#i think i should mention that the novel has an episodic structure because most of the chapters have a self-contained story

[shytulipghost]

What is Ms. Orange about?

After moving to a safer city, a woman finds out that she and everything else around her is fictional. Wishing for a peaceful life and wanting to be free from a superior being's control, Orange will try to stop the author from developing a story for the book, since a plot would mean that her whole life is already decided for her and no action she takes will ever be her own. With the help of a group of teenagers, she will try to achieve her goal by using her knowledge to subvert clichés. At the same time, the author will insert any conflict into the story with the aim that Orange eventually gives up and fully submits to the role that has been planned for her.

It's a fantasy novel with science fiction and metafiction elements, and it is mostly filled with comedy. The main themes are reality vs. fiction, obedience vs. rebellion and adolescence.

[cospinol]

spring 2024 isekai log☆ we very, very narrowly missed a 1-2 isekai finish in my overall seasonal ranking this time around (thanks to tadaima okaeri stealing second place by finally deciding to lean into the sleazy side of its setting a little at the eleventh hour) so i think the takeaway of this season might be that i have bad taste in anime. anyways, highs and lows!

can you believe it, a season where the isekai log hosts the season's best show by a mile???!!! kantei skill is really, actually almost perfect in every way - neatly plotted, thoughtful in its theming, and absolutely bursting at the seams with delicious little character dramas. every single member of the main cast is good enough to carry an entire series on their own (as is appropriate to a plot about acquiring really good personnel), and the mock-battle arc that the season ends with once the whole cast's been brought together is not only a delight in its own right but a confirmation that this series both intends to commit to and is very clever at coming up with military strategy plots - basically all of its priorities are exactly what i want them to be ,and it executes them almost perfectly all the time. i haven't mentioned the isekai aspect at all yet because it's a classic case of 'we put tensei in the title to increase the viewcount of this standard fantasy series' and it almost never comes up in the series at all, except one random reference ars makes to hattori hanzo late in the series that came so out of left field that it made me laugh out loud. i can't overstate what a selling point ars is a protagonist, too, the rare case where his being a little plain and clumsy in some respects and highly competent in select others functions as *incredible* gap moe, he is so cute!!! nothing but respect for MY future emperor... this is a preliminary 8/10 but if next season continues to deliver while raising the stakes i'll increase the whole package to a 9

dainana ouji is structurally and tonally a lot more conventional - it's a goofy comedy about joining the adventurers' guild and killing demons and so on, it's just also insanely good on a technical level, understated but incredibly stylish with an excellent sense of comedic timing; its pacing is breezy and its cast is endearing, and the tournament arc in the manga (which it convinced me to read ahead in because i was enjoying it so much) promises even more. this series is a lesson in simple excellence, that's all!

after that of course there's nowhere to go but down, so we're immediately dropping down to the 'basically average on a normal isekai scale' sector with the new gate, which is really... generally pretty Fine for a normal isekai. it's hard to praise much about it when it has such stiff competition but while its writing is always thin and basic it's got close enough to an idea of what a story should look like to spare it from a lower score, and it never made me angry, so (<- a sad glance back at my usual standards for the genre). the only thing of any note at all about this show, unfortunately, is that it's incredibly ugly on a 'something went very wrong very early in production' level such that all of the characters look wildly off-model at all times; please look at what the protagonist's design already looks like on the poster and then imagine how the show's faring by episode eight

madome (not an isekai, but it's a basic fantasy LN with maou in the title, so) earns about an equivalent middling-four that i did also lightly consider bumping up just a little because its approximate competence in most respects eventually gets it to a pretty cute and decently well-earned no-harm-no-foul slice of life status quo by the very last episode, but ultimately for all this show's extensive parade of gimmicks and light-novel flights-of-fancy it never came up with anything that i cared enough about to give it an extra affection point. also, critically, i think the single most important aspect of the show (the romance between the two leads) is just nothing to write home about; it's not actively irritating but their respective neuroses don't interact in a particularly interesting or cute way - and i know they could, because this show is extremely similar to last fall's ikenaikyo (which has the exact same 'lol it sounds sleazy conceptually but it's actually fluff' premise (as well as just about the exact same protagonists), but which i didn't review at the time because it didn't put the demon lord part in the title, natch) and fares very poorly in comparison -- and as much as i liked that romance, i only gave that show a five, so. them's the breaks!

one level down, from 'nothing special here' to 'no, i mean there's literally nothing here', is dekisoko, where... there is nothing. the gimmick is kind of that it's not really an isekai because he was reincarnated in the same world, i guess, but it can't actually commit to it enough to give us any indication of when/where his first life took place relative to the current setting, which might give you some indication as to the care and consideration put into this series's writing. of course the premise is just a basic veneer and a justification for mc-kun's op abilities and what it's actually dedicated to is absolutely fucking nothing; it listlessly goes through some basic isekai motions (dad possessed by a demon! evil but not evil holy knights! elf forest! and other greatest hits), looks extremely bad the whole time, and then stops. the only character of note is the goddess (??) from the protagonist's previous life who also was reincarnated along with him(??), who has Two character traits (kinda goofy and speaks in the third person), which is twice as much as the rest of the harem, and a few cute interactions with the mc over their shared history, but then of course she's not even the main girl/actual fiancee, even though she's the redhead with twintails! the state of the genre, honestly...

and finally re:monster. this fucking show...... okay, so this show is pretty clear about what it is from the get-go; it's a basic tensura-like where the protagonist makes the most of being reborn as a low-level monster by using his random unrelated hax. the first few episodes of the show cover his early levelling-up as a small child whose peers are barely sentient, and instead of choosing to have very little dialogue it features a constant voice-over where the mc describes the events that happened to him, in third-person past tense, clearly almost verbatim from the light novel. it was around the fourth episode, when the protagonist was fully grown and now clearly having conversations with the other characters that we'd occasionally hear a line or two of between stretches of the same narration that had been going since the beginning in exactly the same overbearing quantity, that it hit me...... that this was going to be the entire thing. yeah, technically this is a television show; it's got pictures, and occasionally it trusts that you can understand that the protagonist is fighting a monster right now without having it explained to you, but for the most part what the experience of watching this series is actually equivalent to is reading a series of detailed episode summaries on a dedicated fan wiki, or possibly listening to someone read you a light novel!!! i swear could count on one hand the number of scenes where two characters exchange more than five lines of dialogue before the narration swoops back in to explain 'that scene happened to me' and shuffle us on to the next set-piece; we are never in ogurou's head in real-time; nothing happens in this show, it's all already happened. then we did this, then we did that. it never stops!!!!! i did a little poking around to see if any other reviewers were as bothered by this as i was but it seems that i'm the only person in the world who this format drove out of their fucking mind - every time the 'next day' sound effect plays it's a drop of water on my forehead, slowly bringing me towards the brink. this fucking show... of course the plot's also atrocious even for a tensura-like and the tone (insofar as it's possible to set a tone in a wikipedia plot summary) is incredibly broken; in particular it's flippant about (and full of) sexual violence on a level that's shocking even for the genre and in a particular way that's downright nasty, given the fluff piece(????!!) that it generally seems to want to be when it gets down to character interactions; there's also all sorts of miscellaneous stupid crap like the names of the female characters not being revealed until after they've given birth to the protagonist's babies(??????????!!!!!!). i did ultimately just keep watching in the end to see if it would ever actually become a real show. it did not

and that's isekai for you. oh, i dropped tsukimichi 2 in the end; i'm only about eight episodes away from the finale but all of those episodes are the same showpiece-arc that i don't like the premise of lol. the moral of the season is that 'let's make a village for monsters' premise is the real evil and all the other subgenres should gang up on it and kill it

[claudiajcregg]

S5 Pregnancy AU - I’d love to hear about!

Welp, this is embarrassing – mostly because this has been sitting in my inbox for almost two weeks, and I kept saying “I need to write something up!” and then… I didn't. (Or rather, I did, then I forgot to post it.) Sorry for the wait, Lil! Thank you for asking <3 (I'll divide this up because I keep writing about the process and how it came to be, instead of any actual, interesting facts.)

I have talked about this one in the past though I don't have a tag for it. The gist is what it says… (Early) S5 but CJ is pregnant. I had this idea over a year ago when I hit mid/late S4 in my rewatch. I thought it'd be interesting to explore some of her disappointment at that time if you added an unexpected pregnancy to it, even if I had the idea before even getting there, lol. Think, the ending-ish of Han, or parts of Disaster Relief. (Both of which do feature! I surprisingly focus a lot on Disaster Relief.)

The thing with S5 is that the timeline is so weird, and I feel I've also created one that isn't entirely realistic but I think it works within the story. (IIRC, the season starts in “May” but also July, then the Shutdown is in November, lmao. A few of the episodes are sneaky two-parters that flow into each other… See 5-6, 7-8.) I've finally gotten out of the no-man's-land I wrote myself into and the next chapter or two, knowing myself, will deal with 7-8! There are a couple of scenes that should be fun to write! (There are so many details I want to mention that are technically spoilers for early twists…)

Every time I had the urge to write it, I'd edit whatever outline I was working in, and though I kept some details… my muse decided to make a big change early on that completely changed the fic's direction. That, and my inability to write anything succinctly. No reason why this story will cross the 100k barrier in a couple of chapters, tops. (It's sitting at 85k across 12 chapters. I think it'll be less than 20 chapters total. Hopefully.)

This might be too long to share snippets, but I've shared some either on the server or here, a couple of months ago.

For more irrelevant details on the “process”…

As I hinted at, I wrote an outline or two around this time last year, because I couldn't stop thinking about it. When I say outlines, it's a general path for the story to follow – ideas, suggestions of dialogue and/or scenes I write to myself; all focused around some sort of chapter structure. I find it much easier to write if I write down where a chapter might go, even if it's just a few lines saying “This happens → then this → finally this;” otherwise, it takes me months. Some would say that I should post it and get encouragement that way but… I hate being dependent on something I can control even less than my muse? That's not for me, thank you. Mad respect for those who work like that.

It was meant to be short – 1-2 “long” chapters per trimester, more if needed, but then interludes in between trimesters. It's not that. Most chapters currently cover 1-2 weeks, but there is not really a pattern. I was afraid of having a fic that would take over my life like the WOWO did three years ago… And it has, but I've also taken breaks and not felt too guilty about them. I definitely don't want this one to sit in my drive and have me wondering what to do with it.

(The novel, aka WOWO, aka IM AU (2021): 150k written in a little over five months, even with extended breaks over the summer. Still hits, even with all its crazy decisions, maybe because of them, but it's also been too long, and it will always remind me of someone who kinda hurt me. Attempts to replace those memories by sharing the story with others, trying to gather whether it's worth posting, have failed, lmao. One day! Maybe!)

But yeah. Uuuuuhhhh. As I've said… Twelve chapters in ten months, 85k words… It's still not done. In fact, I've repeatedly said I am unsure of how to end it (beyond the obvious), but I'd estimate it to be under 20 chapters. I'm not posting it anywhere yet because I want to be able to edit it as a whole and try to make it more consistent; to add little details as I come up with them. There's also the fact that I am not skilled enough to write a compelling story that mixes politics and emotion into something remotely engaging. As a result, the story's politics are very surface-level, and probably repetitive at points, but it's also true I've always been more interested and focused on the emotional journey and the relationship(s) at its center. (Which should surprise exactly no one who's ever read one of my stories.)

But, as critical as I might sound of myself here, I am having fun writing this and I'm committed to seeing it through. I just keep having ideas for stories down the line, putting actual show events through a 'but she also has a kid' perspective.

[thisweekinfandomhistory]

hey v and emily! thank you for doing this podcast! i really enjoy getting to listen and learn with you. i just finished episode 23 where you mentioned libba bray et al being problematic and my curiosity is piqued. i read all of libba bray's books as they were coming out, so for some of them it's been quite a while. were you referring to book content or irl event(s) or both? i would love to know more if you have the time

V here -- I LOVE Libba's The Diviners series, but it also has a lot of things that could have been handled better if she had put in the research. For example, it's yet another example of the Bury Your Gays trope/the Evil Lesbian trope, and she put significantly less research and work into writing 1920s LES Russian-Jewish culture than she did any other non-WASP culture in the series. Given that it's a series ostensibly ABOUT eugenics in America as a necessary evil of the "American Dream," the fact that she kind of lumped Sam's VERY NOT-WHITE IN THE 1920s experience into being One Of The White Characters drives me nuts. (Also she gets her Yiddish wrong.)

I also don't personally love the AGATB series, because it's just not my flavor of genre fiction, but this blog does a pretty good breakdown of why it doesn't hold up to 2023 standards of responsible representation/inclusion, especially wrt the "heroic" main character being a British colonist in India.

Bray spends two whole paragraphs describing the Indian marketplace. It’s not just for scene setting; she’s using her setting for novelty. The problem is that people are never novel to themselves, nor is their own culture novel to them. So using another culture for novelty means twisting the depiction for the purposes of entertaining outsiders. The result is exoticism.

Are these unforgivable evils? No. And honestly, compared to how A LOT of YA books older than, like, 2017, hold up to 2023 standards, I also personally fully acknowledge that my complaints about The Diviners are more like quibbles than anything with actual weight. It's not like she's Laura Ingalls W*lder. I also do think that there is almost no way to write historical fiction that is both accurate and critical of the structures that upheld the kyriarchy of the past in a way that is still suited to a STORY that is interesting and readable.

But I also think that, particularly with regard to AGATB, Libba was writing outside of her lane -- like... I'm not sure that any white westerner should necessarily be the person trying to tackle a fantasy series in British-occupied India, because our education on that time and place is steeped in Orientalism and even the most woke among us aren't authentic voices of those who suffered massively under that occupation. So IDK. AGATB came out long before We Need Diverse Voices, and you can tell.

With The Diviners, I mostly get frustrated because she clearly put A LOT of attention and care into writing Memphis' Black experience and Ling's Chinese-American experience, but she didn't afford the same research or care to Sam's Jewish experience because she didn't even do enough research to know that his experience WAS racialized (and he would have suffered xenophobia to boot, being a Russian immigrant).

tl;dr, she's not #cancelled -- hell, I write drabbles for The Diviners whenever I get the opportunity! -- but there are some glaring instances of ignorance and privilege in her writing that are a bummer.

[earthstellar]

The Cybertronian Class System in Transformers Prime

We know very well about the class system in IDW Transformers and how that contributed to the societal tensions that led to the rise of the Decepticon movement, but what about the Aligned Continuity? 

Novel: Exodus 

We know there is a dual caste and guild system in place. 

The caste system referenced in Exodus is directly stated to be determined through a process in which a new spark is encouraged to take its most natural alt-mode form as soon as it is able. The alt-mode is then used to rank them in society. 

Guilds are less well defined, but appear to be structured around further classification of bots by their relative position within their caste. 

The scientific/academic guilds are stated to be of a very high rank, whereas labourers and manual workers are towards the lowest rank. 

There isn’t much more detail than that, so that is almost all of the information we have to work off of in terms of the TFP Cybertronian social structure.

However, it is worth noting that Functionism in the IDW Transformers comics was developed prior to TFP’s writing, and TFP borrowed the concept of alt-mode determination from the comics. So we can assume that many elements of Functionism are shared one to one between these continuities, although the Functionist Council does not exist in the Aligned Continuity. 

Interestingly, Megatron and the beginning of his social revolutionary efforts are based around the same similar initial core beliefs in both IDW and TFP:

I talk more about how class differences between Orion Pax and Megatronus are largely what caused the war in TFP in this post. 

TFP: Deus Ex Machina 

The episode opens with Miko in trouble at school, when she is picked up by Bulkhead after detention is over. He takes her back to base, and they have a discussion about Miko’s future.

Here’s the relevant dialogue: 

Bulkhead: “Look, Miko. Before I became a warrior, I was a labourer. Construction. I can build stuff, I can break stuff. And that’s it!”

Miko: “I love breaking stuff! I wanna be just like you, Bulk.”

Bulkhead: “Ugh... Why would you wanna be like me, when you could be a... A medic, like Ratchet!”

Two things here stick out to me, the first being that Bulkhead thinks very little of himself, and has class related trauma that likely resulted in his generally low self-esteem. He always claims he isn’t smart, isn’t clever, and so on. But building and construction takes significant skill and knowledge on a material and conceptual level. 

The second thing is that he immediately jumps to using Ratchet as an example of what Miko should aspire to be. Ratchet, of course, is a medic-- Remember the guild system in TFP, where scientific class bots were deemed amongst the highest in social capital and relative value. 

The Wreckers and the Class System

I get the feeling this is why Wheeljack doesn’t like Ratchet very much (at least at first), and why Wheeljack resists Ultra Magnus outright. They are both higher class/upper guild bots who would have been a part of the system that likely kept Wheeljack down. 

We don’t know what Wheeljack’s background is in TFP, other than the fact that he’s a Wrecker, but I get the feeling that the reason why he’s not first and foremost a scientist/engineer in this continuity is because he was likely prevented from joining the scientific guild because he was ranked into a lower class due to his natural alt-mode. 

There’s nothing that supports that in canon, but it makes a lot of sense. 

We also know that Bulkhead and Breakdown know each other, and we don’t have all the details there, but it seems likely their relationship to each other may pre-date the factional divide and they may have been from the same class/caste or guild. 

TFP: One Shall Fall 

The episode opens with the kids erasing photos of Bumblebee from the internet; Infamously, this leads to Jack asking Optimus if he wants to see the cat gif that made Ratchet laugh, to which Optimus replies with a flat no. 

This leads Ratchet to mention that Optimus wasn’t always like this, and he was very different before becoming a Prime, leading to the following dialogue: 

Raf: “Optimus wasn’t always a Prime?”

Ratchet: “On Cybertron, one isn’t born into greatness; Rather, one must earn it.”

I think it’s interesting that as he says this, he takes the posture above: Looking up, even though the kids are all far below his line of sight and off to the opposite side of his gaze here. Like he’s repeating it from memory. And that’s possibly exactly what this is; He’s repeating what he was always told. 

Of course, that statement contradicts nearly everything we know to be factual about Cybertronian culture, but it makes sense from Ratchet’s point of view.

We know Ratchet is old, walked across the Cybertronian continent to reach Iacon to study and train as a medic under Remedy, who was the CMO in Iacon at that time. 

Ratchet, while his spark originated in an undeveloped village, had to travel and work hard to become a medic. 

What he doesn’t seem to grasp, is that he’s quite possibly old enough to pre-date the caste and guild system on Cybertron. 

While we don’t have any definite dates, we do have eras for Cybertronian civilisation which I explore further in this post, and it is entirely possible Ratchet simply became a medic before he would have been defined by his alt-mode. Or perhaps his alt-mode was always some kind of Cybertronian ambulance, and it didn’t make any difference in his case because he wanted to become a medic anyway. 

It’s easy to see why his attitude might grate on bots like Wheeljack or Bulkhead; He’s either very old or very lucky or both, and while from his own POV he did have to earn his place to study in Iacon by way of having to get there first and prove his potential, that is a very far cry from experiencing systemic oppression. 

In Pre-War Cybertron, Ratchet had social privilege above every other Autobot we see in TFP.

I think in light of that, it’s very interesting that he yearns for Cybertron so severely. We know Ratchet cares about others and would not have supported the Functionist society if only because he feels all bots should have equal access to healthcare and a right to be well. 

But we also know he wants Cybertron restored, so much so that the destruction of the Omega Lock nearly causes him to collapse. (I might talk about that scene in a future post, too.) 

What we don’t know, is what Ratchet’s vision for an idealised, restored Post-War Cybertron actually is. 

Do I think Ratchet is a Functionist? No. He cares about his people, and believes in the Autobot key tenant that all bots are autonomous and should have the right to individual choice. (Something Megatron also believes, or believed in the beginning-- He is the one who first put the thought into Orion Pax’s mind.) 

But do I think that Ratchet has been heavily indoctrinated by Functionist beliefs due to his long-standing high ranking position in an intensely classist society? Yes. And I think he’s repeating something that used to be said in his pre-war social circle in the scene above, because surely, he knows better. 

[tobeornottotc]

hey since you've also read the novel and don't mind talking about it so you think we should be worried for Chay tomorrow or nah? I simply can't figure out the kimchay plot but I desperately dont want kidnapping to be how Chay finds out about everything😂

Hi!!

Real answer? 65% um like for me I need this plot to happen because it’s just one of the biggest catalysts for VegasPete it reveals a lot and it does connect to the chess game that is happening currently it truly does a lot to Vegas’s plans and it will also be a great way to amplify the story of KimChay and also balance the dynamic between them giving the power more to Chay hopefully when he finds out. However, I’m still unsure hence the whole 35% still being that we won’t get it in episode nine unless it’s the end of the episode because I see lots of changes and I feel like they have a different plan for Tawan and also we don’t have a lot of episodes left so for VegasPete to have their storyline with enough content they have to kinda rush through Tawans plans and his arc and his destruction but they also have to show this story cause I just think it’s a massive part of the story in general in terms of the feud between minor family and major and I also feel like episode 7 is really good because it shows all the minor family plans but hides in plain sight like Don is set up for everything when it’s clear it’s Vegas who was working with him and they’ve mentioned how Tawan gave information to the Italians so Don, so it’s connected they’re still following the mole storyline and the Tawan storyline and the mutiny storyline happening behind the scenes that’s leading to the final fight so again I still see them as keeping a lot of the storyline the same just rushed, and heavily edited.

The thing is as well the other change they’ve done is about KimChay it’s purposefully done this way to make not know of Porsches career and we know it goes against his dreams for him and Porsche’s since he mentioned it in episode 1, and he also was a victim of the past debt collecting issues so he won’t be happy with the news that his brother is in danger everyday and Kim is part of that

Second it punishes Kim, for his actions because it reveals his emotions too late when he realises Chay is in danger and it also endangers Porchay making him realise even more that using him and playing him the way he was doing was not right and someone like Porchay doesn’t deserve something like that cause he’s purely innocent so it’s a power switch hopefully in which Kim comes to realise how wrong he’s been and Chay start to mature and make everyone realise how stupid they’ve made him feel. So to be honest I do want the kidnapping to be the most angsty potential for Chay to find out about everything and for everyone to apologise to him.

But they honestly may just make Tawans story just end with him manipulating Porsche by replacing Marsh arc in the book (which I think I don’t want like Porsche seeing someone with Kinn and misunderstanding) and then Kinn chases after Porsche we get pool scene but Tawan spills out Vegas is the one who sent him bla bla then VegasPete begins but for plot wise I dunno I’ll feel meh about that I think adding Chay to the mafia arc properly and having him realise the danger really ties everything together or ties to Porches guilt and sacrifice of his responsibilities to be with Kinn, (as episode 6 showcased that was the one thing that Porsche had to deal with in terms of his identity arc) and it ties to Tawan and hurting Porsche because of Kinn and bringing back Kinns own traumas and trust issues to the surface also making him deal with his own obstacle before they can finally be together.and it also ties to the mutiny of the minor family and major family and Vegas Pete the kidnapping has everything connected to it in terms of story structure. And it causes a lot of development of characters to happen and gives us a darker mafia storyline

It also reveals the mole!! Like there’s so much that kidnapping thing leads to so I don’t know what they’re goanna replace it with.

So yeah. Thanks anon, I actually think when it comes to this next 6 episodes they really may be come very different to the Novel they may have a different structural arc and character arcs for certain people like I’m still unsure what they want to do with VegasPete, or who the mole is or why Tawan looks like a zombie (I think it’s because he’s goanna say no he’s released from either Vegas or Don he can finally explain the truth about him being framed to betray Kinn or something like that) but we don’t know what they plan to do with all of them.

That’s why I’m not sure about it like I don’t get how we are getting both the pool scene in episode 9 and the Tawan arc? Because Tawans arc seems too long and lot of plot and narrative and pool scene is meant to be a reuniting of the two is what I think or guessing but I’ve been wrong about some of the things so I’m probably not right. Thanks for the question though ❤️

[j-minte08]

Why do I award BalanWonderworld as a masterpiece?

Introduction

⚠️I'm using a translator, so I apologize if any parts are difficult to read.

In this article, I will write about why I award Balan Wonderworld as a masterpiece, with answers to criticisms.

When I played the demo version, I thought this game was SO BAD. But I believed Yuji Naka and bought the full version. (Before I knew it, I had bought four of them...) I'm not raving blindly about it.

At first, I was hopelessly disappointed because nothing had changed from the demo version. However, in chapters 2 and 3, I was impressed by the three-dimensionality and beauty of the stages, and in chapter 4, I realized the comfort of gaining freedom through the acquisition of costumes.

By the time I was completely finished, I was convinced that this game was a great piece of work.

This is an article that I wrote after spending nearly 100 hours on this game.

I hope you will read it.

Main part

First of all, this game is not a game with flashy action as its primary objective. (Flashy battle action is possible in some scenes.)

【Puzzle】　【RPG】　【Exploration】

It is structured around these three main components.

The game also features a "Balance AI" that senses the player's movements and makes changes to the difficulty and world. There is also a presentation of my own work, so please take a look!

Please read with the above in mind.

■ One button action is stressful.

▶︎ As mentioned earlier, this game is not intended for flashy action. At its root, it is an RPG and does not require multiple buttons. The reason it's a simple operation is because it doesn't need to be.

There is only one button, but instead the player is given the freedom to select up to three actions of their choice. The way to play Balan is to find your own strategy within these constraints.

Some people point out that you can't jump, but only a few outfits limit jumping. Most of them are attack-oriented outfits. It's up to you to decide whether you want more attack power or more movement power.

If you're still not convinced, this game just isn't to your liking.(If that's you, I recommend the Wii version of Rodea.)

NiGHTS and Sonic are also action games with simple controls, but the concept is different from Baran, as explained below.

From the very beginning, NiGHTS and Sonic are one-button games that allow for exhilarating action. The action feels good and allows for improvement through trial and error.

However, Balan begins in a state of helplessness. One of his goals is to use his wits and eventually gain the power to run freely around the three-dimensional stage.

Freedom from discomfort. This catharsis is the best part of Balan.

It is also linked to the story's theme of opening closed minds.

■ The structure of the puzzle is sketchy.

▶︎ There is an intention behind this. By making the puzzle structure more flexible, the player is given more choices.

Therefore, each player will have a completely different solution to obtaining a single statue.

Also, each time you play the game, you will find new strategies, making it a game that can be played repeatedly.

This is the reason why Yuji Naka was so confident about this game.

Personally, I think that this action with a puzzle concept has a similar point of view to card games and rock-paper-scissors.

The Mega Man series is a typical example of a game that requires you to observe the situation and your opponent's movements to find the right technique and move. In fact, there is a famous episode where it was derived from rock-paper-scissors. This is also a game where you can enjoy improving through trial and error, but I think the structure of the rules is similar to that of Balan.

■ It's a pain to stock up on costumes.

▶︎ There is no need to overstock costumes. The minimum number of costumes needed to clear the course will naturally be available. Dependence on certain costumes can make the game monotonous. Also, the BalanceAI can sense your movements and take countermeasures.

As the difficulty level increases, you will have a hard time because the costumes will not come back.

The game is made more interesting by the style of play that allows you to use all the costumes to their fullest extent and bring out the true value of each one.

If you run out, explore the stage while collecting costumes. It may lead to new discoveries.

Even if you don't have a specific costume, there are many situations you can get through by applying other costumes.

This degree of freedom is what makes Balan so interesting. The strategy is left to your imagination.

■ The stage is curved. Isn't this a useless design?

▶︎ The curvature of the map allows you to see every corner of the stage. You may be confused because there is no other game that tries to do something like this. However, this is an ideal map for exploration games.

The basics of this gimmick are used as of chapter 1. Chapter 7, which has particularly large differences in elevation, makes good use of this gimmick.

■ The difficulty level is too low.

▶︎ Basics → Application → Review (Boss battle)

This game is designed to follow the above flow thoroughly. As a result, the difficulty level in the early stages is kept low, but the endgame is quite difficult. I almost lost my mind in chapter 12.

The bosses are easy to defeat. However, it is difficult to conquer all three strategy patterns.

Also, if you keep defeating enemies quickly without taking damage, the difficulty level will increase.Stronger and faster enemies will appear in large numbers.I found the difficulty level increased at chapter 3.

In other words, the difficulty of the game depends on how good you are.

■ I want to have a HP separate from my costume.

▶︎ This system prompts the player to use a different costume in case of failure.

Depending on the situation, you can either sacrifice valuable costumes, or use inconvenient but well-stocked costumes... The game throws a variety of choices at the player. This gameplay becomes more apparent as the difficulty level increases.

If you separate the HP from the costume, this tense gameplay will be lost.

The system of choosing outfits based on what will happen next fosters the ability to think and survive on one's own. It will also help the child's ego independence.

■ I need more explanations and hints. It's designed in an unfriendly way.

▶︎ It's not a game that requires you to do anything difficult, so if you think about it, you should be able to understand it to some extent. All you have to do is immerse yourself in collecting statues by any route you can think of.

Some people criticize Balan for being old-fashioned, but they are missing the point.

Games are essentially content that teaches you to think and act for yourself. This is a posting of what games should be, and a refreshing return to the basics.

However, I don't mean to criticize modern games. The immersive feeling of being in a movie, and the friendly design of the UI that shows you where you are going so you don't get lost. I think it's a beautiful evolution for today's hectic world where it's hard to find time to be alone.

However, to be honest, it is abnormal to say that only works that follow the latest trends are evaluated, and it is difficult to say that there is creativity in such works. Evolving technology and the presence or absence of originality have completely different meanings.

I would like to say that games like Balan, which have their own rules and think for themselves, are what we need today.

■ I don't understand the story. I want subtitles.

▶︎ With both video and dubbing, the amount of information is extremely high. By not using real words, all the people in the world have the exact same experience. Very romantic, don't you think?

It's not to dismiss the unspoken parts as non-existent, but to let your imagination run wild and have fun with it.

Since ancient times, there has been an aesthetic in Asia that finds meaning in blank spaces.

If you want a more substantial story, I recommend the novel version, which probably has what you want. It is available for Kindle.

At the end

Balan Wonderworld is a game designed to grow with the player the more time they spend playing.

Despite its gorgeous visuals, the reality of the story is deep and Yuji Naka's philosophy shines through, making it a masterpiece that can be called a compilation of his work.

At first, you may find some scenes difficult or the system annoying. However, they all have a meaning and will make sense as you continue to play.

Balan is built on a very complete system.

EVERY MOMENT IS AN ADVENTURE... This tagline is true.

But the fact is that Balan is a very peaky game. But that's also true for Sonic and NiGHTS.

If you have enjoyed Yuji Naka's past works, you will surely understand the quality of Balan. I recommend that you take the time to face this game first without any preconceived notions.

Now that I've spoken highly of Balan, I'd like to offer some criticism of the official advertising.

I think the main reason for this failure was the poor choice of stages included in the demo version, which made it difficult to convey the fun of expanding the degree of freedom by acquiring costumes, the sense of freedom, and the fun of being able to create a number of unique strategies.

As for the official SNS, rather than introducing the costumes and the storyline by themselves, the official should have done a better job of showing how they are all connected to make this game interesting.

That's how it looked from my personal point of view, but I believe that the current situation is the result of continuous failures in the area of advertising.

I'm so disappointed that this masterpiece is being buried, and I hope that the officials will have the guts to turn its reputation upside down even now.

Hopefully, this game will get the recognition it deserves. I love Balan Wonderworld.

[michaels-blackhat]

thoughts on evil Forrest 😈

We are going to start out by apologizing. This is very very late. I’m sure when you sent this ask, you meant it to be in the same joking tone that I approach all of my other propaganda posts. Sadly, this is actually going to be a deep dive into a few Evil Forrest related things, including the moment I feel they changed directions, the perfect wasted build-up, and the implications of the change/how it then negatively impacted the story. As I’m sure you already know, by being on my blog at all, I don’t think the story was good to begin with, so we are going to focus on the weird hoops they made themselves jump through to make that story still work. Additionally, I am only going to mention once, right now, how much of a waste it was to not have Forrest ‘fall for his mark’ and complete one of my absolute favorite tropes. Honestly, I think “because I want it” is a completely valid reason to like Evil Forrest. But, the question was “Thoughts on Evil Forrest” and these thoughts have been developing for over a year and a half. So, I apologize in advance.

The majority of this is under a cut, with highlights in the abstract. If no one wants to read this, I understand completely. Go ahead, skip it.

Note: it pains me greatly to not actually have full sources for this essay. Just know that in my heart I am using proper APA citations, I just absolutely do not feel like digging through tweets to find sources to properly cite.

Abstract:

Previous research indicates that Roswell New Mexico has a history of repeating excuses to explain mid-season changes to plots. This essay explores how those excuses are not only loads of crap, but how they hinder the show’s ability to tell a coherent story, misuse the multiple-plot structure to enhance the themes being explored, and lead to decisions that mean the show continuously goes over budget. This also means that characters are not used to their full potential and has led to what some fans consider to be “out of character” behaviors. While these behaviors are not universally agreed on, evidence can be shown that these behaviors directly contradict emotionally important character arc/plot points in the show.

The author of this paper acknowledges that the show took some strides to mend this problem. However, once again no consensus could be found on whether Forrest was a low-level member of Deep Sky and thus just allowed to fuck off on a bus, or his job was recruitment because he did a piss poor job of making Alex not join.

The concept of Evil Forrest has been with the fandom as early as New York Comic Con (NYCC) in 2019, when it was revealed that Alex had a new “blue-haired love interest”. Speculation abounded within the fandom, with some people, including the author, going “yeah, he’s evil” while others rejoiced in the concept of Alex having a loving partner. Speculation increased as fans discussed Tyler Blackburn’s seeming disinterest in his new love interest, prompting some once again to scream “EVIL” at the top of their lungs to anyone who would listen. Very little was revealed, beyond the fact that the new character would show up somewhere around episode 3 of the second season.

Episode 2.04 aired with some commenting on how he barely interacted with Alex- prompting more evil speculation- and others excited to see the characters interact more. The character appears again in 2.06, where he invites Alex to dubious spoken word poetry (which Alex attends); 2.08, where they have a paintball date and go to The Wild Pony; 2.10, where the two are seen writing together briefly at the beginning of the episode; and 2.13, where Alex performs his song at open mic night, tells Forrest his relationship with the person in the song was long over, and they kiss. Forrest was not revealed to be evil during season 2.

Amidst the season airing, Word of God via Twitter post announced that yes, Forrest had originally been planned as a villain, though not the main villain, but it was changed as filming progressed.

The Word of God Twitter post revealed that Forrest had originally been planned as a villain, but they decided that they could not make their “blue-haired gay man” a villain. This mirrors a similar situation and excuse used the previous season, where the character of Jenna Cameron was originally planned to work with Jesse Manes against the aliens, before it was changed because they just “loved Riley [the actress] too much”. Both of these examples occurred while already filming and reflect on a larger problem with the show. Though not the topic of this essay, it is important to note that both characters are white, both in the show and by virtue of being played by white actors. The fact that they couldn’t be villains for one reason or another is not a courtesy extended to the male villains who are all the most visibly brown, and thus ‘other’, members of the cast.

This also highlights the fact that, via Twitter, it has been revealed two other times that occurrences that were reported in season 1 also occurred in season 2. During the airing of episode 1.02, it was revealed that the single best build-up of tension in the show- when Alex walks to the Airstream not saying a word to Michael after a dramatic declaration- happened because one actor was sick at the time and they had to go back and film the kisses later. At the point of airing for episode 2.08, it was revealed that one of the actors were sick and unable to film a kissing scene. Allegedly, this caused the writers to retool the entire scene and deviate from the plan to make that subplot about Coming Out. The execution of this subplot will be explored later in this essay.

The last occurrence revealed via Twitter also revealed larger issues within the show: lack of planning and poor budgeting. During the airing of season 1, Tyler Blackburn was needed for an extra episode beyond his contracted 10. A full explanation was never given, but speculation about poor planning and to fill in because Heather Hemmens had to miss one of her 10 episodes due to scheduling conflicts for another project. During the airing of season 2, yet another tweet came out saying they made a mistake and Tyler would once again be in an additional episode. No explanations beyond “a mistake” were given, though once again speculation occurred. It is the opinion of the author that this was due to changing plot points over halfway through writing, while episodes were already in production. It has been speculated by some that these changes occurred during the writing of 2.08, which was being finished/pre-production was occurring roughly around the time of NYCC 2019.

Previous Literature:

A brief look at different theories of plots and subplots

Many people have written on the subject of plotting, for novels and screen alike. The author is more familiar with film writing than tv, but a lot of the concepts carry over. Largely, the B- and C- (and D- and E-… etc) plots should reinforce the theme of the A-plot. This can be through the use of a negative example, where the antithesis of the theme is explored to reinforce the theme presented by the A plot, or through other examples of the theme, generally on a small scale.

A movie example of this would be Hidden Figures (2016), where the A-plot explores how race and gender impact the main character (Katherine Johnson) in her new job. The B-plots explore the other characters navigating the same concepts in different settings and ways- learning a new skill as to not become obsolete and breaking boundaries there (Dorothy Vaugn) and being the first black woman to complete a specific degree program and the fight it took to get there (Mary Jackson). A TV example that utilizes this concept of plot and theme is the 911 shows. Each of the rescues in a given episode will directly relate to the overall theme of the episode and the overall plot for the focus character. This example is extremely blunt. It does not use any tools to hide the connection, to the point you can often guess the outcome for that A-plot fairly quickly.

This is not the only way to explore themes within visual media. Moonlight (2016) looks at three timestamps in the life of Chiron. Each timestamp has a plot even if they feel more like individual scenes or moments rather than plots as some are more used to in films. Each time stamp deals with rejection, isolation, connection, and acceptance in different ways. So while there is no clear A-, B-, or C-Plot, each time stamp works as their own A-Plot to explore the themes in a variety of ways, particularly by starting out in a place of rejection and moving to acceptance or a place of connection to isolation.

Please note that there are many ways to write multiple plots, there are just two examples.

While there are flaws within season 1 of RNM, overall the themes stayed consistent throughout the season, mainly the theme of alienation. The theme threads through the Alien’s isolation/alienation from humanity which is particularly seen through Michael’s unwillingness to participate and Isobel’s over participation. There is Rosa’s isolation from others, how her friendship with “Isobel” ended up compounding her existing alienation from her support system due to her mental illness and coping mechanisms. We see how Max and Liz couldn’t make connections. This theme presented itself over and over in season 1. While this essay is not an exploration of the breakdown of themes in season 2, it should be noted that there were some threads that followed throughout the season. The theme of mothers/motherhood was woven throughout season 2, with some elements more effective than others. Please contact the author for additional thoughts on Helena Ortecho and revenge plots.

One of the largest problems within season 2 was the sheer number of plots jammed into the season. These plot threads often ended up hindering the effectiveness of the themes and made the coherence of the season suffer. Additionally, a lot of them were convoluted and difficult to follow.

Thesis:

Essentially, season 2 was a mess. To look at it holistically is almost an exercise in futility. Either you grow angry about the dropped plots and premises, you hand wave them off, or you fill them in for yourself. Instead, this essay proposes to look at individual elements to explain why Forrest should have stayed evil.

We first meet Forrest in 2.04 when he is introduced on the Long Family Farm, which we later learn was the location where our past alien protagonists had their final standoff. He’s introduced. He’s largely just there. The audience learns he has more of a history with Michael. In 2.06, we meet him again with his dog Buffy (note: poor Buffy has not been seen again and we miss a chunky queen). There’s mild flirting, Alex is invited to an open mic night, which he attends. For the purpose of this essay, the author’s thoughts on the poetry will not be expressed. Readers can take a guess.

It is after this point that the author speculates the Decision was made. This choice to make Forrest not evil- paired with the aforementioned ‘can’t kiss, someone’s sick’- impacted the plot. We have Alex have a scene with his father- which the author believes could have been pushed to a different episode- and then have Alex go on a date and then not kiss Forrest at the end of the night. Here, the audience sees Forrest hit Alex in the leg, allegedly not knowing he had lost his leg despite ‘looking him up’, which parallels the shot to the leg that happens to Charlie. Besides wasting this ABSOLUTELY TEXTBOOK SET UP WTF, it also takes Alex away from the main plot and then forces a new plot for him. Up to this point, Alex’s plot was discovering more about the crash and his family’s involvement. Turning Alex’s date from a setup for evil Forrest to a Coming Out story adds yet another plot thread to a packed season. It is also the author’s thought that this is where the convoluted kidnapping plot comes in. With Forrest already in 2.10 for a moment, a plot where Alex is evil has Forrest attack him for Deep Sky rather than Jesse abduct him for a piece of alien glass Alex was going to give him anyway and then for Flint to abduct Alex from Jesse. It’s messy. In a bad way. Evil Forrest would have been a cleaner set up: no taking back a piece of alien glass Alex gave to Michael in a touching moment. No double abduction. Instead, there is only Forrest, who Alex trusts, breaking that trust to take him as leverage over Michael.

Implications:

Now, Alex has two plots (Tripp & Coming Out). The Coming Out plot is largely ineffective, as they are only relevant to scenes with Forrest and have the undercurrent of there only being a certain acceptable way to be out. This could have been used for Alex to discover his comfort levels, mirroring Isobel’s self discovery, but there was not enough screen time for that. Additionally, Isobel’s coming out story was about her allowing herself the freedom to explore. Alex’s story was about the freedom to… act like this dude wanted him to. Alex’s internalized homophobia played out often in the series but it was also informed by the violence he experienced at Jesse’s hands and the literal hate crime he and his high school boyfriend experienced. With that in mind, the “kissing to piss off bigots” line comes off poorly. This is a character who experienced what a pissed off bigot could do- reluctance to kiss in public is not the same as not being out. There is more to be said on this topic, but as it is not actually the focus of the essay, it will be put on hold. To surmise: Alex’s coming out is attempted to be framed as being himself, but it is actually the conformity to someone else’s ideals. It does not work as an antithetical to Isobel’s story, as the framing indicates that the conformity/right was to be out contradicts Isobel’s theme.

Further Research:

MAKE FORREST EVIL YOU COWARDS

Author Acknowledgements:

The author of this paper acknowledges that the show took some strides to mend this problem. However, once again no consensus could be found on whether Forrest was a low-level member of Deep Sky and thus just allowed to fuck off on a bus, or his job was recruitement because he did a piss poor job of making Alex not join.

[random-french-girl]

Im genuinely curious kajsh if its ok to answer, whats the political framing of the wilds, as of now, in your opinion?

Hi Anon!

Thanks for the question, and sorry it took me so long! I’m not sure that I’ll have a very satisfying answer for you, because i find it hard to determine/interpret that kind of stuff with any certainty when the show is still ongoing, you know? Anyway, I have a few thoughts, and I’ll try to be as clear as possible, but my apologies if this is rambly and confusing.

What I find interesting is the tension between the political project of Gretchen, our main antagonist so far, and the political project of the show, and how the show will end up positioning itself in relation to Gretchen’s views, whether it will end up implicitly agreeing with Gretchen in some respect, or not, and if it disagrees, how and why.

Because the show and Gretchen already agree on some things! Leah’s lil emo monologue (love you bb) in the first episode parallels Gretchen talking to Nora in episode 10 (they use the same montage, even), meaning our protagonist and our antagonist are on the same page, at least regarding what’s it like to come of age when you are a teenage girl in a deeply sexist society. Namely, how that experience is so traumatic - with the many expectations and restrictions placed on teen girls, with the many people (often men, though not always, hello Gretchen) who take advantage of them and hurt them - that actually being stranded on a deserted island supposedly away from patriarchy (lol, let’s not get into that) is less traumatizing, and even, to some degree, freeing. The trauma/difficulty of teenage girlhood isn’t a particularly novel concept to explore, but it’s nice that a) the feminist framing of this analysis is explicitly stated, b) there’s a clear intention to NOT explore gender separately from other power structures (race, class, sexuality), and we may have different opinions on how effective/successful the show is in its portrayal of various experiences, but I think we can agree the intention is there. Diversity wins, etc.  

But obviously, Gretchen is the antagonist, so I expect our protagonists, and/or the show, to disagree with her to some extent. The most obvious, easiest, least interesting disagreement is: the end doesn’t justify the means. Gretchen’s methods are, simply put, evil. But I’m more interested in what the show is going to do about Gretchen’s thesis, the one guiding this ~experiment of hers. 

Gretchen thinks women are better suited than men to lead, to hold power. Inherently, it seems, which... sure is a theory. She thinks that patriarchy hurts boys too, but the appeal of power/privilege/conformity is ultimately too strong, and even the best of them (like her son!) can’t be trusted. If we’re to believe what the show has told us so far, that’s what Gretchen aims to prove. So she strands a group of teenage girls, another group of teenage boys - all cis, it’s worth noting, for now at least - and evaluates their performances on the island, and then on the bunker, and hopes to show that the girls do better (according to very obscure criteria, so far) and should therefore, I don’t know, rule the world or something. The experiment makes zero sense as it stands at the end of season 1, let’s be honest, but that’s the gist of what Gretchen seems to believe.

So how is the show going to challenge her beliefs? Are we ever going to talk about socialization? Intersectionality? What about gender/bio essentialism? I know the writers mentioned that Gretchen was “limited by her binary conception of gender” but they were also adamant that she’s “not transphobic”, which felt like a cop-out honestly, so, like. They haven’t earned my trust just yet. 

Bottom line is: I want to be a generous audience, so I’m curious to see how they will resolve this, and what position they’ll end up taking, and I am rooting for them to do something smart & interesting with their concept. But also this is literally a show on Amazon Prime, so you know. I’m not expecting anything utterly radical. I just hope I can enjoy it for what it is.

[centrally-unplanned]

Haruhi Suzumiya’s Limited Shelf Life

The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi, an adaptation of a light novel series of the same name, is a 2006 anime who’s ascent into stardom occurred with unmatched speed, but in my opinion its staying power as a “relevant” anime experienced an equally rapid descent. Most people would point fingers at the legendary - just unparalleled in its audacity and “fuck all y’all” vibes - Endless Eight arc of its second season. Others, such as this quite fun video essay on Endless Eight which partially inspired this essay, point to the lack of light novel source material dragging down the possibility of more content to keep up momentum. I’m not going to make a numbers or data-based argument on how the Haruhi franchise actually performed; instead, after rewatching the Haruhi anime recently I feel the show itself was built to have a limited shelf-life from the get-go, and its decline should be no surprise.

Haruhi, to briefly summarize, is the story of Kyon, a witty-but-average highschooler who gets tsundere-roped into being the assistant to the titular Haruhi Suzumiya, a bored maniac constantly trying to drum up paranormal hijinks for kicks who is, unbeknownst to herself, secretly God who’s boredom if left unchecked will destroy the universe. That might sound like a pretty zany plot premise, but it has nothing on the presentation of the show itself. The ‘first’ episode of Haruhi aired, with no context or lead in, as an obviously garbage-tier magical-girl show ‘home-made’ by the actual characters in the show, with fourth wall-breaks and editing mishaps aplenty. And while the next episode proceeded to be the proper episode 1, the whole show airs entirely out of order, with characters referring explicitly to past events that the audience has not seen. Which all leads into the final episode of the first season being chronologically...episode 6. Pieced together afterwards, the show has a complete arc from the episodes 1 to 6 that were peppered throughout the broadcast order, and episodes 7 to 14 are one-off stories that enhance the characters and showcase the (subtle) changes resulting from that original arc.

This presentation was a *huge* part of the success of the show, primarily because it contributed so much to the Drama of it all. Love it or hate you had something to talk about, and the puzzle of what was actually going on - particularly after the first episode - pushed the 2ch thread comment counts into the Haruhi-blessed heavens. It wasn’t just a gimmick though - what it did was make a good show out of, well, not-very-good source material. 

Haruhi in broadcast order presents a sort of arc mystery in that how you see Kyon & Haruhi act around each other changes as the timeline jumps around, and that answer to “why?” is slowly revealed to you (spoiler alert, it's fundamentally romance, but it is well done). It gives that finale a ton of impact, and given how well you know the characters means you are really invested in their relationship at that point. But in chronological order...well that conclusion is a bit rushed, isn’t it? 6 episodes to care about a romance, half of the run-time of which is spent on the 3 other main characters besides Kyon and Haruhi? And then those later episodes, more than half the season, are just one-offs with no narrative. Airing chronologically would be a bad way to structure the show, for sure - but that is exactly how the books go! They are decently executed but jeez are they fluffy beyond the first novel, which tells that tight 6 episode starting arc. 

The show’s first season even acknowledges this, even in its later filler, by jumping around in what they actually adapt. One of Haruhi’s best episodes is episode 12, “Live Alive”, which features the stunningly-animated “God Knows” musical performance, but also ends on an intimate moment between Haruhi & Kyon where Haruhi lets slip a bit of growth in seeing what emotional value doing things for others can hold over always chasing her own myopic desires. It’s a great way to set up her slow-burn evolution, so it works well as lead-in to the finale (which is when it broadcasts). That is why Kyoto Animation chose to adapt that scene... from the depths of Book 6!! They skipped over several novels of content to pull that story out, because they needed it - as the rest of the source material is often filler.

Even the comedic chops of the show, its other strength, often exist in the first season despite the source material, not because of it. The seams actually start to show in season 1 itself, which has a few clunker episodes in its runtime. One of the comedic underpinnings of the show is how it parodies sci-fi anime & light novel elements, making fun of how esoterically nonsensical they can get. In one of the early episodes, when one of the crew - Mikuru - reveals herself to be a time traveller sent from the future to ‘protect the timeline from Haruhi’s power’ or whatever, her explanation is just completely skipped over by our point-of-view character in Kyon, with every other word bled together in a montage sequence as the camera spins around the scene, to highlight how silly the *mechanics* of the powers of these characters are to think about. It's definitely a great gag - which makes it very odd when, in episode 7, the characters spend, and I counted, *4 minutes* explaining over static shots of the characters how the mechanics of the paranormal villain-of-the-week operated. Its has a wider point, the show isn’t incompetent, but its jarring given how earlier the show told you so stridently that these kinds of details won’t matter. But that story is from book 3, it's what the source material becomes, so they can only go so far to fix it.

All of these problems just compounded on themselves when they made additional content, as at that point they had already mined the source material for the arc-nuggets it had and only the detritus remained. Remember that hilariously-bold opening episode, of a magical-girl homemade trainwreck of a film I mentioned? The one that is so funny precisely because you have no context for it, such that your confusion just heightens the humor while you also somehow learn so much about the characters you have never met via the bold characterization? Want to watch *five episodes* about them making that film, which you have already seen and is in the end nothing but a punchline? No? Then 30% of season 2 won’t have much to offer you, since that is what they did - because that smash-cut opening gag doesn’t exist in the source material, it instead gets a whole book devoted to it. For sure other stuff happens in those episodes, it isn't terrible - but it fundamentally lacks the stroke of genius of that season 1 opening, to trust in the audience the way they did to go along for the ride.

Endless Eight obviously didn’t help the show maintain popularity, and the movie is pretty decent, but there was no escaping the fundamental problem; namely that everything after Season 1 is fundamentally niche. It appeals if you like this specific genre of show, and these specific characters. Which is fine, but that can never be the Most Popular Show around, that market size is capped. The moment Haruhi the show had to keep going beyond that first season, it had nowhere to go but down. 

[framecaught]

Transmedia Storytelling: A Perspective on the Homestuck Epilogues

First of all, thank you for reading my first post! I created this blog to document some of my research for a directed study project. I’ll be looking at Homestuck from an interdisciplinary lens but focusing especially on its formal artistic qualities and place in art history. The blog will contain various points of analysis which I develop over the course of the project. For my first piece of writing, I wanted to tackle (from a new perspective) what I view as a complicating factor in the controversy surrounding the Homestuck Epilogues.

Rather than critiquing the Epilogues’ content or making a judgement about their overall quality, I want to explore a specific criticism which has been echoed time and time again by fans. In an article for the online journal WWAC, Homestuck fan-writer Masha Zhdanova sums up this criticism:

“No matter how much members of the creative team insist that their extension to the Homestuck line of work is no more official than fanwork, if it’s hosted on Homestuck.com, promoted by Homestuck’s official social media accounts, and endorsed by the original creator, I think it’s a little more official than a fanfic with thirty hits on AO3.”

Between attacks on the Epilogues’ themes, treatment of characters, and even prose-quality, fans have frequently referenced the issue of endorsement and canonicity as summarized above. Although the Epilogues and Homestuck’s other successors (including Homestuck^2 and the Friendsims) attempt to tackle themes of canonicity within their narratives, critics of the Epilogues contend that this philosophical provocation falls flat. While the creators argue that the works should form a venue for productively questioning canonicity, fans point to issues of capital and call the works disingenuous. In Episode 52 of the Perfectly Generic Podcast Andrew Hussie explains that, to him, the Epilogues are “heavily implied to be a piece of bridge-media, which is clearly detached from the previous narrative, and conceptually ‘optional’ by its presentation, which allows it to also function as an off-ramp for those inclined to believe the first seven acts of Homestuck were perfectly sufficient.” As Zhdanova paraphrases, a critical view posits that this “optional” reading is impossible. The company ethos and production of capital inherent to the Epilogue’s release—their promotion, their monetization—renders their “fanfic” backdrop completely moot, if not insulting.

Why does appropriating the “aesthetic trappings” [1] of AO3 strike such a chord with critics, though? What’s wrong with the Epilogue creators profiting from their work? Other officially endorsed “post-canon” materials, including the Paradox Space comics, Hiveswap and Friendsim games, have not inspired such virulent opposition. The issue comes down to the association between the AO3 layout and the separation from canon. The Epilogues ask us to read them as “tales of dubious authenticity,” but critics assert that this reading makes no sense in the context of their distribution. It’s not exactly the endorsement or monetization that prevents a “dubious” reading, though. After all, Hiveswap is also endorsed and monetized, yet fans have no problem labeling it as “dubiously canon.” So what is it about the Epilogues’ presentation that seems so incongruous with their premise as “dubious” texts?

I’ve come to understand this issue through the lens of transmedia storytelling. First conceptualized by Henry Jenkins, “transmedia storytelling” involves the production of distinct stories, contained within the same universe, across different media platforms. [2] This allows consumers to pick and choose stories across their favorite media outlets, since each story is self-contained, but superfans can still consume All The Content for a greater experience. The Marvel franchise with its comics, movies, TV shows, and other ephemera, is a great example of the transmedia phenomenon.

How does Homestuck fit into this theory? In an excellent article [3] for the Convergence journal, Kevin Veale lays out a taxonomy for Homestuck’s role in new media frameworks. Rather than dispersing different stories across multiple media platforms, Homestuck combines the “aesthetic trappings” of many media forms into one massive outlet: the Homestuck website [4]. It’s almost like the inverse of transmedia storytelling. Veale describes this type of storytelling as “transmodal.” He further defines Homestuck’s storytelling as “metamedia,” meaning that it manipulates the reader’s expectations of certain media forms to change the reading experience. So, despite its multimedia aspects, Homestuck structures itself around one monolith distribution channel (the website), the importance of which directly feeds into what we know as “upd8 culture.” The Homestuck website itself, as a “frame” which encapsulates Homestuck and the other MS Paint Adventures, takes on a nostalgic quality; the familiar grey background and adblocks become inextricably linked with the production of the main, “canon” narrative.

Homestuck itself—the main narrative—is a transmodal venture. However, as of writing this post, the Homestuck franchise has taken a leap into transmedia waters, starting with the Paradox Space comics and continuing with Hiveswap, the Friendsims, and Homestuck^2. All four of these examples fit the definition of transmedia ventures: they contain distinct stories still set in the Homestuck universe and are distributed through fundamentally separate media channels from the main comic. Which is to say, crucially, none of them are hosted on the Homestuck website.

This is where I think the issue arises for the Epilogues. The Epilogues, from what I can tell, aimed to present themselves as a transmedia venture rather than a transmodal one. Firstly, they try to act as a “bridge-media,” or self-contained story. They can be read as a continuation of Homestuck, but can also be separated or ignored. Secondly, they take on a distinct format (prose). Hussie notes in PGP Ep. 52 that the Epilogues were originally only meant to be published in print, functioning as a “cursed tome.” In short, they were intended as a transmedia venture: a self contained story, distributed through a separate medium (prose) and separate media channel (print), to be embraced or discarded by consumers at their whim.

Instead, when the Epilogues were released through the main Homestuck website, readers couldn’t help but interpret them as part of Homestuck’s long transmodal history. Rather than interacting with a new distribution channel, readers returned to the same nostalgic old grey website. The AO3 formatting gag makes no real difference to readers, as Homestuck patently appropriates the aesthetics of other platforms all throughout its main narrative. This issue of distribution (print versus website), which in turn produces either a transmedia or transmodal reading, is the crux of the criticism I mentioned before. Despite the creators’ protests, readers failed to see any “question” of canonicity because the Epilogues fit perfectly into the comic’s preexisting transmodal framework, supported even further by the nostalgia of the website’s very layout. The Epilogues read as a transmodal contribution to Homestuck’s main channel rather than a post-canon, transmedia narrative (like Paradox Space or the Friendsims) as they were intended. This created a profound dissonance between the fans’ experiences and the creators’ intentions.

How things might have turned out differently if the Epilogues really had been released solely as “cursed tomes,” the world will never know. In PGP, Hussie cites the importance of making content freely accessible on the website as a reason for the online release, which is certainly a valid consideration. Even though the print format offers a much clearer conceptual standpoint as a transmedia “bridge-story” [5], issues of capital and accessibility may still have come to the forefront of discussion. As it stands, though, I think the mix-up between transmedia and transmodal distribution was a key factor in the harsh criticism the Epilogues sparked.

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[1] I love this term, “aesthetic trappings”, which Masha Zhdanova uses, so I’ve overused it to some degree in my post.

[2] Henry Jenkins, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, 2007: pg. 98. You can also find a description of transmedia storytelling on his blog.

[3] Veale, Kevin. “‘Friendship Isn’t an Emotion Fucknuts’: Manipulating Affective Materiality to Shape the Experience of Homestuck’s Story.” Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 25, no. 5–6 (December 2019): 1027–43. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354856517714954.

[4] Although the Homestuck website shifted branding from mspaintadventures.com to homestuck.com before the Epilogues’ release and has shifted its aesthetic somewhat (re: banners and ads), I treat the core “website” as the same location in my post

[5] Hussie points to numerous fascinating experiences which might have arisen from the print distribution. He describes a tome as “something which maddeningly beckons, due to whatever insanity it surely contains, but also something which causes feelings of trepidation” and references the sheer size of the book and “stark presentation of the black and white covers” as elements which produce this trepidation. The ability to physically experience (through touch) the length of the Epilogues and the impact of the book cover were lost in the online format. Although the Epilogues have been released in their intended book format now, the printed novel still won’t be a “first reading experience” for most fans. 

[inherhouseshewaitsdreaming]

NaNo Prep Week #3 - Construct a Detailed Plot or Outline

NaNo Prep is a series of blog posts covering the NaNo Prep 101 curriculum which is a good outline of the things you want to do to get ready for NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month.

We’re into Week #3 now we’re looking at plot.

Resources

I would start here with Brandon Sanderson’s Lectures, Plot Part 1, Plot Part 2, and the Plot Q&A and Viewpoint. These effectively frame the elements of plot and plotting you want to look at. Don’t skip the section on viewpoint at the end of lecture three as its incredibly useful. With this as the starting point, the remaining sections are divided into Outlining, Plot Structures and Plot Archetypes.

Outlining

11 Steps to a Complete Cozy Mystery Plot from Jane Kalmes is a rare example of showing the outlining process in progress. I found another in a series of videos by Chris Fox called How to Plot a Novel From Scratch, but Janes has more re-usable structure. That being said, Chris seems to have another playlist that might be more structured, I just didn’t have time to watch that one too.

You can see the example outline to a Brandon Sanderson novel, Skyward, here as well as two failed attempts.

You can use any of the plot outlines as a framework for outlining your plot. Outlining is typically more than just the plot - it includes character and worldbuilding and, despite the artificial separation of these three, they actually bounce off one another a lot. The Jane Kalmes and Chris Fox examples show this.

Plot Structures

There are so many of these. Sanderson covers two of them in his lectures - the Heroes Journey and the Three Act Structure and videos on these are everywhere. Some examples: 3 Act Story Structure for Authors from Alexa Donne, 15 Beat Plot Structure from ShaelinWrites

Dan Well’s 7 point plot structure is based on the Star Trek RPG Narrator’s Guide and gets its own mention because of the RPG reference.

Katytastic’s 27 point plot structure, which is probably my favourite.

Adding to the above is the ever popular Save the Cat (which is also a three act structure). The main headings for Save the Cat appear in the Jane Kalmes video or you can google for a wealth of other material on this one. I have the book Save the Cat Writes a Novel, but you can find everything in it on Youtube.

For those who want a physical outlining method, I did like E A Deverell’s Plot Structure Zine. There is a video showing it in action on this page, as well as non-video based instructions. This gives you an 8 point story structure.

Plot Archetype

This as a concept is less spoken about and probably the main resource for this is Writing Excuses Season 11 on Elemental Genre. I did find a couple of books and an experiment where an AI ingested stories from Project Gutenberg. I also found quite a range in the number of plot archetypes from 3 to 1,462… A good summary of the 7 Story Types can be found in a this Reedsy video from Shaelin, but I didn’t find it useful for helping me plot my story in the way the Writing Excuses episodes do.

Another thing I do, that I think is similar in hindsight, is look at the website TV Tropes. Go there and look up a supertrope and you will find it broken down into sub-tropes and the myriad small tropes that make up a larger trope. These give you the building blocks of Plot Archetypes, including things that are more specific like Cosmic Horror. The website gives you lists of the component parts and, most usefully, long lists of the trope in various types of media to give you examples for further research.

How I Used Them

First I had a little crisis. In quite a few of the videos above, the authors talk about letting the plot develop in their heads over time. I’ve had the idea for the plot I am currently looking at for a grand total of 3 weeks, as opposed to the months experienced authors seemed to spend. Should I go forward with the new story or should I pick up something I’ve developed for longer?

Once I got past that, I tried a lot of different outlining methods. In the end I landed with the following:

Lots of brainstorming with no real structure giving me a very short outline of the main characters and themes. I iterated on it, writing it a couple of times. I liked the main plot, but it didn’t feel substantial enough. So I added a serial killer! It did fall logically out of the work I was doing, especially the worldbuilding. When trying to lay out the purpose of a group, it became obvious someone needed to be doing something proactive to achieve their goals. The killer is trying to prevent a terrible outcome by killing the people who would make it happen.

I then ran all the major plot threads through different approaches and found the ones I liked best.

Using Dan Well’s approach, at least in terms of order, was incredibly useful. I am so glad the Star Trek RPG references made me watch those videos. It gave me a very broad overview which I didn’t feel was enough to be my end product, but it really helped shape that end product.

I then wrote a plot outline much like the Brandon Sanderson approach, but with the following modifications:

Each major/side character had a listed set of “state transitions of Beginning, Middle and End, taken from the 7 point outline I had used.

I had a mapping underneath the plot bullet points that used the 27 point story structure from Katytastic against the main plot threads. This created a nice grid showing me where different things happened in the story. I numbered the plot bullets and referenced them in this grid too.

What I didn’t have time to do (because its barely Sunday when I write this, and I do try to post on Sundays) was to explore the plot archetypes more and I will do this over the next week. I’d like to look at each major thread, decide what its archetype is and look at those archetypes to see if there is anything I should add. For example, Sanderson mentions that a buddy cop plot is essentially a romance and since my lead characters are going to have that storyline, I want to see if I can learn anything from the archetype to enrich it.

[thelatelockdownlist]

A Series on Series 02: Nalini Singh’s Psy-Changeling/Trinity Series

Hi! I’m Alex, a YouTube Newbie and this is The Late Lockdown List where I talk about the list of things I’ve got on my mind since the lockdown started. Today, on the second episode of A Series on Series, I’ll be talking about one of my favorite romance novel series ever: 

Spoilers galore! That’s it. That’s the disclaimer.

So who are the Psys and and who are the Changelings?

In this world, there are three predominant races: the Psys who have powers akin to those of Professor X and Jean Grey, the Changelings who are shifters -- both animal and human forms, and the humans -- just humans. 

There are two main changeling 'packs' in the series: the cats (leopards and panthers) - DarkRiver and the wolves - SnowDancer. As of this writing, there are 15 books under the Psy-Changeling series and 4 under its spinoff -- Trinity -- so named because they've included the other race: humans.

The series starts with Slave to Sensation

with Sasha Duncan, a Psy, who gets involved with Lucas Hunter, the alpha of the DarkRiver cats.

Sasha is a cardinal Psy. This means she’s very strong - literally off the charts strong, because their scale only goes up to 9 and cardinals are way over 10. But her abilities have not manifested. Her mother, Nikita Duncan, is a member of the ruling council. In this book, Nikita decides to enter into a sort of business partnership with the DarkRiver cats to sell real estate to changelings. Sasha becomes the point of contact. 

So that’s basically how it starts. If you want to know more about the story, please go ahead and read it. I don’t want to tell you because that would be a disservice to the author. 

However, I’m going to tell you what I love about this book and the books that follow.

I think Ms. Singh is a great world builder. There are a lot of familiar things about this world where Psys -- who are in the Marvel parlance, mutants -- and changelings -- think were animals but that’s oversimplifying it -- coexists with humans. She sets up the story so well without overexplaining it -- showing AND telling at the same time. 

I found it very easy to dive into this world inhabited by the gifted and the supernatural mostly because their problems mirror a lot of what we contend with in the real world: corrupt politicians, violent crackdown of dissenters, prejudice against those who are not like ourselves… The characters in the story deal with these problems using their gifts -- ones we don’t have, but I understand their motivations and the decisions they make -- right or wrong. 

It may sound trite but the human element in the circumstances in which the characters find themselves are very real and I couldn’t help but be drawn and just stay engaged the entire time. 

So after finishing the first book, I hunted for the next and was completely gratified that it’s a series. I get to know what happens after and that’s amazingly satisfying. I also get to find out more about the initially peripheral characters in the book. And I get to learn more about what “Silence” is and why it’s starting to break…

The next books are about the rest of the packs with a smattering of Psys and humans here and there. The pairings are usually Psy and changeling. Down the road, you get human and Psy and then human and changeling. You’ll also meet the so-called bogeyman of the Psys: the Arrows. Essentially, they’re a squad of highly trained assassins, most of them trained since childhood. Fascinating bunch.

The last book in the Psy/Changeling series is Allegiance of Honor

which sets up the spinoff Trinity series. 

In this book, we meet an almost one-year-old Naya - Lucas’ and Sasha’s half-psy/half-changeling daughter and the only one in the world - who can now shift. This is also the book where we find out just exactly how many ‘pupcubs’ Mercy and Reilly have. 

It’s not all cute stuff, though. There’s an abduction attempt, a ‘righteous’ killing and vengeance. All through it, we see the lives of the Psys, Changelings and humans evolve to try to live in this world where there’s now a real possibility of all three races co-existing in peace. 

Of course, si vis pacem, para bellum. If you want peace, prepare for war. And there’s a lot of foreshadowing.

So I’ve mentioned Trinity several times. The first book in the spinoff Trinity series is Silver Silence

where we meet Psy Silver Mercant, assistant of Kaleb Krychek who is the former Councilor now member of the new Trinity Accord council. Kaleb and Sahara Kyriakus’ story is told in the 12th book, Heart of Obsidian

We also meet another changeling pack, the StoneWater bears and its alpha, Valentin Nikolaev. 

In this book, someone is committing acts of terrorism against humans -- to start -- to undermine EmNet or Emergency Net headed by Silver. In the previous books, EmNet coordinated rescue and relief operations. 

The three other books in this series deal with more of the fallout of the creation of Trinity. A shadowy organization called the Consortium -- which is like the reverse side of Trinity -- also made up of all three races -- that seeks to undermine what Trinity wants to accomplish. It wants to sow discord among the races so they can go back to how it used to be: Psy, Changeling and humans living apart and keeping to themselves. 

I’ve talked about what I loved about this series, but I realized I left out one important thing: romance. Each book tells you the love story, either the start of one or the continuation of the ones you’d read before, of the characters. The dynamics of the relationships are different, especially among the changelings because they have a hierarchy: an alpha, his/her sentinels, lieutenants and soldiers. They’re also classified into two ‘dispositions’: dominants and submissives. The dominants are usually soldiers, but there are also maternal dominants -- ones who protect the hearth and home from within the hearth and home. In this world, submissives hardly ever hold eye contact for long against dominants, which makes for a power imbalance in a relationship where you’re ideally supposed to be equals. However, with mates -- like wolves, changelings who mate -- explained like a magical and psychic merging of the souls -- mate for life. With mates, the dominant-submissive dynamic is less structured. It wouldn’t make for a good relationship if the submissive doesn’t have ways to be in equal footing as the dominant. Here is where the human side of the changelings appear. The mating bond snaps into place only when both parties let it happen. It is up to the female (all of the major matings in this story are heterosexual) to decide to accept the mating bond. However, it is the male who becomes aware of the ‘mating dance’ first. 

I may be explaining it badly, but if you’re intrigued, go read the books. Seriously.

One other thing I love about this series that I know I’ve mentioned but feel like I should say again: this is a world you can happily get lost in. The way it’s built is so intricate; the details seem to jump out of the pages. I feel so invested in what happens to every single character that gets introduced in every book. 

Of course, I have favorites like Roman and Jules -- twin DarkRiver cubs who were introduced in the first book. 

I find myself looking for mentions of the pups or cubs because of how Ms. Singh writes them. Imagine having a toddler and puppy/kitten existing in one body.

It’s difficult to choose a favorite, but so far, mine is Allegiance of Honor. 

It has all my favorite characters and it’s a great setup to the spinoff. I was so relieved to hear about the spinoff because I thought that I would have to say goodbye to all of them. This way, I still see glimpses of my favorites while being introduced to new people and how they form connections to the characters that have yet to be explored.

That’s it for me. I hope you enjoyed listening to me ramble on and on about the Psy/Changeling/Trinity series. 

The latest book, Alpha Night

has been out since June 2020. Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you in the next episode where I discuss Nalini Singh’s other supernatural/paranormal series, Guild Hunter series.  

[andmaybegayer]

Last Monday of the Week: 2021-03-01

First Monday of the Month. My boss just quit at work which means I'm now the only formally trained engineer left who has any particular specialization in embedded systems. This week is going to be a doozy.

I also wrote a Very Long set of media updates because I’ve been consuming some stuff that makes me think a lot. Never a good sign.

Listening: I spent all of Saturday playing Minecraft after talking with some friends about it during the week on IRC. Practicing what I preach with regards to my Large Biome Supermacy policy, which does involve a lot of walking. Hence, I started catching up on The Adventure Zone: Graduation again, I'm like ten episodes behind.

https://maximumfun.org/episodes/adventure-zone/the-adventure-zone-graduation-ep-32-by-a-haircut/

I don't really enjoy Travis' DM'ing style. It's very loose and he has a tendency to let players run wild without much structure which is a tricky thing to handle. He does a lot of worldbuilding and character design but doesn't seem to plan much in the way of arcs. That pays off sometimes (returning to the school to realize they broke a promise they made a few sessions earlier and had to deal with consequences, for example) and when it does, it’s really good, but it's finnicky. I know DM's who can do that, but, well, actually I know One Single DM who can do that well and she's absurdly smart.

Reading: Still on Worm, I just got past chapter 8 or so now. It lives in my phone browser so I've mostly been reading it whenever I get some spare time, which is a good sign. If a book doesn't grab me I need to really settle down in a quiet space to avoid getting distracted, but I can read Worm while someone else is on the phone in the same room.

It is a story with a lot of very well-conveyed feelings and events. It's very easy to imagine yourself in it. Characters actually act like they care about what they're doing, I feel like writing this took a lot of care to keep everyone on model.

There's also a certain care given to the superpowers that you'd usually only see in forum posts arguing about an actual superhero story. Everyone always likes to argue about how far you can push a superpower: can you use teleporting to fly? What prevents a speedster from catching fire in the air? Where does the energy for a  pyrokinetic ability come from? Worm takes these and runs with them as a way to make absolutely any fight become a series of gambits relying on whether a power can or cannot be used to perform some high-stakes trick.

The world certainly has some underpinning contrivances to explain why no one gets killed very often but I've always considered nitpicking the base contrivances of a setting silly, because that's precisely what they are: contrived, in order to allow the rest of the story to flow from there. Like arguing about Omega’s abilities in the famous thought experi-*I am dragged off stage by the ratblr police for making a by now extremely stale joke*

Watching: I came and edited this section in like an hour before this posts because I keep on forgetting to put it in. I don’t really like watching TV and with my parents stuck at home in Pandemic Times it’s how they pass the time.

I did finish S3 of the Good Place. It’s very funny. I’m glad I’m watching it and I’m going to have to go find S4 because ZA Netflix doesn’t have it for whatever reason. It feels a little like it was written by Phillip Pullman if Phillip Pullman was a comedy TV writer.

I also really enjoyed the PBS Spacetime video about how time causes gravity. Love when an explanation of concepts is good enough that you drawn the conclusion on your own.

Playing: Visual Novel Hell plus Minecraft.

I spent approximately seven hours in Minecraft over two days. I tend to hop in and out of games for 1-2 hours at a time but there's a handful that can suck me in for an entire day. Minecraft, Warframe, Horizon Zero Dawn, Night in the Woods. Bastion, to a lesser extent. I end up avoiding them because I don't like loosing entire days, but I wasn't really planning on doing anything this weekend anyways.

Minecraft was mostly a long-ass trek to find a saddle, because as previously mentioned, I enjoy playing it with Large Biomes for the sense of scale.

I also completed Act 3 of Psycholonials and Eliza.

Psycholonials is odd. It is doing the thing that Hussie does where it dances around what's ostensibly the story to carry out the actual story. You get used to the trope after your first encounter but it still makes you wonder when the other shoe will drop, and of course, there's no reason it ever has to. The story may remain in suspended animation behind the every growing mess of narrative red tape tying the B-plot together.

Stories about Social Media have no well established norms. I think I might pick up Feed by M. T. Anderson and also perhaps Hank Green's books sometime. See what context they set that in.

Eliza is frustrating to me. It's a game for programmers, by programmers, about programmers. I'm friends with a lot of Capital P Programmers, the types who go to university and get sniped for developer positions at Seattle or Silicon Valley tech companies and who make great and terrible things and then warn you about the deep problems that underpin the slowly rolling ball of venture capital and bloated technology that is the tech industry. But at the same time, it makes me feel like I've burnt out on that conceptually before I even went in. It’s a whole other world that I’m familiar with but very distant from. In fact, that’s kinda how I feel about Psycholonials too. I’m familiar with the social media rat race but I also don’t go there. Parallels!

My cousins (who are halfway to Capital P Programmers, only so much you can do halfway around the world from silicon valley) warned me not to go into CS, because it would bore me, and that's a non-trivial part of why I'm in Engineering. They gave the same advice about Biology and Physics, without that I may have ended up in Microbiology. it’s not my domain, but because of how Engineering is going, you end up a lot closer to programmers than you think. I found out the other day that most of the software developers on my team have no formal tertiary qualifications, which is accepted in CS but of course, right out when it comes to engineering. It’s a whole other world that I kinda expected to skip around. I might go into this another time, since this post is already getting long.

Making: I haven’t done any engineering scicomm posts on here in a while so I started a few blank drafts and finally got one off the ground. With some luck I’ll have that ready this week. What’s it about? Not saying! It might change!

I’ve been doing layout for a custom keyboard, I need to call a laser cutting place and find out what their kerf requirements are so I can adjust the path accordingly. Wouldn’t do to burn a couple hundred rand on an oversized part, I’m paying for this, not my employer like the other times I’ve done laser cutting, so I’m probably not going to spring for getting one of their designers to check my design. At some point I should CAD up a chassis, but at the same time I might just buy some wood and go ham with a router once I get the plates cut.

Computers Slot: I got WeeChat set up properly on my desktop, which technically was just a matter of getting my SSH keys moved over. It’s taking me forever to move in to Cinnabar, in part because Stibnite lost her boot partition and I haven’t bothered to fix it.

So here’s a pitch for WeeChat as a good quality Terminal UI IRC Client. Many of my closest friends live there and it has a good set of tools to help me keep in touch.

WeeChat is very configurable but with perfectly sane defaults, I didn’t configure it for years. The UI is smarter and less arcane than something like irssi, and if you enable mouse support it can be downright modern. Running it remotely like this limits some features but as long as you don’t mind jumping through a few hoops to do filesharing, IRC is really great like this.

One of the big ones is the ability to do that double-pane thing, I can keep an eye on two channels at once (really as many as I can cram on my screen, but usually two) which is great when you want to browse channels while talking in your home channel.

It also has a good array of remote access tools, from what I’m running up there, just weechat running on my server inside tmux connected over mosh for low-latency SSH, to weechat-relay, a relay protocol built in to weechat. At the moment relay only supports android phones and the glowingbear web client, but I’ve never really looked around since both of those cover all my needs. Easily one of the best ways to get IRC on a modern mobile device, barring maybe IRCCloud.

[ariainstars]

Ben Solo - A Sad Star Wars Story

Warning: longer post. (And possibly, a few unpopular opinions.)

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

For a start: I’m not here to say I like how the sequels ended with Episode IX, in particular the way they handled their protagonist.

It sucked, to say the least.

I am writing this because looking back now, I can hardly imagine how the authors could have wrapped up the sequel trilogy with the happy ending we expected.

Let’s start with that word: happy. Honestly, did anyone want Ben to be “happy” with what Rey has become? I did expect her to fall down the rabbit hole. We repeatedly have witnessed how aggressive and judgmental she is; and by all logic, she had to meet her own Dark Side in order to realize that she has no right to judge the man she first knew as Kylo Ren. The moment I heard Palpatine’s evil laugh in the first trailer, I figured he had come to pursue Rey, not him. Unfortunately, her moment of shock was short and she hardly learned from it; if anything, since Luke sent her right back into the battle. This scene may have been what fanbros expected from Luke, but honestly, it was ridiculous. It did not fit to The Last Jedi’s Luke and it did not do Rey any favor.

And: had Ben emerged victoriously, found his happy ending, how would the title “The Rise of Skywalker” be justified? He is a Skywalker by blood, but in fact he is a Solo.

  Wrapping Up the Saga

The sequels were received with mixed feelings from the start. Fans of old were angry at The Force Awakens since it seemed to say that history was repeating itself; that the heroes or the original trilogy had brought down the Empire but not managed to preserve peace. We saw them separated from one another as they once had been, disillusioned and worn out. Not the mention the wasp’s nest that was raised by The Last Jedi! If the Prequel Trilogy dismantled the illusion that the Jedi were perfect, the Sequel Trilogy definitively does the same with the Skywalker family. Both messages are clear for everyone to see, provided one is ready and willing to see them.

If Star Wars is a tale with a moral - and given its approach and the fact that it was handed over by Lucas to Disney of all studios it is - then the authors are trying since the 80ies to teach our minds to a compassionate approach on both villains and heroes. One of the main reasons why many fans dislike the prequels is that they expected to see the Jedi and Anakin / Vader being cool; they felt let down by witnessing the Jedi’s narrow-mindedness and Anakin’s strong emotionality. The affronted reactions to The Last Jedi were on the same line of thought. The prequels showed that the Jedi were not the good guys, and for the observant viewer this is already clear enough in the original trilogy. But it was only with The Last Jedi that the elephant in the room was finally approached.

Through Rey, The Rise of Skywalker makes clear that wanting to be a Jedi does not entail actual heroism but the conviction of being a hero. And Rey’s dyad in the Force, the tragic figure of Ben Solo, warns about the dangers coming from a child and teenager no one believed in as a person because everybody only saw his powerful potential.

The Jedi’s Failure

Neither Luke nor Anakin nor Rey needed the Jedi in order to become heroes. They already were good-hearted, brave and idealistic when we first met them. The Jedi ways did not make any of them happy; they learned to use their powers and employed them for short-lived “victories”, but they never found lasting peace.

Not a few fans have wondered how Luke Skywalker, who believed in his father despite all, could give up on his nephew that fatal night (even if it was only a moment of panic). Simply put: as strong and mature as he is by the time of Return of the Jedi, Luke suffers from a father trauma, and he desperately wishes for Vader to become Anakin again, his father, who used to be a hero. When he asks Vader to leave and come with him, it is not out of pure idealism but also a personal request. But Luke did not need his nephew. The moment he had at the temple was a personal issue, it had little to do with Ben’s strength in the Force or his status as Luke’s model student: Luke was afraid that Ben would be the end of everything he loved. Luke, Leia and Han were thrown together by a trauma bonding; Ben had no place with them because he hadn’t been through the same.

The actual tragedy in Ben Solo’s life was the bitter realization, over and over, that he was not needed by anyone (except for being abused, e.g. by Snoke). Ben desired Rey even before he had met her because she was powerful but unexperienced, and he hoped to find sense and belonging by protecting and instructing her. No wonder Rey’s rejection in the Throne Room drove him out of his mind with rage: it was another confirmation of what he had experienced all his life - that people can do without him. So he decided, bitterly and sullenly, that he could do without others as well. But over and over, he had to realize that he could not escape his want for connection. He kept hunting for Rey; and he was very conflicted both when it came to his father and his uncle, letting on that he did have an emotional connection with both of them although he didn’t want to accept it.

Ben’s tragedy was that he did not want to be special at all, and that contrarily to his uncle and grandfather he was aware of it. Ben simply wanted to belong somewhere.

It is an intrinsic part of the saga that a hero is never a hero “because he is superior to others for… reasons”: Star Wars does not bow to that cliché. Some people are born with the capacity to tap into the Force, but not all of the saga’s heroes have it. The morally good qualities a person has, the right decisions they make are not inborn but passed on, learned, communicated. In A New Hope Luke was saved by Han, to whom he had offered companionship and set an example by trying to save Leia. In Return of the Jedi Vader was won over by his son’s loyalty and sacrifice. For an average action film hero, this kind of attitude or outcome of his adventures would be unacceptable: a hero is expected to be triumphant, not saved by someone else. And I know enough fans who don’t understand Luke and prefer Han or Vader to him, who are both cooler and more predictable.

In film, where characters need to be introduced to the audience within the scope of minutes, narratives are applied in a way that the general audience gets them quickly. The downside is that this goes at the expense of nuances. Fans don’t like to see Anakin being passionate and stormy because as Darth Vader he was coded as brutal but cool; they don’t get Obi-Wan’s many mistakes because he was coded as a hero, or Yoda’s arrogance due to his status as a wise old mentor. The sequels brought this dichotomy to a new level coding Rey as the heroine although she has a bad attitude and comes from bad blood, and Ben Solo as the villain when his attitude is conflicted at worst, and who is the offspring of the original story’s heroes. The difference lies in their intentions - hers are good, his are bad. This is interesting because it makes us, the audience, question ourselves as to how and why we believe we can tell good from evil.

You could probably say into a megaphone that the Jedi are not the good guys who always win, that the Force is not a superpower belonging only to the Jedi and that there is no simple Dark and Light but that the Force needs balance: some viewers will never get it. I guess everybody feels the saga’s subtext on a subconscious level; but woe betide if someone like Rian Johnson brings it up to the surface for everyone to see.

  Narrative Key

One of the main reasons why The Last Jedi is so divisive is, I think, that its major theme connecting all of the others is communication. While the prequels told much about miscommunication or lack thereof, Episode VIII is packed full of beautiful examples of what happens when people actually manage to communicate; and even when they do not, they learn from their misunderstanding one another (e.g. Poe with Admiral Holdo).

It is a common but major mistake not to question the narrative key to a story. Many Star Wars fans believe the story is simply about the good guys defeating the bad guys, so they overlook the deeper themes of the saga and respond with outrage when the authors try to humanize their heroes, bringing them down from their alleged pedestal. It is e.g. helpful to know Joseph Campbell’s monomyth theory; to consider that a film saga is not the same as a TV show and that therefore if the characters go through changes these must be significant from one instalment to the next due to the time limitations; to watch a few films by Akira Kurosawa, in particular The Hidden Fortress, to understand the significance of a major event seen through different eyes; or consider the prequels’ parallels with legends, classic literature, or the Bible - Lucifer’s fall, Romeo and Juliet, the tales of King Arthur. Star Wars is a conglomeration of many narratives, from Western films to the Japanese to French fairy tales to Greek mythology to Shakespearean drama. Who approaches these films expecting mere “action” is bound to be disappointed. It is understandable, however, that if you are used to certain kinds of stories, you will assume that every story should basically follow the same lines, and you will have difficulties accepting anything that is different, or believe it’s just badly made.

I still remember the (sometimes vicious) quarrels I followed in an online forum a few years ago about a Japanese mecha anime who some fans by hook or crook wanted to fit into the structure of a French novel. Of course, those two narratives don’t fit together: no wonder most of the other fans didn’t accept that kind of interpretation.

The Phantom of the Opera’s film version of 2004 was largely a failure both with regard to quality and audience appreciation because it made a tacky Byronic romance of a story that actually is a mystery thriller, probably expecting that it would be more appealing that way. What the filmmakers accomplished was making the story flat and the characters annoying by stripping them of the drama behind the original story.

Filming Rebecca’s film version from 1940 Hitchcock managed the transition excellently maintaining the storyline of the original novel; but Daphne duMaurier’s book is a coming-of-age story, and who expects a crime thriller may feel irritated by the narrators’ meandering and detailed inner monologue.

Game of Thrones also could not culminate in “all’s well that ends well”. The last season was not well-made, but I think now that was not the whole reason behind the audience’s disappointment. The show always was very crude and included loads of horrific events; even the worst victims of the war, who seemed to have a justification for their actions and seemed well-meaning, at times did terrible things. It would be a misfit to apply a happy ending to a “sex and violence” narrative as with another martial epic, like Aeneid and Iliad. Who waits for happy endings ought to avoid this kind of story from the start. (Yes, I know, I should listen to my own advice - had I imagined how depressing Rogue One is, Star Wars fan or not, I would probably have skipped it.)

Stories of this kind can be dissatisfying because as an audience, we follow our heroes’ adventures, sometimes for years, and we usually want to see them to find their happiness in the end. But in all honesty: we should have imagined.

That is why I think it was naïve to believe that the sequel trilogy would lead Ben to a happy ending with Rey. I have read more than one fanfiction which irritated me at first, until I realized that they were told on the lines of Fifty Shades of Grey, or Pride and Prejudice. That may work well for a fanfiction, but Star Wars is not a mere romance. Even if there was a hint of the overture to Romeo and Juliet during the abduction: couples based on that trope are not destined to end well. I myself was hoping for a happy ending due to the fact that the saga’s rights were in the hands of Disney of all production companies; and giving that the Skywalker family is one of the most famous in pop culture, I was certain they wouldn’t wipe them out. However I was not quite sure how they would do that and make it convincing, and I was wary when it came to the assumption (which many Reylo’s took for granted) that the love between Rey and Ben would be strong enough to save the galaxy and give them a happy ever after.

When a guy is introduced by murdering a defenseless old man, letting an entire village be wiped out with practiced ease, going on with torturing another guy both physically and mentally and climaxing with the horrible crime of patricide, one can hardly expect a happy ever after for him; even less since so very little was explained in terms of his childhood and adolescence. Some viewers identified with Ben Solo and saw his abandonment and abuse issues; many others didn’t, and none of the sequel films really thematized them. That he made peace with his parents and died to save the girl he loved is sufficient for a convincing redemption arc, not to offer him a happy closure.

  The Trope That Comes Closest

There were a lot of speculations with regard to the trope Ben (Kylo) and Rey were actually modelled on. Romeo and Juliet, Hades and Persephone, Pride and Prejudice or Beauty and the Beast, and there were probably more. Rian Johnson is known for loving The Phantom of the Opera more than any other musical. I don’t think that’s coincidental.

- The phantom is disfigured by birth, Ben is extremely powerful by birth; and Ben also gets disfigured by Rey during their duel. (Vader’s sunken, charred face under the mask was, for a long time, how I imagined the phantom unmasked by the way.) - The phantom is highly intelligent and has huge musical talent. Ben was born with a strong power in the Force. - Both wear masks and look much less threatening without them. They also wear a cloak, and black clothes. - The phantom had committed terrible crimes both to protect himself and to punish a world which would not accept him. Sounds familiar? - In the musical we do not get to know how he became a ruthless monster in the first place. Ditto. - The phantom dies (or disappears, in the musical) because only the girl knew that he was lonely and unhappy and that he still had goodness inside him. She had forgiven him, but the rest of the world wouldn’t have believed her or forgiven him.

Both Kylo Ren and the Phantom are creatures who are at the same time terrible and wonderful. The normal world, populated by average people, cannot accept them because they are both too fascinating and too terrifying. In order to find lasting fulfilment, Ben ought to have found back to humanness. The phantom couldn’t due to his disfigurement and his criminal past; and though Ben loses the scar on his face, the Cain’s mark of the patricide he committed, his deed and his former status as Supreme Leader of the First Order never would have been forgotten.

“Yet in his eyes all the sadness of the world Those pleading eyes that both threaten and adore…” Christine in The Phantom of the Opera (on the rooftop)

  Heroes: Dynamic and Static Characters

A general rule of storytelling is differentiating between dynamic and static (also called “impact”) characters. A static character is like an anchor for others: while they live through crises, learning and maturing, this character always remains his old self and always stands for the same values. He may be misunderstood, opposed and belittled, he may lose the battle, but never the war; and after having helped others through their troubles, he usually is on his own. (Cue: cowboy riding into the sunset.)

Superman stands for peace and justice, Jack Sparrow for freedom, Peter Pan for the innocence of childhood, Paddington for faith in people’s goodness. No wonder they are so popular: it is familiar and reassuring to follow the adventures of someone who is always like a rock in a storm. Static characters are in essence childlike, two-dimensional; which is probably why our child self easily gets attached to them and may be outraged at the idea of them changing, or maybe (gasp) being wrong about something.

But George Lucas developed his saga along the lines of personal growth, and by exploring its themes: thankfully, otherwise it would have become as boring and repetitive as so many other franchises. To continue a story you can either make it dynamic, or press the repeat button over and over. The Skywalker men with their strong emotionality may be unusual heroes, but much more interesting than other, “cooler” guys whose actions are more or less foreseeable. So, I can understand the Disney studio’s choices. On the other hand, it is not surprising when fans of old get angry when their supposedly unalterably perfect heroes make mistakes: everybody wants to know that some things (or persons) never change. Even if on the long run, change might be for the better.

I think one of the sequels’ most important messages was that the Skywalker-Organa-Solo family failed their heir precisely because their mindset did not change. Ben grew up in another world than they did; obsolete political structures, dictatorship or rebellions did not matter to him. But his family wanted him to adhere to the ideals that had gotten them through the war against the Empire, discouraging him from searching and finding his own place in the world, a world that now was very different both from the old Republic and the Empire.

Whether a static or dynamic character is more relatable to the audience is a personal matter. Many fans adore Darth Vader, Leia and Han Solo etc. precisely for the fact that basically they always remain their old selves. Padmé also is a favorite, probably due to the fact that she does not change considerably. Anakin changes a lot, which is perceived as a sign of weakness. Some fans may relate more to Luke, who undergoes serious trials and emerges from them stronger and wiser, far away from the greenhorn he was in A New Hope. And yet Luke’s final decision to throw his weapon away before Palpatine is often perceived as weird to this day. It’s not “heroic”.

The outraged fans who ranted at Luke’s portrayal in The Last Jedi did not realize that Luke was doing something both Obi-Wan and Yoda, or the other Jedi for that matter, never had done: he took responsibility for his actions. In this context Ben was the audience’s self-insert, he was as appalled at Luke’s misstep as we were. Such a blow is enough to send someone on a lonely island to meditate about his mistakes for years, convinced that the world is better without him.

But for the action film audience, that is not acceptable. If you have a light sabre and the Force (an alleged superpower), what do you need responsibility for? You can’t do wrong if you’re the hero, right? Luke also was the only character from the original trilogy who underwent character growth, which makes it all the more ironic that the many, many critics who tear the sequels to pieces are fuming at how Luke could be so “defiled”. Luke grew beyond the person he had been in A New Hope; these fans obviously did not. Which is why the studios thought they had to produce The Rise of Skywalker in order to “appease” them and to give them the Luke Skywalker they wanted.

  Where Does the Galaxy Go From Here?

A conversation between my husband and me, about a year before The Rise of Skywalker came out.

Me: “I hope Ben Solo will survive at the end of the trilogy.” Him: “I do hope that, too. But they won’t give him a happy ending.” Me: “Why?” Him: “He killed his own father.”

I hate to admit it, but he was right. I’m not aware what ethics code is under use in the film industry now, but in any case, the horrible crime of patricide was done; even if it was under coercion, the son traumatized by it, and it ultimately brought him back to redemption. You can’t make a patricide, the former right hand and for a time leader of a terrorist organization a hero and give him a happy ending; in particular when you are Disney of all film studios. (Not to mention that he killed Han Solo, a very popular character.) And from exchanges with other viewers I am aware that many do not understand how Ben killed Han under Snoke’s coercion, and the implications that led him to kill Snoke: they believe he simply did it because it’s something an evil, power-hungry person will do.

Ben dying without anyone knowing that he was not a villain at heart and worse, leaving the fates of the galaxy in the hands of a young woman whom we often saw giving in to evil influences again and again within the scope of minutes was a dangerous turn. If he was but “a child in a mask”, Rey is a child who believes to be a Jedi. How is Rey supposed to be a heroine, with the other half of her soul gone? She and Ben fitted together perfectly because she had the good intentions but a violent attitude, while his intentions were bad but his attitude desperately conflicted because inherently good. Rey came from evil blood but was kind-hearted because she believed in her parent’s love. Ben was the heir of a family of heroes but did not feel loved by them, which made him lonely and bitter. What good is Rey on her own, even more so when at the end of Episode IX she deliberately leaves her friends and goes to a literal desert? The little girl inside of her is still starving for connection, and neither being a Jedi nor a “Skywalker” will appease her. She had to meet Luke to realize that he was a good man but still just a man; a lesson she didn’t quite internalize yet. The sequel trilogy wasn’t her story because her personality hardly developed. It was Ben who went through hell and back.

Films (and film sagas) have a determined length and as a film studio you need time to explore all themes, which in Star Wars are quite complex. The worst mistake I found with Episode IX was that it broke the Campbellian monomyth in favor of a Marvel type B-movie to appease the fans of old who had hated The Last Jedi. Which is understandable from their point of view, but went at the expense of quality. The Rise of Skywalker may have quenched the fire a little, but as a film, it’s frankly forgettable, and compared to the other films from the saga, I doubt that it will age well. Had the sequel trilogy continued Rian Johnson’s approach instead of putting a band-aid on The Last Jedi, it would have been good enough to make a cultural impact the way the classics did. If the sequel trilogy was meant to follow The Hero’s Journey, no one completed it: Ben died and Rey went into exile, and no one brought any kind of elixir or salvation into the world.

All of this is not to say that I have grown to like The Rise of Skywalker and that I am not disappointed about the ending, or no longer sad about Ben Solo’s death. I hope that the next trilogy will give him a second chance: I am still convinced that his ultimate fate should have been to bring lasting Balance to the Force. If I am wrong and his existence practically cancelled the past without improving anything, the whole saga loses its sense. I think that by now he atoned more than enough for his sins.

When I learned that Rian Johnson had negotiated his own trilogy after The Last Jedi, I remember wondering what it would be about. After all, almost everything had been said about the Skywalker saga, hadn’t it?

It hadn’t. I had naively assumed that like with Episodes III and VI, the final revelations were preserved for Episode IX. By now it seems to me like The Rise of Skywalker is meant as an appetizer for the next sequel. It can’t be that the studios unlearned how to make good films in so short a time after The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi, also considering that everything else they made about Star Wars in between (Rogue One, Solo, The Mandalorian) is solid work and not by a long shot as flat as Episode IX.

The studios assuredly will keep their secrets as long as they can. The Mandalorian was met with huge expectations, yet nobody knew about Baby Yoda before the first episode was aired. Due to their depth and love for details, Star Wars films can be watched and discussed over and over, and the message regarding the necessity of Balance is still widely unknown or not accepted by the fans. If this is supposed to be not only an entertaining but also an educational tale, authors must give new fans room to get to know the saga, and old fans time to let the new ideas sink in. Lucas and his collaborators have taken decades trying to teach us that morals are not black and white. But still when The Last Jedi came out, the message was utterly hated.

Whatever Johnson’s trilogy will be about, it can’t be a part of the Skywalker saga any more: they are all dead. Even if Ben is brought back somehow, he is a Solo, so this time it would be the story of his own family. The Skywalker saga was basically Anakin’s, and by reconciling with a Palpatine and giving his life to save the woman he loved his grandson ultimately made up for his sins. The Last Jedi was a bold move; but what are “bold moves” supposed to be good for if they are not followed through? Apart from the fact that the sequels weren’t even exactly bold but drawing sums from what we already could see in original trilogy and prequels about the Jedi and the old Republic.

  Family Is the Key

Star Wars is a family tale. It is for families and it is about families. One of the most frustrating things about The Rise of Skywalker was, for me, that the “new” heroes didn’t make any kind of home or family of their own; and a Star Wars film or series never works without a father figure at its heart. I am sure Ben Solo was ultimately meant to be a father figure; the sequels couldn’t work without even giving him the chance to be one. Anakin and Luke both founded a family - one through marriage, the other befriending many different people. The third generation did not even get a chance either way.

“I believe that you are redeemed by your children.” George Lucas

In Star Wars, children always have to pay for their parent’s sins, and only they can make them atone. Which makes it all the more tragic that Ben is not a father; by this logic, only his child could have saved him, or an adopted one. On seeing the enslaved children of Canto Bight, of whom one is Force-sensitive, I was convinced that the sequels would be the children’s trilogy. (I might have accepted Ben dying had he saved and left them with Rey, who also is an abandoned child and so would have found a meaningful task.)

What the galaxy needs most are not heroes but people. Heroes exist to save desperate situations; lasting peace can only be made by normal people. With Luke becoming a hero in the original trilogy and Anakin a villain in the prequels, I was expecting Ben to find back to humanness. Since we have another trilogy to look forward to, I do still hope Ben will get another chance and this time he will find his happiness; but I also believe that he will have a long way to go before that. By the end of The Rise of Skywalker he is a hero, but in order to be happy he would need to learn how to be fully human, realigning both sides of his personality and healing the gap between them (the way Anakin couldn’t). And you don’t learn how to embrace your humanness quickly after having lost it within the scope of years and years. Ben wanted Rey because she was the only person in the galaxy with whom he could be completely honest. But being human also entails bonding with other people, not only with one’s significant other.

Ben tried to pull off the “bad guy” role and failed because it’s not in his nature. A lot of fans see him as a loser, because whether good or evil, a male protagonist is supposed to be always unfazed. The gentle, nurturing and emphatic personality that comes out in Ben when he is balanced is not that of a warmonger but of a peacekeeper: I see nothing inacceptable or emasculating in that. Unfortunately, who has Luke, Anakin or Han as blueprints for “real” men, won’t accept someone like Ben Solo. I hope that in time, he will be more appreciated, and that his life story will be a warning both for the audience and for the saga itself, i.e. that it is more to the point not to punish a criminal but to prevent him from becoming that way in the first place. Which brings us again to the topic of children and a better way to raise them, Force-sensitive or not.

Rey and Ben both are children with unhealed wounds. Their brief moment of harmony during the Force connection on Ahch-To was so powerful because both were speaking to each other’s inner child: Ben saying to Rey that she was not alone, Rey offering Ben an understanding he had not known before. Padmé also always saw in Anakin the good little boy she had first met; one of the reasons of the unbalance in their relationship was that he felt powerless to do something for her in return.

I think that the sequel trilogy of the Skywalkers wanted to tell us is that even if you save the whole galaxy, it’s not sufficient if afterwards you can’t support and protect your own offspring. When we met Han, Leia and Luke again, their personalities were pretty much as we left them; their mistake in handling Ben can’t have been something they actually did to him, the blunder must lie somewhere in their attitude. All three of them were traumatized by cruelly losing or never having known a healthy family life, so we must assume that after the war against the Empire, they tried to build a new world that would fit to their needs. But if adults build a home, they must do so thinking first and foremost not of themselves but of the ones who need it more than them. Children shape the future, not a victory of “good” over “evil”. And I find it interesting that the codebreaker DJ, who had such a pragmatic view of war, was also someone we met on Canto Bight, like the children. He was a traitor, but as everyone in the saga, even he had a point when he said that ultimately, wars are useless because they always flare up again.

“Good, bad, made-up words. You blow them up today, they blow you up tomorrow.” DJ in The Last Jedi

The last scene of The Last Jedi showed us a Force-sensitive boy sweeping an open space before looking up at the sky and dreaming about being a Jedi. I still believe that this scene’s meaning was “Clear the stage, it’s time for us - the children.”

The Jedi, respectively Force-sensitive creatures, must find new and better ways if they want to be advocates for peace and justice. No institution can claim to have a moral standard if it does not protect, nurture and encourage their most vulnerable and needful members, i.e. the children. Watching the prequels it is shocking to follow how the intelligent, brave and affectionate child Anakin could become the most hated man in the galaxy, crushed in the powerplay between the “good but narrow-minded guys” and the “bad but not always wrong” guys. Both his and his grandson’s dark fate could have been avoided, had it not been for the Jedi mentality based upon the conviction of having the right to destroy everything that does not (or does not seem) to line up with them.

The Star Wars saga told us over and over that power is not what it takes. The Jedi lost the Clone Wars; Vader was a lonely, bitter guy (not to mention Palpatine); Kylo had all the power his grandfather never had and it did him no good. Anakin, Han and Ben all were loved most by their women when they were at their weakest. And this brings me back to what I stated above: stories can be interpreted in different ways, but what about the message the author actually wanted to convey? If I am not getting it all wrong, it’s that compassion and not power is the key to everything good.

Episode VII and IX mirror one another, only VIII hints at a possible balance. Star Wars has a cyclical narrative; Anakin / Vader had his happiest moments and successes in his youth, while his grandson in his own youth hit rock bottom and committed his worst sins. If Kylo Ren’s destiny, as per Adam Driver’s words, is supposed to be the opposite of Darth Vader’s, how can The Rise of Skywalker really be the ultimate ending for him?

  P.S. What do you think, could baby Yoda and Ben meet? Then Obi-Wan and Yoda would be together again in a new way. P.P.S I would also like to see the Force, for once. I’m sure it’s not black and white at all. How about a rainbow? (Does anyone have Rian Johnson’s e-mail…? 😊) P. P.P.S. On the other hand, if the next film starts with Rey being pregnant and not knowing how, I might be sick… ☹

[words-writ-in-starlight]

the untamed is on netflix, right? i think i've seen it. i'm enjoying your posts about it and my mom would love if i watched a chinese show (it looks chinese, i might be wrong though) but i'm kinda short on time so please pitch to me why i should watch it so i will be convinced and look past the lack fo time

Anonymous asked:

ok the untamed looks cool af how doesone watch it 

A L L R I G H T I’m finally going to make a rec post, I’ve put this off long enough.  You’ve definitely already started to watch it, clever, so please forgive me for using this as an excuse to pitch this show.

So, for starters, Anon, The Untamed is indeed on Netflix!  It is in Chinese!  If you (like me) do not understand Mandarin Chinese, the Netflix English subbing is…fine, it’s fine, but I recommend poking around in the fandom because every single form of address is changed to the character’s full name.  And maybe I just spent too much time doing translations for my old Spanish and Chinese and especially Latin classes, but I think there are some things that, A, shouldn’t be translated or, B, should be translated awkwardly over being translated incoherently.  

I digress.  My thoughts about maintaining forms of address in their native language for the sake of clarifying levels of respect/etc are not relevant here.  Chuck a note in my inbox if/when you get confused about everyone’s three names and I’ll write/link you a guide.

POINT IS.  The Untamed is an adaptation of the novel Mo Dao Zu Shi, which is generally translated as “The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation,” and my quick pitch for it is: There’s a plot, sure sure, it’s the story of Wei Wuxian (his fall from grace to Most Hated Person In Magic!China, and then his resurrection and efforts to solve a murder), and if you like character-driven fantasy narratives you Will Like This

B U T

You know that post “but is he…you know…your narrative foil?”  That’s this show.  If what you crave is “one character committedly pines over another for twenty years even when the entire world hates that person,” please let me interest you in Lan Wangji, the love interest.  They have a kid together.  It’s a great romance.  Literally what else do you want from me.  I love a narrative foil, I love a tragedy, I love an epic love story, I love a found family.  And good GOD do I love a character who self-destructs in an effort to do the right thing.

Wei Wuxian isn’t evil.  He’s not even especially malicious.  But when the chips were down and he needed to survive, and to save people, and to figure something out, he took the only avenue left to him, and it was—it was inevitable, really, that it make him the villain of the piece.  He saved a lot of lives.  Everyone except Lan Wangji hates him for it.  He’s already thoroughly despised by the time he starts actually doing things that are objectively bad.  Talk to me about it forever.

My usual list of free-form associative Things I Like That You Will Probably Also Like under the cut:

Wei Wuxian!  I know he’s the main character but I love him so much that he gets a bullet point!  He’s the kind of lighthearted goofball who’s perfected the “I Would Honestly Die Before Showing Emotion To Anyone, How Dare You Imply That I Am Not Sincere In My Perpetual Good Humor” mask, and it hits like a sledgehammer when that mask cracks.  I would watch this actor flip between smiles and homicidal rage all day.  He gets a hug from Son Boy in the last episode and I almost cried.  50000/10.

Lan Wangji!  A great love interest!  Noble to the core!  Incredibly bitchy!  I want five more just like him!

This is where I mention that China has strict censorship laws, so, despite the fact that they kiss and have sex and get married and the whole nine in the book, the show is all Intense Staring And Love Declarations Where They Never Say The L-Word.  But like.  Please trust me, it’s actually So Romance.  If anything I think I like the  romance in the show better.

Wen Ning!

I don’t have anything else to say about him, I just love him so goddamn much.  He and his sister Wen Qing are stars and the rest of these sinners don’t deserve them.

COMPETENT. VILLAINS.  I’ve spilled a lot of ink on this one lately, but I love competent villainy, I love villains who have Goals and plan to Achieve Them and actually pull it off.  Jin Guangyao, the big bad of the “present”(the part where Wei Wuxian is resurrected and kicking around trying to solve a murder), is actually phenomenally good at his job and I support him even though I enjoyed watching him go down in flames.  There are enough villains in this show for everyone to have their preferred type of villain, from Devoted Right Hand Man to Megalomaniacal Overlord to Freewheeling Engine Of Death.  GREAT villains in this show.  Which brings me to…

YI! CITY! ARC!  I’m not going to tell you that much about it, but it’s dark and tragic and features my very favorite villain in the entire show, Xue Yang, who is just.  *chef kiss*  A horrible monster of a man.  An unapologetic, cold-eyed shriek of a villain.  The very best at what he does, and what he does is absolutely horrible, and I would watch an entire series about this five-ish episode arc.  Also, I’ve adopted Song Lan/Xiao Xingchen from the Tragic Ships Shelter and someone should toss me a headcanon ask for them.  Any AU your little heart desires.  I love them.

THE MAGIC!  I know it took me a long time to get here, but it’s a very character driven show and I am a very character driven person and I just wanted to yell about characters for a minute.  But anyway, I’m told that the Untamed is a great onboarding point for this genre of Chinese fantasy novel, because they do a really good job of making the necessary points accessible.  I had no familiarity with wuxia/xianxia/etc when I started watching this and everything about cultivation made sense to me, or at least enough sense to be going on with.  It’s very lovely and fascinating and it’s where they put their Entire Non-Clothing Budget.

This is where I mention that their effects department clearly used their entire funding for, like, cool sword stunts and beautiful clothing.  The wolf puppet in particular is just.  Almost adorably terrible.  If that’s going to severely impact your enjoyment, Idk what to tell you, man.

Related to the above, I love plotlines about characters losing control of their magic.  That’s all I’m going to say about it.

Unreliable narrators, baby! They set up a lot of concrete facts about Wei Wuxian in the first two episodes that become obvious as complete bullshit as you go on, and it’s very satisfying to watch!  See also, Nie Huaisang, the most unreliable narrator of them all, whom I adore.

Beyond all those things…it’s just got a lot of great relationships in it.  It’s hugely driven by the affection people have for each other, or the places they feel they’vebeen deprived of that affection.  It has a lot of iterations of the same relationship in wildly distinct ways, if that makes sense—offhand, there are maybe four major sets of siblings, five if you count the Jins, and they are all radically different and insanely compelling.  The basic structure of Wei Wuxian/Lan Wangji, the “black cultivator/white cultivator on a crusade to change the world” thing, appears a lot of times, and goes horribly awry in a slightly different way for all of them.  That kind of in-universe repetition of themes, doing the same thing over and over again looking for the Right Path, is one of my favorite things to appear in a story—see also, the Kencyrath (twins, Dreamweavers, Knorth lords, loyal Kendar, etc), the Animorphs (warrior teams, deaths on the field, etc), any number of other things I yell about.

TL;DR: The story is great and the cultivation is fascinatingand the schemes are elaborate, but