#it is a common theme of magic being used for entertainment instead of useful things

[captain-amadeus]

Jingle and Cedric having a bonding moment out of their skills being underused

[sinnabee]

Here's an interesting question for your Magician AU: How do the boys have their magic in the first place? Are some people just born with it, or were they made by a magician, or did they obtain it, or what?

ALRIGHT.

i know its been... ages. sorry about that.

i originally had some steapunk-ish magical worldbuilding ideas, but it also had weird mafia themes because i was in my Sleuth Jesters Era then. so we scrapped that.

HOWEVER. i can still answer this one!!! answer under the readmore :D

basically, everything living has the "potential" to do magic. it's a part of life - to live, you have a magical core. period. however, MOST people can't access this core. sometimes they can, but only subconsciously. this might manifest as someone with a green thumb, who is just weirdly good with plants. or maybe they have an affinity for animals. or perhaps their cooking is spectacular! little things. (this doesn't mean every talent or skill someone has is a latent magical ability, just that it has been known to manifest. you can be a great cook and have a completely dormant magical core.

now, some beings have either a stronger magical core, or maybe just get lucky and have something that kicks it into gear, making it "active" rather than "dormant." these people can perform magic! lots of different types! illusions, scrying, elemental affinities, manipulating the laws of space and time and all that jazz! they can also get really really good at party tricks lmao.

maybe some of them are even craftspeople - those with active cores that can imbue inanimate objects with magic. :)

so, that's how it is with humans. speaking of imbuing inanimate objects with magic - and therefore life - animatronics.

so here's the deal - magic runs through everything. one of the most common natural sources of magic comes from leylines, shifting currents of magic that travel across the planet. (someone feel free to correct me if im doing leylines a disservice by dropping them in here, im just going with a generic "fantasy novel" definition.)

as it turns out, highly advanced animatronics with incredibly powerful learning AI's and personality chips are what one might call "susceptible" to natural magic, and leylines. Fazbear Entertainment flew a little too close to the sun on this one - eventually their creations became so advanced that, to magic, they appeared as a perfect vessel to fill with life.

Magic saw Freddy Fazbear and said "is anybody gonna turn this thing into a fantastic dad and sentient being?" and then didn't wait for an answer.

Once the magical community REALIZED what had happened - that magic had taken the next "evolutionary step," of sorts, the magical community had no choice but to fight for the rights of what they KNEW were living, thinking, feeling beings.

Since I'm no longer taking the "steampunkish" vibes for the magician AU, I'm going this route instead - it's the regular old modern world, BUT. Animatronics have been found sentient and given rights. It just so happens that, in the context of the Magician!au, Sun and Moon (and Eclipse) found magic to be really, REALLY fun. They chose a career that would let them utilize it in plain sight, and still have tons of interaction with people - Magicians!

Important context is that the magical community is very much hidden from the mundane one. Technically, all animatronics are actually witches, just like humans who have active magical cores. Sun, Moon, and Eclipse can get away with using their magic in front of mundanes because of the job they chose! :D

Part of the reason it was so easy to convince the magical community to fight for animatronic rights was because magic doesn't just bring anything vaguely human shaped to life. If it did, there wouldn't be a need for necromancers - the planet's natural magic would be raising the dead left and right. No, it was that animatronics met all the criteria magic needed to consider something "alive," and so it just. Took the final step. :)

AN IMPORTANT SIDE EFFECT OF THIS, HOWEVER - due to the nature of animatronics technically being more akin to "constructs" than a naturally "born" creature, they have inherent access to their magic. ALL animatronics can perform magic. Which was the OTHER reason the council and magical community fought so hard for their rights - they had to get these guys some kind of TRAINING before they exposed the entire magical community to the planet.

I hope that covers everything!!! Thanks for the ask!!!! <3

[wordsnstuff]

Guide to Creating Magic Systems

Patreon || Ko-Fi || Masterlist || Work In Progress

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Decide What is “Good” and “Evil”

This is a big decision, because it’s going to impact the way your characters use magic, and the overall theme/tone of the story. You must decide where the moral limitations of magic stand, in addition to the practical limitations. You must also decide who can/does overstep those moral or societal boundaries. This is a great place where you can find conflict and establish the themes of your story.

Establish Clear Limits

All quality magic systems have clear limits in their reality. Sometimes time travel is possible, sometimes it isn’t. More “powerful” spells, or spells with greater physical implications, will require greater sacrifices, like death, loss, or pain.  Deciding these limits are a key task you must accomplish early in the process of designing a magic system, because it can impact the conflict, plot points, character motivations, and more.

Establish Consequences

Arguably, magic systems aren’t interesting or engaging unless the reader is aware that any use of magic will have some consequence. Not always an epic consequence, because some magic systems are designed to be fun and full of wonder, and therefore some magic should be available to serve that purpose without being overshadowed by impending consequence. However, if magic plays a major part in your conflict or conflict resolution, it would benefit your story to establish a system of consequences or effects that come as a result of using various amounts or levels or types of magic that exist in your universe.

Diversity in Magic (Powers & Users)

One of the more contemporary grievances about magic systems is that it’s very one-size-fits-all, or bland in terms of who can/does use magic and how they do so. It’s worth your time to explore the idea of including multiple groups or species who can use magic and determining how the way they use it can differ. Regional characteristics of magic users and habits/idiosyncrasies that differ depending on class/race/social status/location. It can also be an interesting point of contention in your story/world to think about how different groups or individuals influence the methodology or views on magic. Do some view it as a sacred gift that is only to be used according to ancient tradition? Does this conflict with more modern views of younger users who view it as a tool that should be used whenever to make life easier?

Establish a Source & Theory

On a lot of occasions, this development is mostly for your own sake as the writer. However, it’s immensely helpful to know where magic came from or how it came to be available/wielded, and how that affects its value or role in your world. This is typically the kind of information authors put a lot of thought into and then end up stuffing as much of it into the preliminary drafts as possible, only to cut 90% of it out later, but even if it’s never explicitly stated in the text, writing the story with that context in mind can considerably enrich the story.

Common Struggles

~ How do I establish magic is a thematic element as well as a world building one?... Make your magic mean something. Using magic systems as a decoration is a staple of the fantasy genre, so you must establish the intrigue of your magic system through who uses it, and how they choose to do so. Use magic as a tool to explore the themes of the story. It doesn’t have to be a metaphor itself, but it can do wonders in delivering subtle nudges toward the overall point of the story. Think of it as a thematic tool, instead of a plot ornament.

~ How do I depict the use of magic in an engaging way?... Big magic and small magic. Sure, there will probably be some epic battles or intense displays of incredible power, but if this ability is widespread and considered typical, show the little things as well. Characters usually have “stage business”, or mundane actions they accomplish to break up dialogue or make scenes more dynamic, and this stage business is a great opportunity to show everyday magic. Doing laundry, getting coffee, catching a bus, sorting paperwork, etc. are all tasks that would be more convenient with magic, so show it. Use these little moments to periodically inform/remind the reader of the breadth/limitations of magic and the diversity in who uses it and how.

~ How do I convey the intricacies of the magic system without info-dumping periodically throughout my story?... Find places in scenes that you wouldn’t necessarily assume magic would be a necessary part of and ask yourself how a character who has magic (and perhaps always has) would live that moment differently from you (a person who does not and never has had that ability). If they’re doing the dishes in this scene, would they be doing it manually or directing the objects to move with magic because they don’t like getting their hands wet? A lot of the charm in magical stories is the escapism; the idea that life could be so different, and probably more convenient, if one had magic. So, lean into this, use opportunities you find to inject some context or information about the rules/limitations/history/etc., and the magic will naturally integrate itself.

~ How do I achieve a magic system that adds to a reader’s enjoyment, rather than simply acting as a story garnish?... A lot of writers try to recapture the fascination readers have with magic systems in stories like Harry Potter, and it’s important to denote that what sets that magic system apart from the others is that it was built using various source materials that weren’t inherently magical. If you try to build a magic system based on one in another story, it’s unlikely you’ll come up with any original ideas. The magic in Harry Potter was constructed using Latin roots, global mythology, and various references to popular tropes in literature about witches, wizards, fictional creatures, etc. Additionally, a lot of the conflict regarding magic was derived from real world issues, such as prejudice. Magic for the sake of magic does little to interest a reader who is well versed in the genre, but magic created from scratch to serve a unique purpose will intrigue and entertain them. 

–

Masterlist | WIP Blog

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[twistedtranslations]

Cater Diamond - Full of Lies

You can unlock this story by getting Cater’s SSR Scary dress

Big thanks to Rym and Apollo for proofreading!

Translation under the cut

Chapter 1

Main street

/Notification

Cater: Oh? A message on MagiCam? Who would've thought it was that girl! How nostalgic~ The picture those ghosts took at Ramshackle dorm made our college's Halloween event trend -> Jumping onto the bandwagon and posting a lot -> Huge success for Cay's follower-catching strat! So far it's been going well but… Mixed within the comments and DMs of my new followers are a lot of old aquaintances. Even some classmates from middle and elementary school are here.

Cater: "Hey! It's been a while! Oh, would you like to come to our college? Cay welcomes every single one of you! You can always come over to hang at NRC's Halloween event!"

Cater: And now some emoji full of feelings!  (^○^)♪ (ゝω・)☆　d(’ｖ｀*)b

Cater: Everyone is really so casual and easygoing~ Well, it's easier on me, so I'm not complaining.

???: HEY!

Cater: Where did that loud and rowdy voice come from? I've got a bad feeling about this…

Front Gate

Sebek: Humans, don't crowd around the young master! Get out! Leave!

Boy A: Hey, what are you doing, sweptback bro! Don't interfere with our Draconia Challenge.

Boy B: We're putting our lives on the line to show our bravery by uploading a picture of us touching The Malleus!

Boy A: Huh, since when did Malleus disappear?! It's that sweptback bro's fault.

Boy B: Don't be so angry. After all the effort of having a sweptback, let's show the world a huge smile on that face!

Sebek: For humans of your social standing to use the name of the Lord of the esteemed Valley of Thorns in vain…Besides, my hair is swept back like this so I have an unobstructed view to find those like you who behave rudely towards my young master! You shall receive punishment for insulting the Draconia… no, for insulting the young master. My thunder shall shock you all to bits! HAAAAA...

Cater: Okay, stop! I'm part of the Halloween Committee. It's forbidden to fight. Why don't you try talking to this lad if something's up?

Sebek: Don't interrupt me, you frolicking human! I will shock you to bits as well!

Cater: Won't you create a scandal for the Draconia family if you were to harm an ordinary human with magic?

Sebek: W-Well… You're right. Besides, didn't you just say you were part of the Halloween committee? Both the young master and master Lilia are both performing the same duties… They ordered me to listen to the orders of the other committee members. Ok, I shall talk this out.

Cater: Even though you are crossing your arms and puffing your chest out, you are being apologetic right? Anyway, these are our college's precious guests. They have no intention to harm Malleus.

Sebek: These magic-less weaklings were making a spectacle bothering Young Master with a toy. I cannot forgive that!

Cater: Malleus is like super famous, and he's an admirable being, right? So just for this festival, it should be fine to interact with our guests as a little fanservice right?

Sebek: Stop messing around. The young master is a dreadful being who makes everyone kneel and bow down to him. AND THAT'S WHY I WILL NEVER LEAVE HIS SIDE AND PROTECT HIM ALL MY LIFE!

Cater: You're just obsessed!

Boy A: Hey, interfering our Draconia Challenge aside, what are you two squabbling about?

Sebek: Hm? You humans are still here? I told you to leave.

Boy B: Huh? You've got some nerve, talking rudely to us like that!

Cater: Come on guys. Why don't we take some pictures together since it's finally Halloween! We, Heartslabyul are those who rise from the soil in the darkness, the underlings of the night~

Boy A: Wow! Now that you mention it, you do look real good for the camera!

Cater: Cheer up everyone and gather! Let's decide on a pose~~~ Happy Halloween~

¨*shutter noise*

Cater: (Ugh… This is exhausting)

Chapter 2

Classroom

Kalim/Cater/Lilia: *Sigh*… I'm tired….

Cater: This year's Halloween was exhausting. Mainly due to our guests being rowdy..

Kalim: It was fun entertaining the guests, but I was really troubled because Jamil got in a foul mood.

Lilia: Even we, three most gentle boys, have been worn down. The other students must be at the limits of their patience.

Everyone: *Sigh*…

Cater: Now that you say it, by chance all the members of the light music club are also part of the Halloween Committee. Let's have our usual relaxing tea time while also discussing some countermeasures.

Kalim/Lilia: Agreed~

Cater: I got this! Trey's home-made pumpkin pie! It's moderately sweet, so it's my favorite!

Kalim: I have kunafa. It's a cheesecake from the Scalding Sands. It's delicious when it's hot!

Lilia: Oho, these are all sweets befitting of Halloween. As the last one, I have prepared this. Licorice!

Cater: You're always bringing the same thing! You know me and Kalim don't like that.

Kalim: The smell makes my nose shrivel up~

Cater: But you know, since it's black, it does feel like Halloween. Oh, right, let's take a picture together. It's super charming to be in costume and have themed food.

*shutter noise*

Cater: #TheBestHalloween #SelfmadeCostume #HomemadeTreat #LightMusicClub #NRCHalloween

Kalim: The best? Didn't you say you were exhausted earlier, Cater?

Cater: I never said it wasn't exciting and for things like SNS, isn't it better to exaggerate a bit?

Lilia: As expected of you. We live in a period where everyone is connected all around the world. It is most wonderful to spread happiness instead of complaints.

Cater: Oh. The picture I just uploaded got an amazing response! 

*notification*

Cater: Another message from that girl. Was she the kind to keep track of people's activities?

*ringing noise*

Cater: This time it's a call. (How persistent…)

Kalim: Cater, is it from one of your friends? You can pick up if you want.

Cater: Hm~… More like an acquaintance from the past? But it's alright? We're at a very important meeting, after all.

Lilia: We are only eating sweets, taking pictures and uploading them to MagiCam though…

Cater: It's the age of social media where everyone can keep in contact at their own pace, you don't have to go through the pains of having to response in real time to a phone call.

Kalim: Do you have that many people who want to get in touch with you? You're so well connected Cater~

Cater: Well, if you look the amount of aquaintances I have, that might be true? My dad's a banker. The bank he works at has branches all over the world. Therefore, whenever he transferred to a different branch, our entire family would move with him. We moved once every two years, so I kind of feel like a pro at quickly packing things?

Lilia: Commonly said, you are a family who moved a lot for the sake of the breadwinner.

Kalim: So the reason why you have so many friends is because you have travelled around the world since young.

Cater: Yeah, the girl just now said we are friends as well. Having to change schools frequently, I got to meet more people compared to someone staying at one place. From the best to the worst… a lot of people. However, they all had something in common.

Kalim/Lilia: …?

Cater: If I left there, they remained there. That's why I'd rather have a casual and happy time with everyone than to deepen a friendship. It’s like a circus troupe, you know, having fun hanging with people all over the world and then leaving. That's why MagiCam is the best! People from my school from three years ago contacted me out of the blue. My social circle is expanding as well. Cay is getting popular!

Kalim: Even if they're far away, you don't have to hold back you know? I got it! I'll lend you my magic carpet, so you can visit your friends whenever you want.

Cater:… I expected no less of you, Kalim. I'll take you up on that offer next time.

Lilia: I feel like I understand you.

Cater: Hm?

Lilia: The relations between humans are eternal. They are things that cannot be severed. In a new place with no trace of your existence, new relations will continue to be forged. That in itself is nature. However, I think the more precious a relation is, the more lonely it becomes. Why does it feel that way? I have lived a long life but the reason is still unknown to me. But just as Cater said, there may be a perfectly logical explanation for not getting too attached to one person in particular.

Cater: Lilia, what got into you suddenly? What I wanted to say was-

*ringing noise*

Lilia: Hello, this is Lilia speaking? What business do you have?

Cater: He just casually picked up the phone during our conversation.

Lilia: Oh, Sebek. What is it? You are so loud. Right now, I am in a meeting with Cater and Kalim. WHAT?! MALLEUS?!

Kalim/Cater: ?!

Chapter 3

Hall of Mirrors

Silver: Stop pushing. It's forbidden to enter the Hall of Mirrors.

Man A: Huh, really! I came all the way to the Isle of Sages to see Malleus Draconia.

Man B: We are doing the Draconia challenge now! Why can't we enter~

Girl C: He’s inside right! An actual Draconia, the Actual Malleus!

Everyone: MALLEUS! MALLEUS! MALLEUS!

*Lightning and thunder*

Silver: It's a rare event that Master Malleus is participating in. He also agreed to interact with the guests... For it to come to this... Everyone, it’s better if you leave. You have angered master Malleus.

Man A: I paid a lot of travel expenses, did you know that? This is the price of fame.

Everyone: MALLEUS! MALLEUS! MALLEUS!

Exterior Hallway

Cater: Did the visitors who wanted that  MagiCam glory end up angering even Malleus himself?

Sebek: Yes. At first he was gentle and calmed me down when I got angry… but a fool grabbed Malleus by the horns and made fun of him by saying "Look! It's a bicycle from the olden days!"

Lilia/Cater: Gh!

Cater: I don't know if they're brave or just reckless. Were the dark clouds and thunder rampaging in the sky above the Hall of Mirrors due to Malleus' anger? You don't think he overblotted, right…?!

Lilia: Do not worry. Using that amount of magic power shall not make him overblot. He is simply irritated. Back when he was young, mountains would be destroyed by his lightning whenever he threw a tantrum.

Cater: Hahaha… that's on a totally different level. I guess it was a good idea to have Kalim fetch the professors.

Sebek: Upperclassman Vil noticed something was up and isolated the young master. He also casted a defensive spell so the tourists wouldn't be harmed. And it seemed that Upperclassman Jade is persuading the angry young master with some unique methods... Even so, those humans who can't seem to understand the gravity of the situation keep stirring up the young master, they're uncontrollable.

Lilia: This means we must use our last resort. We must put in effort to suppress the onlookers and avoid the worst situation.

Cater: Wait a second, Lilia. I thought of something. It's not like people there dislike Malleus or anything. Despite that, it doesn't mean that they like Malleus as well... They're just interested in trends. Just like my old acquaintances.

Lilia: ?

Cater: First, I'll take a picture of Lilia, who's wearing the same clothes as Malleus!

*shutter noise*

Cater: Next we use something catered to influencers. We'll elongate Lilia's picture with a photo editing app!

*swiping on phone*

Cater: Now we just add some text to finish it up. And then upload a cropped version to MagiCam!!

*Phone SFX*

Cater: #AWildMalleusAppeared #DraconiaChallenge #UnexpectedlyAtSportsGround #NRCHalloween

*Phone SFX*

Hall of Mirrors

Man A: H-Hey. Look at the Draconia challenge tag.

Man B: It seems he's at the Sports Ground now. As expected of Malleus. He's much faster than we are!

Girl C: Okay. Everyone, let's move!

Everyone: YEAH!

Silver: What happened? Master Malleus should still be in the Hall of Mirrors.

Cater: Fu. With this, I hope the storm has passed…?

Vil: Good grief. Accidents are an unavoidable part of stage plays. Letting yourself get influenced by the guests is so amateurish. My work here is done. I will return to the dorm to straighten up my appearance.

Jade: My, that was a close call. Malleus is extremely powerful. I persuaded him to the best of my abilites, trying to get him to understand. But there was no one to turn to if it had failed. Well then, I will also return to my station. I wish everyone a wonderful Halloween.

Malleus: I caused many disturbances between different racial groups during a mere school event. I should restrain myself more…

Sebek: The young master has done nothing wrong! It was the fault of those inferior humans!

Silver: The young master told us to avoid hostility between fae and humans. Why are you getting more hostile?

Sebek: WHAT DID YOU SAY SILVER!

Lilia: Malleus. Did you forget our promise from long ago? Call for us when the tranquility in your mind is disturbed.  Even if we are not related by blood, we are still a family. Got it?

Malleus: Lilia… My apologies. To everyone.

Everyone: …

Cater: ….Family…huh.

Flashback

Lilia: But just as Cater said, there may be a perfectly logical explanation for not getting too attached to one person in particular.

Flashback ends

Cater: (That was full of lies. For a guy who grew up and lived in the same place, he never had to deal with rebuilding relations over and over…He would never understand my worthless and meaningless feelings.)

*ringing*

Cater: Hello, Trey. What's up? Huh? Are we doing our rehearsal for our night show at the stamp rally now? And Deuce, who is also part of the Halloween Committee, was at his wit's end due to the lack of manpower. So Ace is helping him out? Darn, Ace is definitely going to extort me for a favor later!

Cater: Argh! And is Riddle on the verge of a rampage? I'll be back soon, Trey. Please calm him down! I am currently at the site of the biggest crisis yet of this Halloween Week! No, for real! I'm not lying. That's why you don't have to be so cold to me, 'kay? URGH, TREY, YOU'RE SO CRUEL!

Cater: Now that Diasomnia's turmoil has settled, let's change the mood and continue on with work. In any case, we’ll still separate after the fourth year… It would be different if I repeated a year though. Anyway, I should just enjoy the moment to my heart's content! I'll surprise everyone with this charming skeleton costume! I'll show them what I'm capable of!

Cater: Happy Halloween!

[wuxiaphoenix]

TV Series Review: My Heroic Husband

I’m about half through this Chinese costume drama, and I think My Heroic Husband is awesome and entertaining in the five out of five star rage. With one caveat: bear in mind I also shamelessly love Death March to the Parallel World Rhapsody.

Superficially, you wouldn’t think a story set in a wuxia world with no evident magic (and even very little wire-fu) would have that much in common with a light novel/anime set in a high-fantasy world with dragons, spellcasting, monster races, and game-like features. But both stories are isekai, and they share the theme of “protagonist from modern Earth has all kinds of ideas and inventions no one native to the setting ever thought of”. If you liked that in Death March, you’ll love watching Ning Yi go after his enemies modern corporate war style.

Yes, it’s an isekai. With a rather unusual approach. You see, we start out in a modern corporate struggle-to-the-death with actual murder... that turns out to be the ending of a webnovel currently being written by an author whose editor has nixed corporate dramas. Apparently comedies and lighter stuff are supposed to be the coming thing. So the writer is... finishing this book off....

Only he doesn’t want to kill off the character.

(Every writer here has probably just winced in utter sympathy. I know I did.)

And then the author takes a deep breath, nerves himself up, and calls the editor back. He’s going to give the editor what he wants with a new story... but it’s going to be the same character.

Cue the corporate hero about to be murdered by a blow to the head... waking up in the body of an ancient scholar who got smacked in the head. Who’s set up for an arranged marriage - a matrilocal marriage, at that - to a genius silk-dyer who wants to keep her name and business in her own family. Of course there’s a rival for her hand, and inside-the-family competition for the family seal, and maybe a war starting up.... Let the shenanigans begin.

And oh man, are there ever shenanigans. Shop renovations. Figuring out what advantages you have over the opposing shops. Dealing in preserved eggs. Saving a courtesan. Short selling. Mutual conspiring against all the other family plots going on. Designing a blunderbuss. And epic business revenge against the guy who tried to assault his wife. At one point I halfway expected Ning Yi to end up kidnapped by the Minister of the Right because the minister recognized this guy knew how to strategize. It might happen yet....

It doesn’t hurt at all that Guo Qi Lin, the actor who plays Ning Yi, is an expert in xiangsheng, crosstalk, to which the closest American equivalent is apparently stand-up comedy along the lines of “Who’s On First?” It also doesn’t hurt that, instead of the typical pretty-boy looks, he looks like someone you can believe got roped into an arranged marriage... and wholesome enough you’d feel good about taking him home to meet the parents.

Seriously, look at the guy. Wholesome romance prospect check.

You can find the eps on YouTube, but apparently people have snipped a few bits here and there out of episodes, or blanked the soundtrack and replaced it with some free music instead. Likely to avoid tripping content reports. *Shrug* I mute those bits and just watch the captions. And at some point I hope to get the complete eps on a DVD. It’s apparently on Amazon Prime, though, if you use that.

If you want comedy, costumes, and “hey, I might be falling in love with my husband” stories, this is one to check out.

[aotopmha]

Attack on Titan Series Thoughts

I've been mulling over Attack on Titan's ending and how I'd rate the whole story from all kinds of angles and I've reached the conclusion that above all else, the ending is really fucking annoying.

A great or a terrible ending would help me make my mind up much more easily.

If it's great, it's great. If it's terrible it's a good story with a terrible ending.

But instead, it is a mixed bag: there are things about it I like a lot and things about it I don't like.

It is a very common belief that the ending is paramount to a story's quality, but I've found that this is not really true for me. My favourite anime ever pretty much doesn't even have a proper ending. My needs for an ending basically encompass some sort of sense of closure and that's about it.

Especially longer-running series often either make the journey worth it just by being as long as they are (so a pretty generic ending is okay) or fall off in quality long before they are done. But AoT is neither of these for me.

AoT in this sense is complicated for me because I can't decide whether the ending impacted the quality of the story or not depending on which aspect of the ending I focus on.

Some details make it immensely satisfying to me and some details sour it a little bit.

I think right now the good and bad things balance out so in general nothing changes about how I view the story overall.

In basics, I really like the emotional core of Attack on Titan, but I've always found it flawed on the technical level.

I'd give the story a 10 just for how much it emotionally engaged me and made me care. This story is the reason why I started this blog and I became active talking about media in the first place.

For a time I was losing the sense of fun of being a fan: people just became really hostile when discussing stuff.

But this past week or so has been incredible in my inbox, reminding me of the highs of being a fan, with so many wonderful messages.

Other stories have made me more angry, made me cry more or laugh more, but AoT made me feel the biggest spectrum of feelings.

No other story has made me do this, at most I only became a member of various forums as a random member; I didn't create a blog with the aim to talk about one.

From a technical level, I would give it a 6-7 depending on the section of the story.

The foreshadowing for various twists is pretty loose from start to finish, there is a bunch of redundant scenes all over the story and the pacing can be really uneven. It is not nearly as *well-crafted* of a story in my eyes as I see people praise it to be.

The art is a pretty huge mess at points, too.

I think sometimes the fact that this is the author's very first actual long-running story very much shines through. I think only a beginner would dare to employ historical imagery as bluntly as Isayama did, too, for example.

But to me the emotional core is magical.

The average of these two aspects, emotional and technical, would be around 8-8.5.

But at the same time, when I finished that last chapter I felt like I couldn't rate it and this has rarely happened to me.

I've kind of slowly distanced myself from number ratings in general because consuming media is a very emotional and personal thing and exploring it via positives and negatives feels much more apt.

From that perspective, I think the story is incredibly emotionally intelligent and understands humanity really well.

Stemming from that in turn, I think themes are the strongest aspect of the story next to characters. While I think the story faltered in a some instances when it came to characters, I think the themes mostly stood tall all the way through.

I think it ended up giving answers to and looping back to ideas it started with: seeing the good in the cruel world, facing humanity's unending desire for conflict and need to survive, living without regrets, learning to see the world in more complex shades of gray rather than black and whites and learning to do the right thing when needed.

As a mystery box, it does answer pretty much all of the big mysteries of the story and I think I don't really take issue with any of the big answers except maybe one very specific one. The numerous twists throughout the story range from absolutely genius to fairly typical. Again, the foreshadowing gets a lot of praise when it comes to this story, but I think a lot of the story actually isn't planned. Isayama just uses some details in clever ways to make it seem like it was planned.

I think that is a skill in itself that never gets nearly enough credit, but in the end, I think that is the weakest part of the story along with the world itself.

I like the walls themselves and I really like some of the Titan designs, but other than that I never had much interest in the world of AoT on its own. It always has to be connected to characters or themes for me to care. The crystal cave, time sand dunes and certain Titan skeleton are the most interesting settings in the story for me in that sense.

I think it does also fall in the pit of some pretty frustrating dark fantasy tropes, most specifically with a certain blonde female character who had one of the best character arcs in the story that was kind of just thrown under the bus.

It can't quite escape the pitfalls of that genre and it just so happens to be my favourite genre of story, so I constantly see excessive shock value rape, forced pregnancy and gay erasure happen in stories that I think are great otherwise. It's frustrating.

I hoped AoT would be better than that because for so long it was, but it didn't end up being as such.

But at the same time, I think most of its female cast still ended up being pretty great and did some pretty fun archetype-defying stuff. It's a pretty strange dichotomy. It is actually much better than most dark fantasy, but not quite there yet.

This is actually true for the male cast, too, I think. It does some fun playing around with all of the character archetypes.

The story's action scenes are thrilling and some of the action setpieces are really memorable. The final arc really shines in that sense to me. As a horror spectacle it is especially excellent.

Despite sometimes coming across as narmy/unintentionally funny, it still somehow manages to make the Titans a credible threat and this is true throughout the entire story, for different, evolving reasons.

I think the Titans have become iconic for a reason and never lost the luster throughout any of the story.

Along with that, my final point is that it is one of the few stories that sets up a kill 'em all setting that actually kills major characters with substantial focus and commits to it. It also doesn't kill too many characters where no character ever gets to actually develop.

So, considering all of what I listed above, what would my general thoughts be?

I think it still is a story worth checking out.

Personally I obviously love the story as a whole.

But I think any fan of dark fantasy/sci-fi could get a bunch of entertainment out of it: above all I think it is an extremely digestable series.

It's sometimes a very dense read, but I never felt it was a "hard" read. It's a very dark story with a lot of horrible things happening, but I never felt it was difficult to get through even in its darkest of moments.

My favourite characters ended up being Gabi, Reiner, Eren, Pieck, Armin and Annie. Zeke and Hange get a shoutout, too.

My favourite chapters ended up being 71, 82, 100, 122, 131 and 137.

Who are you guys' favourite characters and what are your favourite chapters and why?

Send me an ask explaining why for fun! (Or ask me for my reasonings?)

[littlemessyjessi]

How They’d Be As Mukbangers:  Harry Potter Characters

How They'd Be As YouTube Mukbangers

James: Every video has a theme.   Like, I'm not even playing.   Holidays?  All kinda of holiday themed food.  Quidditch World Cup coming up?   Things inspired by the country of his favorite team.   Just a random day?  Everything is blue.   He's that type of way.

Sirius:  If a mukbanger was a thirst trap.  I could easily see him really getting into.  Dark background, black gloves, aesthetic as fuck and like, he doesn't even talk.  He just sits there, looks hot and somehow makes eating looking incredibly sexy.  And he fucking knows it.   Bitch also one hundred percent rolls his eyes back when it hits his taste buds.  Licks his lips and his fingers.  Takes way too big of bites.   Most people would say it's cringy how sexual his videos are...but everyone is secret subscribed anyway.  With notifications on.

Remus:  This goes one of two ways.  If he's in a good mood and things are chill, he'll find a recipe, make it to the mother fucking 't' and then have a little mukbang slash review on said recipe.  Nice lil chat.  Sweet tol bean.   Precious. If it's near the full moon there ain't none of that.  Ya boy, brings in his monstrous plate of food, sits it down and just tears into like a fucking beast, no talking.  Just nom nom nom.  Unintentionally thirst traps and people opening talk about when Remus goes beast mode.  

Peter:  Candy and sweets channel! Small mukbangs with reviews from different candies from Honeydukes!

Lily:  Lol, Lilypad.  She ain't playing around.  Her videos are planned out, edited and just generally finessed to perfection.  Even had music added to it with tiny vlog segments as it's set up.  It's a little pretentious but she does have a good following.

Marlene:   This bitch.  Fucking competitive eating queen.  Tiny ass lil ho can eat you under the table, bro.   Think RainaIsCrazy on YouTube.  She can fucking smash.  Usually does eating challenges from different resteraunts and competitions.  Often, challenges Remus on his wild days.   He's a beast but she still wipes the floor with him.  

Dorcas:  The collab.  Dorcas always has good food and good company.  She's all about sharing a meal with someone and talking about random things.

Alice and Frank:  The couple channel.  It's generally filled with so much fucking cute and the food is always tasty.  It's sickening they feed each other but you also can't help but awww.

Molly Prewett/Weasley:   Family recipes.   Molly's channel are tried and true recipes from the Prewett family.  Cook with me and tons of kitchen life hacks.  Also, that woman can turn a ham sandwhich into a full course meal. Bet.   Always taste tested by Daddy Weasley.  Yes, I said Daddy Weasley.  

Lucius Malfoy:  The most pretentious fucking channel to ever exist.  It's a whole fucking production that admittedly he does put a lot of work into.   Somewhat thirst trappy like Sirius' but instead of just having a plain black background he goes out of his way to shove as much of his manor into.   Only eats the most expensive food fucking on the planet and of course, it's prepared by House elves cause he's a twit.  (Yes, I know this is Thranduil but honestly wouldn’t put it past Lucius to be this fucking pretentious.) 

Severus Snape:  Actually pretty solid content.  His exquisite skills in potions actually made him a rather good chef.   Tasteful shots, edited well with music over everything and subtitles.   Simply audio for the eat portion at the end.  Nothing too fancy for the background.  Often just a very clean kitchen. Solid content though.

The Black Sisters: Mass chaos.  Part vlog, part drama channel, half the time the food never even gets finished because of fights.  

Bill Weasley:  The Traveler.   A lot of egyptian food.  Some made by hand.  Some vlogs from street food while he's out just generally doing his job.   Short videos but solid.  He's hot and he picks good food.  It works for him.

Charlie Weasley:  This extra ass bitch.  He's the bitch that does all that outdoor cooking.  You know what I mean.   Shots in the woods, roaring fire.  Lit by a precious dragon child no doubt.  Dragons lounging in the background like those bitches who always have their dogs there.  Yes, I'm jealous.  Close up shots of him cutting things on a custom wood cutting board. Everything he makes causes your mouth to water.  God damn, scarred, freckle faced bastard just gobbles it up and ends every fucking video with a wink.   Charlie Weasley is the ultimate thirst trap and he fucking knows it.

Percy:  Percy's channel could be epic but instead is boring as fuck.  Why?  Because he insist on having the most snooze worthy meals that are 'sensible' and THEN he proceeds to talk about politics.   He actually had a pretty decent following of other like minded individuals but my god- politics and porridge, Percy?  Really?

However, once he chills the fuck out, leaves the ministry to do something else - it’s a game changer.  Brings the family on for mukbangs.  Does videos with mummy weasley.  Percy grows his hair out and Bill teases him for being a copy cat.  Much better.  Still talks politics but it’s fucking hiliarous and now the food is poppin. 

Fred and George:  Alright, this shit right here.   Every fucking bit of it is a self promo for the shop.  Meals inspired by and that would go well paired with 'this product'.  Like, that's the whole thing.  And then they run an add for their shop at the end featuring the product.  It works for them because they're smart, they're hot and they're also wildly entertaining with their constantly sibling squabbling. But yeah.  Big promo for the shop.

Ron Weasley: Honestly, out of everyone.   Ron probably has the most followers and it's because he doesn't say shit while he's eating. He sits down with a massive fucking turkey.  Nods at the camera and just tears it up.   It's literally so satisfying.  All the food is prepared by his mother.  So it's obviously fantastic. ( I just had to use this gif.) 

Ginny:   Gin's channel is usually team building videos with the Harpies.  'Cheat Day: Vlog and Mukbang w/the Harpies' type of vibes.  It's cool though and since it's a famous quidditch team the fans enjoy the behind the scenes action and actually drop all kinds of recipes for them to try in the future.

Hermione:  Hermione could easily veer off into Percy's channel of misery when she gets started on her rants but mostly they're really chill videos.  Mukbang and Book Review type of vibe.  Or sometimes even the playing of an audio book while she does her thing.  All in all, wholesome.

Harry:  Lol, I swear.  Fucking awkward bean.   Harry's videos are literally of him making the simplest of things and being so fucking awkward. "Er, well, hi guys.  So I'm about to head out for work.  Running a bit late.  But we're having a bit of toast and jam."  Like it's literally just little videos of him eating whatever throughout the day.  But of course, since he's Harry Fucking Potter- his follower count is astronomical.  

Neville:  Now, this boy.  This boy is a goblincore gobbo's wet dream.  Gardening videos with homegrown veg.  Recipes from Grandmother.   Have a nice Veggie Pot Pie with Professor Longbottom in the Hogwarts Greenhouse.  There is a fanbase and it is huge.  

Luna: Honestly, the weirdest fucking channel in the world.  Like she finds the weirdest things to eat and goes from there.  But Luna is bae so it's cool.  Also, a thousand percent does Smoke Sesh + Mukbang videos.  You know it's true.

Dean and Seamus:  Literally, eating in the most crowded pubs as they visit football games around the country.  Seamus will definitely pull the Irish card from time to time to have a drinking competition.  He wins everytime.  He may be a little dude but shit- homie can hold his own.

Cedric:  Honestly, it's so fucking pure.   Straight up did videos during his time at Hogwarts in the Hogwarts kitchen.  Such kind little conversations with the house elves.  "Hey, guys.  Thanks for coming back to another video.  Today we're making some really tasty biscuits.  Whispy, one of the talented bakers here in the kitchens, is here to help us today so please say hello to her in the comments."  He'll also always make extra and leave them in the Hufflepuff common room for everyone to enjoy.  Like, it's honestly so pure and he's such a soft boi and oh my fucking geeeeeeerrrrrrdddd!!!!!

Draco: Actually takes it really seriously and put a lot of hard work into it.   Nothing like his father's ego-tistical recipes.   Surprisingly, every. single. recipe. is a muggle recipe.  How would he know?  Because he cross referenced with Granger of course.  Cooks it himself.   No magic.  Lots of random talks.  Just like a monologue of things and it gets kinda deep sometimes.   Like, it's the channel to go to when you need advice that you didn't even know that you needed.   Still eats incredibly proper.   It's that pureblood raising of his.  Old habits die hard.

Tonks:  Pure chaos.  "Hey, today we're having Mum's homemade lasagna and I'm also getting a new tattoo.  Might dye my hair.  Don't really need to since I can do this  but whatever. So yeah, there's that.  Like it's just all over the place and you'd think it would take but the chaos is too good not to watch.  Literally gives herself beaks and snouts while she eats.  It's iconic.

Dumbledore: Mother fucker just sits at his desk, stares straight into the camera and eats a lemon drop.  Like a weirdo.  The video usually no more than a minute and each video is just some variation of that.  Meme lord.

Hagrid:  Tea With Hagrid.  Also, so the recipes suck, they too, but Hagrid is a peach and it's relaxing to see his gentle half giant there in his hut, pumpkin patch out the window and Fang laying by the fire.  It's a mood and he's just like the comforting Dad figure. 

McGonagall:  Honestly the best one in the entire world.  She makes a full course traditional Scottish breakfast... and then transforms into her animagus the cat...and promptly knocks it off the table.   A fucking legend.

------------------------------

Please attack the ask box!

Love, Kenny

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Love, Kenny

[bigskydreaming]

I’m writing this scene between Lilith and Bruce right now, and I just cut a whole segue their conversation took because it derailed it too far from where I meant to take it and was more of a meta thought anyway.

So I’m just gonna verbalize it here so as not to waste that thought. You’re welcome!

But purely on a pet peeve note (and this seriously isn’t a response to something I read lately, I feel like people always think that’s what prompts everything I say but honestly, sometimes shit just pops into my head and this is one such instance lol) - anyway like, lemme just express real quick how much I LOATHE the term ‘mindrape.’

Like. Please stop forever with that, sci-fi and fantasy themed media and entertainment. That’s not a thing. Stop trying to make it a thing.

To be perfectly clear, like, the idea of a telepath or someone via some technology or magic being able to go into your head and view or pluck out your most private, carefully guarded thoughts? Abso-fucking-lutely something that can and should be viewed as a violation, in universe.

Its just....not rape. Its literally not.

I honestly do think that the rise of this particular term was because people thought about it and just HOW intimate and personal one’s thoughts can be, especially someone who is used to being closed-off and emotionally guarded, and when trying to come up with a way to describe this that captured the INTENSITY of the violation people were picturing when they imagined this.....that’s how people ended up linking it to rape as a way of conveying just how awful a violation it was?

But like.....rape is a very specific act, is the thing. It has specific context, it has specific catalysts, framing, fallout. Rape has its own name rather than just being described as a violating assault or an act of violation, because rape is a SPECIFIC act that carries its own connotations in our society. And those connotations aren’t something that entertainment should feel comfortable borrowing just to use as like, a benchmark for how awful a completely fictitious concept might be.

Because that dilutes the very purpose of giving rape its own name in the first place. The more its likened to an abstract sense of violation that feasibly encompasses pretty much anything that falls under the umbrella of personal violation.....the less it stands out as notably different from other forms of violation and calls to mind the things that MAKE it different, and thus warrant it being treated differently or approached in a specific way.

And here’s the thing about WHY rape has its own terminology:

First....there’s the fact that whether we like it or not, the simple reality is our society is obsessed with sex. We live in a very heavily sexualized world, where its often difficult to completely separate ANYTHING from sexual connotations. Its easier to make just about anything ABOUT sex than it is to make anything that’s remotely sex-adjacent about something OTHER than sex.

Now combine that with the fact that while rape is about power, and taking it from a victim or exerting it over a victim.....rape is INTRINSICALLY connected to sex. True, rape is not sex, its an act of aggression, not a sexual act. There is no way to engage in rape without simultaneously engaging in violence. There is no way for someone to consent to what is inherently by definition a stripping away of consent.

Rape is not sex. But sex is the VEHICLE by which a rapist takes or exerts power SPECIFICALLY. While at the exact same time, a HUGE part of why survivors struggle so much with getting the support they need in recovery.....is because due to how SEXUALIZED rape is in our society, in our media and just our very conversations of it, most rape survivors face the stumbling block of their assault and violation being viewed as more about sex than it was power.

Essentially, even though on the surface even most people ‘know’ that rape isn’t sex and rape is about power.....lots of people fall into the trap of looking at rape and thinking of it as sex gone wrong, or sex someone regrets, or tons of other thoughts that have more to do with sex than rape. Because from a pretty early age, anyone who doesn’t ALREADY have their own view and awareness of rape....has their view of rape then informed pretty much just by how its depicted and presented in media and entertainment. Where its of course heavily filtered through a very sexual lens.

So even while consciously KNOWING that rape isn’t an act of sex but one strictly of violence, entitlement and power....lots of people still have to contend with and push back against a foundation of it being more closely associated with sex in their minds, as the easily visualized IMAGE of what rape LOOKS like on the surface.....than other things it has more in common with once you look at anything OTHER than the visual of it, such as focusing on the motivating factors for rape and WHY rapists do what they do.

Theft, coercion, other crimes and concepts that more accurately reflect a rapist’s desire to TAKE what they were told was not theirs to take or to just degrade or humiliate someone in the most intimate way possible, or to turn a person’s very body into a weapon against them or to injure someone in a way that is meant to be more lasting or permanent in its effect on a person than just inflicting a physical wound.....any and all of these things have far more to do with why rapists rape than a simple desire for sex.

Rapists don’t rape because its the only way for them to have sex, even. Because even when rape is very much attraction based....its STILL not about just wanting to have sex with the person of their focus....its about wanting to have sex with them even despite being told no, or without giving them even the chance to say no. Even when a rapist ONLY targets a person because of their specific physical attraction to that person and their desires/fantasy to have sex with that specific person and not someone else.....the crime itself is still ABOUT stripping that person of their personhood in order to simply act upon them as the OBJECT of their focus/attraction...rather than any kind of a partner in a mutually beneficial or engaged-in act.

But despite all of that.....ask any non-survivor what springs to mind first when they hear the word ‘rape’....and chances are the resulting thoughts are more instinctively geared towards sex than power.

All of this is directly linked to our tendency as a society to view and treat and even talk about rape in terms of it most commonly being sex that got out of control. Despite the fact that no act of rape was EVER going to be an act of sexual partnership......because the very thing that turns something FROM sex INTO rape....is the MOMENT a rapist determines or feels that sex with a person is off the table or simply not what they’re interested in.....because they either don’t have or don’t WANT their victim’s partnership in what happens. They simply want to take. To steal. To use. To abuse.

Without exception.

Honestly, this got a lot more indepth than I was intending to go when I was just riffing off of a thought that popped into my mind about how I just really don’t like the term mindrape.....but a big part of the problem I have with the term is how indepth you basically HAVE to go in order to fully convey just why the term is so.....not a valid comparison to make to rape, with anyone who doesn’t already have an instinctive or reactive understanding of rape that’s more based on what rape TAKES than with how its usually depicted or talked about, where its in terms of what rape LOOKS like.

Because alllll of the above connotations and how important and central they are to any actual examination or discussion of rape....they simply do not carry over into a concept like someone reading your mind without permission.

Again, its not that such a thing wouldn’t be extremely violating IMO. It absolutely would be.

My point is simply that rape is always a violation, but violations are not always rape. SEXUAL violations are rape. But there’s a ton of ways a person or even something like a law or concept or even a freaking BUSINESS contract can be violated. And these aren’t interchangeable.

Are a person’s most intimate thoughts something incredibly personal, something no one should be allowed to take without permission? Sure. Absolutely. But imagine how else such a scenario could take place even in our real world, without needing a concept such as telepathy to make it feasible. Think about anything from someone reading a person’s carefully guarded or hidden diary or journal where they record thoughts they NEVER expect or want someone else to be privy to. Think about someone being tortured to give up information they’d be willing to give up their life to keep secret. Think about a burglar breaking into someone’s home when they’re not there and going through all their most personal belongings, leaving evidence that some stranger has been there and seen and touched all of that and you now don’t feel like you have the ability to keep anything safe and hidden from others, even in the safety and security of your own home.

Are all of these things different kinds of violation, most of which carry a great degree of intensity and personal betrayal or harm?

Absolutely.

But are any of them interchangeable with RAPE?

Or are they a bit easier to separate from from that concept once laid out to this degree, to see as completely separate and distinct things that may have some overlap but not necessarily even in the same ways or places they’re usually viewed as overlapping with rape as a concept?

Since I began this as a fandom related concept, lemme bring that back for a final thought.

Instead of likening other things TO rape, imagine if we did the same thing in reverse, and likened rape TO other things instead.

In terms of even just Batcharacters.....think about how often its been raised as an actual STORY point, that many Bat characters have shown a willingness or even tendency to cross all kinds of ethical boundaries and illegally surveil someone or intrude upon boundaries in the name of ‘the greater good’ or because they feel the ends justify the means.

Now imagine if all of those instances, no matter how large or small a violation....from a simple breaking and entering job to get inside a Rogue’s secret hideout in order to steal the location of their next crime....to putting bugs and cameras into someone’s home without their knowledge or permission and even just being able to spy on them naked or when revealing extremely personal information while thinking there’s no one else around to hear it, regardless of whether or not that’s what the character intends those to be used for or never actually uses them in that way.....

Imagine if all of THOSE violations were considered, viewed and talked about as not just breaches of privacy but as RAPE, specifically....with any relevant Bat-characters thus by extension specifically being rapists for having engaged in such violations.

And then, let’s flip the script back AGAIN, and now look at those instances where characters intrude, surveil, cross boundaries or invade privacies in the name of trying to save people or prevent tragedies or in the name of that always handy alleged ‘greater good.’

Try using that ‘in the name of [...]’ clause in regards to when and why a rapist rapes, and see how......not good that is. Has any of the above EVER been an ACTUAL justification for why someone rapes someone else? COULD it ever be? I know there’s the fuck or die trope and there’s more than a few variations of it in which one hero is forced to essentially rape another one or someone innocent or else the villain will kill them both, or kill the other person, or something like that....but even then, the actual RAPE is still on the villain or person exerting coercion, so no, not even then is rape being done in the name of saving/protecting someone or some supposed greater good. Its still the villain that’s doing the actual violating, that’s making the CHOICE to set up this scenario and limit the hero’s options to either ‘participating’ or signing someone’s death warrant....and just like sex is the vehicle by which rape occurs, the ‘raping’ hero is in this kind of scenario STILL just being used as a proxy by the actual person with the actual intent and desire to violate and assault the other person, and in being used in such a way, and in an inherently sexualized way themself.....it simply makes the ‘raping’ hero still not an actual rapist, but an additional rape victim of the ultimate villain as well.

See how complicated and messy this all gets, and how quickly?

And especially given that it doesn’t ever NEED to get there, in either direction, since there’s plenty of ways to describe varying types and degrees of violation with specificity, without resorting to ‘rounding up’ to refer to them as rape as a shorthand for expressing it was a particularly intimate or sensitive violation - and without losing sight of the fact that violations that result even in the THEFT of sensitive, personal information or secrets.....still only result in things like pieces of INFORMATION being what’s stolen, rather than someone’s entire bodily autonomy and personal agency.

Anyway, in conclusion the point is really just that we come up with the terms we do for specific reasons, and while language and contexts do evolve, grow, and even wholly change over time for a variety of reasons, it is important to take note of when that happens so we can determine if that change SHOULD be happening or if key contexts or connotations are being left out or overlooked in the process or wake of language changing.

And while I kept my point here limited to the example of rape and ‘mind rape,’ it applies to a ton of other stuff and topics as well. This just happened to be the one on my mind at the moment, but this kind of awareness can and should definitely be applied to a lot of other discussions involving sensitive or emotionally charged topics as well.

We come up with specific words and terms with INTENT. The creation of a specific term or phrase almost always involves having seen a NEED for such specificity in the first place, in order to denote key differences between something and other things it might be similar to but not fully described or encompassed by previously existing words or phrases.

Before treating concepts as interchangeable, we should always take care to make sure that they are, in fact, actually interchangeable.

[popculturebuffet]

Green Eggs and Ham: “Train” Review or A Little Better Now (Patreon Review for Emma Fici)

Hello you happy people and all aboard! We’re back on the Green Eggs and Ham Train for a Train themed episode. Train. As you can tell I like trains... admitely I don’t see enough episodes et on them and I don’t buy books or obess on them but I like the idea of a train, the comfort, the use of a mode of travel that was once common but is now simply used on occasion with the dawn of air travel, and it confining our heroes to a smaller space with limited room to move. it’s good stuff. I even tolerae the band train... I mean yes their music is okay at best, but the lyrics.. are wonderfully delightfully insane. Who else would use a garbage bag as a genuine romantic metaphor?

When last we left off things ere a bit ehhhhhhhhhhh: Sam went from delightfully quirky with some issues ot adress to annoying, and Michelle went from kin dof a bitch ot ENTIRELY THAT BITCH. Outside of Guy’s mental breakdown/heatstroke episode involving hallucinations of green eggs and ham, yes that did in fact happen, it wasn’t much to write home about and I worried the series simply had a good PILOT but the series itself wasn’t going to be fun sit through. 

If I was right or I was rilla.. will have to wait till after the cut. But first as always i’d like to thank the person who payed for this episode Emma Fici. Emma is one of my closest friends and one of two patreon patreons. If you’d like a reivew of your choice eveyr month guarnateed, then please hop over to patreon.com/popculturebuffet and back me at the 5 dollar level. You also get access to my exclusive discord where I ocasoinally post about work in progress stuff and tlak to my falns, to pick a short any time I do one and EXCLUSIVE review, as well as helping me hit my stretch goals. So line up, sign up then join me under the cut. 

So we pick up where we left off with Guy hurtling into a lake. Eh I dunno i’ve heard being naked ina  lake is pretty neat. 

All you’d have to do is take off the hat and your there. But Sam saves him wiht the weird train of hats he put at the end of the car for some reason, and our heroes are saved.. but down a vehicle. Oh and Sam’s vehiclular neglgence costs a bunch of fish their home.

And our heroes are without a car and Guys at the end of his rope with Sam.. I mean granted he’s been there since he met the guy but it’s down to like the tiniest thred, not helped by Sam casually stealing his wallet to pay for train tickets depsite Guy , UNDERSTANDABLY, not wanting to hang out with the guy who has stolen with him, gotten him implicate din animal trafficing and dosen’t really respect personal space. Also it’s taken me embarassingly long to remember Micheal Douglas played my boy Hank Pym in the Ant Man and the Wasp films. Seroiusly I don’t know HOW I forgot that, him being aged up and thus unable to do ANY of the things he is constnatly denied credit for in canon (Founding the avengers, being the first ant man.. and the first goliath and the first yellow jacket and the first giant man.. and the only doctor pym...).. but instead the film kept his troubled nature and ego, but removed the domestic abuse (which is something I will not go into but needless to say the comics version went above and beyond to try and make up for that and redeem himself soley because it was the right hting to do) and by making im older still gav ehim a roll as Scott’s mentor. What i’m getting at is I freaking love Hank Pym and I could’ve been making hank pym jokes for several episdoes now. That’s a mistake I itned to recitfy.. right away as Guy looses his suitcase as a result of it and whie he lcaims not to be bothered his voice says otherwise. Eh i’m sure the world can wait for ultron Guy. 

So anyway, Guy reluctantly agrees to the train travel idea and being parked across from Sam on the grounds he has no real other options. Meanwhile the BAD GUYZ.. and i’ve also decided to drop spoilers as the series is two years old, most people reading this have probably seen the series, and it makes analysis rough when I have to dance around spoilers. So yeah the BAD GUYZ aren’t villians.. kind of a dickhead on the blue guys part, but not EVIL. They figure out their going by train it’s a whole thing.

ON the train we run into michelle again...

Yeahhh for the first half she’s as inusfferable as she was the last two episodes and it lead me to believie the rest of the series was going to be constant suffering as she’d be in every episode, likely because they DID get Diane Keaton for this and you don’t waste Diane Keaton. You just don’t. But while they got their money’s worth in having her on screne wise they just..w asted her for the first 2 and a half episodes: Michelle is a judgemental, unpleasnt suffocating bitch and it’s going to take a lot , even if this episode helped, to make me truly like her as a person. 

Case in point her first two scenes this episode are just.. dragging her daughter past a play place uncarring about her feelings because while I DO get she cares about her child’s saftey and is terrified afte rloosing her husband.. it dosen’t EXCUSE her actions. It dosen’t forgive her locking her daughter up constanlty, not talking to her like a human being and oh yeah PUTTING A FUCKING LOCK ON HER SHE CAN CONTROL.  I mean my god I don’t think they INTENDED for her to come off as abusive as she does, and i’ve seen far worse inteitonally and untietionally, but it’s still not remotely plesant. There is a larger issue baked into that the episode brings about, but we’ll get to that. 

And naturally at breakfast.. she procedes to top herself. ONCE AGAIN she treats guy like trash as guy UNDERSTANDABLY didn’t want to talk to her after her previous layers of bullshit which, just as a refresher, involved insulting his invention constnatly (even if it turned out ot be dangerous she did not know that till the last second) then refusing to help a man BAKING in the desert and mocking him to his face. 

So yeah unsuprisingly instead of you know, APOLOGIZING for that episode or anything else she mocks him again and calls him sad. I just.. I get they were trying to have her come off as a jerk and then slowly develop.. but you can’t overdue the jerk part. It has to be juts the right amount and if it is this much there has to be a commpuance. There is none as far as I can tell because god is a spiteful two faced prick. 

So naturally Sam forces the two parties together, and orders green eggs and ham for everyone, except guy who refuses. We do get a really great bit though as EB turns down the idea and we get a tremendous rant from Micheal Douglas as he talks about how a girl in his clash, veyr likely just him, got a rash from tring new things and you shouldn’t and to watch out for the scarlet beetle he’ll steel your ants and try to conquer your planet and is not a guy in a costume but in fact an actual beetle. EB naturally tries it. 

We get a brief interlude with Snerz that’s funny enough: he outright calls his visotrs flunkies, they enter to the song money, and his minon throws dollar bills at their feet. I imagine this is what visitng Mar a Largo is like. They turn up his noses until he mentions getting a chickarffe for his animal crutelty wall. And i’m torn about Snerz. On one hand he can be generally entertaining in his dickery.. but ont he other I do question why he’s in EVERY episode. We don’t NEED him in eveyr one and I feel he’s only in them because Eddie Izzard was expensive so they had to get him as a regular to justify the cost. We really DONT’ need this scene funny as it is and it adds nothing so far. Maybe i’m wrong and these guys end up being important. I don’t know. 

So yeah so far this episode was miserable getting through and I expected it to be another long sit... I was wrong. The second half.. is really damn good and reminded me why I liked this series so much. No really. We get two stories,both really good following one half of each pair teaming up. As for why their split Guy is annoyed with Sam, as well as dosen’t want him letting the chickaraffe out because you know lots of people dosen’t want ot go to jail and leaves to find a quiet place to work on watching paint dry while Michelle tucks a sleeping EB in, her first really truly humanizing moment, which should NOT have taken three episodes but hey, i’ll take it, and goes to find the same.

So starting with Sam and EB, naturally Sam takes all of a minute to let his buddy out and it gets loose on top of the train. EB hears the familiar sound and gives chase and the two meet properly. After Sam covers for his buddy and realizes the creature is asleep in his car safe now, he properly talks to EB and we get a truly magical sequnece: The two talk with Sam whoelheartdly supporting her free spirit and finally giving the girl what she badly needed: someone who treated her not as something to be tied down but you know.. a child who just wants some expression and as she literally lets her hair down, It’s truly adorable and it just has a magical quanitity as they enjoy the beautiful view from the train top. 

Granted this takes at urn later when EB brings up her mom, and Sam.. supports her mom, pointing out she’s just looking out for her.. which she is but in a deeply unehalthy way and I don’t like the show just.. brushing over Michelle’s terrible actions because “she’s her mom”. But it’s also hard to tell if they are: Sam’s mom left him as we’ll find out, so he likely colors his memories of her rosey and simply envys EB still HAVING hers. It’s not BAD stuff but I don’t like a work saying “You should love your family just beacause your related”. Instead of because they lovea nd support you and if they dont’ love you or treat you remotely well or don’t give an ass about you fuck them. Thankfully I DO love my family and have no issues with them, my immediate family at least, but i’ve had friens with downright abusive or neglectful parents. It’s not that black and white. Ducktales also hammered in the family theme but was transparent in how it can me messy, harm each other and that it took true love and consideratoin for it to work at it’s core. 

It’s still not a terrible scene and what comes next is neat as earlier it was shown the train has loops, because Seussworld, and now that’s a problem because their on top of it. Michelle’s jail braclet thing ends up coming in handy the first loop, as while she can’t unstick it means she and sam can suririvie it. They do get it loose, turns out the password was indeed password, because of course, and they end up narrowly suriving a roller coaster bit of track, with the help of MR. Jenkins who I can finally name because EB names her in the next scene. Understanding her need for a pet, Sam deputizes her, and gets her back in bed in time for the next plot. 

Speaking of which winding back a bit as these two go back and forth, Guy goes through two rather hilarious cars: First a bath car that has a bubsby berkely style water number and then a model train car.. with the train on the track showing guy watching guy watchin gthe train etc. 

It’s great. Guy ends up finding the quiet car.. and Michelle. And in her first scene of acting like a human being and not if julie powers was a soccer mom, Michelle, while standosfish as usual, not only unites with guy to shush a loud guy in the car, but is genuinely apricative when Guy helps her get her place back, she was doing some literal bean counting. 

The two genuinely hit it off, first with some adorable silent bits and then by talking, with Michelle appreciating his now safer job and warming up to him. Keaton and Douglas have GENUINE chemestry and it annoys me itt took the series this long to use that instead of wasting Diane Keaton on being 

It’s really great stuff and i’m actually rooting for the two.. once she gets her shit together obviously. Guy does make the mistake of lying abotu knowing about the chikcaraffe.

This ends up being bad as he finds out EB knows the next day and after she leaves the car RIGHTFULLY tears the fuck into same for getting him accused of crime, stealing from him and now puttin ghim in a precarious situation. While Guy DID lie, he idd so well meaningly and trying to impress someone whose ineherntly judgmeental. Douglas also does REALY well in the scene, calling sam out but it dosen’t feel cruel.. it’s justified. While guy is miserable and does need to work on himself.. Sam also needs to work on himself and is putting guy in serious danger just by forcing him into his animal smuggling scheme. 

So Guy leaves.. and naturally given the unvierse hate shim runs into the BAD GUYZ, who aren’t much better. No really they refuse to belieive guy might be innocent, use excessive force on everyone. They have better GOALS than sam but I woudln’t really call them good people. Smash to black and we’re out. 

Final Thoughts:  This one was better. As I said the first half or rather third drags slightly but once we get to the two seperate plotlines it’s REALLY damn good stuff and reminded me what the series was capable of in character in creativity. Hopefully it keeps this up

Next Time on the Blog: We return to mewni for the penultimate chapter of season 3 as Moon and Eclipsa have some fundemtnal disgareemnts on how to handle Meteora that wind up costing both dearly. 

See you at the next rainbow

[piracytheorist]

I... started replying to these questions and only near the end did I realize that @spellcasterdouxie tagged me in their similar post, but not (directly) for me to answer these questions. But they did leave the tag open and by the time I realized it I had answered almost all the questions, so I’m going through with it, lol XD

rules: answer the questions and then tag 10+ other creators to answer the questions!

first creation and most recent creation of 2020: My first one is also my very first Grim Fandango ficlet titled Have You Forgotten Yours?, which I wrote pretty much after finishing the game at the beginning of the year. My most recent one is this Captain Amelia gifset :)

one of your favourite creations from 2020: I think I’ll go with this gifset and meta of that Douxie and Merlin scene. Making the gifset and writing the meta made me pretty emotional, and it meant so freaking much to me that tenyai replied to it too.

a creation you’re really proud of: Full context aside, this one from Gordo and Trudy doing the frickle frackle was a pain to make because the scene was not only super dark, it was also chokeful of noise, so with the content I had I’m quite happy with how I managed to make it look.

a new style you tried this year and a gifset that uses it: I don’t use greyscale a lot and I have used it before, but I am pretty happy with this one of Gordo having an angsty shower but this time in B&W, and totally because of the style and not what the gifset shows, of course, why would you think otherwise my good sir

your favourite colouring: I don’t do much colouring in my gifsets, I mostly fix brightness, contrast and the colour tone, so the difference is rarely discernible unless you compare the gif with the original. But this gifset of Detective Rogers was interesting to toy with :D (also how was it that I made it in APRIL it feels like I made it a year ago and tbh that feeling isn’t surprising with this year is it)

a creation that took you forever: Definitely my Douxie’s leitmotif video. I had to rewatch the whole show looking out for his leitmotif (and I still missed one or two moments, shame on me lol), then transcribe all of its appearances into sheet music, then edit the whole thing, scenes and sheet music, together. I don’t remember exactly but I’m pretty sure that organizing the whole thing took like, a week, until the video was ready. And then youtube took it down because of copyright and I had to downgrade its size so that I could upload it to vimeo, lol. It didn’t get a lot of popularity but I didn’t really expect it to, it was a bit too technical and was mostly made for my own entertainment.

your creation from 2020 that received the most notes: My gifset of Douxie and Claire high-fiving!

a creation you think deserved more notes: This one and like, I’m not one to beg for notes or complain but it was surprising it got so few notes considering a) it’s from a scene not many people have made a gifset from, b) said scene has great comedic timing and like, why not and c) pretty much every other Douxie gifset I made got more than 200 notes so this one stands out. Again, not complaining, it was just weird why this specific gifset flopped (in comparison to my other Douxie gifsets), lol.

a creation with a favorite scene/quote: Oh, fuzzbuckets!

a new fandom you joined and a creation you made for it: The Douxie fandom (I haven’t watched the other ToA shows so I don’t consider myself a part of the whole series fandom), and here’s the very first gifset I made of him!

a creation you made that breaks your heart: Oh that’s definitely this gifset of Douxie in that scene with Charlemagne and the staff. I can’t even. My boy T_T

a ‘simple’ creation that you really love: This gifset of Douxie throwing some “Magic fire!” in a BoOksToRe because while it was quite simple to colour it and stuff, I really really enjoyed how well-timed the gifs are.

a creation that was inspired by another one: I guess the “[Character] + TV Tropes” is a common theme for gifsets and stuff here, so this one I made of Douxie + TV Tropes is probably fitting for this question :D

a favourite creation created by someone else: One??? Uh... This Grim Fandango fanart (skeleton alert)

some of your favourite content creators from the year: @carpedzem, @valentimmy, @dahliycia, @inhonoredglory, @spellcasterdouxie, @a-s-levynn​ and @nikibogwater​​.

and for good measure, another couple more creations of yours that you love: 1) Silver from Treasure Planet with the pirate flag waving behind him, 2) Gordo and Trudy having a quiet moment and giving the sweetest faces to each other what do you mean it didn’t end there, 3) Douxie fighting with Morgana 4) Douxie hating those twits, 5) Douxie being 919 and not knowing how to read (Ancient Draconic) and 6) Colin characters wearing Among Us hats.

I’m bad at tagging people so if you want to do it, or if you do the same mistake I did XD do it and tag me :D

.... And then I clicked “Save draft” again instead of “Post”. That’s why this comes like three days later XD

[thatonealise]

On Worlds.

We inhabit them. We've christened ours Earth, but there are some who call Middle-Earth their home. I've heard many dashing tales from the Borderlands, and on all too many occasions guested in Azeroth. All these faraway lands are unique in their own right, sporting flora and fauna so diverse it really does make one wonder how such things came to be, whether out of nothing, or out of the wilds of human imagination.

I've always been under the impression that it would take a person too much blood, sweat and tears to fashion one. But here I stand, alone, and I need a place to set my latest overambitious and never-ending enterprise. It's a habit I'd always detested deep down, but came to respect over time, and now I say it is the prospect of making something grand, chipping away at it day and again, that gives me one more reason (among many, mind you) to get up early in the morning, and wonder what aspect of it am I going to work on next.

So it is, that I've been pondering on the sort of a world I would want you, the Player, to quench your wanderlust, and perhaps take your subconscious somewhere it has never travelled.

My research -- that hunt for inspiration, artistically speaking -- took me to media I have and have never ever witnessed, or heard, or read, or seen. I've browsed art, played this game and that; I've watched film and series, and I've brushed the dust off some of my forlorn literature. I've even dared to show up in the local library for once in an embarrassingly long (by a reader's standards) while, and borrow a "manuscript" or two I thought had a few interesting ideas. But, I have to admit, Stack Exchange remains my personal favourite. There are so many great minds there, with an equal knack for world-building, and even more thought-provoking questions granted inspiring answers. I can't recommend it enough.

On to the point, though, and it is that I've compiled a list of "archetypes" to take into consideration building my own world:

Earth-likes

What a surprise, huh? I believe it to be the most widespread archetype, and it is rather self-explanatory. An Earth-like world is more often than not a carbon copy of the blue planet (or our rather milky galaxy), with oceans and continents shuffled a notch to dodge the cosmic copyright, so to speak. It is again most common, and for a good reason: we know plenty about the science that keeps such worlds (and, by extension, our own) spinning, and the life living the way it does. It is a solid point of reference, backed with facts and studies so easy to look up on the web, or anywhere bookish, and it is always oh so tempting to use.

A few notorious examples taken from modern authors include...

...a continent under the influence of Celtic and Germanic myths; known as Middle-Earth of J. R. R. Tolkien.

...the super-continent of Stillness by Nora K. Jemisin.

...the Present World, to some extent a mirror of ours, and found in Kentaro Miura's Berserk.

...or the unforgiving deserts of Arrakis, credited to Frank Herbert.

...or Faerun, the iconic setting of Forgotten Realms.

...or even the Journey, courtesy of thatgamecompany, and the dunes one has to slide down rushing to the mountain's peak.

If at least two of the above ring a bell, you may have an idea of what brings all these worlds together, and by extension, what I think constitutes an Earth-like world. If not, then let me illustrate my point instead:

Go on, draw a comparison! It wouldn't take a particularly perceptive eye to notice that even a seemingly outlandish example, the desert planet of Arrakis, shines features not too unlike those we may find here on Earth, albeit "turned up to eleven," for the lack of a better expression. They are planets filled with oceans, and continents in between the oceans, most of them, and in general they follow the same rules we follow in our universe: desert storms rise as the wind blows, plates collide to erect mountains, and sentient life is soon to usher in an age of civilisation. Physics and passage of time progress the world as you would expect them to.

Naturally, there will be a degree of variation between Earth-likes. George Martin's Westeros, for one, is an otherwise conventional continent subject to unconventional seasons, some so abnormal they shape entire cultures -- consider the Long Night, for instance, and the impact it had on the Westerosi folklore.

Let's touch on Arrakis again: it is too an Earth-like world at the core, that suffered from a speculated misfortune of a near-miss encounter with a comet, and what once might have been an arid and bountiful world has now been left a scorching desert inhabited by massive sandworms that have evolved to swim through the sands as though they were oceans, and gobble up the teeny-tiny human wanderers crossing their "soil." A few similar worlds come to mind: Kharak, just as extreme and featured in the Homeworld series, and the much more famous Tatooine, the brainchild of George Lucas.

This big quirk -- extreme weather, unpredictable seasons, or morphed geology, or fictional species -- I prefer to dub "the Twist." It is something, a phenomenon or fact of life, that sets this world apart from ours -- something you can use to suggest that the world at hand is its own, and not Earth put in an alternate reality. Extreme biomes of Arrakis or Kharak, and bizarre seasons of Westeros, are just two examples of the Twist. Magic and magical beings found on Azeroth, or in Faerun, is another.

While the Twist is found in all archetypes, I'm of the opinion that Earth-likes depend on it more than others. Take away the Twist, and you will be left with yet another exoplanet, abiding by the rules we all know and, to be frank, find them too mundane to entertain us, or to leave a lasting memory.

As you'd expect, this was the first archetype I visited and considered for my game. The Twist I wish to feature, to go hand in hand with game mechanics I have devised, is the marriage (or clash, depending on your point of view) of science and magic, and the many ways cultures practicing either-or-both would balance them out, or tip the scales in one's favour if they so desire. I'm also very keen on endangering the Player on their journey, which I want to be perilous, and for it to matter more than the destination. Think of it as a world of vagabonds and gallivants, travelling from one bizarre place to a place twice as otherworldly, and embarking on life-threatening quests.

I've considered several worlds, most notably Kharak -- whose native species, the Kushan, traverse it on trucks and jeeps and other sand-crawling machinery. Cities on that scorched planet exist as only safe havens around, surrounded with lifeless sands, and to make it from one city to another is a dangerous affair indeed. The theme resonated with me quite a bit, but I did not find desert planets a good choice for my game, for many reasons:

It is, as the name suggests, a giant desert. There aren't that many biomes (just two, in fact, if you count largely mechanical cities as one) for the Player to explore, and there is little challenge in generating them on the fly, as opposed to a more varied world.

Throwing in arid biomes we discover in worlds like Middle-Earth or Narnia, or Faerun, felt far too conventional to me, and in my mind there would not be much room for an apocalyptic event so crippling as to make exploring this world nigh fatal.

Even if I dodged the desert altogether and rolled with a different biome or biomes, I'd still have to balance between two problems I doubt are easy to solve: featuring more biodiversity in a fundamentally monolithic environment, or more extremes in an Earth-like world that would not fit in very well.

Banality. Banality was a major concern for me, as there are oh so, so many Earth-likes out there in the industry, and the last thing I wish for my little side project is to offer yet another one. No sir!

Scope was the last but nevertheless just as important. It is difficult to fill up a giant continent, or continentS, with enough quests and points of interest to keep the Player invested. It is hard enough to produce enough scripted content, a la World of Warcraft, and it is harder still to delegate the creative matters to an automaton (Talking about you, Left 4 Dead!). Earth-likes, to my understanding, necessitate imposing scale, that I can not hope to achieve neither alone nor in company.

So I scratched this archetype off my list, and again I went searching every nook and cranny of the game industry and beyond for patterns and clues to make into archetype...

Otherlands

Perhaps not the best title to describe a world so otherworldly as to defy all laws native to our universe, but I nonetheless thought it described what I had in mind for such worlds best. Exotics, Otherlands, Alternate Realities, you name it: they spit on the natural laws we've always known, and turn what we consider to be natural upside down, from a relative point of view (I'd image they'd think we earthlings bend their ideas of what is natural, vice versa). They more often than not have so little in common with a conventional; continental world, that as a Player, you ought to be born anew, in a sense, as you have to come to terms with the new reality, and learn the rules alien to your human brain-box.

While not so abundant in fiction or film, there is an unexpected plethora of otherworldly examples found in video games. I suspect, as little more than a humble writer and not at all a qualified game designer, that the blame (the reason, rather) is at least in part to be pinned on the freedom of mechanics worlds detached from all physical boundaries allow. You're no longer on Earth; seldom even in our universe, and more often in a dimension forged by game designers to fulfill a very blunt purpose: to serve the gameplay, in full. I'd imagine it is times easier to set a game built on mechanics hostile to laws of physics somewhere abstract; mallable, in a way, to the designer's whim.

Thinking of examples took me to these fine pieces of digital entertainment:

William Chyr's Manifold Garden is, to me, a quintessential Otherland. It is set in an abstract world wrapping on itself, juxtaposing impossible geometry against Euclidean space. About the only link to our reality it maintains is the presence of gravity. Look up and down, try interacting with the objects or solving the puzzles, and you will very soon understand this is NOT the realm accomodative of your earthly instincts.

Alice: Madness Returns, too, features an Otherland (not Otherlands, fellow Alice fans!), a level set among the clouds, far above in the sky -- none other than Cardbridge! Playing cards dwell there, and glide along the windy streams to form marvellous paper castles in the sky, and bridges, and gates for Alice to cross on her way to the evil (is she really?) Queen's heartful (quite literally) domain. Like in Manifold Garden, physics still permeates this world, but the only "actor" it appears to affect is Alice herself. All that surrounds her, on the other hand, behaves in a way we would think odd.

Oddly enough, Valve's Ricochet is one more example of an Otherland, the way I see it. It's set in a pitch black void, a pocket dimension of a sort, and constricts its gunslinging inhabitants to a small archipelago of quasi-futuristic-looking platforms. It is in many ways abstract and disconnected from what we would brand a "real" world; akin more to a simulation than something even an advanced civilisation would be able to orchestrate in the vacuum of deep space. It instead serves a solitary purpose: to be an open and clear arena for the Players to pull off dextereous ricochets and physics-bending leaps from one spot to the next. There are no other earthly rules to govern this world, and beyond the dark arena is the thrice as dark abyss.

Of course, by this logic, one could consider more abstract games along the lines of Tetris Effect or even Pinball Dreams, to also fit under the same umbrella of otherworldness, and I reckon they would be right. Both games take place in places foreign to our expectation for a, dare I say, traditional setting. This is not to say, oh no, that Otherlands belong to just the games -- far from it! Otherlands are to be found in many other media.

Off the top of my head, I'd count that one scene from the cult-classic 2001: A Space Odyssey, as a "classic" Otherland in a mind-boggling nutshell:

The message I'm trying to convey, if not clear, is that Otherlands are very stubborn, and insistent on breaking you as an earthly thinker; to augment your mind and let it comprehend and utilise the new reality and the rules it enforces, like one would use the laws of our universe. "When in Rome," is the mantra they will have you etch into memory, until you think and interact with it as though you had never known another home.

The entire world, in other words, is one big Twist, standing in stark contrast to the little twists applied here and there to an Earth-like dimension. Furthermore, one could even assert that the Twist in an Otherland is turned on its head -- whereas in an Earth-like Twists were other-landish phenomena many in number but little in scope -- the Twists in an Otherland are instead few and far between, and grounded in reality. They are the links linking an Otherland to the Earth-like law. Say, physics would be very much expected in an Earth-like world, but treated as an exotic Twist in an Otherland.

To be a little more precise, an Otherland does not bother to stay true to the mechanics we think mundane and natural. It instead moulds or kills them outright, and throws itself at the mercy of the designer's wants and wishes.

Otherlands were an option, but not the option, that I'd choose for my world. I cherish the freedom they bestow upon you as a designer, but it alone did not convince me to opt for this archetype. Simply put, the downs outweighed the ups:

The world I wish to create will host fantasy far too Tolkien-esque to distance so much from Earth and earthly law. There is, in my view, a strong pull among many dungeon-crawling aficionados towards fantasy, and fantasy I will deliver. My own strain of fantasy, to be clear, but it will nevertheless mandate a degree of reality deemed by me too Earth-like to belong in an Otherland. I just can not see, at this time, a world of fantasy that is also an Otherland, not if I want my world to radiate welcoming familiarity.

This game being an open-ended RPG, it is difficult for me to envision it in an abstract environment. It calls, as I see it, for landmarks sensible to someone never ever "tainted" by the quirks of Otherlands, familiar and homely in a way, based in laws of physics and around points of interest grounded in our reality. Elevating it to be the Twist of an Otherland, brings the latter much closer to an Earth-like, but not quite. Neither this nor that, if you will, and that in turn leads me to the next and last archetype...

Near-Earths

Should you ever run into the same predicament as yours truly did in the paragraph above, I'd strongly advise you to consider Near-Earths. Not entirely Earth-like, but also too Earth-like to fit as an Otherland, a Near-Earth world is based to some considerable extent in the laws and traits of an Earth-like. It takes the best of both worlds -- mind-boggling Twists of an Otherland and experiential familiarity of an Earth-like -- and mixes them up to shape up something in-between.

Near-Earth remains ultimately an extension of an Earth-like world at its core, but to set itself apart it puts an emphasis on large-scale Twists -- that would be considered too outlandish for an Earth-like. One popular trope among Near-Earths is to feature earthly topology, strewn around the universe in the form of isles or even whole continents. Fundamental laws that define an Earth-like it bends to a fictional degree, but preserves the essentials, such as planets or stars or faimiliar dimensions, that make up our universe. Thus the link between our universe and that lives on, and it's easy for a newcomer to the world to find their way around with little to no hand-holding required.

I can't help but conjure up a few shots from Treasure Planet, which I gather needs no introduction, to illustrate my line of thought. Take one of the more iconic stills from this flawed masterpiece, R.L.S. Legacy docked at the spaceport of Crescentia:

It is in many ways familiar, I think, to anyone who has ever been to any run-of-the-mill harbour, except that ginormous frigate appears to stay suspended mid-air, not even ropes to hold it in place, and not at all swaying side to side on the high seas as one would assume. No, in this universe carpenters and shipwrigts build 18th century vessels propelled by internal combustion engines to fly through the breathable expanse that they call Ethereum. Indeed, there it is possible to breathe in space, so long as one stays careful not to lean too much on the taffrail and fall into the Ethereum proper, doomed forever to be a cosmic castaway.

Treasure Planet is very representative of a Near-Earth world, as I reckon the aforementioned scene proves. While grounded in culture and (partly) science of our universe, it strays a lot from what our scientists would deem feasible, to the point that it is fundamentally different from our universe in some respect, such as there existing a breatheable atmosphere everywhere in their universe, but not so fundamental as to defy every law of science we know in our world. Physics, and planets, and other celestial bodies and phenomena still exist there, albeit altered in a variety of ways.

Another such example would the High Wilderness, that we're told to travel aboard a literal locomotive, in the brilliant game and one of my many favourites -- Sunless Skies:

It, too, features all the same biomes and structures and many laws with a basis in our universe, and like Treasure Planet, it introduces a major twist: the space beyond the confines of Earth (which does exist in Sunless Skies, and generally follows our history with significant deviations perpetrated by Masters of the Bazaar) is an intricate maze of seldom interlocked and often overlapping topology, stacked on top of one another, and filled with an atmosphere reminiscent of Ethereum, breathable but named a different name.

It is still familiar enough to us as earthlings, and it would not take a seasoned Otherlander to pick the thing up and know the rules of play by instinct. Sure, we are driving a locomotive through time and space, and pass by living stars that govern all, called the Judgements, but the spaces we traverse and people we meet and phenomena we witness are not confusing in the slightest. Shrouded in mystery, maybe, but ultimately sensisble if given enough thought. There is not another dimension for us to consider, and impossible geometry wrapping on itself to comprehend, as seen in Manifold Garden. Nay.

On the Judgements, as a side note, I've found them to be an interesting twist in and of themselves: they are intended to be the law-makers that decide what is real in this world, and what is not. Kill, or posses them, and the world will return to a chaotic state, easily a contender for the quintessential Otherland.

One last sample for you to taste would be the city-state of Sigil, the center of all planes in the planar world of Planescape (pardon the tautology!). Also an earthly world in many ways, it departs from tradition by dabbling in the ideas of interplanar travel, and whole planes of existence drifting from place to place depending on the belief of its denizens. Name me a single spiral-shaped medieval town suspended miles in the air:

I hope my criteria is now clear, or clear-er, better still if as a day. A Near-Earth has some of its fundamental laws thrown away, or meddled with, but there is always at least some foundation identical to that of an Earth-like.

Enter the Wild

In the end, I had a choice to make; a choice of three options, all of which bore pros and posed cons. Weighing all of them took me several restless nights, about a week in total, and some creative encouragement from a colleague, who suggested I turn to Sunless Skies-esque worlds for inspiration: islands floating in the sky, nurturing islanders and their peculiar settlements. I fell in love with the idea in a heartbeat, and on and on I went searching for references. It implied to me a Near-Earth, and all the marks of distinguishment I outlined before for other archetypes pointed to Near-Earths as the perfect fit for my world.

I settled for a few points of reference, among them...

Variably-sized islands and quasi-continents of Dragon Hungers, complete with pocket cultures and hosts of creatures that dwell there:

"Outdated" and outlandish means of transportation between the islands, like airships or fire-breathing dragons, a la Sunless Skies:

Celestial bodies of Treasure Planet, like black holes or nebulas, making an appearance, though toned down a bit to ditch some of their more destructive and lethal properties. A black hole wouldn't spaghettify you in the blink of an eye, but falling into one will nonetheless bring a swift (albeit not quite so fast and unavoidable) end to your career:

What they amounted to, ultimately, is an amalgamation of varied islands, some as big as a continent, others as small as my balcony, and all sporting ecosystems never-before-seen on most other islands. They are suspended in the sky, fortunate to have a man-friendly atmosphere, with a devilish twist I'd rather keep a secret for the time being.

Wannabe heroes make their living sailing through this sky aboard mighty airships or fire-breathing dragons (among many other means of transportation), from one island and on to the next, undertaking quests and accepting commissions from the locals to earn themselves some sustenance. It's a floating world of vagabonds, gallivanters, and legends-in-the-making.

OR! Those same gallivanters may find a particular island, or spot upon on the island, very tempting to settle on. Indeed, if they so desire, players would be able to adopt a sedentary lifestyle, and see what the wilds beyond the comfort of their heart might bring one treacherously blissful morning...

Us locals have entitled this universe the Wild. Enter at your own risk, traveller, for you may never return. This theme seemed to me like a good middle-ground between all the problems I've outlined reviewing archetypes:

Scope was confined to the typical bounds of an island. Some are bigger than others, no doubt, but all of them are a far cry from the usual dimensions of a continent. A narrow scope, as such, is a scope amiable to developers limited in number, or readiness to tackle an enormous landmass.

Narrowed scope in turn shortens the distance one must travel to leave one point of interest for another. We're feeding two birds with one scone -- there is no need for us, as developers, to fill up the lands betwixt with something for you to do, and you won't have to drag yourself through an overstretchesd piece of half-arsed (pardon my French) filler to finally reach the objective that caught your eye in the first place.

At last, as my colleague pointed out, islands in space are capital. Done before to be sure, that road has been travelled many times (and so were most others), but it is still the Earth-likes that proudly keep at the victorious spree as the dominant archetype among the developers. A Near-Earth to me felt like a fair and much-wanted change of scenery, for once in a blue moon.

A floating world shattered into many habitable pieces by far imposes so many more factors upon the cultures, languages, civilisation, technology, and nature of the wild, that to turn it down in favour of an all-too-researched Earth-like world seemed a lazy way out the massive creative problem, I think, many people of letters and pencil and other trades would be thrilled to approach.

P.S. I do realise all my scribbled judgements are arbitrary, and the lines separating Near-Earth from Earth-likes, from Otherlands, is apparently fine, and entirely subjective. These are little more than my five cents; my five thoughts on the subject, and I personally found grouping these worlds into archetypes a good "bookmark" that I've used and will likely come back to designing my own worlds. Peace.

[writer-and-artist27]

An Unbent Person

Note: Even though I haven’t finished the movie Remaining Sense of Pain from Kara no Kyoukai as a result of my being triggered by the intro, Asagami Fujino has been lingering in my head lately. And since it’s your birthday, @withanina / Aqui, I wanted to revisit her in a way that both honors you as one of my best friends and that helps me process the complex character that Fujinon is.

I just hope I did Fujinon justice with this oneshot. I’m still trying to figure her out, even when she’s one of my best Archers in my Chaldea and I’ve been in a writing slump to the point of defaulting to S&S verse to try to get back something. But we’re still here and I’m rambling, so enough of that. I’ll just insert this song as a theme since Yuki Kaijura also composed Credens Justitiam for Madoka Magica after working with Type: MOON, and let’s go. The lyrics used for the song are taken from lyricstranslate.com. This story canonically takes place, I think, after the aforementioned Remaining Sense of Pain (possibly around Extra Chorus) and S&S 24, before Kannabi.

Happy Birthday, Aqui. Thank you for sticking with all my stories. I hope we’ll keep being friends for years to come.

---------------------

Growing up in Nagareboshi Café meant getting used to what other civilians would call “abnormal behaviors.” Or, maybe the better phrase was simply “not minding things out of the ordinary.” Whether it was the shinobi coming into the café with nothing but a few flicked fingers in my direction to ask for an order or the occasional call for a song by a tired voice from the bar area, I learned very quickly to take things as they were. After all, it was still the Narutoverse — a place where child soldiers were considered “common” of all things. Papa had lived in that very same scenario for years, and now my best friends were growing up in it.

It felt like death was inevitable, no matter where you were in this world, because it was made a “norm.” Ugh.

Thus, the least I could do was not judge and instead be as welcoming as possible. It was all I could do just to provide some levity in a world that couldn’t offer any.

It was with this mindset that I met her.

She could’ve blended into the crowd with her unassuming black and red spider lily-patterned kimono and long purple hair, but once she was gently walking past Mama’s figure in the front of the café and carefully making her way to a table in the corner of the building with her cane, I did my best to not stare. It wasn’t every day that someone came in with a cane in hand, and once she started gently tapping the cane against every object she came across while walking, it automatically clued me in that it was not my business to ask.

Someone with an apparent disability didn’t need extra attention drawn to them unless they needed it for a helping hand. Internally, I was very grateful, though, to see how some clientele and our own café servers stepped out of the way to let the lady slowly maneuver through the crowd with her cane, a few people even quietly moving their chairs out of the way to give her a clear path. It was such a stark contrast to how Vy’s old family at times gave one of my aunts far too much space, simply because of how emotionally stubborn and physically weak she was for reasons I never did understand even after being reborn. Family issues were family issues.

But for a second, my thoughts wandered to how things would have happened for the lady to come in the way she did. Anyone, of course, could use a cane. Everyone had their own reasons. But the cloudiness in her eyes — it said something about her cane usage. Aside from looking straight up at the sun for that direct UV light exposure, possibly impaired vision wasn’t something that just happened unless we were getting into the possibility of genetics, lifestyle choices, and/or eye strain and how eyes related to anime powers. The Sharingan was a notable example of the latter, where Canon Sauce went blind thanks to overusing his Mangekyo after fighting Danzo, and I did not want to think about Obi possibly dealing with the same consequences once his Sharingan activated.

Wait. No no no. I shook my head vigorously, clamping down on the urge to slap my cheeks as punishment. It wasn’t my place to speculate what happened to Nagareboshi Café’s newest customer, even if she was pretty and the empathy in me was screaming to help her. The right thing to do is give distance and let her come to me if she wants to, I mentally knocked my head against a library wall, much to Hisako’s raised eyebrow. Remember that, me.

How about a song to break the ice, then? Hisako suggested, eerily quiet with her arms crossed over her chest. Tomoe Mami’s theme? To stop the library knocking.

Oops. I glanced at the black and white keys underneath my fingertips and nodded to myself. You know, why not?

My Nobody beamed with pride. Much better!

I couldn’t help but agree. There was something about seeing that lady with her walking cane and cloudy red eyes sitting by herself at a table that reminded me of a yellow magical girl. A single yellow-themed, gun-wielding magical girl who went about fighting alone just to ensure some kind of future for herself. It was honestly sad to think about because her wish was “to live” and that was where it had landed her.

But the concept of “loneliness” was not one I could entertain forever. I knew I didn’t want to when I couldn’t unsee the white myself.

Thus, humming the first few lyrics to myself was a good distraction while it lasted. Plus it was a good starter for tapping my foot to get the rhythm before letting my hands play out the rest. The piano crooned softly with my thoughts, echoing the chords I wanted, and for once,  I didn’t mind feeling my chakra start to float from the interaction. It felt like I didn’t have to hold my chakra back. This time, I let the music take me away in the hopes of letting my chakra play out as it should’ve been. Free, empathetic, and open.

The Sage of Six Paths might’ve been happy with the performance. I wanted to think that, at least, when playing the piano at that moment.

Solti ola i Amaliche cantia masa Estia…

E sonti tolda i Emalita cantia mia Distia…

A litia dista Somelite esta dia A ditto i della Filioche mio Solti tola Solti ola i Amaliche cantia masa estia E sonti tolda i Emalita cantia mia distia…

Alita della Maliche sonta dia Mia sonta della I testa mia Testi ola Solti ola…

Solti ola i Amaliche cantia mia Dia, dia...

By the time the last few keys faded into the air, I knew without opening my eyes that someone was sitting next to me on the piano bench. Miyako-bachan’s teachings were close to becoming second-hand nature to a point, but it didn’t stop me from squeaking a little when glancing over to find the very same lady I was thinking of at my right side.

Maybe I was too invested in remembering the first Heroine of Justice…

Even up close, it was obvious my newest visitor had gone through a lot at her age, with the little creases on her cheeks and the occasional white line of scarring crossing along what skin her kimono showed past the collar. Once she wrapped her red shawl tighter around her shoulders, hiding the scars with one hand while clutching the handle of her cane with the other, she slowly blinked in the vague direction of the piano. It took a moment before she went about turning her head towards me. Her gaze was unfocused, but still pointed my way. “Hello,” she said very quietly, her long purple hair brushing her shoulders with the greeting. “Are you the one who played the song just now?”

“Y-Yes,” I replied gently, nodding my head. “I am Hoshino Tomoko, your pianist for the day. Welcome to Nagareboshi Café, um…”

“Asagami,” the lady said, bowing her head in return. Her red eyes blinked again, as if focusing past the clouds in the irises, before she added, “Asagami Fujino,” with a small smile. “It was a beautiful song, Hoshino-san.”

“Thank you, Asagami-san,” I said respectfully in return. “Is there another song you would like me to play for you while you’re here?”

To my surprise, Asagami-san shook her head, her long purple hair swishing against her clothes enough to reflect the café lighting. It took an extra moment for me to realize she was wearing a black ribbon in her hair. “Not a song,” she said, voice all the more quiet in spite of her closeness. “I wanted to ask you something.” She blinked for a moment, her eyes narrowing in my direction in that small interval of time before widening minutely. “What were you thinking of when playing it? It was…” Asagami-san trailed off, turning her head back to looking at her lap as she gripped her cane. “It felt different. I never heard such a song like yours before.”

Oh. Uh. Just in case, I turned to the other person in the room. Hisako?

It didn’t even take a second for my Nobody to answer. Reliable as always. Yes, dear?

Chakra or no chakra explanation?

Hm. Hisako thoughtfully pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose. Keep it simple. No chakra. Best to not add any confusing elements.

Alrighty. Simple and no chakra it is.

To Asagami-san, I admitted honestly, “I was actually thinking of you.”

Asagami-san raised her head in my direction so quickly, I would’ve thought she’d have given herself whiplash with how her neck turned. Her red eyes were still cloudy-looking, but they seemed to be shining with a newfound light of some sorts now. It felt like she was shocked. “Eh?” With that said, Asagami-san then lowered her head, no longer gazing in my direction but still exuding that same aura of surprise. “…Me?”

“Yes,” I continued, in spite of the growing blush no thanks to anxiety and embarrassment. “I-It looked like today is your first day here, so I just wanted to play something that made you feel welcomed—”

“No one has ever done that for me before,” Asagami-san interrupted, her voice one octave louder than before. Her knuckles were turning white against her already pale skin as she gripped her cane. “Not after…” She inhaled one long deep breath. “It was not painful.”

I took a deep breath too. “I didn’t mean for it to be,” I said softly.

Asagami-san gave me a small smile past the shoulder of her red shawl. “You seem to be a kind person, Hoshino-san.”

“I try to be, every day,” I said, doing my best to keep my voice from wobbling. This conversation was definitely starting to hit something heavy, and for once, it felt like I was doing something right and stepping into territory I couldn’t exactly parse out on my own. After all, it wasn’t every day a grown woman was relying on a teenager of all people. But the situation was happening, and there was no stopping it. “It’s what I was taught to do, and I want to keep doing it.” For the people I care for, for the people I lost, for myself, was left unsaid. “Everyone deserves a chance to feel safe and be themselves. I just help make the space for that, without pain and with as much kindness I can muster.”

Asagami-san said nothing for a while after that, merely tapping her cane against the pedals of the piano for a small moment. I did my best not to wince when one such tap happened on my foot, but by then, it seemed like Asagami-san was in her own thoughts. My bit of pain didn’t matter. Right now, something was up.

Did I say something wrong?

“…You can see,” Asagami-san said finally, her voice a bare wisp in the air, “life even without pain?”

As expected from a moment of silence — it sounded and felt like a loaded question. Still, I lifted my hands from the piano keys to place them into my lap, taking a breath to formulate my answer. There was no way I could leave this standing. “Maybe. Maybe not. I just know that life is full of many things, Asagami-san. Pain can be a part of it, but that’s not all there is to it. There’s the trees outside, the bright blue sky, the warm air, the food in the café, and the people that live here.” With the warmest smile I could make, I turned to her, even if a part of me could guess she wouldn’t fully see it. “It’s because of what happens in this life that I got to meet you, right?”

Asagami-san looked up in my direction again. Her red eyes were wider than before, letting in enough light to expose my reflection in the cloudy irises before the first visages of tears dotted the edges. “You…” her bottom lip quivered. “How can you say that, Hoshino-san? I-I…” Asagami-san shook her head vigorously, enough to jostle the black ribbon in her hair, making it crooked. “I’m not—”

Maybe I shouldn’t have shared. Maybe I was going too far, considering we were in the middle of the café and the privacy seals weren’t turned on and I needed to turn them on. But the words were leaving my lips before I could stop them, interrupting whatever thought Asagami-san was about to voice. “You’re fine, Asagami-san. I just wanted to play the song for you because I’ve been hurt before, and I don’t want anyone else to feel the same way when there’s so much more in the world to discover and enjoy.”

Asagami-san’s shoulders shook against her shawl, causing the red cloth to fall back and expose the barely hidden scars against the black collar of her kimono. “…I thought I couldn’t feel anything outside of pain. Not after Keita-san a-and Shiki-san.” Keita-san? Shiki-san? “But you—”

“I’m sorry if I overwhelmed you,” I said honestly, raising my hand for a moment before lowering it. Even if I was tempted to pat her back as a form of sympathy, from the way Asagami-san was hunching into herself, it wasn’t the best time to intrude on her personal space bubble. I made this bed, and I was going to lie in it even if I wasn’t sure of what was going on. “I put a lot in what I do. But I meant everything I said. And what I felt when I played the piano.”

It was at that very moment I saw a small droplet hit the edge of Asagami-san’s kimono sleeve. Oh. Oh dear. “Wh-why…” there was a dainty sniffle, “why didn’t I meet you sooner? If I knew you before, then—”

Screw it.

I reached over to gently rest my palm against the hand Asagami-san was using to grip her cane. “But you’re here, Asagami-san,” I said, feeling my smile wobble all the more at seeing more droplets fall onto Asagami-san’s kimono, creating dark wet circles in the black cloth. “You’re still here now. And I’m glad that you are.”

Asagami-san shuddered, her shawl barely covering her back with the gesture tilting her center of balance. “I-I feel like crying. It hurts. I-It all hurts. C-Can I… Can I cry?” For a grown woman, I was not expecting the childlike tone of wonder in her voice. “Hoshino-san, can I cry?”

My heart hurt. Something must’ve happened for her to react so much. Even then, I still curled my fingers so that they could brush against Asagami-san’s hand and hopefully relax her grip on her cane. Physical comfort was the least I could give after unearthing something so heavy. “Of course you can. That’s a part of what makes you human, Asagami-san. Crying is a part of what helps all of us be alive.”

The first sob I heard from her then sounded more like a relieved laugh than a cry for help. Even then, Asagami-san shrunk into her seat at the piano bench, purple hair shrouding her face all the while. I simply kept my palm against her knuckles, controlling my own breathing to not cry myself from the shared emotion.

“M-May I—” Asagami-san choked around another sob as her hand relaxed minutely under my grip, “May I come here again, Hoshino-san?”

“Yes,” I said faintly. “Of course. I wouldn’t say ‘no,’ Asagami-san. Feel free to visit Nagareboshi Café whenever you’d like. I’ll be here.”

It felt like a promise I couldn’t turn my back on. I wouldn’t.

---------------------

Long after Asagami-san left from the café closing for the day, I found myself letting go of the breath I was holding. Then a hand gently fell onto my hair.

“You okay, hime?” Papa whispered, patting my head for a moment before pulling me in for a side-hug. “Need anything?”

My lip quivered before I let go of my current inhibitions and wrapped my arms around his waist, converting the side-hug into a full-on hug. The fact that I was getting a faceful of his waist apron didn’t matter. Nor did the smell of what reminded me of day-old soda. No matter what, it was still Papa, and work was done. I could be selfish around him and it was okay. “M-More hugs, please, Papa.”

Papa laughed softly before resting a hand against my back and patting there too. “Alright. You did well, hime.”

“I-I followed your example, daddy,” I whispered back, finding my voice going back to Vy’s for just that moment. “Help others when you have the ability to.”

“And that, hime,” Papa replied wistfully and proudly, “is what makes your heart a good one. Just let me and Mama help you next time. You can’t do everything alone and we’re still here. We’ll play a full concert together when Asagami-san comes back.”

“Aye. Th-That’ll be nice.” If it meant one more wounded person could smile, that was enough for me. I didn’t have to shoulder everything. And one concert could possibly make one more day won from the dirty clutches of war. I’d just have to settle for that.

Maybe next time, Asagami-san could smile without tears in her eyes.

[soyouareandrewdobson]

Alex ze Pirate Mini Review 5: Why I love One Piece and my final verdict

(Warning. Post contains initial geek out about One Piece that is meant to correlate to my opinion on Alex in general)

When I started this series of posts, one thing I asked myself was, how could I sum up my problems with the Sam story while also tackling some general issues with AzP without redundantly repeating major points of my previous posts.

… So I decided instead of giving a straight answer, I would first tell you how I came to fall in love with One Piece.

Around 14+ years ago, I began reading manga, with works such as Ranma 1/2, Pokemon and Dragon Ball being my starting point. You know, the average stuff everyone had read at some point. One Piece, already back then consisting of over 25+ volumes,  was only something a friend started to lend me and I read the first seven volumes, not really quite getting why it was that popular. I did not hate what I read, but there was nothing outright standing out to me the way the story was told that got to me. And then I hit the Arlong arc with volume 8 and onwards. While it was mostly the adventure of Luffy with his crew against Crocodile and his Baroque Corporation that totally sold me on the manga later on, the Arlong arc was what really got my attention. Seeing the character of Nami betray her friends, pieces of worldbuilding that would years later play a role and so much more, made me curious where things were going. Particularly, why Nami would betray Luffy. And when I reached chapter 77 to 81, where I got to read Nami’s backstory, how Arlong killed her adoptive mother in front of her eyes when she was just a little kid and Luffy declaring he was going to help her and her village, I was hooked. This was the first time in my life as a manga reader, I was not just entertained, I was emotionally invested. Because not only was Nami’s backstory genuinely saddening to me, but seeing Luffy determined to help her and the ensuing battles was exciting. Exciting because it truly showed to me, how awesome of a character this goofball with stretching powers really is. Not because he was physically strong, but because he was willing to do all of that for someone just “because” he considers that person a friend. Seeing Luffy not just beat up Arlong, but destroying everything this bastard had build on the suffering of the village and in doing so setting Nami free of the past that haunted her, because he cared for her as a person not in a romantic but platonic manner, was satisfying on so many levels.

 And ever since then Eiichiro Oda proved to me time and time again, even if he hits a bump in the road (seriously, fuck most of the Fishmen Island arc) he knows how to write a world that doesn’t just manage to be cartoonishly entertaining, but also filled with heartfelt moments, where true heroism is not defined just by physical strength, but the willingness of the main characters to help and care for each other and the people they meet across the journey. There are many stories out there where the power of friendship as a virtue, and the virtues it is build on are a theme. But in the world of shonen manga, One Piece for me is still the top.

 And Andrew Dobson’s Alex ze Pirate is the complete antithesis to everything Oda EVER created in One Piece.

 While One Piece has one of the most complex worlds I have ever seen in fiction, with Oda often times setting building stones for future story arcs years in advance (seriously, the thing with Brook and Laboon alone is worth mentioning) , Dobson can’t even bother to properly tell us in what part of the ocean Alex has her adventure or why there is a beaver dog thing walking around a bunch of humans.

 While One Piece has some gorgeous artwork and unique designs with an insane level of cartoonish detail, Dobson has some very generic designs and draws like a 15 year old girl that read Spirou and manga too much and now starts doing scribble artwork.

 While Oda draws chapters for over 20 years now, Dobson could not even bother to finish up the adventure of the crew getting properly together back in 2004, as only one volume was released.

 While One piece tells a story that defines the shonen genre for over a decade, Dobson tells stupid newspaper strip jokes that are not even interconnected much.

 While Oda’s Strawhats are the embodiment of the word nakama, Dobson’s characters only bring the following old saying to mind:

 With friends like this, who needs enemies?

 Bottom line, Alex ze Pirate is absolute garbage as a work of entertainment, particularly in the world of kids entertainment. It was so already long before Dobson wrote the three part story I reviewed in detail, but this story in my opinion was for anyone with a bit of brains the last nail in the coffin. Cause overall, this was likely Dobson’s last chance in his and the eyes of the readers.

 The last chance, because he was going to put all his talent as a writer and artist into this one story to prove his critics wrong; That he could tell an engaging and emotionally fulfilling story in a multi part story, longer than his 15 pagers. But like with everything else I have seen so far, he failed.

 He failed artistically, because damn does this not look even remotely professional compared to other professionally published work or even other silly webcomics like Cludscratcher or Housepets (which I highly recommend you to read).

 He failed as a storywriter, because instead of emotionally engaging and well paced, this shit is rushed, works more on “tell, don’t show” than anything else and really just magnifies the worst aspects of his characters and Dobson’s mean spirited humor in general. Cause this is not a tale where we feel like Sam genuinely has found a family and friends in Alex and her crew. It is the tale of Sam just accepting that he has nothing better going on in his life.

 He failed, because instead of actually putting care, effort and love for his characters and work into this, he likely just wanted to get it out and hope that just because he “put effort” into this more than usual, he would already get praise by default.

 And once this thing was out, all that happened was the following: Even more people realized what kind of hack he is, that this project was not going to be salvaged even if actual stories instead of strip based jokes are told and he misinterpreted the disinterest as reason to just completely give up, instead of trying harder.

 And as a result, even if Dobson still went on to do shitty redesigns and a few more pages for it, Alex ze Pirate soon after ended. Put into everlasting hiatus, where it joins such work as Pilote Candidate or Frank Millers All Star Batman and Robin.

 Dobson, if you ever read this, let me just say it how it is: You failing to make even the most basic story about people appreciating their friends, particularly when within the last decade there has been an entire fandom of manchildren out there that was build on a show with “Friendship is Magic” in the title, just shows how bad of a storyteller and creator you are. You shouldn’t have gone to college in order to become an animator, you should have joined fanfiction.net in order to get some basic understanding on how to even write. Cause your writing is so bad, it makes fanfiction look genuinely complex and thoughtful. Well that and you should perhaps go out and find genuinely friends and not just online supporters that mistake you for some persecuted innocent artist, when in reality you are just a toxic idiot who attempts to manipulate people so he can profit of them and their fleeting interest in his substandard comics based on the lowest common denominator cartoons.

 I wrap this review up. We will revisit Alex one day again, but for now, I just want to focus on something more positive. So within the next weeks, if I post something, I will try to make it focused on something NOT Dobson related. You know, stuff to genuinely enjoy. Till then, I just want to say thank you. Thank you @hypocricyofandrewdobson for reblogging my entries. Thank you to everyone who liked this, reblogged this or started to follow me because of it. I hope I managed to educate and entertain you all in a positive manner, without making myself come off too much like an assholish nerd with too many interests. Stay safe.

 And hey, if any of you has his own two cents on Sam, Alex or the others, even ideas how to make them genuinely better, I am always open.

 See ya.

[deliciouslydebauched]

BIO

{This in particular can help to give an overview of this character for those unfamiliar with the Fable franchise, it's a very simplified list of facts about a fairly (in my opinion) complex character, both a mixture of direct facts and my own character headcanons.

Immortal ex-pirate and theif, as well as the Hero of Skill, Reaver is the leader of all industry in the Kingdom of Albion having founded Reaver Industries. Through using twisted business tactics in his factories such as child labour, severely low wages, and shooting workers who disobey, he has accumulated unfathomable wealth and became an invaluable asset to the Royal Family, even if they do not always agree with his principles. He is one of their closest advisers as although his suggestions may lack sentiment for the people, they always result in a growth in the Royal Treasury funds.  

Narcissistic, egotistical, and displaying a near psychopathic disregard for life, this debauched elite should not be crossed. Although elegance drips from his youthful appearance, finely tailored suits and theatrical persona, Reaver will double cross and use anyone necessary if it benefits his power, financial status or generally entertains him. This can be seen through his 'selective member' parties thrown weekly in which guests observe an unwilling victim battle to their death against brutal creatures, all while dining on whiskey and submitting themselves to whatever lustful pleasures they or their host are in the mood for. Reaver is not immoral, but amoral, seeming to bear no concept of morality. And as the most skilled marksman in the land- the Hero of Skill shan't miss your pretty head if he deems you one fitting of aiming the trigger towards.

Time, loss and greed are a lethal combination. The mortal man that used to exist is long gone, long decayed beyond recognition. All that is left is a soul without a glimmer of light.

"What a weak, despicable man he is. But I am not he. I am Reaver. And I will sleep much better after this chalice of wine.’

-------------------------------- Full Name: Unknown (Goes by Reaver in present time)

Titles: Pirate King, Hero of Skill

Nicknames: Suppressor of the people’, ‘thief’, 'nobhead' and an array of other unpleasant nicknames amongst the peasantry

Age: Roughly 300 years old

Gender: Male

Sexuality: Pansexual  aromantic

Birthplace: Oakvale

Residence: It changes regularly. For many years he travelled the seas on his ship ‘the reaver’, only to then settle into a mansion in Bloodstone which he abandons by the end of Fable 2 to travel to Samarkand. In Fable 3 he has returned to Albion to reside in a mansion in Millfields, which he then again abandons. 

Financial Status: Upper Class (perhaps only beaten in wealth by royalty)

BODY & BASICS

Height: 6’2 

Build: Slim yet toned, although hidden beneath extravagant clothing.

Hair Color: Black

Eye Colour: Brown Scent: Gunpower, expensive colognesTattoos: A small black heart on his left cheekboneScars: None 

Alignment: Chaotic neutral/ lawful evil (depends on the circumstance) 

FACTS AND HEADCANONS (1) Reaver gained his immortality through striking a deal with the Shadow court, but in doing so did not realise the price he would pay was the destruction of his family, fiance, and all other inhabitants of his home town Oakvale. (2) He must provide a yearly sacrifice to the court to maintain this youth. This is something he has quoted to be becoming an increasing 'burden' as time passes. However once he stops fulfilling this action the court's judges will come for him instead. (3) Reaver is not his real name, but a name taken to symbolise his separation from the weak mortal man he perceives himself to have been many years ago. To reave is, "to take away by or as by force; plunder; rob," common practices of a pirate; hence, his name, Reaver. Reave also means to rend, break, or tear; a reflection of Reaver's violent nature. (4) He was known as the 'King of Pirates' for a period in his life long ago due to killing the previous pirate leader in Albion Captain Dread; however this is a part of his past he now hides away. It wouldn't seem appropriate for a 'respectable' business man to be associated with such a thing now would it? The only calling of his past seems to be that most mansions owned by Reaver tend to be situated by the sea, or some form of lake. (5) Being born as the Hero of Skill gives Reaver inhuman powers of accuracy and speed in combat. His preferred weapon is a gun, this was how he captured ships in the past, it is said that he would capture them by shooting the captain from across the water no matter the distance or conditions. The more impossible the shot was, the faster the crew would surrender.' He never goes anywhere without a gun, and his seemingly graceful walking cane in fact sheaths a sharp blade to be pulled out when necessary. (6) Reaver was indeed once a normal man, but his with every passing century the humane aspect of this individual seems to lessen, as if his very emotions are becoming muted. This may account for his lack of remorse, or capability to stay calm in the face of enemies, instead seeming to find those who loathe him most humorous. He also seems genuinely unphased and unconcerned about turns of events, merely making sarcastic remarks or moving on when his plans do not succeed. (7) It is virtually impossible to get Reaver care for you. He only looks out for his own best interests and survival. This can be put down to years of a blackening heart, as well as the eternal burden he carries over destroying his village all those centuries ago. (8) Clothing Styles: Changes throughout the decades. Currently finely tailored suits of blacks, whites or deep purples, usually with real fur lapels. Leather gloves and boots and a holster beneath his jacket to keep his ‘dragonstonper 48’ pistol in. He brings a cane with him most places and he wear tops hats with a steampunk themed pair of goggles wrapped around the top, an accessory to emphasise his position as head of industry in the kingdom along with his style of bow ties/ cravats. Reaver takes great pride in his clothes, dare to dirty them and he’ll likely have you shot. (9) Reaver has severe struggle sleeping due to plaguing flashbacks to the night his home was destroyed. He has never told any other, but this is one large reason he has a deep craving for the 'night time' company of others, ranging from single people to large groups accompanying him in his bed chambers most nights. If this isn't possible, he tends to sit up and write or drink, or go for walks alone. (10) Reaver is known as the 'Hero of Will', but what does that mean you ask? In Fable, Heroes are extraordinary humans with knowledge and the power over the three heroic disciplines of strength (physically), skill (speed and accuracy with ranged weapons), and will (magic). Heroes are not all the same in talents, each one is usually only able to master one of the disciplines, although there are a rare few who can master all as they are descendants of an ancient bloodline of heroes known as the 'Archon's Bloodline'. Reaver is a hero born capable of mastering 'skill', and was needed along with the hero of will, strength and an Archon bloodline member to defeat Lord Lucien, a man who was threatening to destroy the world. Reaver, being Reaver, only agreed to help after several failed attempts to betray the other heroes for his own gain. Not to mention if the world came under the control of Lucien he'd have had difficulty finding sacrifices to keep his immortal youth. So begrudgingly he helped save the world. How nice. (11) Reaver holds no guilt over the killing of the citizens in Oakvale (except for his fiance, that he regrets deeply), he would do it again in a heartbeat. However, he is still only human, and therefore although experiencing no guilt, he is haunted by their deaths in his consciousness, making him experience a vulnerability that is very out of character for him. He can feel the weight of the sin. Unlike people he kills in the present who have wronged him or offended him, the people of Oakvale had done nothing to him personally. They were just people. And although Reaver kills without hesitation, he never kills without reason. Therefore although feeling no regrets over the event, it is something he would prefer to simply forget.

[ashesarrows]

The Girl Who Soared Over Fairyland and Cut the Moon in Two by Catherynne M. Valente- FULL REVIEW

This review is the complete version of its counterpart on GoodReads.

This book really disappointed me. The roughest thing is that it’s right in the middle of the series, so you have to read it if you want to continue. There are bright spots (Ell! Saturday!), and I can sense the incredible book Valente was trying to write, but overall, this was a flop. Would’ve been a DNF if I hadn’t promised myself I’d finish the series. 

So, firstly: I’m a longtime fan of Fairyland, and I commonly list the first book and Valente herself as my favorite book and author. I had no negative preconceptions about the book going in. In fact, I know I have an irrational fear of series, and at first I thought my struggles with this book could be chalked up to that. 

But I loved the second book. It was entertaining, a good follow-up, and a unique new story to explore. When I picked up the third book and only got a chapter in before forgetting about it, I had a lot of excuses—I was burned out. I didn’t like the Blue Wind, and I didn’t want to read about her. I was busy with school.

As it turns out, having picked the book up three years later and finished it this time, none of that was true. This time, I was yearning for more of Fairyland, I quite liked the Blue Wind, and I had ample time to read in. 

It just wasn’t a good book.

I talk about planning/pantsing a lot, and that’s once again relevant. I’ll excerpt from my review of another book:

There are two types of NaNoWriMo writers: the planners, & the pantsers. Planners have an outline ready before they write, and pantsers go "by the seat of their pants"—very few, or even no, plans. Both have pros/cons; here I'll focus on a common pitfall for pantsers.

Almost every Western narrative… follows something akin to the 3-act structure. There is a main conflict which builds to a climax and is then resolved (think Star Wars’s Death Star.) For any good narrative, you need MOTIVATION-GOAL-CONFLICT—and occasionally stakes[.]

This book does not have a conflict.

So where do you find 300+ pages of writing? Just have something happen & see what comes next as a response!

The problem is that this makes an unworkable first draft. Things Happening =/= Satisfying Plot Arc. In editing, you have to take everything you've written and organize it into a plot shape, often cutting things that don't fit. (Planning is the opposite; tons of work upfront/you usually end up UNDERwriting.)

...The most common method of writing on Wattpad is pantsing. 99% of the time, writers write & then post chapters on a set schedule. Can't edit plot structure when you upload one chapter a week.

Now, I knew that Valente was a pantser before I read this book, and that she originally uploaded Fairyland one chapter a week. I was very impressed when I first found out; I don’t recall sensing any of these pitfalls in the two previous books. It is hard to write a book with no editing—it is damn well near impossible. Whether I liked this book or not, the first two are a triumph just for that. Valente has been writing this entire series with both hands tied behind her back and her eyes taped shut, and I have to commend her. Even my feelings of frustration are almost overshadowed by how impressed I am that it took three books for her to fail.

Valente herself acknowledged editing concerns in multiple / interviews. From the latter link:

I remember being at a convention right after it really hit, and somebody in the audience asked, “Well, you realize you can’t go back and change anything, because you’ve already posted it online.” And I said, “Oh, shit.” It had never occurred to me that that was gonna be a problem. I kept a couple weeks ahead of the posting schedule, but again, much like writing The Labyrinth in ten days instead of thirty, I just ran ahead with something without knowing that I couldn’t do it and it worked out incredibly well.

Did it? I feel differently, and this review aims to explain why.

This book lacks plot. Valente is attempting a 3-act structure, which relies heavily on a central conflict. There has to be some big mission; some big goal. First book example: September has to beat the Marquess (goal and conflict) OR ELSE everyone in Fairyland suffers (stakes/motivation). Every moment of the book ties back to this larger goal.

The central conflict of this book appears about halfway through. You know the moon, and the yeti, and splitting things? This comes up over a hundred pages in. September, and the audience, has no idea about any of that for a hundred or so pages, and so for that amount of time, the book is unconscionably boring. 

The beginning of the book sees September afraid she’s too old to go back to Fairyland, which is a great central conflict idea for the one chapter in which it exists. Aha! A book about growing up and the associated trials and tribulations. That’s a fantastic theme, and yet I forgot about it entirely until the end, where it briefly awakens again, after an entire book of Not That At All. More on this later.

For now, the book takes September back to Fairyland, which should be wonderful, but Fairyland seems to have become all exposition and no action. A whole chapter of The Blue Wind lecturing September, for example. This is a character we don’t know, have no reason to be attached to, and are being actively hindered by as she relentlessly slows the plot down. And then September gets talked at by an alligator or something, and then another something something… I don’t remember any of this, because it was not relevant.

This isn’t like Fairyland #1, where September might need to befriend someone to gain access to magic which would help her on her quest. In fact, for this first half of the book, September doesn’t even have agency! Someone hands her a MacGuffin (I refuse to recall its name) in the form of a box, and she Must carry it to some city or other on the moon. Why? Who knows. She just must. And she does. And you’re thinking to yourself, why isn’t September making her own ship and leading revels? We know, as an audience, that she’s more than capable. What on Earth has got her seeming so meek? She even sasses characters, but somehow always ends up doing as they ask.

The book also takes all this time to reach any characters we know and love. The readers want Ell and Saturday! We do not care about a horde of lecturing adults with no connection to a central plot or September! Looking back, I can see how Valente may have been hoping to pull off something similar to Alice in Wonderland, but in Alice nobody speaks for a full page. This is just one example:

direct link

I’m hard pressed to even call this exposition, because it tells us nothing about the world we’re in. It’s just a sermon Valente wants us to hear. And worse, because I’ve read the last two books, I know she can pull this off. It doesn’t have to be this way. Many people said many things in Fairyland #1, and it worked because there was a plot that the speeches were part of. 

(If you just look at the quotes page for this book, you can see how many there are—and how repetitive they get. X is a Y, okay, alright…)

But this sort of thing reached its peak when it almost ruined Saturday. Don’t worry, he’s generally well-written, but when September meets him and he starts lecturing? It’s just awful to read. Suddenly it’s not Saturday talking but Valente speaking through his mouth, giving those sermons again, and it just makes you want to scream.

This made me recall an old writing rule—“never remind me of the author’s existence.” I want to feel as though real people are really saying these things, and when all of them speak identically, it’s really difficult to believe that. I won’t deny Saturday his right to say poignant things, obviously, but in this case due to the volume of lectures, and the proximity of his to the others, and the obvious preachiness of all of them, it really got in the way of my even enjoying the scenes with Saturday. And come on; that is unforgivable.

But there is a plot. There is an, ahem… other MacGuffin. A paw? A yeti’s paw. Something about time. Look, at this point I just wanted to finish the book. The original MacGuffin had become a new one, which would lead them to the third, and all this because at 100 pages in someone said “hey there’s this yeti we really hate around here,” and September went “sounds awful I’ll go hunt him right now.” And of course she can, because she has been DOING NOTHING FOR THE LAST HUNDRED PAGES. What is she going to do, something else? There IS nothing else to do in Fairyland apparently. Again, what this book does to the world & inhabitants of Fairyland is near criminal.

So the plot starts here, and it’s not great—September takes it up because there’s nothing else to do, and of course her friends come along, but (at least to me) it seems obvious that Valente invented the moon’s political situation and the Yeti just to come up with SOMETHING for this book. It never felt convincing that this had really been happening behind the scenes in the other books. On top of that, since we get very little context (despite the lectures!), it feels less like a vital quest and more like September (again) doing something because someone else told her to. We really don’t get any other perspective on the issue until the very end.

But talking about the end will require a spoiler tag, so I’ll avoid it for now. Let’s take a break to talk about how confusing the book was overall. I often didn’t know where the characters were heading or why, or what role a new character played, or even if they were there or not.

After seeing a GR query about this particular issue, I went back and researched it. The character Candlestick allegedly leaves the party on page 189:

Candlestick had not come with them after all, turning up her peacock tail and refusing to speak further with any of the lot of them.

But then shows up in not one but two lines in the next chapter anyway:

The Tyguerrotype, the thirteen bouncing Glasshobs, the quivering houses—and September and Saturday, A-Through-L and Candlestick—had a little thickness, but no more than a thick sheet of paper. (201)

“Did we see what?” called Candlestick. (204)

I understand why Valente wouldn’t want to make major plot edits to the books after posting them, but why didn’t an editor read through this even once? It would have been easy to fix—delete one line, or even just a word. It seems clear through surrounding context, looking back, that Valente intended to leave Candlestick out of these chapters, so why didn’t anyone confirm that for readers?

It’s just not fair to your audience to leave things like this in. It’s not professional. It makes me look down on the publisher, to be quite honest, because they apparently couldn’t take the few months necessary to re-read the draft and offer Valente edits on these bare minimum issues.

So you can understand why I wasn’t sure what was going on most of the time. Especially in the beginning, when multiple characters existed just to lecture, it was hard to get attached to any one addition to the party because I could expect them to be gone without incident or importance within two chapters. 

For example, the Periwig (whose name I refuse to look up) who works with Ell in the library says she has cursed him to stop him from flaming around the books. Yes, Ell is having uncontrollable flaming issues now. As a reader pummeled by random lectures, watching September ferry around MacGuffins, this just felt like an “oh shit we have to come up with a NEW conflict for these characters” ploy, without much thought or logic. And I had no idea what the curse was for over fifty pages, until on page 173 there’s a specific reference to Ell getting smaller after he shoots flame. I’m sure there were more earlier on, but I missed them, and who can blame me after a hundred pages of content that was not relevant to the story.

This plot point is never satisfyingly wrapped up, either. Why did the Periwig think this was a good idea? Could she have undone it? Why did nobody address her about it? And why was it solved the way it was? Nothing made sense.

What’s really frustrating is what could have been. Near the end of the book, I turned to the back cover just to avoid continuing to read, and I looked once again in total bafflement at the two starred reviews of the book pictured there. Booklist’s back cover quote reads as follows:

As usual, Valente enlightens readers with pearly gleams of wisdom about honesty, identity, free will, and growing up. September often worries who she should be and what path she should follow, but the lovely truth, tenderly told, is that it's all up to her.

And, despite having read roughly two hundred pages of this book, it was only once I saw this quote that I understood what Valente was trying to do.

This is a great idea. And there are ELEMENTS of it here, and even elements I quite like. Occasionally, the lectures September hears do in fact correspond to some aspect of this theme (“you become what you are called” is one example of a line I could tell meant something, but needed to be expanded to accomplish anything.) It’s hard, as a reader, to differentiate between lectures addressing a vital theme in the story and lectures that are just talking.

Returning to Ell’s curse, it turns out that [SPOILER] Ell was just flaming for what is essentially dragon puberty, which is a GREAT opportunity to build on this theme! Somehow, though, we don’t get that.. I would have loved to see Ell have to deal with, essentially, a sexual awakening, and that did not happen, and it feels like the cure scene is random and therefore wasted. [END SPOILER]

It doesn’t help that Valente also wastes a scene with FANTASTIC potential where September literally destroys her fate by giving it no prior context, no weight in the plot, no relevance to the conflict, and fifteen tons worth of expositional lecturing to drown in. I want to love these scenes; some of these scenes utilize my favorite tropes! I just can’t get around all the ways Valente is leaving her story out to dry.

Then there’s the clothing September wears, her new designation, Aroostook the car, the attempted blossoming romance between September and Saturday: so many elements which could have made that theme great. It’s like a broken puzzle.

This brings us to the Yeti. I’m just going to go full spoiler, because I’m mad.

[SPOILER]

The Yeti is a reverse twist villain?? Can we stop with this? It’s not interesting & not an engaging surprise & also feels like going “ha ha I fooled you.”

From the moment September set off to beat him, I was wondering—are we really doing this? Based on one random person’s complaint? September has made it very clear that she doesn’t understand the politics of the world she’s inhabiting, and yet: this. Unlike in the first book, where the Marquess’s evil is confirmed by every person she comes across and September ends up fighting her out of personal connection, this just seems like meddling. September has no skin in the game; it’s almost a white savior trope—especially when the history of the Moon parallels colonization!

And then The Gang sees future-Saturday helping the yeti, and instead of thinking “maybe we got this wrong based on one person’s lecture” they think “ah FUCK maybe Saturday is going to be evil” and manufacture totally unnecessary conflict.

But it’s not even that they misunderstood, or that their source was biased; the end result is that the Yeti was seen as evil because he DIDN’T CARE THAT HE WAS. He gives this “none of their business” answer that is fundamentally unsatisfying (and makes no sense—had he explained, THEY WOULD NOT HAVE BOTHERED HIM) because at the end of the day, it means none of September’s actions in Fairyland were necessary. She just showed up and left. Nobody, not even the story, needed her. I guess September and Saturday have now kissed (twice!) which is great for them but not something that makes the whole book worthwhile.

[END SPOILER]

And on top of this, there are typos. I already covered the issue with Candlestick, so here are the others quickly:

 “All of us,” September said gently, and held out her hands. “I know what you said, Miss Candlestick, but however you count it, our fates are stuck together and stitched up good.” She paused for a moment, looking down at her flowing black silks and her own small hands. “Closer than shadows, she finished.” (170)

“If you’re not to tired after your cannonades.” (179)

The full moon rose passed the high barn windows, spilling in like milk. (248)

(First sentence ought to have put the end quotation mark after the word “shadows,” but accidentally places it after September’s dialogue tag. The second sentence should use “too” instead of “to”. The final sentence needs to either say that the moon “rose past the high barn windows” or “passed the high barn windows”, likely the former.)

What gets me is that this last sentence is on the last page. Even if Valente and her editors never flipped through most of the book, surely someone would’ve noticed this? It just drives home how little anyone cared. About Fairyland, of all things!

And then Valente, who DID NOT EDIT THIS BOOK, has the audacity to include lines like these.

September reached inside and took out the red book. It was heavy. A girl’s face graced the cover, finely embossed, but it was turned away, gazing at some unseen thing. Perhaps it was her own face, perhaps not. A miniature version of herself, after all. Was it an answer? Was it everything already written?  “You can’t argue with something that’s written down,” she said, stroking the red locks of hair on the cover. “If the heart of my fate is a book, there’s nothing for it. Once it’s written, it’s done. All those ancient books always say ‘so it is written’ and that means it’s finished and tidied and you can’t say a thing against it.”  Oh, but September, it isn’t so. I ought to know, better than anyone. I have been objective and even-tempered until now, but I cannot let that stand, I simply cannot. Listen, my girl. Just this once I will whisper from far off, like a sigh, like a wind, like a little breeze. So it is written—but so, too, it is crossed out. You can write over it again. You can make notes in the margins. You can cut out the whole page. You can, and you must, edit and rewrite and reshape and pull out the wrong parts like bones and find just the thing and you can forever, forever, write more and more and more, thicker and longer and clearer. Living is a paragraph, constantly rewritten. It is Grown-Up Magic. Children are heartless; their parents hold them still, squirming and shouting, until a heart can get going in their little lawless wilderness. Teenagers crash their hearts into every hard and thrilling thing to see what will give and what will hold. And Grown-Ups, when they are very good, when they are very lucky, and very brave, and their wishes are sharp as scissors, when they are in the fullness of their strength, use their hearts to start their story over again.

(page 184).

Like... all of that, and then she didn’t edit September’s story? I’m appalled.

At this point, you might well say I’m being far too harsh. I understand that. These next five paragraphs are for you.

For the first few months of (re)reading this book, I genuinely felt like I must be a bad reader, or my attention span was gone, or I just didn’t like Valente or her work enough. Looking at all the incredible reviews here, I felt jealous—and frustrated. Why couldn’t I just enjoy this book the way everyone else did? 

Obviously, I never want to dislike a book, but this was one that I almost feel betrayed me. I know there’s a significant amount of entitlement there; Valente doesn’t owe me any stories, let alone good ones. 

At the same time, I made every effort. I owned all the books, was working hard to read a series despite my long-time struggles with them, and, well, I LOVE Valente! I constantly talk about her work! And even someone like me—someone who’s usually a pretty fast reader, loves the series/author in question, and was determined to finish this book—struggled throughout. 

So I’m frustrated that the book made me feel like an idiot. I’m frustrated that, for the apparent crime of being devoted to Valente’s work, I was put through this. This book would be one star if not for the world of Fairyland and the returning cast—if this had not been a Fairyland book, I would not have finished reading it. For that first half, I was bribing myself (with better books) to read one or two pages at a time. Really.

Like I said, it didn’t have to be this way. I know damn well that Valente can do better than this. If Valente had been given the opportunity to edit this draft into a polished book, she could have done it. It’s only because of these restraints that she chose—and she is a grown woman who may choose what she likes—that the book came out this way. It’s genuinely hard to review, because I understand why she wrote the book this way, and I understand why she did not later edit the majority of the text, and I also have the perspective of a disappointed reader. It’s hard to balance all of that.

So two stars it is. I’m a little sad it took so long to review this book, because I was REALLY pumped to review it when I first finished, but I hope that on the contrary letting it sit has allowed me to be more objective and less emotionally upset by it. 

I hope to pick up the fourth book soon, but with the combination of it being unrelated to the main cast and the letdown that this book was, it’ll be a while before I feel up to it. Don’t worry, though, because I will come back to update you as to whether the series overall is worth continuing. I have every hope that it will be.

[ladyherenya]

Books read in December

I set myself some reading goals for the end of the year -- finish any books I’d already started, read the books I'd already borrowed, and to read ebooks I’d bought before buying any more. But I guess most of those books just weren’t the right genre? A few exceptions aside, this month I read a bunch of other things instead.

Also read: The Frost Fair Affair and Holiday Brew by Tansy Rayner Roberts, and Sweetest in the Gale and 40-Love by Olivia Dade.

Reread: Love Lettering by Kate Clayborn and Bookish and the Beast by Ashley Poston.

Total: thirteen novels (including two audiobooks and two rereads), three novellas, and three story/novella collections.

Favourite cover: The cover was what caught my attention for Finding My Voice and Old Baggage.

Still reading: Between Silk and Cyanide by Leo Marks, Or What You Will by Jo Walton and The Disorderly Knights by Dorothy Dunnett.

Next up: A Most Improper Magick by Stephanie Burgis.

*

Queen’s Play by Dorothy Dunnett (narrated by David Monteath): In 1548, Francis Crawford of Lymond arrives in France, incognito in order to protect Scotland’s queen, seven-year-old Mary. I enjoyed this, even though I am not very interested in the antics of the French court and thought The Game of Kings benefitted from having more characters who I found wholly likeable and/or who matter, personally, to Lymond. Dunnett is an impressive storyteller -- vivid descriptions, lively dialogue, nuanced characters and twists that take me by surprise. Moreover, those satisfying puzzle pieces explain the plots and intrigue, give insight into personalities and develop the narrative’s themes (here, the consequences of power). 

The Kinship of Secrets by Eugenia Kim: In 1950, four year old Inja lives with her grandparents and uncle in Seoul, while her sister Miran is in America with their parents. War delays the family’s reunion. This is a fascinating portrayal of two sisters growing up in different countries, and an incredibly poignant story about a family separated. Compelling, and beautifully written, and despite moments of intense grief, hopeful. I liked how, in the end, Inja and Miran didn’t have all the answers.. But I wonder if I’d have found the ending more satisfying if I had a deeper understanding of who they both were as adults.

Teacup Magic series by Tansy Rayner Roberts:

Tea and Sympathetic Magic: Stephanie Burgis recommended this novella as something similar to her Harwood Spellbook series and it certainly has a similar appeal: romantic fantasy, bordering on comedy-of-manners territory. Like Georgette Heyer but with magic and diversity and an intention to challenge problematic and outdated attitudes. Charming and cosy, like a good cup of tea rather than a frothy hot chocolate. Miss Mnemosyne Seaborne, a reluctant guest at a houseparty. She joins forces with the other guests after an unexpected abduction occurs. Entertaining, and even though it was too short for me to really become invested, I immediately wanted to read the sequel.

The Frost Fair Affair: After her previous adventures, Mneme has new friends, a suitor and a campaign: overturning the social conventions which prevent women from travelling by portal. After someone in Town steals her political pamphlets, she gets caught up in a mystery. I enjoyed this oh so much! I found myself caring a lot more about Mneme and her relationships; I liked the mixture of intrigue and danger, and how in the cause of dealing with these, Mneme learns more about the man she hopes to marry; and the Frost Fair, on a frozen river, makes a delightful setting. I'd love to read more.

Belladonna U(niversity) series by Tansy Rayner Roberts:

Unreal Alchemy: Oh, this is my new favourite! Urban fantasy about Australian uni students who are connected to an indie rock band, Fake Geek Girl. These stories are funny, geeky and romantic, with great chapter titles and lots of fandom references. They employ different points of view and different narrative styles in a way that’s really effective. I love the characters and how important and intense their non-romantic relationships are. Between them they have a variety of romantic/sexual relationships and feelings, but friendships and familial relationships, like the one between twin sisters Hebe and Holly, also drive the narrative. The first collection contains four stories/novellas.

Fake Geek Girl -- Ferd moves into the Manic Pixie Dream House; Holly and Sage argue about the future of the band.

Unmagical Boy Story -- Viola has feelings about her best friend losing his magic, transferring colleges and making new friends.

The Bromancers --  The band and frriends spend a weekend at a magical music festival.

The Alchemy of Fine -- A prequel about the band’s origins.

Holiday Brew: This collection is more serious and less overtly fandom-y than the first, but arguably still very meta (especially if you consider Viola, Jules and Ferd as a response to the trio in Harry Potter). I sat down intending to read just one of these stories -- and ended up reading them all.

Halloween Is Not A Verb -- Holly invites various people to their mums’ place for Halloween.

Solstice on the Rocks -- A short story about university graduation.

Kissing Basilisks --  Begins on New Year’s Day, is compelling, and picks up the non-band-related narrative threads from Fake Geek Girl.

Missing Christmas by Kate Clayborn: This novella is loosely connected to Beginer's Luck but stands alone. It's sweet. Business partners and best friends Jasper and Kristen pay a last minute trip to a client and get trapped by a blizzard, which pushes them to reconsider the boundaries they’ve drawn in their relationship. I liked the moments which showed that they’re an effective team because they know each other so well and can communicate through subtle body language. 

Finding My Voice by Marie Myung-Ok Lee: Ellen is a Korean-American teenager in her final year of high school. Her story is about applying for college, gymnastics training, Ellen’s relationships with her best friend and her first boyfriend, dealing with racism at school and with her parents’ expectations that she will follow her sister to Harvard. It’s very short, first published in 1993. I was aware of all the places where a YA novel written today would be allowed to give more details and to expand the story, but it was still interesting.

The Magnolia Sword: A Ballad of Mulan by Sherry Thomas: I’ve borrowed this several times this year, only to return it unread each time, and I was starting to wonder if I really wanted to read it. But once I actually sat down and focused, I quickly realised that I definitely did! I became completely engrossed in this Mulan retelling. It’s a tense adventure. I enjoyed the characters and their interactions, particularly the elaborate courtesy of formal conversations, and the way Mulan and her companions value loyalty and camaraderie. I thought this was a very believable take on the whole girl-disguised-as-a-boy thing too.

Dear Mrs Bird by AJ Pearce: In 1940, Emmy wants a newspaper job but is instead typing up letters for a women’s magazine and discarding mail from readers whose problems are Unacceptable. Frustrated that Mrs Bird won’t offer advice to so many women in need, Emmy's tempted to take matters into her own hands. Her optimism means she makes some naive mistakes, some of which made me wince, but it’s also an incredible strength. She's delightful company. I really like how much of this story is about her friendship with Bunty and I enjoyed the insight into women's magazines and the Auxiliary Fire Service.

The Lonely Hearts Dog Walkers by Sheila Norton: Recently separated, Nicola moves back in with her mother, starts as a teaching assistant at her daughter’s new school, gets a puppy and joins a group of dog walkers, who embark upon a mission to save the local park. This was very low-angst and, once I realised the sort of story it was, kind of predictable. I can recognise the appeal of this brand of realism, but personally would have preferred more humour or more emotional complexity. Were Nicola a colleague, it’d be easy to find things in common to discuss, but her story wasn’t quite what I was looking for.

Chasing Lucky by Jenn Bennett: When Josie and her mother return to Beauty to look after the family bookshop, Josie has plans -- keep to herself, finish high school, secure a photography apprenticeship, move to LA. But after Josie accidentally breaks a store-front window and her childhood friend Lucky takes the blame, Josie’s priorities change. I enjoyed this more than I expected to. I particularly liked how Lucky subverts people’s expectations, and how Josie’s family works at communicating better with each other.

Old Baggage by Lissa Evans (narrated by Joanna Scanlan): It’s 1928 and Mattie Simpkin, a now-middle-aged militant suffragette, lives in Hampstead with her friend Florrie Lee (aka The Flea). Mattie gives lectures about the suffragettes but realises she’s not reaching the younger generation. So she starts a club for “healthy outdoor fun” for teenage girls. Mattie is wonderfully forthright -- amusing, engaging and informative when it comes to things she’s passionate about -- but she’s also fallible.  A really delightful yet bittersweet story about friendship and loss and the opportunities available for women. I liked its awareness that being able to loudly be yourself is a privilege not everyone has. 

There’s Something About Marysburg series by Olivia Dade:

Teach Me: Rose is unimpressed -- not only must she share her classroom with the new history teacher, he’s been given her Honors World History class. There’s something particularly satisfying about people who have been hurt and lonely finding support and love in each other. I like that they get to know each other over many months. I like Martin’s relationship with his teenage daughter and Rose’s relationship with her ex’s parents is so touching that one scene made me cry. And it was interesting seeing the US school system from the perspective of experienced teachers; I appreciated the details about their jobs.

Sweetest in the Gale: a Marysburg story collection contains three novellas about couples in their forties.

Sweetest in the Gale -- Griff is worried when Candy, a fellow English teacher, returns for the new school year uncharacteristically sombre and subdued. A really sweet romance about people who are navigating loss and grief.

Unraveled -- Maths teacher Simon is assigned to observe and mentor the new art teacher, Poppy. I enjoyed the threads of mystery.

Cover Me -- After a concerning mammogram result, Elizabeth marries an old friend so she’s covered by his health insurance. Predictable as anything, but that made it a safe position from which to explore serious and sobering topics.

40-Love: I’m not interested in tennis or holiday resorts; I was disappointed that this novel wouldn’t show Tess being an assistant principal; and even though some of my favourite fictional couples have a significant age-gap, I’m wary about age-gap romances (and socially-programmed to think it’s odd for a woman to date a much younger guy). But I liked the other stories in this series and I was curious. It’s Not really My Cup of Tea, but I was convinced that Tess and Lucas were both capable of making their (somewhat unconventional) relationship work. An interesting exercise in challenging my social-programming.

The Viscount Who Loved Me by Julia Quinn: After watching Bridgerton (not always to my tastes but mostly fun), curiosity prompted me to read the opening of the second novel, and I was so entertained by Kate Sheffield verbally sparring with the viscount, whom Kate is determined to prevent from marrying her younger sister. I continued to be entertained up until the viscount acts a bit too entitled on his wedding night (that’s unattractive, if outrightly problematic). Which left me in rather an uncharitable mood for the final act, so I can’t identify if the drama of dealing with past traumas didn’t meet the standard of the earlier comedy or if I just hold such scenes to differing standards.