back in A Brother To Dragons where we see her serve Dan’s power fantasy, but this is where it really becomes apparent. She’s just made a shocking and terrible revelation. That her father is the Comedian. A rapist, a murderer and a bastard. Naturally she’s very upset by this, but Manhattan, being so distant, doesn’t fully comprehend her distress. Now this isn’t bad in and of itself for the reasons I’ve just explained. It works from a conceptual standpoint. I’d honestly be fine with it if we see this properly addressed in a future issue. And that’s the problem. Aside from a few brief mentions, we never get to see Laurie fully come to terms with the knowledge of who her father is, which is just crazy to me. It’s as though Laurie serves no purpose as a character in and of herself, but rather how she influences the story’s of the male characters. Laurie discovering her real father isn’t important. It’s Manhattan’s change of heart that’s important. She’s just a means to an end. I can’t tell if this was deliberate or accidental on Moore’s part, but either way, I don’t like it because it reduces her as a character and completely undermines the feminist critique she was offering. It reminds me of the anal sex gag from the first Kingsman movie where it crosses the line between mocking the reductive roles of women and actively reinforcing them. Whereas before Laurie’s character was making a mockery of the unrealistic way women are often portrayed in comics to support a man’s story or to titillate a male reader, now she’s become the very thing she was designed to mock in the first place. It’s such a shame because it just feels like a missed opportunity.

The Darkness Of Mere Being has some brilliant ideas and doesn’t shy away from exploring them. However a few missteps along the way unfortunately lessens the impact of those ideas, at least in my opinion.

[stupidspaceseven]

A Memori Fic Rec

Hi Friends! In the spirit of celebrating memori engagement week I’ve decided to celebrate some of my favorite fics! Under the cut are a range of fics in different genres and ratings, divided between canon fics and AUs. It’s long but by no means exhaustive. All these fics are completed ;) Happy reading!

Canon Compliant Fics

How All This, And Love Too, Will Ruin Us by biextroverts

Rating: T, One-shot; Genre: Found Family/Angst

Emori finds a family and loses a lover on the Ring.

A great Ring fic that covers the six years in space. I’ve only read it once because it made me That Sad, which is really a testament to how well writting and IC it is, so if you’re a sucker for angst and raven&emori friendship definitely give this a read. 

The Lotus Eaters by maelidify: @maelidpoetree​

Rating: M (no smut), One shot; Genre: Fluff, Character Study

“I don’t like this place, John,” she said. “We’re not safe here.”

Am I partial to this fic because it was a gift to me? Yes, but I firmly believe that more people need to read it and that the author deserves more recognition in general! This pre 4.08 science island fic is sweet and romantic but explores inner conflicts of nature in such a beautiful way (with some awesome anecdotes and metaphors). All her writing is beautiful and poetic and it’s worth your while to go through her memori tag to find/read the stuff she hasn’t posted on AO3.

Cataclysmic by maelidify; @maelidpoetree​

Rating: E (by author request don’t read if you’re not 18+) One-shot, Genre: Angst

She’s looking up at him, half angry, half looking for permission for something. For what—?

Oh.

More breakup angst!! This remains the best Murphy POV I’ve read, it’s messy and angry and sad and the fic tears me up a little every time. I’d even recommend this to people who don’t like/read smut because, while present, it’s tasteful and really this fic is about all the emotions. If the two fics in a row haven’t clued you in just read everything Liz writes, because I don’t have space to talk about all her fics but they are all worth your time!!

First Impressions by interlude; @bombshellsandbluebells

Rating: T, One-shot; Genre: Drama

John Murphy comes back to Arkadia with an unfamiliar grounder woman. The Arkadians and former delinquents react.

(Or: Memori seen from different points of view. Takes places between 4x03 and 4x04.)

Personally I’m a big sucker for outsider POV fics, and the author does a great job with keeping all those outsiders in character and addressing their most pressing motivations while keeping memori in the spotlight of the fic. The story has all the urgency present in s4 and fills in some of the gaps nicely!

The Wild by Debate; @stupidspaceseven

Rated: M, Multichapter; Genre: Fluff

When Emori points up at the sky, it’s with a pointer finger twice the width of his own. He locks away the knowledge that she trusts him deep inside his chest.

[Post Wanheda 2, detailing Murphy and Emori's early season 3 adventures as they grow to mean the world to each other.]

This one is a shameless self-promotion, but I’m recommending it because I think it’s really good!! Fun shenanigans, theft, first kisses, angsty backstory reveals, smut, this fic basically has the works, and I’m like, 98% sure it’s the longest memori canon complaint fic out there. (I have a host of other memori fics, canon compliant and otherwise if you want to check those out too, but this one’s my personal favorite).

Canon Divergent AUs

Her What If List by the_most_beautiful_broom; @the-most-beautiful-broom​

Rating: G, One-shot; Genre: Meet Cute/Ugly

Memori Appreciation Week: Day One: Canon Divergence

Emori and Otan's latest robbery goes awry when the mark ends up being very much awake, but all's well that end's well, and an unexpected connection is made in the middle of the desert.

And she wonders if his eyes weren’t just sad, that they were just asleep. Because maybe it’s the fire, or the fading adrenaline, but now Emori can swear his eyes are sparkling. Which is a stupid thing to think. She’s in the middle of the dead zone, with a gun that isn’t a gun, and a man who could be conning her just like she’s trying to con him.

A really imaginative AU with Grounder!Murphy. This puts our characters in a familiar situation but makes it new and unique. Emori’s POV is both critical and vulnerable and the memori banter is amazing!

home is what the heart protects by emperor_bell

Rating: G, One-shot; Genre: Family/Friendship

"John Murphy had lived a hundred lifetimes in his year on the ground and yet still, somehow, after a year of living in space again, nineteen year old John Murphy hears the word “dad” and his first thought is 'I’m too young.'"

I'm obsessed with the thought of Emori having a baby in space, and I set out to write Memori parents. Instead I wrote 2k words of John Murphy feelings. Enjoy.

More messy feelings! The dialogue here and what characters (mostly Murphy) do versus what they think and say is really interesting and makes for an engaging read. Plus a look at how complicated memori as parents would be and a super angsty sequel if that’s the kind of thing you’re into!

Taking A Village by Zaffie

Rated: M, Multichapter; Genre: Found Family/Survival

Once they get it all sorted, the technical aspect of living on the Ring turns out to be the easy part. It's the rest which is hard. Everyone's got their personal demons to face - except when you're seven people trapped together for five-plus years, "personal" is easier said than done.

This one is much less memori-centric than spacekru-centric, but it’s probably my favorite Ring fic, and the AU aspects just make it better. Both Murphy and Emori are incredibly in character and their chapter is beautiful and sad. If you happen to also be a big Spacekru or Raven fan this fic is a must. Also there’s a great sequel in the works!

I know the sound of your heart by dylanobrienisbatman; @dylanobrienisbatman

Rating: G, One-shot; Genre: Fluff

Bellamy fought hard, and got them the 80 acres on the edge of the valley. They built a house, big enough for all of them, they had a farm, they were happy and safe. Emori should be happy, she should feel like it was enough, but it wasn't. She and John were still apart, and their history made her scared to try.

But as time went on, she watched as John became part of the group. She kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, but the longer she waited, the more it seemed like he was really better.

Was it time to give him another chance?

The soft spacekru feels in this one are almost as great as the memori ones which feature reconciliation and addressing their s5 issues in a healthy way. The lead up to them getting back together is as good the second go around as in the first.

eat, drink, and be merry by flowermasters

Rating: G, One-shot; Genre: Fluff

Murphy and Emori do what they can to improve morale.

So this is the wedding fic that everybody needs in these hours. There’s a healthy dose of spacekru to make it all the ore sweeter and Murphy and Emori are adorably in love while trying to maintain their aloof and uncaring reputations. This fic did so much to heal my soul while in the depth of the s5 angst. 

In This Valley by Kats_watermelon; @katswatermelon​

Rating: T, One-shot; Genre: Angst/Fluff/Kidfic

written for day 1 of memori week, prompt: canon divergence 

This is mostly a really fun spec fic if God Complex went worse and Murphy and Emori got six years alone on Earth. There are big shifts in tone from the start to the end of the fic, but they feel earned and memori have a cure kid in addition to Madi and you get to see them square up with Diyoza asap. Something for everyone!

Life After the Mountain by Ghelik; @ghelikblack 

Rating: T, Series of One-shots; Genre: Hurt/Comfort

The Mountain falls and the grounders keep their distance, because the Sky-People are soldiers that have earned their respect and the lands of the Mountain that they have conquered. Which is good, because skaikru might need a break.

Series of one-shots in an AU where season 3 kind of didn't happen, but elements of it might be borrowed from.

This one is a little different because it’s a series of one shots and not all of them deal with memori but the fair majority of them do, and it’s a great what-if of how Murphy and Emori learn to function in society in a (sort of) kinder world. There’s lots of angst and vulnerability and feelings of inadequacy as well as fluff and healing. The fics span genres so there’s probably something for everybody!

Burn brighter than we ever have before by Zoadgo; @jonnmurphy

Rating: G, One-shot; Genre: Drama

Murphy flees an unknown threat in the Promised Land, running right back to the desert that almost killed him the first time he crossed it. It seems intent on fixing its past failures, and Murphy isn't strong enough to fight it on his own, this time. But someone from his past offers him a chance to survive, and even to prosper in the Dead Zone. That is, if he can bring himself to trust someone who has already betrayed him once.

Another great Murphy POV with additional cool (or hot, rather) desert descriptions and personal conflict. It’s a cool what-if and explores how things could have gone down if t100 didn’t go full scifi. Most of all Murphy and Emori’s understandings of each other/immediate connection shine through. 

Show Them the Mercy They Won’t Find on Earth by berxnica

Rating: NA (no smut), One-shot; Genre: Drama

she just showed up swollen and scared, eyes so impossibly big that they left no room for a smile. she pulled murphy aside and removed the blanket that she previously was clutching to her stomach. and there it was, her stomach, swollen and full and round with the promise of life.

Another memori becoming parents fic, but in a different era. The character understanding shines through in the prose here. Our faves are suspicious and afraid and angry while still being soft with one another. If kidfic is your thing at all it’s def worth your time!

Earth Skills: Reap What You Sow by BeaRyan

Rating: E, Multichapter; Genre: Crack/Smut

That week everyone got high on mutant corn and John Murphy realized juvenile prison might not have taught him everything he needed to know about how to please a woman. Canon adjacent.

This is a Memori story from John Murphy's snark-tastic POV and as such contains minor whomp of everyone. Complete.

This story contains a multitude of side pairings, but it is really good for a laugh, and despite being cracky Murphy and Emori’s feelings are very real and present and sweet. A grand ‘ole fic.  

AUs

Litany by infernalandmortal; @infernalandmortal

Rating: T, Mulichapter; Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort

After leaving an abusive relationship, Murphy moves into his best friend's house. He's fine, really. Their new roommate comes with more than enough baggage of her own.

(A Memori college AU)

If you read memori fic chances are you’ve read this, but it’s definitely worth reiterating! Great writing really brings forth raw emotions from both Murphy and Emori’s POVs and a lot of reading this fic is like getting sucker punched in the best way. There’s also a nice side helping of found family feels, and you get it all in Amanda’s lovely prose (her setting descriptions? kill me) truly a must read.

Little Beast by infernalandmortal: @infernalandmortal

Rating: T, Multichapter

Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort

John meets her eyes from across the room. What are you running from? his eyes ask.

Nothing, she blinks back. Everything.

“Will I see you again?” His eyes are trying not to be earnest. They are a strange shade of blue-green in the flickering yellow street light outside her house. They are uncomfortably difficult to read.

“Maybe.” It’s all she can give. She’s supposed to fear boys like this. “I’d like to.”

(A Memori-centric small-town AU. Title and opening excerpts from Little Beast by Richard Siken.)

Less angsty than Litany, but no less emotional, this fic is *chef’s kiss*. The fic features Murphy and Emori growing together and becoming family with one another while trying to manage their pasts. The growth the characters have through the fic is amazing and the ending make me feel all kinds of Soft. There are also bonus drabbles in the same ‘verse. And after you read those you might as well read everything else by this author because her stories are numerous and amazing. 

Don’t be surprised if I love you (for all that you are) by not_a_total_basket_case; @raven-reyes-of-sunshine​

Rating: G, One-shot

Genre: Fluff

Emori doens't want to find her soulmate, she wants to make that choice herself.

Who doesn’t like a good soulmate AU? The mechanics of soulmates in this AU are really unique and structured in a way to make the payoff at the end all the better. It’s a great friends to lovers story, and the supporting cast is lovely too, this fic make you feel all warm inside. 

Tired of Yourself and All of Your Creations by Chash

Rating: T, One-shot

Genre: Fluff/Drama

Murphy didn't ask to be successful and relatively wealthy and friends with people in good standing in society. It just sort of happened, and now there are all these families who apparently think he'd be a good match for their daughters. Being a respectable member of society is a pain, really.

I certainly didn’t know I needed a memori Regancy!AU until I read this, but the characterizations were picture perfect and the plot quick and smart without getting pulled down by the type of dialogue common in regency writing. A very fun AU!

Quiet Thought Come Floating Down and Settle by LayALioness

Rating: T, One-shot; Genre: Drama/Fluff

When Murphy meets the girl, it’s not under the best circumstances.

A great example of canon transferred to modern AU well with prickly Murphy and mysterious Emori. The story is fast paced and all of Murphy’s inner musings and snark are highly amusing. 

traitors never win by Kats_watermelon; @katswatermelon​

Rating: T, Multichapter; Genre: Crime/Drama

Murphy's been kicked out of his crew. Emori's been alone for a while now. They both have a knack for robbery and dreams bigger than their pasts, and they're willing to steal from anyone and everyone to prove it.

If you like the high drama this is for you, a very edge of your seat read with a great payoff at the end. Lovely dialogue as well and a combo of both Murphy’s and Emori’s POVs.

Golden by frikdreina;

Rating: E, One-shot; Genre: Smut/Fluff

It was their two years anniversary and Emori had planned this for weeks. Murphy would be at her place after seven and Emori skipped her last period so she could get everything done before he got there. Her heart was pounding as she unlocked the door to her apartment, the thrill of anticipation taking over her. It was like if electricity was running through her veins and she couldn’t get enough of it, with her mind drifting to the way he kissed her and how his touch had always felt right on her skin.

If you’re just looking for some hot and sweet memori smut this is the fic for you! Doesn’t get into anything too kinky and remains intimate throughout with great descriptions. 

she’s the tear in my heart by flowermasters

Rating: M, One-shot; Genre: Fluff/Drama

Murphy is in love with the girl he's sleeping with, and is incredibly bad at handling it.

Oh man This Fic. The banter is amazing and full of little call backs and tie ins, the descriptions speak to Murphy and Emori so well and transfer to a modern AU so easily. The fic is lovely and if you want something where Murphy and Emori are just dumb about their feelings than this is for you. Another author to keep your eye on if you like memori (or becho) fics. 

[tvdamonelena4ever]

It Had To Be Her.

A Jessica Jones Season 2 Ending Analogy

SPOILER ALERT, PLEASE JUST SKIP OVER THIS IF YOU DON’T WANT SPOILERS.

"It didn't have to be you" but that was a lie.

The best twist of that iconic line, “it didn’t have to be you”, is that it had to be Trish, there was no other option. A quick summary, TLDR, Jessica was pretty much brainwashed by her 'mom’ and could not understand all the damage she was doing to not just her life but to everyone's lives by keeping her alive. That woman stopped being her mom the very moment Karl experimented on her and gave her so many defects that she VERY CLEARLY could not handle.

So lets talk Alisa, people can and will claim that she was still Jess' mom because of all the memories but I just can’t agree with that because there's a lot of evidence that goes against that. Even with all those memories and her apparent 'Love’ for Jessica (which btw if you look back it wasn’t really there much at all. It was always Karl over her own daughter) it did not matter, she could only barely and in some instances control her monstrous nature that Karl created and that was only when Jess was with her and even that took time to try and control, so Jess was really supposed to be shackled 24/7 to something that used to be her mom, to try and keep her, a very dangerous mass murderer, in check!??? The terribly sad truth was that her mom did die in that car crash and what was brought back was just a shell with the memories of a previous life, her trying to be that woman and using the voice of who used to be Jess’ mom.

Let's go in depth with that voice, that is where all of Jessica’s control and rationality starts to kind of rapidly disappear, that voice is what got into Jessica’s head, she said in 2x08 she doesn’t see her mom when she looks at her but she hears her through her voice, that is what pretty much brainwashed Jess and made her lose all sense of rationality, choice, control etc, in my opinion, the second half of this season was Jessica being controlled by another Killgrave, another monster but this one wore her mother’s face and had her mother's voice and that was all too powerful of an emotional connection to her past for Jess to break free from. Jess wanted so badly to believe her mom was still there but she just wasn’t, Jess literally wanted to drop the case and forget everything that her 'mom’ did, all the murders etc. that we saw in the first 7 episodes and even continued to see afterwards because she really wanted that to be her mom, she wanted to believe that she got a second chance with her mom.

Now let’s talk about Trish a bit, while I can’t entirely defend Trish with a lot of the choices she made I can see why she made some of them. The inhaler drug was a split between Trish just giving into the high kind of feeling that she had fallen into before but it was also abour her wanting to be able to help Jessica more, she wanted to be Jess' sidekick and she believed who she was wasn't enough. Next, when Jess first told Malcolm and Trish about 'her mom’ Trish could immediately tell that Jess wasn’t herself, she knew that Jess was probably not going to be able to see clearly and break through this hold her 'mom’ had gotten on her, even with how strong Jess is in all aspects. I can see that was part of, definitely not the only reason, but partly why Trish wanted powers and kidnapped Karl to achieve them. Yes Trish did have some selfish intentions there, I know that but part of her intent was to stop Jess’ mom, in 2x12 Trish admits Jessica is the only one who can put her down, that was really the only option despite the illusion of choice the writers showed us. So what happens when Jess tries to finally do what had to be done? Jess still couldn’t do it because she still wanted that to be her mom, it really wasn’t but she still wanted to believe it was.

So 2x13, the episode that really ties this all together nicely, this was such a crazy episode and I want to dive into this a little bit because once I watched it I was able to see what I believe the writers were establishing all season. Again this is my opinion, I think they were trying to make us believe that Alisa(?) could be redeemed, showing that illusion of choice time and time again but whenever they did that it was always by showing it through Jess’ perspective. From any other angle you wouldn’t feel a thing for her, look at how rational and how right Pryce was, i hated the guy but he had no connection to her and he told Jess what she needed to do. Now look back the first 7 episodes and how much different Jess and us, the audience, reacted to this mass murderer but in the back half of this season you mostly only see Alisa through her daughter (a daughter who lost her whole family far too young and truly just wanted a second chance with any of them) they try to make you feel sorry for Alisa, try to make you feel for Jess and the loss of her family and the apparent finding of her 'mom', and they want to make you think Alisa could somehow be redeemed but that was never the case and that was never there intention. So 2x13, this was the best this beast got, but not even saving that family could redeem her, she was doing that for selfish reasons like wanting Jess to stay with her, shackled to her in hopes that she could remain in check but that just isnt possible and then near the end of 2x13, we actually do see Alisa, the real Alisa, truly come back to life and be Jess' mom one last time, because she does such a selfless act and it’s the one thing Jessica couldn’t do, accept that who Alisa is now can’t stay alive, not as this monster that Karl created, she finally shows a bit of love for Jess by not wanting to ruin her entire life just for her to have to try and keep a beast in check. I will come back to the very end but first I want to explore the episodes that led up to this a bit more to show some crucial things.

First, let’s look at when she surrended and was in jail, that seemed to be selfless and a honest move to try and reconnect with Jess right? Wrong because she would still continue to protect the person that made her a monster, that was her selfish intent and bargaining chip for Jess to have visitation rights. Yes she got abused by a guard, and that was a bit wrong but with everything she had done it wasnt unwarranted. Anyways she doesnt just let it go and made sure Jess saw what happened, she should have been selfless here and kept this to herself but she doesn’t. Jessica Jones, who started the season saying “I’m not a murderer”, then went to this dude’s house to investigate, got caught off guard and ends the next episode by killing him, the third life she took. I'd like to also mention the extremely amazing gaurd that replaced him, what happened to her? You all saw it and you know she didnt deserve that. So back to Jessica and who shows up in 2x11, Killgrave, there to haunt her mind but it’s not him that makes those scenes important, it’s the real meaning behind them, Jessica not in control, Jessica not being able to see clear, Jessica doing things she knows she shouldn’t be doing. This whole episode I believe was the clearest evidence to show that Jess was really struggling to have control of her actions, her emotions, her rationality, her reality etc. At the end of this episode you think she’s okay and you believe that she has gotten her control again by getting rid of the Killgrave like control that was in her head but that wasn’t the case, it was a trick. Her 'mom’ had such control over Jess that even when she repeatedly threatened Trish, Jessica could not break that hold, her 'mom’ even comes to kill Trish and her 'mom’ almost makes Jessica herself kill Trish by blocking her throat. After that you would think Jess would finally understand that there was no ther way this could end but she refuses to believe that even when Trish tells her she is the only one who can put her down, even when she has a gun pointed at her 'mom’. And that episode ends with her 'mom’ knocking her out and kidnapping her.

That just isn’t love but even with all of that Jess was still willing to become a criminal for her 'mom’, an accomplice to a mass murderer trying to escape, yes she was a mass murderer you can’t even debate that.

Let’s touch on 2x07, Her 'mom’ even murdered one of Jess’ boyfriends, one that Jess was really in love with, yet Jess barely shows any anger about that, do you remember that scene? Her 'mom’ wouldn’t even listen to what Sterling said, he was outmatched and in real danger with Jess not around, so he needed to make up a lie for those thugs to leave but Jess’ mom didnt care, didnt listen to what he was trying to say, she literally just bashed his head repeatedly into a wall. There was a reason they made us, the audience, see that truly gruesome scene.

I could examine a lot more if people want me too but let’s jump to the most controversial spot. THE SCENE.

Jess and her mom on the Ferris wheel at Playland. And yes I didn’t put marks around mom that time because this is the one instance her mom is really there, Alisa finally realizes and accepts that she needs to die, to set Jess free and let her get back to her life without being shackled to a beast, a monster, that she can’t control and will take over again soon. But even here, Jess still won’t let her go and gets in too, At this point, with the info they know the police have classified Jessica as an acomplise to a mass murderer. If they would have caught Jess with her mom alive in that ride she would have saw the police murder her mom, they may have been brutal about it too, taking there time, etc. Jess would then be arrested as a criminal and possibly even charge her with all the murders her 'mom’ commited because she did not stop her and even went as far as to help her, hide her, and run away with her.

This is why it had to be Trish Walker, Jessica’s best friend who knows her better than anyone else and needed to save her from herself, just like Jess saved Trish from herself in the past, aka 2x07. With Trish being the one to kill the struggling shell of Alisa she saved Jessica in a lot of ways. Trish prevented Jess from being a criminal and arrested as one, Trish saved Jess from throwing away her whole PI career, Trish saved Jess from her mistakes. Mistakes that she didn’t even know she was making until the trigger was pulled. That’s when Jess got her control back, you could see how angry and hurt Jess was, you thought she snapped and was going to seriously hurt Trish and yet she couldn’t because she held back and controlled herself. In the aftermath of what is a tragedy to Jessica is when she comes back to the reality of her life and finally sees that she couldn’t just throw away everything she worked so hard for, her job, her life, even her potential relationship with Oscar, (Full Disclosure, I need to admit I am 100% Trishica trash but I do actually like Oscar and I think it’s a part of the story they need to tell) before she was too scared to open up to him and really let him into her life, even when he tried to stop Jess from leaving with a mass murderer to stay with him and his son because they both really like her but she still didn’t listen, she couldn’t stay. In the aftermath though Jess now knows she needs to open up to them, she can’t hold on to the past, she had to face her past and with Trish's help (even when she didnt want it) she overcame it and got closure, yes in a harsh way but that's what she needed to move on. Jess now knows that she needs to keep living her life and let some people in. That whole sweet ending with Jess, Oscar and Vido is all thanks to Trish Walker, if not for Trish Jess would have been arrested, convicted and thrown in jail for life with no bail for the crimes she became a part of when she was basically brainwashed under the illusion that she had got her mom back.

That is why it had to be her, why it had to be Trish Walker. Jess might not want to understand or forgive her but I’m sure she will in time, because Trish Walker stepped up to be the hero that Jessica needed.

If you read all this thank you again, I appreciate it so much and I am willing to hear what you all think, to politely debate about it or whatever.

P.S. Just look at them! Even in their dark times

[iaahillyer]

Andrea Limauro: Mare Nostrvm

Andrea is an artist and city planner born in Rome, Italy and based in Silver Spring, MD, just outside Washington, DC. Andrea’s work explores issues of migration and identity, the fleeting concepts of home and safety, nationalistic narratives, and gun violence in the US. His work has been exhibited in galleries throughout the DC metropolitan region including IA&A at Hillyer, Touchstone Gallery, the Annapolis Maritime Museum, and the Arlington Art Center. His paintings have been featured in publications in the US, UK, and Italy. Andrea is a Board Member of the non-profit art advocacy Washington Project for the Arts. 

http://www.andrealimauro.com/

Your work engages with the fleeting idea of home and safety in our world. How do you, as someone who has lived in many countries, define home?

My life experience is central to my understanding of “home.” My first experience with migration started early when I was 11 and my family moved to Belgium.  I was in middle school – a terrible age for anything, let alone moving to a country where you do not speak the language. In Belgium I was faced with intense discrimination by some teachers. The south of Belgium had experienced mass migration from Italy a few decades earlier and anti-Italian sentiment was still very strong among some people when we arrived there in the 1980′s. I had a physics professor who would call me names - like dirty or stinky Italian - in front of my Belgian classmates and kick me out of the class for no apparent reason other than my background. My parents did not speak French, so I often helped them with grocery shopping and communication in public. I remember this one time when my mom sent me to a bakery while she and my father waited outside in their car. When I was inside the owner refused to sell me bread because of my accent. I was very upset and could not believe someone would act like that towards a child. When I went back to the car I told my parents that there was no bread left, rather than let them know about the episode for fear that my father would confront the baker.  My experience in Belgium was very formative for the way I came to understand identity and discrimination. The cruel irony is that when we finally moved back to Italy we relocated to the north of the country where my southern Italian accent often got me singled out or excluded in high school and sports, teaching me yet another lesson about home and identity. I think that was the turning point for me was where I came to conclude that “home” for me would be a fluid concept, or something I had and could build in a place of my choice. It was kind of liberating and since then I have lived over half of my life outside my native country, and in half a dozen countries on three continents. Today, home is where I have my deepest sentimental relationships: Verona and Washington, DC.

Tell us about the inspiration and evolution of this series. What discussions do you hope for Mare Nostrvm to evoke?

Politically, the inspiration for “Mare Nostrvm” started as a reaction to all my current and past “homes” being affected by the global populist movement. It started with Brexit which affected me deeply as it would preclude me today, or my children in the future, to have the same wonderful experience I had in the 1990′s when I lived in England as a student. After that, Trump’s electoral victory on an anti-immigrant wave made me feel very unsafe in the US and forced my wife and I to have serious conversations about relocating. The final straw was the election of a right-wing populist government in Italy fueled mostly by anti-immigrant sentiments.

Artistically, while the political world around me seemed to go crazy, I could not stop thinking about the powerful images of women, children, and men packed on rickety boats trying to get to Italy. I was inspired by their bravery and desperation, leading them to make such a dangerous trip (the deadliest migration route in the world). I felt I wanted to do something about their humanity which often gets lost when right-wing politicians talk about them only focusing on the economic cost of hosting them, or worse, talk about them as being dangerous invaders. The geographic route of their migration and the language politicians use to describe it brought up a lot of parallels with Roman and Italian history.  I started researching in more depth the Punic Wars and Italian colonial history to find inspiration for my series. I really started seeing everything as part of this 2000 years of history that links Italy with north Africa and the rest of the Mediterranean. Italy is very much the product of cyclical exchanges with our neighbors on the sea as much as our European neighbors to the north.

Your color palettes and materials are bright, and elicit a sense of happiness at first viewing—there are vibrant hues and a shimmering use of gold—can you tell us more about your use of color, especially in depicting such difficult topics?

I like to make art that is aesthetically pleasing, and the sea is my element. I love how beautiful the Mediterranean is, but also how it can make you feel small and how you must respect its power. I needed to make the sea beautiful and menacing at the same time. Therefore, the color choices are very intentional. The sea in all its depth is dark and grey whereas only its visible top layer shines with enticing and deceiving colors. I also wanted to use colors that connected the series to the story and aesthetics of ancient Rome. From the patterns of cobblestone streets, to the gold leaves, to the reds and greens of Romano frescoes, it all comes back to my youth growing up in the “Eternal City.”

What do you feel will be the next step for this series of work?

I would love to expand the series and the sculptural aspect of “Mare Nostrvm” and find ways to bring it to Italy and Europe as I feel it needs to be seen there. The reception in Washington has been fantastic with great reviews in the Washington Post and the Washington City Paper, however, the theme of “Mare Nostrvm” is perhaps too far removed from the US, even though there are clear parallels with the migration debate in this country.

[clonerightsagenda]

So last year before I wrote A Horrible Kind of Nice for Gill’s bday fic I was tossing around other ideas and toyed with an exploration of what SBURB 2.0 might look like. I initially planned to do an ensemble fic and grabbed two random characters out of a lineup for the first scene (in this case Aradia and Roxy) and then things... got away from me, and it ended up being about them? Even though I have never given that dynamic much thought before or since, beyond that they would probably be agents of party chaos if unleashed. If I had recently gotten a new item of clothing I would have assumed it was possessed and that’s why this got written. I wasn’t sure what to *do* with it, but since it’s 4/13 and the cat’s out of the bag about TLC ‘let’s restructure SBURB’, I guess I will toss this out there. I don’t know where it came from or where it was going, but I got some fun pesterlog lines out of it.

It’s a slow morning until Aradia Megido swoops in through your open window.

           “Holy shit,” you say, spilling cereal over your sheets. “Where’s the apocalypse?”

           “I could use your help,” she says. “Are you busy?”

           When have you ever been busy? You whiled away most of your time as a kid hobnobbing with carapaces, making up stories inspired by your mother’s books, or waiting for friends to get online. Your session had been one long wait for the gods to arrive, and your victory so far has felt like marking time until the next disaster that has always been lurking around the corner. So no, you’re not busy. Not like Aradia, who darts in and out of the house so much you’ve barely met her. She’s exploring, checking out Earth’s past and future, identifying good brooding cavern locations on the planet where the matriorb will hatch, and scouting the new universe for signs of the game sneaking through. You’d think she did it to avoid the rest of you, but she’s always friendly when she’s around – friendly enough to invite herself into your room via the window.

           “For you I’m willing to snub tea with the Queen of England. What brings you to the Rogue’s windowsill? Need something burgled?”

           “I am hoping your class can help me out.” Her wings fan in and out. The opacity setting’s down to let her squeeze inside, and they’re mostly the suggestion of color when the light hits them right. “I’ve been looking for signs of SGRUB that might have slipped past us, but the universe is a big place, even when you have plenty of time. I though the Rogue of Void might have better luck pinpointing what I’m looking for in the middle of so much nothing.”

           “So I can’t find a needle in a haystack, but if you launch the needle into space I can latch onto that bad boy right away?” It sounds reasonable. You don’t know much about what your powers can and can’t do. Someone mixed with a game guide – even one for a different Aspect – might have a better perspective. “Why not? If I do any more thumb twiddling they’re gonna fall off. When do we leave?”

           “How about now?”

             God tiers can breathe in space. You hang just outside the pull of Earth’s gravity and enjoy the sensation of not burning, freezing, suffocating, irradiating, or any of the other metal ways the vacuum of space usually kills people. It’s stuff like this that makes Jade throw up her hands and grumble. Science has a lot of explaining to do.

           With your eyes closed, you try to scan through the near infinite blackness. SBURB is part of you. It reconstituted your body out of light and ash. Surely you can pluck its traces out of the biggest void around.

           “I think I’ve got something,” you say. “Cute little planet. Good neighborhood. Nice place to raise the kids. I’ll bring us in.”

           The surface is sweltering. You push through jungles lusher than the pictures Jake sent you and jump as huge insects buzz and click past your face. There’s no sight of civilization, and Aradia offers to jump you both forward in time. There has to be sentient life here sometime. Otherwise SBURB wouldn’t have landed.

           “Nah,” you say, pushing away some ferns and earning your first glimpse of the frog temple ahead. “No point in riling up the locals. Let’s take a look without interruptions.”

 When you step inside, Aradia heads right for the carvings. It’s in the reptilian script you recognize from before, and you wish you’d thought to bring along the cipher you all worked out on that last day of the game.

“Sollux is the one who did the translations last time,” she says, running her fingers over the grooves in the stone. They don’t look cut but grown – and they are. No one built this temple. It hatched from a game construct launched from a session that’s paradoxically already underway. “I can’t tell from this whether it’s from the old system or not. We’ll have to take pictures.”

           “On it.” Unlike in the Medium, you don’t have a connection everywhere, but you snap a picture and hope you remember to send it to him when you get home. “It’s too bad there’s not a release date stamped somewhere. Sburb 2.0, patched and modded by the alphabet soup session. No need to thank us for the continued health and safety of your civilization. We’re just that dedicated to a good gaming experience.”

           “Maybe it says something like that somewhere! I can read the pictograms; it’s the code that’s throwing me.” Her voice trails off as she moves down the wall.

           A pebble clatters somewhere behind you, and without thinking you wrap shadows around yourself and flicker back to the doorway. Aradia looks up.

           “Thought I heard something,” you say, your face heating up. You totally bailed on her. By about five feet, but that doesn’t matter. Some brave adventurer you are. She’ll never ask for your help again.

           “Temples can be spooky sometimes.”

           “I wasn’t scared. I’m just on high alert. Can’t let the team anthropologist get carried off by a bunch of bloodthirsty natives. Of course all those stereotypes are pretty racist, since it’s more likely a bunch of natives will get carried off by bloodthirsty anthropologists.” Great, you’re babbling. “Point is, gotta keep on your toes. Look, maybe I should keep in touch, in case something happens and I have to zap us both home. It’ll look bad if I show up in the kitchen and then remember I ditched you a zillion light years away.”

           “I can take care of myself, but if it makes you feel better, go ahead.”

           You reach to grab her elbow and immediately drop it. “Whoa. You’re running hot. I thought DS and Hal were bad with the overloaded computer thing they had going on.”

           She shrugs. “I’m low on the hemospectrum. I think you guys are a little chilly, actually!”

           “Color-coded and temperature-controlled for your convenience.” You whistle. “You trolls really have bio-organization down pat.” You take her sleeve, loosely.

           The two of you walk deeper into the temple. You’d have been in and out by now, but Aradia takes her time and you’re stuck keeping pace with her. It’s not that bad, though. She catches things you wouldn’t, stopping to coo over a butterfly fanning its wings or a patch of emerald moss growing over the stones. She’s also the one who contemplates a statue of good old Bilious Slick for a moment before pressing down on its left eye. There’s a groan of shifting rock, and a passageway opens up at your feet.

           “Coming?” she asks, and pulls you down the stairs two at a time.

           You leave what was left of the daylight behind you, and you’re debating draining the battery of your phone using it as a flashlight when you hit the bottom. There’s no treasure chest or pit of skeletons, like you might expect at the end of a secret temple passage, but what you do find makes your heart race nonetheless. Two circular platforms. One purple, one gold.

           You look at each other. Then, together, you step onto the Derse transportalizer.

           And here you are again. The darkness of the Medium spreads out in a sheet of black that looks false with its absence of stars. The purple spires of Derse reach up overhead, and it’s almost like you never left at all.

           Without meaning to, you’ve let go. You rise into the air toward a tower that dwarfs most of the other structures on the moon. It’s one of six. When you reach the window, you take a breath and peer in. You’re almost expecting to see a dreamer curled up inside, maybe an evolved form of one of the planet’s insects rolling over and fluttering its wings, but the bed is empty. Of course it is. Any players for this session are a long way from being born.

           Your surroundings look hazy. From the corners of your eyes, you can almost see through the Gothic architecture. You get the sense that if you turned your head too fast, huge chunks of the world might not have loaded in. “This is a potential future,” Aradia says when you touch down at her side. “It isn’t certain it’s going to happen yet.”

           “I didn’t think it worked that way.”

           “It didn’t before. But we’re in a new world order.”

           Footsteps ring out in the street, and you see two Dersites coming your way. The halberds they’re bearing look very real. They stop a wary distance from you and gesture in your direction with deliberate motions of their hands. You’re used to this – the carapaces living near your home didn’t speak much either – so it’s your turn to translate. “They want to take us to their queen. I’m not really feeling it. You?”

           She shakes her head. “If the layout’s the same, I know the nearest telepad to Prospit. Race you!”

             You come in a close second, and the transportalizer spits you out on a planet of blinding gold. You take a moment to catch your breath, but as soon as you look up you lose it again. Because Skaia isn’t there.

           Maybe it’s because you were a Derse dreamer, but you never liked Skaia. Its light was too harsh, like a fluorescent bulb without a dimming fixture. You’d felt it on the back of your neck with an illumination that had weight.

           The light at the center of this session is softer, and it’s filled with colors. Streamers and patches of vivid light flow in undulating patterns through its depths. The chessboard tier one Battlefield isn’t visible through the haze, but you’re reminded of silk curtains drawn around a stage, all color and delicate flow.

           “Aradia,” you say, with rainbow lights dancing over your skin, “I think this one’s ours.”

 -- tipsyGnostalgic opened memo on board Operation Skaiasurp –

CTG: guys

CTG: we found a session we made

CTG: n im pleased 2 announce that its SUPER GAY

 A system develops. You locate SBURB artifacts scattered throughout the universe and drop temporary transportalizers on site somewhere no wildlife is likely to stumble into. Then Aradia takes her crack team of amateur archaeologists/ruins pillagers to check it out and bring back the information Sollux needs to make a call. If there's access to a potential session, Rose expands her walkthrough with scraps of lore and information from agents willing to talk. She suggested bringing the sprites for their game guide insight, but Hal hasn't taken her up on it yet, and Davesprite refused in terms that another mother might wash his mouth out for.

Aradia doesn't need to tag along on your location jobs, but she does usually. You're grateful - it's nice to have the company. There's not much lonelier than outer space.

You need to be somewhere quiet and separate to focus, but floating in a void gets boring, which has led you to your favorite surveillance spot.

The Mare Cognitum stretches out before you in an expanse of dust and blasted rock. The surface beneath you should burn you (or freeze you? You're not sure of the details - maybe it's both) but being a literal goddess has its perks.

"You know, footprints here don't fade," you say, drawing a smiley face in the dust. "There's gonna be a really confused rover rolling around here someday, trying to figure out who's been walkin on the moon with converse. And poor NASA's still trying to explain the stars."

Aradia nods, eyes fixed on the Earth. Your home planet looks fragile as a dreambubble in the distance. The sight hasn't gotten old yet. It makes the trip worth it, even if you have to get a full brush-down when you return. Jade freaked when you bragged about hanging on the Moon ("There's no erosion there - the dust particles are nightmares on a molecular level! You can't bring that back here for people to breathe in”) and now you have to pass inspection before being released into the general population. Still, it's worth it, you think, as you tap your feet and send clouds of dust rising in your own localized atmosphere, each mote beautiful and invisibly deadly.

           “It’s quiet here,” Aradia says.

           “Well, yeah. We’re the only people in thousands of miles. There are radio waves bouncing around, though.” You put a hand to your ear. “How delayed are those? Think we could catch the Beatles?”

           “That too. But I meant no one’s died here.”

           “I forgot you heard dead people. Is that all the time?”

           “No. And Earth is better than Alternia. There was a lot of violence there. We sent adults off planet, which cut back on the death count, but it also meant most of them were children. That made it harder to reason with them.” She points toward Earth. “Have you seen that house a block down from us with the yellow window shades? There’s a spirit there. An old woman died peacefully in bed. She’s staying around to watch over her descendants. She hasn’t moved on yet, but she’s happy. I’ve never seen that before.”

           A whole planet, and not one person who died in peace. “I can’t decide if you’d love or hate museums,” you say out loud.

           “Museums?”

           “They’re like… whole buildings full of old shit. Art, or dinosaur bones, or whatever. You can go look at them and read about where they came from.”

           Her eyes light up. “A catalogue of the past?”

           “Sort of. I’ve never been to one myself, obviously. Unless you count my house.” You’d felt like you lived in a museum sometimes. Everything was an exhibit of a world that no longer existed. Sometimes, especially after talking to Jane, you felt more like you were living in a crime scene, surrounded by pieces of evidence you could use to piece together a narrative of your mother’s last years. You weren’t trying to identify the culprit – you knew who’d done it. The person you searched for scraps of information on was the victim.

           She jumps to her feet. “We should go! I’d love to see it.”

           “Can’t you look at Earth’s past by going there?”

           “Yes, but seeing how people interpret it in the present is just as interesting.”

           “If you say so.” You get up and dust yourself off as best you can. Jade will do the final scan. “We’ll do a group trip. I think everyone will be glad to get out of the house.”

             It takes some coaxing, but eventually everyone agrees. You see stirring the group up as one of your sworn duties. Jane got on your case for being the team's party girl. In the bowels of a planet shaking itself apart, she'd accused you of never taking anything seriously. But sometimes people need levity. During SBURB, the sheer shittiness of your situation hadn't had a chance to fully hit you, not when you needed to stay alive. After the game, the weight finally landed, and you all dealt with it in different, terrible ways. The worst is past, but it's better to keep people occupied. The problems start when they have time on their hands. Your enthusiasm isn’t faked, either – you’ve never been to a place like this before.

Even with your more notable members incognito, a horde of teenagers entering the museum raises eyebrows. You’re not their main age bracket. Before the guards can decide to follow you around, you spread out. Terezi trails behind, stubbornly trying to read the Braille labels. She’s been teaching herself, since plain black text is harder for her to sniff out than the color coded kind. She has to keep smacking Dave away, who pretends to read the labels and makes up ridiculous stories instead while Karkat mutters along to the audio guide. Kanaya sits down in the Impressionist gallery like she’ll never move again.

           You leave Rose locked in a staring contest with an extremely creepy statue of a tiny man and drag Aradia off to the museum’s one mummy. You figure if anything’s going to be haunted, it’s that.

           “Nothing,” she says.

           “Really?”

           “Nope!”

           “Man, the guy’s gonna want his money back. Some afterlife he got. It would’ve been sweet to get to visit all the world’s museums, even if you do have to deal with a bunch of class tours rubbing their noses on the glass.”

           “This is how some of your cultures sent off the dead?” She bends down to look at the peeling hieroglyphics. “It’s fascinating. They knew how to throw a corpse party.”

           “Biggest damn corpse party around.”

           You follow her through room after room (John and Jane challenged each other to find the grossest baby Jesus and almost crash into you while racing through the Medieval section) and she stops in front of an oil painting. “Is that haunted?” you ask. “Will the eyes start following us around Scooby Doo style?”

           “It’s not haunted, but…” She peers closer. “The creator left a little bit of themselves behind, and I can feel it. They must have loved their work very much.”

           The painting is from four hundred years ago. You try to imagine making something with so much love someone can still feel it, that much later.

           Your path takes you out to a main courtyard, and Aradia sinks down on the edge of a fountain. "This is incredible," she says. "I wish we'd had something like it on Alternia. Some highbloods collected memorabilia, but it wasn't organized like this, and we couldn't come visit whenever we wanted."

"Maybe that can be a career goal, now that we're all cogs in the capitalist machinery again. Can't keep living off Jane's inheritance forever."

"Career?"

"You know, job?” You wave a hand vaguely. Real World Twenty-First Century TM shenanigans are something you’ve only studied in the abstract. “What you do when you grow up so you can pay for shit. Of course that involves going to school usually, which would be an accomplishment for most of us."

"This can be a job?"

"Someone has to do it. What did you guys do on your planet?"

"Lowbloods like me would get assigned menial tasks in support of the Empire’s basic functions. If we showed useful skills we'd be conscripted into the Empress's forces to conquer new worlds. With my powers, I'm sure they'd want me." She shivers and dips her fingers into the water. "They'd want Sollux too."

"What, there's a demand for tech skills there too?"

"Something like that. So you can choose here? What would you pick?" she asks, a little too brightly.

You shrug. "Growing up in the future there weren't many career options except fisherwoman and apocalypse gear model. Now... I dunno. I kinda liked messing around with the frog's DNA back on our last day in the game, making all those tiny little changes that made huge differences. I know it's not like that in real life, but genetics might be cool. Making something besides mutant kitties. Maybe I could cure non-universe cancer."

           “That sounds neat.”

           It does. You hadn’t voiced it before, but now that you have, you wonder why it hadn’t occurred to you. There are lots of ways to make the world a better place. Sometimes you change the way the whole multiverse system works, but sometimes you can work a little closer to home.

 A few weeks later, you visit Calliope while she’s touching up the latest comics pages she and Jake have drawn. Almost everyone has been a guest artist for them; who can say no to that face? Someday soon your Catwoman expy will bust out of prison again. Her colors are more muted and smudgy than usual. Still lifes and landscapes were her favorites at the museum, but she liked Impressionism too.

"I wanted to ask you," she says. "Next time you go to one of those sessions that belongs to us, can I come?"

"They're kinda boring," you say. It kills you knowing you're in a universe where Calliope will grow up bullied and alone and time has tied your hands. All your instincts say not to let her near another game session.

She frowns – she can tell when you’re babying her, and she always puts her foot down. "You all helped, but I made it in the end. I want to know I did it right."

           In the end, you cave, like you always do. (Jane got talked into letting her buy a whole tub of edible glitter on the last shopping trip.) The first session you located is only a transportalizer hop away. You don’t let go of Calliope’s hand the whole time. If anything goes wrong, she’s not getting left behind. When she sees the replacement Skaia up above you, she gasps, and you tighten your grip on her fingers.

           “Can you… talk to it?” you ask after she’s been staring, rapt, for a few minutes. “Is it you?”

           She blinks, jarred out of whatever trance she was in. “Oh! No. It’s not like that. It’s not a person. Skaia wasn’t the other me either, exactly. It was more… a way of thought that had been installed. Closer to an AI, although nothing as advanced as Hal of course. It doesn’t have a soul. It’s the same thing here.” She floats upward, and you bob along after her. “I can see what influences I left behind, but it’s chosen its own way to develop. It looks like painting water.” Before you have time to worry about the consequences, she dips her hand into the lights. The colors swirl around her fingers and form the suggestion of shapes. It looks like two people standing on a foreign landscape, but before you can make out the details the image breaks apart again.

           “Not as high def as the clouds,” you say.

           “It’s not fixed.” She pulls her hand out, and you almost expect her fingers to be streaked with color. Of course, they’re clean. “It *is* like paints – there’s the base materials, but you can make different pictures yourself.”

           “Possibilities.”

           Calliope sinks downward to stand on the gold brick walkway, and you settle next to her. “That’s what we fought for.”

           You squeeze her hand. “You did good."

           “You found this place with Aradia?” she asks.

           “Yup.”

           She nods, eyes tracking the swirls overhead. “Hmm.”

           “Hmm what?”

           Calliope shrugs. “Nothing!”

           “Bullshit. You said that hmm intentionally. But two can play at that game.” You turn your head. “I’m ignoring you.”

           “I am a chronicler, Roxy. I like to know what’s going on so I can take good notes.”

           “You mean you want to stick your nose into all our biz. Well, I’m not having it.”

           She keeps her expression professional. “Is there what you would refer to as “biz”?”

           Is there? You hadn’t thought about it. You guess… you don’t mind hanging out with her. Any day when she shows up asking if you want to check out a new planet is a good one. She’s got a nice laugh. But beyond that… You’ve had so many false starts it’s hard to distinguish between genuine attraction and your latest desperate crush. You’d committed to taking it easy for a while to “find yourself” or some shit instead of chasing after people just because you don’t want to be alone. How do you tell when that process is over? Does a little light go on; does the oven ‘ding’ and say Roxy’s ready? The problem with self-development is that there’s no progress bar, and no one hands you an achievement badge. You have to gauge those kinds of things on your own.

The pause has been dragging on too long. This calls for drastic action. “Oh no, the gravity on this planet is way too high,” you say, collapsing on her shoulder. “I can’t stand up.”

           Calliope is sturdy despite her slight frame. Your weight doesn’t make her stumble. “I’ll take this as a no comment, then.”

“Damn straight.” You slouch a little more for good measure and then stand up. “If there ends up being something solid to comment on, which at the moment there is not, you’ll get the scoop from me. But until then, no sensational tabloid journalism, ok ma’am? You have ethics to consider.”

“Cross my hearts,” she says solemnly.

           “Double the protection. I dig it.” You shake your head. Now that Calliope’s introduced the idea, you can’t seem to knock it loose. “Let’s get out of here before some chess people think we belong in jail.”

 TG: hey jane

TG: wut activities might u recommend for introducing an eligible alien bachelorette to the wide world of humanity

TG: i ask bc uve appointed urself seeing eye human 2 ur own space invader

TG: evn tho i swear she gets around better than most of us ffs

GG: Still sour about her getting the last cupcake? :B

TG: that cupcake had my name on it and u kno it

GG: You snooze, you lose!

GG: We watched your future torrent of Broadchurch last night.

TG: ok ur translation thing is totes adorbs but a

TG: thats not rly introducing her to the WORLD

TG: and b

TG: i dont need competition from david tennants face

GG: What about Jodie Whittaker?

TG: she was p hot as the 13th doctor ngl fashion choices aside but shes 2 woeful in that one 4 my tastes

GG: Wait, what??

TG: WHOOPS

TG: pretend i didnt say anything bc SPOILERS :X

GG: :/ GG: Just to make sure I’m not off base, we’re talking about Aradia here, right? TG: mayb GG: So you two are an item now? TG: no

TG: i mean TG: not rly

TG: weve been hanging out

TG: n then callie IMPLIED there might be something goin on and I thought welllll TG: u kno

TG: shes cute + fun + im super single

TG: so why not give it a shot rite

GG: Why not indeed.

GG: As for a grand tour of humanity, I don't know.

GG: What does she like?

TG: shes down 4 everything thats the problem

TG: if i set her loose shed probably come back having joined the circus

TG: or the mob

TG: anything fuckin goes

GG: You've been out beyond the solar system so much, I doubt there's anything that exciting to see here.

GG: Maybe you should just treat her to... a regular day out!

GG: Show her what you two have been missing gallivanting around in outer space.

TG: hm

TG: mayb

TG: btw when r u gonna make ur """"thing"""" official n stop wanderin around the perimeter tryin not 2 set the proximity lights off

GG: I don't know!

GG: When are you going to admit you're angling for tips on a date?!

TG: hey now

GG: How does that old rhyme go?

GG: Roxy and Aradia, sitting on the moon.

GG: K-I-S

TG: H-A-V-I-N-G personal + emotional conversations that r none of ur damn business n shouldnt b construed from

TG: u big buffoon <- rhyme scheme bitches

TG: but like

TG: in strict confidence

TG: comin from someone who walked u thru the BISIS and so deserves some fuckin respect here

TG: were u gettin vibes of any sort off her

TG: by any chance

GG: Roxy, she's spent maybe a month tops on the planet!

TG: uh huh

TG: and ur gettin vibes off ME bc im the desperate loser who tried to mack on john 2 seconds after meeting him

GG: I can't believe you've set your sights on every possible interpretation of my father figures.

TG: lol i do it JUST 2 annoy u

GG: And I wasn't going to say that! I just haven't seen the two of you interacting that much, is all.

GG: The problem before was that you felt lonely, right?

GG: That's what you told John, that you were looking for a relationship so there would be someone for you.

GG: Do you still feel lonely?

TG: nah

GG: I should hope not! We're bursting at the seams here.

GG: You spent all of yesterday holed up with Dirk and Jade working on those transportalizers.

TG: it wouldve gone faster if sollux had helped instead of complaining about how i beat him @ mario kart

TG: 'this game looks like it was programmed by a wiggler smearing its own droppings on its hiveblock walls' my ass i won fair and square

GG: Oh, is THAT why I saw him playing that game at 2 am this morning?

GG: Karkat was his competitor, but I don't think it was much of a contest.

TG: trainin 4 a rematch huh

TG: he can try

TG: earths champion will remain unquestioned

TG: damn tho 2 am is like peak wildlife sighting time in the living room

GG: They haven't quite shaken being nocturnal!

GG: Anyway if you're not feeling lonely, maybe this is authentic.

GG: Maybe you really do like her.

GG: You wouldn't be the first among us to seek out an extraterrestrial paramour!

TG: no i would not ;) ;)

TG: (wonking intensifies)

GG: Hush, you!

GG: How come we haven’t had to watch you go through one of these “bi crises”?

GG: If I recall, you spent most of your time singing the praises of the menfolk earlier in our adventure.

TG: the menfolk

TG: u did it jane u singlehandedly got rid of any attraction i had 2 them good job

TG: no no jk jk

TG: like

TG: idk

TG: part of it was i didnt want to weird u out

GG: Ah yes, dear sweet Jane who can’t handle the truth again.

TG: look u barely grasped the concept of bisexuality!!!

TG: i didnt want u treatin me weird ok???

GG: I would never have done that to you.

TG: not INTENTIONALLY

TG: but r u SURE u wouldn’t be like ‘w8 r u hittin on me then’ or some shit

GG: …

GG: Maybe. I could cram my foot in my mouth with the best of them sometimes.

GG: So it was all a ruse for my benefit?

TG: not entirely

TG:  u kno I was tryin so hard 2 b what the empress didn’t want me 2 b

TG: + part of that was embracing the conventional 21st century girl routine

TG: which is also unfortunately super het most of the time

TG: dunno y i was tryin 2 prove myself 2 an evil alien witch + loads of dead peeps but there u go

TG: let her wall me in2 a corner there unfortunately

TG: but evn if i wasnt as DIRECT about it

TG: i always knew

TG: ppl r hot janey

TG: loads of ppl r so hot n im not gonna discriminate there

GG: Aradia does have some charm.

GG: It can’t hurt to try it out.

GG: Have a day planetside! See the sights.

TG: mayb ur right

TG: doin something NORMAL might sort some shit out

TG: c if she actually likes hangin w/ me or is comin out just 2 b polite

GG: Good luck.

GG: And Roxy?

TG: ye

GG: I think anyone should be happy to hang with you. :)

TG: <3

           It’s hard to decide what to show as examples of “daily life” when it’s all strange to you too. In the end, you elect to wander. The two of you stroll downtown, drifting toward storefronts or flowerbeds whenever something catches your interest. It’s too bad malls died out. They’d be perfect for this kind of activity.

You're still not used to big crowds, but you breathe deep, straighten your spine, and remind yourself you're a god. Aradia, on the other hand, loves it. She strikes a pose mimicking a mannequin and exclaims over a set of tiny measuring cups. Watching her, something inside you unspools. You're not a god, or an outsider; you're just two girls checking out some stores. For all anyone knows, you’re on a shopping trip.

           “Hey,” you say, reaching for something familiar. “Want to stop by a makeup counter?”

             It’s different actually sitting down at one of these things instead of nabbing what looks good with your appearifier. You don’t know which sample to try out first. Luckily there’s a self-service option with a bunch of temporary applicators. You don’t want some sales person messing with your face. “Hey,” you say, grabbing a tube of lipstick. “I bet this would look great on you.”

           Aradia takes it, and her eyebrows rise. “Gold? That’s a high caste marker. If I wear cosmetics, I’m supposed to wear my colors. Or my moirail’s, if I had one.”

           “They regulated makeup? Truly a sign of a dystopia.” You pick through the available samples to see if you can find any of your favorites. “Normally I wouldn’t recommend gold with gray, but you’ve got warm enough undertones. Now Terezi? No way.”

She uncaps the lipstick and eyes it. "You're good at this."

"Learned by watching old Youtube tutorials and ganking samples from makeup counters in the past. Callie liked it too, so we bonded a lot. Of course I didn't know then she was covering up the whole skull alien thing. I just thought she was insecure. Who wouldn't be, with her jerkass bro calling her ugly all the time?"

She doesn't need to know all the details. Only Dirk and Calliope know everything, although you've kinda sorta mentioned it to Jake and Jane, not that you think they fully understood. You hadn’t aspired to Platonic girldom only to rub it in the Empress’s face. It's funny how applying the trappings of femininity from a dead civilization could still ease your dysphoria a little, even though it's not like a bunch of judges from Ladies Weekly were watching and nodding in approval. You're in a God Tier body now, every cell fresh baked and new. No clerk is going to steer you away from the women's section.

           “How does it look?” Aradia asks, jolting you out of your thoughts. She’s found some sort of glittery eyeshadow too and managed to get it on perfectly. It looks great on her.

           “You’re pretty,” you say out loud, and then regret it. You didn’t mean to sound surprised. It’s just that Aradia has always been Aradia. She hits you with her personality first, and that overpowers everything else.

She doesn’t get offended, but she sure gets even. “You’re prettier than I thought at first too.”

Your smile drops. “Gee, thanks.”

She frowns. “Did I say something wrong?”

“Not if that’s what you meant to say.”

“I try to say what I mean. It’s good to be honest.” Her gilded lips twist into the closest you’ve ever seen to a frown from her. “But sometimes people don’t seem to like it. You humans look so different. It took getting used to. I mean, your hair’s light, and you’re not even old. Once you get over that, though, it makes for a nice picture.”

“Do you wanna frame me?”

She hesitates. “Did I mess up again?”

“Nah, I’m messin with you. It’s ok if you’re blunt, god knows Jake’s noshing on his foot all the time and we still love him, toenail breath and all. Our gang could use a lil more plain speaking. Just go easy on my self esteems, ok?”

           “Ok…” She drops her latest applicator into the used cup and clears her throat. “Is there a mirror?”

           You find one for her, and she giggles at her reflection. “I look like I’m pretending to be an Heiress.”

           “Come on, your fishy highness,” you say. “Let’s check out the park.”

 A rack of city bikes for rent stands near the entrance to the park, and she rushes over. “Two wheeled transportation devices! I haven’t used one of these since I was a wiggler.”

           Jane’s been busy practicing to get her license, but John has coached you on a few wobbly laps around the neighborhood. How hard can it be? You’re a god, for fuck’s sake. “I’ve got some change. Want to try them out?”

           It takes a circuit of the park before you’re moving smoothly, but your confidence grows with every minute. Even if Aradia learned on another planet, she hasn’t forgotten. She careens past you, laughing maniacally, and you pedal faster to catch up. "Watch out for the curve!" you yell, but it's too late. She skids off into the grass, leans so hard to the left you think she's going to flip over, and then crashes into a pond, sending a flock of ducks flapping for safety.

She's God Tier just like you, but you still turn an ankle jumping off and running over. "Are you ok?"

She's still laughing, sitting down in the water with her knees green with pond slime and her hair hanging in dark tangles around her shoulders. The gold lipstick, against all odds, has hung on. Damn good product design. "That was GREAT."

"No rainbow sparklies, so I guess you got off easy."

"I've taken much harder knocks than this." She stands up, dripping muddy water. "I'd better rescue the bike, though."

You're both wheeling them back onto the path when you see the orange vests of park security. "Uh oh." Maybe you should stay and explain yourselves, but years of dodging drones has made you suspicious of law enforcement, and you don't want humans asking Aradia too many questions. Hell, you don't know if you could answer all that many. You're practically an alien temporally. If you woke up from a faint to someone asking you who the president was, you’d have no fuckin idea. "Want to run for it?"

Aradia doesn't answer, just drops her bike and sprints for the trees.

You follow, and you're both laughing hysterically between breaths. Aradia keeps gasping "They're after us" with the glee of a kid running into a toy store. The security officers don't bother following you - you see them stop to collect your bikes - but neither of you stop running until you collapse against a mossy boulder deeper into the woods. You press your hands against your thighs and catch your breath, while Aradia's giggles slowly die down.

"Now that was more like Alternia," she says. "They wouldn't cull us if they caught us here, would they?"

"What? No, no way." Is that why she'd run so fast? "They might check to see if we were drunk and kick us out. We don't kill people for existing here." Then again... John told you about being followed by the clerk the last time he went to a gas station for a soda. Rose holds Kanaya’s hand in public like a challenge. "It's not as obvious as the hemospectrum," you say at last. "It's not supposed to work that way. Sometimes it does, though." Is that better? At least Alternia was up front about listing off who got protection and who got killed. Here, they pretend things don't work that way, but kids end up dead all the same. "It's not paradise."

"Nowhere is."

You run your fingers over the boulder. Someone, sometime, has scratched their initials into it. "Maybe once I've lived here longer I'll want to keep looking for something better. But I guess it hasn't lost its shine yet. Like, maybe people suck, but you know what sucks more? Being one of the only people on the planet.”

           Her gaze snaps over to you. “Do you think that’s why I leave so often?”

You hadn’t meant it that way. Once she’s brought it up, though... she does bail pretty regularly. “I don’t know. Almost as soon as we got here you were zooming off to the past or the future or other planets. Did you get sick of us that quickly?”

           “No, not at all!” She tucks a waterlogged strand of hair behind her ear. “But there’s so much to see, even if I have all the time in the world. I got excited.”

           “You’d think you’d seen a lot already. You were bumping around in everyone’s memories, right?”

           “I guess so. But the dream bubbles aren’t real, exactly, and in SGRUB I wasn’t in the right frame of mind to appreciate the sights. Back on Alternia I was a peasant class. I had to be careful exploring because I might risk being attacked. Traveling isn’t safe for the lower castes. Now…” she spreads her arms. “I have a chance.”

           “I spent my whole life staring at the same bit of ocean. So I get wanting to see something else. But I’m worried if I leave for too long, they’ll keep making friends without me, and I won’t be able to catch up, you know?”

           It’s easy to feel that way when for so long your only presence in your friends’ lives was a flashing icon on a computer screen. If they didn’t want to talk they could click you away. In the session, you’d felt worthy of your Aspect, fading into the background while everyone spiraled around the Jake English event horizon. Being technically doomed makes it worse. You know they won’t turn you away, but you can’t help worrying the timeline will suddenly catch on and expel you, or you’ll come back from a trip to space and they’ll have forgotten you after all.

           “My friends and I have spent a long time together,” Aradia says, snapping you out of morbid daydreams. “Not those versions, exactly, but almost every other. Actually, it’s nice to spend time with someone new.”

           “I can see where you’re coming from. I mean, I don’t have five billion friend memories, but we’ve got baggage. Hells of baggage. Imagine one of those movie timeskips with all the spinning headlines.” Those exist, too. The Derse tabloids had started out writing nasty rumors about Jake and Jane, but they labeled you and Dirk traitors soon enough. “Drama, drama. But it’s not enough that I ever wanted to run away, or at least not for long.”

           “I’m not running away!”

           “I meant for me,” you say, although it sounds like you’ve touched a nerve.

           Aradia leans against the boulder and shifts away from you. "When I visit other places, I'm not passing judgment on your planet, or on you,” she says. “Maybe we just have different priorities."

           The comment sounds like a rebuke, and it stings. Why would you be a priority to this girl from outer space, anyway? You only met a few months ago. And yet… admit it or not, she’s becoming a priority to you.

           Chalk one more up to the not interested column, you think. Out loud, you say, “Wanna get home? The security people might remember to do their jobs and track us down.”

           “Ok.” Aradia looks back at you and smiles, but in your eyes at least, it looks forced. “Thanks for showing me around. It was nice.”

           “Anytime,” you say. What you don’t say is, if you stay.

 -- tipsyGnostalgic [TG] started pestering tentacleTherapist [TT] --

TG: hey mom lil help here

TT: I'm the mother today?

TG: yup bc i need guidance

TT: Ok, let me put on my required string of pearls.

TT: Mental, emotional, or spiritual?

TG: do i gotta pick

TT: Generic guidance it is.

TG: hows dating an alien goin

TT: Swimmingly.

TT: I've leveled up to being able to unironically express affection without my face heating to the boiling point.

TT: It's my part to slow global climate change.

TG: im proud of u

TT: Thank you.

TG: so i was wonderin if the 2 of u evr have misunderstandings

TG: u kno communication probs that come from like

TG: CULTURAL HIJINKS

TT: Ceaselessly.

TT: At least the two of us didn't have to work through the "murder as a competitive sport" cognitive dissonance.

TT: To put it in her words, Kanaya is "The Weak Bitch Who Is Only Down With Murder When Absolutely Necessary And Even Then I Prefer Not To Get My Clothes Dirty"

TG: of all of us arent u the bitch most down with murder

TG: evn if technically jade n jane got u beat

TT: I may in fact be that bitch.

TT: Or I'm all talk. Hard to say.

TG: yeah i think janes had 2 have the whole murder as a cultural value talk but i was thinkin more like

TG: idk

TG: priorities

TG: r they not super social

TG: do they not grasp the concept of TALKING or HAVING FUN

TT: Allegedly trolls are not a social race.

TT: There tends to be a lot of infighting. There used to be twelve of them, remember?

TG: ye we hung out w/ their corpses

TT: It can make them struggle with interaction.

TT: Something we of course excel at.

TG: totes

TT: Kanaya was worried making me talk about my feelings would push us in the wrong quadrant.

TT: Part of that was her personal history, though. It’s complicated.

TT: We all have our neuroses.

TG: ok ok now sidenote TG: this isnt rly important xcept for like TG: my personal self esteems

TG: did kanaya evr think u looked weird

TG: u kno since ur not a troll

TT: Hang on, let me text her.

TT: She says, "You Looked Strange At First But I Got Used To It".

TG: harsh

TT: The betrayal.

TT: The heartbreak.

TT: Etc.

TT: Does that answer your question?

TG: i guess????

TG: idk aradia was kinda super blunt but im not sure she meant it that way???

TG: she seemed surprised i got touchy about it so i guess i was overreactin

TT: You realize they have different personalities too, right?

TT: Although bluntness does seem to be common.

TG: shouldnt xpect were poster hotties for another species

TG: maybe alternia didnt have a devoted cadre of monsterfuckers just waitin 4 their chance

TT: Their depravity knows some bounds.

TT: Also,

TT: Dave says if you shack up with an alien he's disowning you.

TG: tu or tg

TT: Which do you think?

TG: ily kiddo but maybe well gang up on u and disown U instead

TG: how do u like them apples

TT: i hate this family

TG: b a good son and give rose her keyboard back

TT: I'm on my phone, actually.

TG: what is he evn doing there

TT: The five of us are playing Scrabble.

TT: John just deployed the Q on a triple letter score. Things are getting heated.

TG: and uve got me on speaker

TT: No, I think he caught a glimpse of my screen while trying to spy on which letters I have.

TT: I'm not actually spelling out your personal business on the board.

TT: Jade wants to know if you had fun on your date, by the way.

TG: for FUCKS sake

TT: This household keeps no secrets.

TG: it was FINE EVERYTHINGS FINE TG: weifjsdlk

TG: heres a bunch of letters for ur scrabble game im out

Not long after your "date", Aradia fucks off into nowhere again. You've been spending a lot of time out in space yourself, so you try to distract yourself by hanging out with everyone else. Can't afford to miss out on whatever in-jokes have sprung up lately. There's nothing worse than being left out of the latest household meme.

It goes alright. Jade's been teaching you to read music. Calliope wants help brainstorming her Halloween costume. Davesprite trashes Alternians for your benefit until you tell him to knock it off. But when you find yourself at loose ends, you get testy. Being alone isn't a value marker. You know that. At least, you hope you do. But it's oh so easy to feel like it's a judgment made by everybody else.

           You’re not sure why you’re sulking so much. You’ve been rejected before. Of course, John was a crush born of one shared, terrible experience, and he’s a good friend now. Deep down you’d always known Dirk was off limits. Maybe it hurts this time because you thought you might have a chance, that someone might actually like you, and then they left the whole planet to get away. Serves you right for hoping.

-- tipsyGnostalgic [TG] started pestering timaeusTestified [TT] --

TG: hey wanna hang out

TT: I'd love to, but I'm on dinner duty tonight.

TT: I've got like twenty recipe websites open now, and I think my internal monologue has been replaced by a middle aged white woman who's losing interest in her marriage.

TT: Then I have to get Jane to drive me to the store before she coaches me through things like boiling water.

TT: Didn't you remember? You're usually first in line to watch me humiliate myself in the kitchen.

TG: idk

TG: guess i thought maybe SOMEONE in this house of like TWENTY FUCKIN PEOPLE might be free 2 spend time w/ me

TT: Uh.

TT: Wait, seriously, is everyone else gone?

TG: i dunno

TG: feels like it

TG: or mayb im just used 2 getting ditched lately

TG: like the last stick of gum in the package chucked out the car window n oozing pink goo all over in the gutter

TT: This Aradia thing has really gotten to you, huh?

TG: no its fine im over it

TG: i dont know how srs i even was it was prolly another of my stupid infatuations bc some1 looked at me

TG: and shes not interested so wutevr

TG: im just bored

TT: Trust me, I don’t prioritize you over this fucking recipe odyssey.

TT: However, I also would rather not get eaten alive by a bunch of people asking where their dinner is.

TT: I’m minimizing the tab, though. You’ve got my full attention.

TT: Do you want me to come upstairs?

TG: no not if its gonna be some psychoanalysis session

TG: thats the LAST thing i want

TT: I haven’t been treating you like that, have I?

TG: no!!

TG: its not ur fault its just TG: shed rather be zippin around in space than here with us n when i brought it up she basically said i wasnt a priority 2 her

TT: Just like that?

TG: i mean

TG: MORE OR LESS

TT: Lest I talk about myself, this sounds a little like the problem I had with Jake.

TG: which 1

TT: Jesus.

TT: When he started getting distant, I assumed it was something I'd done.

TT: And then I overreacted by clinging tighter like a shellshocked ball python, because I was terrified of him slipping away.

TT: If I'd asked him why he was backing off, and he'd told me he needed some space, maybe we could've skipped some of the resulting interpersonal bloodbath.

TG: whoa whoa slow down

TG: r u

TG: dirk MOTHERfuckin strider

TG: tryin 2 give me relationship advice

TT: It's not from me.

TT: I'm paraphrasing a demiurge who looked down upon me from his golden snake-throne and in the hissing language of Heart itself said,

TT: "Talk to your ex, you piece of shit."

TG: lmao is that rly what he said

TT: There was more poetry involved.

TG: quote it to me xactly i wanna hear this

TT: I didn't write it down.

TT: The exact words were lost in the overall sentiment of the moment.

TG: which was pants shitting terror

TT: Actually by that point I was more annoyed that one more fucking game construct was passing judgment on my life choices.

TG: 2 pissed 2 b afraid

TG: ur natural defense mechanism

TT: Whatever works.

TT: He was right, though.

TT: We weren't holding hands and prancing through a field of daisies after talking it out, but it did make things better.

TG: i mean

TG: u were KINDA holdin hands

TG: if only 2 not die

TT: I don't think that counts.

TG: the fact remains

TG: so ur sayin

TG: i should ask her y shes avoidin me + the planet earth

TG: evn tho last time i broached the subject she flipped out

TT: Yeah, maybe.

TT: If it’s important to you to try to see if this thing can work.

TG: and if she says 'its specifically 2 avoid u' what then

TT: I don't think that's likely.

TT: But if she does, then it's her fucking loss.

TT: You're amazing, Roxy.

TT: Anyone would be lucky to have you.

TG: aw shucks

TT: I'm serious.

TT: Remember when we had the whole group bonding thing in the heart of a self-destructing planet?

TT: It kind of rubbed off on me, I think I've learned how to be motivational.

TG: the old dirk wouldve built a 'how 2 date' robot and unleashed it rite

TT: And then the robot would steal your girl, and I would be in the shit again.

TT: I've learned my lesson.

TG: thx

TG: ill give it a try 4 u ok

TG: and if u want my input i vote pick the recipe w/ the cutest baby pictures in the anecdote

           You must draft a hundred opening lines. Maybe you even would have sent one of them eventually, but Aradia beats you to it, showing up on the front porch one day without bothering to tell anyone she was coming home. You’re alone in the living room watching My Cat From Hell, so you’re the first one to see her.

           “Hi Roxy!” she says, and you nearly throw the remote across the room.

           “Oh. Hey.” You fumble with the buttons until you find mute. This isn’t what you planned for. You’d kinda assumed when you worked up the guts to talk to her it’d be through chat. Face to face is more vulnerable. She’ll be able to see what your expression does instead of what you choose to reveal with carefully selected typography. You can’t even DO a :/ in real life that easily.

           “Did I miss anything?” She takes off her goofy Indiana Jones hat and tosses it discus-style onto an armchair.

           “Nothing much.” You’d come up with something witty but, uh, comeback machine broke. Now there’s a meme you can’t use without getting blank stares.

           She nods. “I found another new world with the game. Want to check it out?”

           She’s acting like nothing’s changed. That rankles you. “If you found it already, you don’t need me.”

           “I don’t need you, but it’s not as fun on my own. I thought you might like to come.”

           You point toward the armchair. “You put your hat down. You’re not going to stay at all? In and out, just like that?”

           “Are you upset?”

“No. I… You still… want to hang out?”

           “Why wouldn’t I?” Her wings flutter. That’s a tic you’ve noticed with DS – he tucks and untucks them when he’s nervous, an adaptation of Dave interlacing his fingers. Is she on edge?

           “Well, you kinda bailed. And we’d just…” Argued? Split? “I thought it might be my fault.”

           “Of course not.” Her wings are really jittery now. A lock of hair is blown forward, and she reaches up to tuck it back. “It gets a little much down here sometimes.”

           “Guess a crash course in human life was too much for any of us.”

           “It was kind of overwhelming.” She smiles. “But it was fun too. I’d like to do it again sometime.”

           Wait, what? “Like, in general, or you mean with me?”

           “You did an excellent job as tour guide last time. I’m sure you can find more to show me.”

           Is she flirting? She delivers every line so on the level it’s impossible to tell. “Uh, well, name the date,” you say. “There’s a whole damn world and I haven’t seen most of it either.”

           “I’ll be in touch.” Her wings finally settle and fade into nothing. “Now I’d better see whether Sollux has converted my room into a file cabinet again.”

           It’s only once she’s gone that you realize you didn’t do any of the things Dirk suggested. You still don’t know why she keeps leaving. You told her you weren’t upset. Sheesh. Maybe you need to visit Nix again so your own personal snake goddess can tell you how much you suck.

           Time passes. You’ve learned to recognize the first few bars of Never Gonna Give You Up on a treble staff. Jane snags her license. Calliope’s Halloween costume is a hit. You don’t know what you and Aradia are. She still comes and goes without warning. When she’s around, you’ve taken her a few places – to an arcade, to the zoo. The outings are fun, but you’ve never even taken her hand for anything but transportation purposes. What’s the point of getting close to someone who might not be there tomorrow? The last time, she’d said, “I had fun!” and you’d said, “Yeah, me too” and shoved your hands into your pockets. She’d looked almost disappointed, but what was she expecting? Sollux has been giving you dirty looks. You give him dirtier ones right back. If he thinks you’re toying with his bffsy’s heart, he can take it up with her.

December 21 is drawing near. Some crackpots with a big following insist the Mayan's calendar ends here and, rather than considering it might work like the modern kind, have assumed the world is ending. You don't remember which of you suggested an apocalypse survivors party as a joke, but it caught on, and at some point as the concept snowballed it gained sincerity. It's 2012. The world already ended, although only you and a few friends know. The world was gone, and it came back, and you're still here. You're all still here.

Plus, it gets rid of the problem of picking which cultural holiday to celebrate all together.

           You stay close to home to help with preparations, and Aradia sets a personal record staying put for over two weeks straight. John insists on showing the trolls every holiday movie he can get his hands on for cultural immersion, and you and Jake now have to put up with choruses of “You’ll shoot your eye out”. Rose and Dave are having a truly horrendous ugly sweater competition. The 21st rolls around, and while a bunch of tinfoil hat enthusiasts are expecting the world go up in flames, you party. Jade has strewn greenery yanked from the woods everywhere. Kanaya found some ornate candlesticks at a thrift shop that elevate the table’s style, even if a few people have already almost set their sleeves on fire. Karkat gets weepy giving an impromptu speech, and you all cheer to cover your own watery eyes. You made it. You really did.

           Calliope breaks the tension by unveiling an actual physical scrapbook she’s been putting together out of pictures copied from phones and snapped in secret. There are green cherub thumbs in a few corners, but that adds to their charm. The group spends a few minutes flipping through the pages documenting the last eight months. There’s Jake posing on one of the statues in the museum’s sculpture garden (directly before near-apprehension by museum security). There’s Dirk and Dave in their matching fake college hoodies, which spurred a flurry of copycat orders. There’s Jane sweating bullets behind the wheel for the first time while her dad gives her an encouraging fatherly thumbs up. It’s your lives for the past nine months, flat on paper with decorative paper framing. After your first sixteen years, it’s amazing that a life can be so full.

 Most people clear out of the dining room after that, although at some point Jade will strongarm people into tag teaming the dishes. Jake is trying to convince John that Pacific Rim is the perfect film for the season, even if it won't officially come out for another year. Davesprite keeps ambushing people with a camera.

You pick up your glass (sparkling cider, of course; you cleared the local grocery store out of their selection) and slip outside. The bright lights from inside stream out into the shadowy backyard. You tilt the glass and let the last few carbonated drops trickle into the dead grass. "Happy apocalypse day," you mutter.

"Same to you."

You jump, and the glass tinkles to the ground. "Shit, you scared me."

Aradia's smile fades. She's leaning up against the side of the house, her dark hair merging into the shadows. "I thought you knew I was here. Who were you talking to?"

You shrug and bend down to pick up the glass. There's a chip in the rim. "It's stupid."

"Doubt it."

"It is."

"Dare you to tell me."

"I was talking to the other Roxy. Dead Roxy." You look up at the sky with its strange new stars. "She'd hate to miss a party like this."

Aradia walks over to join you in contemplation of the heavens. This close, her body heat chases off the chill. "I like to think the dead go somewhere happy. It makes up for some of the unhappiness here."

"Are you unhappy?"

"No, I can't complain."

You try to remember when she slipped out here. After dinner? She'd had a ball with the party blowers and hit Sollux a few times on the nose. "Why are you out here?"

"I was thinking about leaving. I've been here for a few weeks."

"But it's holiday season!"

"There's so much left to see. Lots and lots of planets, and the past and future of all of them. They're waiting for me."

"Let them wait."

Aradia folds her arms over her chest. It’s cold out – the warmth from the party is leaching off your skin. With her body temperature, does she feel it?

"Why do you keep running away?" you ask. “You said you like to tell the truth. And I want to understand. See, Jake was always running away, because we were putting so much pressure on him and he didn’t know how to deal. That didn’t mean he didn’t want to hang with us, he was just getting the social version of a DDOS attack. So if it’s really because you like it better out there than down here, I can live with that. I’ll stop bothering you. But if it’s something I can change… I’d like to help. I’d like to see you stay.”

Aradia sighs. Her breath streams out in a puff of white. "No one told me to guide the dead,” she says. “It's something I decided to do, and I was good at it. The furthest ring is strange at first, but heroes of our Aspects master it quickly. I mastered my friends too. I knew exactly what they need and what to say to them. I don't anymore.” She glances behind you, where silhouettes move behind the sliding glass door. “This... all this, even them, it's new. I'm not sure I'm good at it."

Living together means sometimes you overhear conversations you shouldn’t. A month or so ago, one of your pictures toppled off the windowsill, and you’d gone rooting around behind the bushes looking for it when you heard Aradia and Terezi walking by. Terezi snapped, “I didn’t ask to be part of another of your handholding therapy sessions.”

           You sunk deeper into the bushes and cloaked yourself in void. This sounded like a bad time for Terezi to sniff you out. “I thought it might help,” Aradia replied.

           “I don’t need help. I know all that stuff about guilt and responsibility. I just need to be sad for a while. Remember sad? You used to brood all the time in our session when you weren’t breaking things as destruction therapy.” Shit, this was definitely something you shouldn’t be overhearing.

           “I’m sorry.” Aradia’s tone stayed level. “Other versions of you were happy to hear what I had to say.”

           “I bet they were.” Terezi groaned, and you could imagine her pressing her fingers to her forehead. “I know you want to be nice. After the last few sweeps it’s sweet someone does. I was in a bad place, and I would have appreciated this then, but now I need a chance to get over it on my own. We’re not the dreamers you spent so much time with. The same solutions won’t work with us. I appreciate it, but it’s frustrating when you’re treating me like a machine that you can punch the right combination of platitudes into and a happy ending will pop out.” She’d paused, and when Aradia stayed silent, said, “That sounded mean, didn’t it? I’m not very good at being nice. I’m sure you picked that up.”

           “You’ve given me things to think about,” Aradia said. She didn’t sound angry. She never has.

           “Yeah, and I’ll think about what you’ve said too, but mostly I need time. The kind even you heroes can’t give me.”

           “If I can ever help –”

           Terezi nodded. “I know where to find you. Well, sometimes.”

           After she went inside, Aradia stayed in the backyard long enough for your back to ache. Then she spread her wings and took off. You didn’t see her again for weeks.

 Is that what this is about? Is that why she keeps leaving? Because she doesn’t know how to act, and she’s afraid of messing up? You think back to the few times you’d made it clear she’d hit a wrong note, the way she’d tensed up and got uncertain. Can you forget what it’s like to live in realtime, without cheatcodes at the ready and the ability to reverse and try again? It’s kind of like when John had taken the training wheels off your bike, and you’d crashed more trying to be extra careful. What you have to do is go faster to keep your balance.

"I'm not good at any of this either,” you say. “I spent the first few weeks of our victory lap getting the shakes from booze withdrawal again. I get nightmares most nights - not deep meaningful coherent shit, I don’t even remember most of it, but I wake up freaked out. My kids are here and they're people who are messed up too and I want to help them but god, I'm not a therapist, I can't even help myself. And who the FUCK knows how a checkbook works." You flick the rim of the glass and it chimes. "It's been months and I still kinda want a drink."

"I've never met another you," she says. "I don't know what to say."

"None of us have done this before. We're all... fucking up for the first time. Out there you were like... replaying the same levels of a game over and over because you knew all the tricks, but sometime you have to move on and click a dialog option without knowing what it'll do. Sure, sometimes you'll make a mortal enemy or fail a quest, but sometimes you won't." You scuff your foot over the damp patch in the dirt that's all that's left of your libation. "We can't keep thinking about dead people all the time. And tracking down the game… it’s important, but this here matters too.” This is turning out cheesier than the party platter you ordered for tonight’s party, but it’s too late to back down now. “You… matter to me. Maybe I don’t know you that well, or know what makes you happy in a million universes or tidbits like that, but I’d like to. I’d like you to stay. The dead are dead, and the future’s coming. No one can stop it. But the present’s here. And it’s the holidays. That’s the best time for presents.”

That gets you a little smile. “Time puns are my weakness.”

“I’ve got an endless supply of dumb jokes, I promise.” You reach out and put a hand on her shoulder. Shit, she’s warm. “We have forever, but we’re only gonna be sixteen once. Do you want to spend all of it in outer space missing dead people?”

" I'm done with dying," she says.

"Wanna give living a try?"

Both of you are hit with a bright flash of light that leaves you jerking away and blinking stars out of your vision.

"Hope that turns out," Davesprite says. "I alchemized a fuckin nova flash. I call it the retinablaster 5000 and it's a leading cause in early onset vision loss."

"Don't make me sorry I birthed you," you say, rubbing your eyes. You hadn’t even heard the sliding door open. As a professional sneak, you’re falling down on the job. Rogues shouldn’t get taken by surprise.

"You didn't. John birthed us all out of slime and I bet he regrets it every single day of his life. Jake won the arm wrestling contest and Terezi says using Hope powers isn’t cheating because of course she favors being underhanded, so he’s putting in your future-pirated movie. We’re saving you seats, unless you guys want to stay out here freezing your asses off."

“We were having a moment,” you say, with as much haughtiness as you can muster.

“Oh, one of those. Well, we’re not holding off on pressing play, so finish it up.” He slides the glass door closed, and the noise from inside dies down. The lights from the kitchen still spill out onto the dead grass, painting it gold. It’s the kind of little detail Aradia likes. She looks at it quietly.

“You can’t miss Pacific Rim,” you say. “It’s a must-see.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, it’s about friendship and science and cancelling the apocalypse, which are all part of the reason for the season. Plus there’s robots with sickass swords, and what else do you need from a feature film?”

“Someone to watch it with.”

“That helps,” you agree, and hold out your hand. “Come in and stay a while?”

She grabs it, and her warmth chases the winter chill away. "I think I will."