#it sucks that the series was written retroactively

[lostshitpirate]

In mgs1, Snake talks about how despite being on opposing sides. He didn’t see Gray Fox as his enemy

Do you think this was something Miller taught him? And if that’s the case is that how Kaz felt about Ocelot?

The death pact between them never sounded personal to me. All of Kaz’s beef seemed to be with Big Boss. Ocelot was just a barrier in the way. Another piece on the chess board like him.

I wonder if when Ocelot went to kill him it was kinda like old friends meeting for the last time rather than it being enemies meeting on the battlefield.

[tamamita]

i fell off mha years ago but have been into jjk for a couple years and imo the writing and concepts for characters are well written, especially some of the women in the series like maki, nobara, shoko & yuki, however jjk is very quick to kill or at least severely harm characters at a whim. I wouldn't say shock value for most of them, the work explores the idea of retroactively trying to justify the beauty of death of those departed, and there is a good amount of nuanced discussion in the series about this even still.

I will admit that there is definitely a disparity between the men and women regarding plot significance, and one of the female main characters has had their assumed death & potential survival teased for at least a few times in 100+ chapters, which sucks because that character is probably one of the best female protagonists in modern shonen and I hope gege has a real good reason for writing her out of the story for so long and that if she returns it's well made up for.

though at this point in the story it's probably a mercy some favs aren't around, considering how unforgiving the death toll is on popular characters currently lol. anyway that's just my thoughts.

I remember enjoying the first season and the movie, and I really enjoyed the characters, and I remember loving Nobara and Maki. So hearing about all the things from manga readers leave me kinda scared. Haha... Well, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised considering it's a Shonen.

[teapartypenguin]

Luna's deck sucks, here's how to fix it

So I've got a lot to say about Ruka/Luna and her role in the story, mostly how I think it could have been better. But I'll start with the first way that the writers fail Luna: her deck.

If you play the TCG, you may already know that Luna is one of the few main cast duelists that never got an archetype associated with her. By this point in the franchise, every character has their own archetype or two associated with them, yet Luna doesn't use any archetype specific cards (unless you count Kuribon). She has a loose fairy forest type theme that is a mix of plants, fairies, and beasts. This isn't too out of the ordinary for characters, Akiza also had no real archetype during the series (just a lot of plant/rose themed cards), but she and most others in that state got some sort of archetype retroactively made around their deck (in Akiza's case, the Rose Dragons). Luna has not received any support.

Luna's ace monster is Ancient Fairy Dragon, who in the series, she had a strong connection to. And despite being the weakest attack wise of the Signer dragons, AFD's effect gave her the strongest counter against the Earthbound Gods in the first arc (which is why she had to get written out for most of it). In fact, this effect would be so strong that AFD would get banned irl for several years until the card got an errata. And possibly because of this, AFD is still the ONLY Signer dragon to never get an upgraded form.

Now let's talk about Luna's duel against Professor Frank. This is Luna's first showing as a duelist especially after being hyped up as a former dueling prodigy. Even with the very loose deck, there is a bit of a strategy there. Luna use Ancient Forest to attempt to lock her opponent out of attacking, then uses life point gain and loss effects to slowly burn her opponent. Eventually the duel ends in a draw with Luna using Oberon's Prank in combo with Kuribon's LP gain effect. And that is the end of the ONLY solo duel Luna gets in the series.

Looking back on this duel after having finally played Yugioh, I had the sudden realization that Oberon's Prank was an anime only card with an awful effect made just so Luna could force a draw. Oberon's Prank is a trap card that makes it so that any LP gain effects used on your opponent are negated, and both players take damage equal to the LP that would have been gained. The closest equivalent to Oberon's Prank irl is Bad Reaction to Simochi, which only inflicts damage to the opponent. Simochi was also used by Luna in the World Championship games and is probably the intended way to use Kuribon's LP gain effect. So the only reason I can think for why they would write the duel in this way would be because they really wanted Luna to tie/lose. In a narrative sense, I get wanting to show that Luna is kind and would rather force a draw than let her opponent get eaten by a dragon. But also, she wasn't going to win the duel at that point, let her run Simochi and get a win. Or make it look like there was a choice in the matter.

(IMO, if the dragon wants to eat the creepy psychologist, soup's on.)

So if I were to fix Luna's deck, the first thing is giving her a Naturia/Vernusylph deck.

Naturia is a Synchro and Fusion focused deck that is composed of Earth attribute monsters with the goal of controlling the opponent's movements. A couple of the Naturia cards would have already been made by the time of 5Ds. Naturia works for Luna for a couple reasons; the control style is a good contrast to Leo's combo focused deck, they're a bunch of cute critters that fit the fairy forest theme Luna was going for, and the archetype's story itself is also related to the Naturia protecting their home forest (as Luna does for the card spirit world).

Their boss monster is also named Leo and I just think that's funny.

Maybe the writers did consider Naturia and decided against it for whatever reasons (didn't want another majority plant player after Akiza, knew Luna would be too much of a menace with Naturia Beast, wanted to save the cards for the Duel Terminal arcade game, etc.).

Supporting the deck further would be the Vernusylph archetype, which are a small archetype of Earth fairy monsters that offer support to other Earth monsters. They're a relatively new archetype so some effects may be a little strong for 5Ds era (especially Vera). But they fit into Naturia well and would have really solidified the fairy forest theme. Also them being Earth support in general means that they can support Powertool Dragon and many of Leo's Morphtronics in tag duels (also a couple of Team 5Ds use Earth monsters so it would make Luna fit well into a lot of tag duels). And despite being a Light attribute, AFD fits into the deck.

And another monster I think would fit would be Circle of the Fairies (also a relatively new card). This one throws off the Earth attribute focus a bit, but offers support for plants and insect types. Also more burn and LP gain effects for Luna. And it and the other Circular monsters keep up the fae theme being based around fairy circles.

That's my opinion on what Luna should play. It's not too late for Luna to get an associated archetype, there's a couple of characters who get different archetypes in later games, like Tea playing Witchcrafter in Duel Links and Blair getting Lightsworn in Tag Force. Or Ishizu who's deck retrains created one of the most powerful decks in history. AFD is also long overdue for an upgrade/support after being off the banlist for a couple years now. And so Konami should make Luna's deck absolutely broken as an apology.

[copaganda-clobberfest]

submitting ganondorf from the legend of zelda franchise, especially the version from tears of the kingdom! ok i know this sounds a bit crazy but hear me out (and also sorry if i get some other character's names wrong, i didn't play the games in english)

so i'm gonna have to get a bit into the worldbuilding of zelda first, specifically ocarina of time where ganondorf has his first real appearance so in hyrule there are several fantasy races, there's the hylians, the sheikah, the gorons, the zora and the gerudo (also in some other games there's the rito. and there's the kokiri/the koroks but they're not relevant to this) the hylians are basically regular humans except they have long pointy ears which is bc they're chosen by the godesses and their ears are for hearing the godesses' voices. they also (only in older games) all have light skin. the royal family of hyrule only consists of hylians. you can probably see where this is going. the sheikah are also human and are only meant to be servants for the royal family and do their dirty work for them. like a whole torture dungeon/mass grave, which was presumably used during the hyrulean civil war that took place about a decade before the start of ocarina of time. the gorons and the zora aren't human and, while they have their own leadership systems, since the end of the civil war they are under the rule of the hyrulean royal family. then there's the gerudo. they are based on middle eastern people and they are all dark skinned. (their fantasy thingy is that they're only women, except for one man who's born every 100 years and becomes their king. that's ganondorf.) they live in the desert and they're the only race who is independant from hyrule, which the hyrulean royal family really doesn't like. also the hylians are just super racist to the gerudo in general.

so ganondorf's motivation starts out as wanting to improve the life of the gerudo, because the conditions in the desert suck. (this is technically only really elaborated on in wind waker, one of oot's sequels. the zelda timeline is an absolute mess which i admit makes discussions like this kinda difficult sometimes.) ganondorf then conquers hyrule but doesn't actually improve anything for the gerudo, he literally just sits in his evil castle and is evil and kills people. and then you defeat him.

as i mentioned, wind waker, a direct sequel to oot in one timeline, really went into depth about his motivations and made him a sympathetic character. but then he also kidnaps little girls to find zelda and is the evil bad guy who you have to kill at the end.

twilight princess is an interesting case bc it takes place after oot in a timeline where link timetraveled back to before the start of oot and told zelda what would happen. so, in the backstory of tp, ganondorf gets executed for crimes that he mostly hasn't even comitted yet (though the execution fails bc plot). the gerudo are nowhere to be seen, it's implied that they have either been driven away or murdered. ganondorf's attempted execution even takes place in gerudo desert. then he attacks hyrule again and you have to kill him bc he's evil.

then skyward sword, as a prequel to the entire series, retroactively retconned ganondorf to be an incarnation of the hatred of demise, the demon king, who is basically just personified evil.

but at least these games mostly agreed that the hyrulean royal family is terrible (except for skyward sword).

then breath of the wild and tears of the kingdom came out. (spoilers ahead for totk) smarter people than me have written stuff about how imperialist the narrative of totk is, but i'll try to summarize.

ganondorf isn't in botw, but the gerudo finally appear again after a long and very suspicicious and. it's bad. i'm not even gonna get into how their writing is so racist (and honestly, worse than their writing in oot which came out in the 90s), bc that would really be its own essay. but to summarize the relevant stuff, they're now allied with hyrule and have really assimilated to hylian culture. they have pointy ears now which ingame there are two myths given for why that's the case: one is that it's bc of interbreeding with hylians, which is not how gerudo genetics work, and the other is that it's bc of their shame of having given birth to ganondorf, which yikes. bc of all of this the gerudo have finally "earned" being portrayed as the good guys.

in totk, most of the story takes place in the past and we see it through zelda's (very biased) memories. and the whole thing is genuinely kinda uncomfortable to watch bc if just feels like propaganda. rauru, the first king of hyrule, comes from a race of basically demigods, called zonai, that are from islands in the sky. he arrived in hyrule and "united" the zora, gorons and rito underneath the kingdom of hyrule. it's really just colonialism honestly. he also keeps trying to pressure the gerudo to join him but they, and ganondorf as their king, refuse (said refusal is narratively portrayed as being super evil for some reason). there's some fights between the gerudo (where the gerudo seem to very willingly go along with ganondorf) and the hylians, and rauru easily wins by using powerful magical artifacts that function as weapons and that he and queen sonia literally wear as jewelry. eventually, ganondorf swears alliance to the kingdom of hyrule, just to later betray them and murder queen sonia. then he becomes some kind of demon god. one sage of each race, including a gerudo, get recruited by rauru to fight against ganondorf and they get magical artifacts but only after they swear alliance to rauru and hyrule. (we never find out how the rest of the gerudo in this time feel about any of this, whether they're still loyal to ganondorf or if they agree with the sage.) in the present day, the gerudo are completely allied with hyrule. the old gerudo sage holds a lecture to the new gerudo sage (who is btw a teenager) on how much the gerudo need to be ashamed of ganondorf having been a gerudo. also, underneath the gerudo desert, there are 2 zonai mines, which implies that the reason rauru wanted the gerudo under his rule was so he could get their resources. another place where there's a zonai mine is underneath kakariko village, which is where the sheikah live, who are basically the royal family's servants. through the entire game the hylian royal family is portrayed as being absolutely unquestionably good (even though their actions are the absolute opposite), meanwhile ganondorf is portrayed the most unsympathetically he's ever been.

totk especially is just so bad about this. the previous games are still kinda copaganda but they're still a little bit better which just makes totk even more frustrating.

.

[baglsasha]

Star Wars prequel revisionism is lame. Those movies suck ass and having fond memories of them from when you were a kid doesn't change that.

I loved them as a kid too, but god damn do they not hold up. I don't care how good the actual story they're telling is they're executed so poorly that without already having lore knowledge about what's going on there's next to 0 emotional impact.

Surrounded by yes men, George Lucas couldn't write a script to save his life, and he couldn't direct to save his life either. These movies barely even pass the fucking Turing test the dialogue and acting is so stilted.

Also the sequel trilogy not being great does not retroactively make the prequels good. They're both bad (tho the prequels are significantly worse). I see a lot of people trying to frame it as the prequels being non-corporate cinema, George Lucas telling his true vision! Vs Corporate Disney Star Wars garbage. But like, the prequels are as corporate as it gets. The original trilogy cash cow was starting to dry up and Lucas wanted money. He shat the scripts out quickly and got to work on putting together a product that could be intensely merchandised to line his pockets.

There's good ideas in the prequels, concepts that if portrayed well, in smarter scripts, with better directing, would've been fantastic! But those concepts weren't done well because they're lazily written garbage because the primary goal in making them was to make a lot of money...

Imo Clone Wars (cartoon) being a solid (sometimes fantastic!) as it is/was does a lot of emotional heavy lifting for the prequels. If you go into Revenge of the Sith having watched that series Anakin's story really does feel more heart wrenchingly tragic... but without another piece of media that actually has Anakin as a well written and acted character we come to like, if you watch that movie on its own terms without supplemental knowledge, there is 0 emotion. We're almost never shown Anakin and Obi Wan's friendship and Anakin just comes off as a weird creepy asshole. Also his fall is intensely rushed to the point of absurdity. No amount of clone wars solves that. (Seriously the man goes from "what have I done" to "yes lord Sidious I will slaughter children" in about 5 seconds...)

They're just shit movies.... I honestly would love to see them remade. I don't really trust disney to do that well, but it'd be cool if we did have a good version of Anakin's story.

[e-l-forever]

What is your opinion on Smallville Lana and Clana?

Oh wow a Smallville question! And what a question at that, right? I feel like I should preface this with a lot of stuff, because I actually have huge history with this character and the ship (which, believe it or not, I used to ship at some point).

First of all, I LOVE Kristen! I adore her, I've seen several cons with her and she's the sweetest and kindest and is stunning inside and out. And looks like she's also aware of the problems with her character's storylines and wasn't much happy about it.

Second, I watched Smallville as it was airing in.... god knows what year.... meaning, I was very young at that time and coming straight out of Lois & Clark TNAOS series, which turned me into a Clois shipper for life. So once Smallville started and was a huge hit right away I was hesitating about getting on board, because: "How do I, a Clois shipper, watch a series about Clark and another girl's big love?" And I vividly remember reading an article in a magazine with one of the producers, who was promising that this was about school years ONLY, that there would be no Lois, so we were all free and safe to root for this cute young couple. So I trusted them and started watching and just loooved early Lana and Clana, it was adorable and just age-appropriate cute teen love for me at that time. (I keep mentioned my youth because I think the show aged with the viewers and the early seasons/ships were more younger viewers-appropriate, while the more adult and mature Clois relationship was more for the older viewers, like you would grow out of one ship into another. And I think that's also how the different age groups gravitate towards these ships). After the first couple of seasons it started to get a bit tiring but I was still holding on, to the point that when they announced Lois's arrival after S3 I felt so betrayed 😂, I was like "you promised!" and I tried not to like her, but nobody could resist Erica and I fell for her in 1(ONE) episode 😂

After that it just all went downhill for Lana/Clana. Storylines kept getting worse and more unbearable. The back and forth and the constant will they won't they was super tiring, especially compared to the breath of fresh air that was Lois/Clois. Whenever Clark and Lana were sharing screen it was sheer misery and they were just bringing out the worst in each other. Their plots separate from each other were so much better (whenever Lana was allowed to have one, that is, which wasn't often). I remember genuinely loving Lana with Jensen's character until he had to leave and went psycho, and - unpopular opinion - but I even loved her story with Lex and their own love-and-war twisted games they were playing, at least it made her interesting and exciting as compared to the horrible stuff she was given with Clark! Basically with time I could stand her less and less.

I also think she overstayed her welcome, because the writers had no idea what to do with her anymore, especially in an adult Superman's story. In S7 I felt they were nicely building up to her exit and showing in excruciating painful details how Clana just was NOT working at all, no matter how much they tried (and GOD, they tried gazillion tiring times!!), and even the characters were saying it like a million times how maybe they weren't meant to be, but sadly the Arc of Suck in mid-S8 shit on all over it obviously... That was the worst written, most offensive, character destroying bunch of episodes I've seen in any show and I'm embarrassed on behalf of Smallville producers and writers for doing that. That exit and the horrible taste retroactively ruined all my fond childhood memories I had of the character and of shipping that ship. I can't stand either anymore, sadly.

I think I would have loved if they had kept her as just a friend for her last couple seasons, like Oliver was with Lois, I think her character could have been redeemed that way and could have been made likable again. Because I know they brought her back in S11 comics as a friend and that was pretty nice. But oh well.

[floatingcatacombs]

Oniisama e... and the Role of Girl's Love in Founding Modern Shoujo

12 Days of Aniblogging 2021, Day 3

I finished Dear Brother/Oniisama e this year! Everything I brought up in my 2020 blog post on the series remains true. It’s a masterclass in shoujo melodrama, terrible girls, and repeating the same shot three times to add emphasis to the scene. As expected, the second half of the show significantly ups the ante when it comes to ridiculous private school drama. Our main character Nanako is repeatedly toyed with by powerful upperclassmen, and the sorority drama boils over into outright revolution, very clearly taking a note from Riyoko Ikeda’s previous work, The Rose of Versailles.

Unfortunately, Oniisama e hits the brakes towards the end, focusing too much on the characters everyone cares the least about. It also tries to scrub away every trace of gayness from the show in order to convince the watcher that it was all just a phase, killing off exactly who you’d expect them to and shoving everyone else into last-minute heterosexual relationships. This sucks, but it’s not a sin unique to Oniisama e – the idea of lesbianism in media as either a phase or an invitation for death was the norm up until very recent times. You can see it in the American lesbian pulp fiction of the 1950s and Japan’s own Class S literature of the early 20th century.

Oniisama e’s anime adaptation was released in 1991, and by the end of that decade, yuri manga would finally begin to enter the mainstream, finally able to have something other than tragic endings. But Oniisama e isn’t a product of those times. Its manga was originally published in 1974, which I had always imagined as a dark age for lesbian lit. As it turns out, I was looking at it from the wrong angle. Oniisama e was on the experimental fringe of the movement that created modern shoujo as we know it.

It's hard to imagine just how different shoujo was before the 70’s, but most of it stems from the genre being treated for decades as a stepping stone for male mangaka before they could get to publishing shounen instead. The target audience was far younger, so most early shoujo depicted young children instead of high school girls. Because of all of this, romance, which is the first thing you think of in terms of modern shoujo, was rare.

But by the end of the 1960’s, the genre had gradually shifted into being written primarily by women, and adolescent settings had begun to gain popularity. This set the stage for a revolution in the early 70’s, in which a group of female artists retroactively referred to as the Year 24 Group all started greatly expanding the boundaries of what shoujo could be. Subgenres such as science fiction flourished under this reimagining of shoujo, while romance became far more prevalent, even in controversial forms such as boys’ love and girls’ love. Narratives became complex and sometimes politically relevant, channeling the radicalness of the student protests just a few years earlier.

So in short, Oniisama e is the way it is because its author was literally inventing modern shoujo in the process. But what about the other authors in the Year 24 Group? As it turns out, some of Ikeda’s contemporaries were depicting female-female relationships more explicitly, at the cost of relegating them to even more tragic endings.

Siroi Heya no Futari is a groundbreaking 1971 oneshot by Ryoko Yamagishi that is all but forgotten these days, but was one of the very first manga that could be considered yuri. It reads as surprisingly tropey from a modern lens, which suggests a lot of future yuri carried its lineage. It’s short, so you should honestly just read it for yourself here, but I’ll outline it real quick:

The shoujo revolution brought with it more experimental panel composition

Spoiled French princess orphan Denise de Poisson (they really pulled out all the stops for the background of their innocent feminine girl) is sent to Catholic school against her will. Her roommate is Simone D’Arc, the evil black-haired delinquent of the school. Both girls are clearly having a terrible time here, and they take it out on each other for most of the manga. They don’t ever really have a friendship, going straight from hatred to doomed romance, only bonding due to their shared circumstances. They are cast together in a production of Romeo and Juliet, where they share a passionate stage kiss. Eventually, word gets out about their lesbianism, and Simone tries to get Denise a boyfriend in order to “fix” her. When this actually works out, Simone finds herself scorned, and she ends up killing herself, because Denise was apparently her one true love. Denise is forced to carry this knowledge and pledges never to love again, living a life of stonehearted isolation.

And that’s a wrap! There’s a lot going on in these 80 pages, most relevant the idea of sexual purity through lesbianism. Though the relationship between Denise and Simone is clearly rotten, it’s still treated as innocent in the moment. Both express bisexuality at different points in the story, which is ultimately what leaves them tainted. Simone is unable to “grow out” of her lesbian relationship and it ultimately consumes her, taking Denise down with her. Obviously, this is a terrible takeaway message, but it’s enlightening to see it spelled out so clearly in this manga. These are the sexual politics which guided lesbian literature for pretty much all of the 20th century, and ripples of this obsession with purity and youthfulness still appear in plenty of modern yuri, much to my chagrin. On the other hand, it’s good to know that yuri in which one or both of the girls are absolutely insane has always been around. Ditto to the school play, which fundamentally exists in manga to facilitate crossdressing in a gay or trans way.

In conclusion, Catholic school sucks.

[exysexualmoron]

Hi, I’m such a fan of your kandreil vampire series It hurts in the best way. I was rereading the Christmas one and noticed how even retroactively thinking about Kevin accepting Thea’s proposal sets off something in Andrew, and hurts him pretty intensely (which makes sense considering his canon abandonment issues are ramped up in this verse because of the circumstances). But I was wondering how you think everything unfolded re: how Andrew found out they were getting married / when and how Kevin told him? And if it was not that much longer than a couple of years (which was the sense I got) after Andrew made his offer to change him I definitely think there would’ve been a period of time where Andrew withdrew from Kevin a lot. I both can’t imagine Andrew at the wedding and feel like Kevin would not feel right about him not being there, so either way I think whoever was there was likely miserable unless Kevin and Thea, being so practical and less romantic, just had a small ceremony with no one except maybe Wymack and someone close to Thea or her family. With the way you wrote it I almost feel like there was some massive miscommunication between Kandrew about this where Kevin put off telling Andrew about the engagement until everyone else already knew and Andrew found out from Nicky or Wymack or someone but maybe that’s not what you pictured at all. Also you said they were practically in a relationship in college but in an unspoken way so that’s more miscommunication fuel from Andrew’s end potentially, and I could see a lot of his frustration about the situation being channeled into the animosity he seems to have towards Thea even if it isn’t totally fair. Sorry for rambling I just was thinking a lot about some of the details of your fic because I think the character work in it, especially how Andrew is written is fascinating

Hi! Okay I'm so excited about this ask because I have this whole timeline mapped out lmao.

Kevin's 27 when Andrew offers, that puts it in 2013. The thing about them is that they never had anything before Neil, yet they did. It was never explicit, never stated, never talked about, but they had feelings for each other and acted on them in almost every aspect except for the sexual one. But. After graduation Kevin moves away and Andrew stays to work with Roland, and that's kinda like a breakup for them. Kevin comes around a lot, the conversation when Andrew offers him immortality actually happens at Eden's. The following year Thea proposes and Kevin says yes. It's not really out of the blue, they had been together since the nest, it was time (the whole world was basically a giant aunt at that point asking them when it would happen because they weren't getting any younger).

Kevin does tell Andrew, he's one of the first people he calls, and Andrew congratulates him and all. There's a piece of vampire lore in this AU that I have no idea whether I've posted any parts with it in it or not, but it's about the age the person's turned (stay with me haha). Vampires are rare, why? Because immortality sucks. After 100 years or so everyone you knew is dead, the world is completely different, yet you remain the same, it just sucks, most vampires don't make it past that mark, and the ones who do were mostly turned under the age of 25 (it has to do with the brain not being fully formed until then in my head). sooooooo by the fact that Kevin is in his late 20s by that point, Andrew sort of has accepted that he'll never be like him (I sort of because that scorpio will never really let go of that).

Andrew congratulates Kevin, Kevin wants him as his best man, Andrew says no because he's an immortal vampire and he doesn't want the media to find out, but deep down it's because he's 1: too deep in his own misery to get himself out of it for long enough and 2: he doesn't want to watch Kevin grow up.

Andrew hates Thea with a passion, always have. At first he saw her as Kevin's beard, then when he realized bi people exist and saw her as the one thing keeping them apart (which she was definitely not lmao).

Kevin keeps them apart. A lot. He knows how Andrew feels and isn't about to give his wife any chance at being alone with a vampire (Kevin doesn't see Andrew as a monster ever, the nest fucked him up like that that murder is never a big deal and well Andrew's killing for food how different is that from that steak on the barbecue?) and risk her becoming dinner.

I love writing them in this. I love exploring human nature, and Andrew's nature, how even in canon he's just thrust into situations and deals with them later, he doesn't actively tries to change anything unless it affects others (which is why he's in an eternal state of sad for like ten years until Neil shows up and gives him the push he needs to change things, if that makes sense).

Thank you for the ask omg I love talking about them.

[lacefuneral]

Serious question. Why do you hate William Shatner? I searched through your blog trying to find an explanation but I couldn’t find anything, either bcos tumblr search feature sucks or you’ve never explained. You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to, I’ve just never heard anything really bad about him so I was curious.

I’ve actually answered this question multiple times, but mostly on other ppl’s posts or in tags so it’s understandable if it wasn’t easy to find. I’ll actually link this answer in my pinned post for future ref.

Reasons I dislike William Shatner: 

He was cruel to the cast and crew of Star Trek on set. This is well documented, and the following people have openly spoken out about it or, at the very least, referenced it in passing: George Takei (Sulu), Walter Koenig (Chekov), Nichelle Nichols (Uhura), and James Doohan (Scotty). He also completely ripped into a teenage Wil Wheaton (Wesley Crusher in TNG).

He even betrayed Leonard Nimoy, his lifelong friend, by recording him without his permission for a documentary. They never reconciled. 

He supports Autism Speaks, a for-profit organization whose money goes to “cure research” (i.e. torturing neurodivergent kids in order to “fix” them). When autistic advocates spoke up and asked him to support alternative organizations - ones that actually help autistic people and do not pathologize us - he mocked them. 

He posts regularly on twitter about his disdain for the MeToo movement, and how he believes it’s a cry for attention.

Most recently (June 14, 2020), he expressed annoyance with the concept of a bisexual Captain Kirk. This one is going to take a bit of context, so bear with me: There is a new Star Trek series in the works called “Strange New Worlds” - which is a spinoff of “Star Trek: Discovery” and is a prequel to “Star Trek: The Original Series.” It follows Spock and Captain Pike. There is no indication that Kirk will even be in the show, but that hasn’t stopped people from speculating online. A clickbait article was written, claiming that not only would Kirk be in SNW, but that he would be bisexual. Instead of ignoring it, Shatner dug in his heels and insisted that if CBS ever did such a thing, it would be an example of “cancel culture presentism.” Which is a fancy way of saying “I don’t think bisexual people should be on TV.” Needless to say, that baffled a lot of people - including myself - because not only is that statement biphobic, but because James T. Kirk is undoubtedly coded to be a bisexual/pansexual/m-spec man, and this felt like a huge slap in the face. Like people were being unreasonable for recognizing that he isn't straight. It's like... you played him that way, Bill. You made him flirt with men and check them out. You made him look at Spock like water in a desert. You did that. You don't get to retroactively pretend he's straight.

Edit: Today (August 4, 2020) he posted some transphobic tweets, which I have documented here in two parts.

[fiftysevenacademics]

Warrior

By chance, I learned about a show called “Warrior,” originally on Cinemax and now streaming on HBOMax. The basic premise is that a martial arts prodigy immigrates to San Francisco Chinatown in 1878 and is quickly sold to a tong that is on the verge of going to war with a rival tong. The dearth of movies or TV shows set in pre-earthquake (1906) San Francisco always baffles me, given how incredibly socially diverse, violent, raunchy, crime-ridden, wealthy, and often lawless the city was. Portions of the waterfront were even built in abandoned ships. Imagine the amazing sets you could design! I’ll watch anything set in pre-quake San Francisco, especially if it’s going to tell the story of characters, such as Chinese immigrants, that we almost never see in Westerns or other films set in this era.

So I was already in before I saw that the show is based on an 8-page treatment by Bruce Lee and related notes his daughter, Shannon Lee, found. She is also an executive producer, along with Justin Lin. I’m not a huge fan of martial arts movies in general, but this one had a lot of potential so I checked it out and got immediately sucked in.

I’m not going to spoil the plot but it gets convoluted quickly. Probably about 2/3 of the scenes end up with fighting and there is plenty of sex, too. Is it a little trashy with all that sex and violence? Yes, but GOOD trashy, with characters that are multi-dimensional, well-written, directed, and acted, though the costuming leaves a lot to be desired and, somewhat stereotypically for the Western genre, most scenes occur in brothels or barrooms and there are a few historically improbable relationships. But OK, this is borderline pulp fiction and the story is exciting so whatever.

What I love most about the show, however, is how well it portrays a totally neglected aspect of California and American history: How virulent anti-Chinese racism shaped white working class politics in the West. It is the only show I’ve ever seen that directly addresses the cultural climate and politics leading up to the Chinese Exclusion Act from a Chinese point of view. One of the central conflicts in the show depicts how white laborers brutally intimidated and assaulted Chinese workers and their white employers, and how politicians used the “they’re taking our jobs” rhetoric for political gain. One of the main antagonists is a ruthless Irish labor boss called Dylan Leary, who is obviously a fictionalized version of Denis Kearney. 

The show mostly accurately depicts how Chinese were sequestered in Chinatown by a combination of laws that prevented them from owning property or becoming citizens and a campaign of terror led by white vigilantes, making it easy for white business owners to extract grueling labor for hardly any pay. The combination of exploitation and exclusion the Chinese immigrants face in American society intensifies a “get rich quick and get out” mentality among some Chinese immigrants, who are more than willing to do anything they must to their own people in order to send money home, make enough money to go home, or to become the most powerful people in Chinatown. Limited opportunities for economic and social advancement outside of Chinatown drive some to organized crime gangs called tongs that have turned this ethnic enclave into a haven for opium, gambling, and prostitution. While the show is set in this sensationalistic criminal underworld, it’s clearly contextualized-- If these guys had the same opportunities as white people, they’d become industrialist tycoons, too. You just don’t see stuff like this on TV!

The ghost of the Civil War is never far from the action, either. The irony of people who held strong views and fought against slavery going West and then oppressing Chinese workers, many of whom were also enslaved by debt bondage, is not lost on this show. 

It’s tempting to think that the show is retroactively putting contemporary anti-immigrant policies into the past to make a point. But the point is actually that things really were like this in the 1870s and remain to this day at the heart of American politics. As a show that fits into TVs “Western” genre, it is unique in its point of view and how much detail it goes into about actual racial politics of the era as well as the hopes, dreams, and disappointments of people who have to build their own community in a society that hates everything about them except their strong arms and backs.

Speaking of which, part of the show’s appeal is how generous it is to viewers of its many very hot actors and actresses! It manages to have sweaty, shirtless martial arts sequences and exotic, langorous, opium-enhanced brothel sequences that don’t feel exploitative or one-dimensional because they are just parts of a much bigger, well-rounded world the characters inhabit.

And I totally lost my shit when there was a scene set inside a business inside an abandoned ship in San Francisco’s infamous, utterly lawless Barbary Coast. I don’t honestly know how many businesses continued to be operated out of abandoned ships in the 1870s but surely there were some and I don’t even really care because I was just so excited to see something like that come to life.

One review wrote, The vibe is very much “What if Peaky Blinders was racially diverse and half the characters could roundhouse kick you in the face?”

Another review wrote: There’s a lot about the show that will be recognizable to fans of today’s dark antihero dramas: The gangster storyline feels like a plot from Boardwalk Empire or Peaky Blinders, the frontier fable of capitalism resembles Deadwood, and warring factions vying for power recall similar conflicts on Game of Thrones. But what sets Warrior apart is its focus on a fascinating chapter in the American story that’s often treated like an afterthought in history books. And it wraps that history lesson in an enticing action-thriller package with nods to spaghetti Westerns, the kung fu cinema of Hong Kong, gangster flicks, and exploitation films, as well as other grindhouse genres.

I discovered Warrior thanks to this essay by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Here’s a quote: The real issue here isn’t just adding more Asian American characters, it’s about the kind of characters portrayed. Two important areas that are deliberately overlooked by Hollywood are Asian Americans as romantic leads and as heroic leads. Few series dare to have an Asian American man as the object of romantic desire, especially by a white woman (are you listening, Bachelor/Bachelorette franchise?). Fewer have Asian American women as leads prized for their intelligence and outspoken strength rather than their svelte figure and flirty smile. There are exceptions: the wonderful Cinemax series Warrior, based on a Bruce Lee treatment, focuses mostly on tough and sexy Chinese men and women fighting for survival in San Francisco’s Chinatown in the 1870s. 

“Warrior” currently has two seasons. It was canceled when Cinemax ceased producing original content. But Shannon Lee and Justin Lin are hoping that with enough fan support, HBOMax will agree to make more seasons. Check it out!

[animebw]

Hmmm, how to word this…I don’t really think it’s really fair to dismiss the criticisms of AoT’s final stretch out of hand, especially since while their are several idiotic takes like those you mentioned, not everyone who dislikes Attack on Titan, especially its final stretch, is arguing in bad faith.

In particular, I find that there are three particular sticking points that people have. First is the handling of the use of discrimination as a plot device, particularly using the Eldians as a Jewish allegory along with Holocaust imagery. I don’t feel like I’m fully qualified to speak on the issue, but taking the only group of people in the fictional setting who can transform into enormous, man-eating monsters, and equating them with one of the single most marginalized and persecuted minorities in history, who were often demonized to justify this persecution…well it doesn’t sit right with me. A lot of stories use fantastical racism, and while it can be done well (like in 86), it tends to fall a lot flatter when people with extremely powerful superhuman abilities are the ones being persecuted, especially when they’re directly compared to a real-life minority.

Second, a lot of characters got shafted on their character arcs, either being written out of the story before they could properly complete them, or having their arcs be rewritten to revolve around other characters rather than being about their own journeys. The most egregious examples of this, imo, are Ymir (who also was subjected to the extremely awful Bury Your Gays trope, and offscreen, no less), Historia, and Mikasa. To be fair on this point, there are several characters who do have well-written character arcs in this stretch, such as Gabi, Levi, and especially Reiner, but some other characters are infuriating to be forced to deal with, especially when the plot seems to contort just to keep them in the narrative when so many others were unceremoniously written out (looking at you, Zeke). Add onto this the rather abrupt time skip (and please believe me when I say that the time skip was really jarring and out of nowhere in the manga), and how several characters, particularly Eren, change drastically during it and only get that change explained retroactively, and that adds up to several characters feeling like their journeys were either incompletely told or derailed outright.

Third, a lot of plot points and plot devices in this stretch either felt incredibly contrived or like they ultimately took the plot in a direction that felt rather incongruous with the prior material. For example, several of the shifters survived what very much should have been mortal injuries just so they could remain part of the plot, rather than giving them less dramatic injuries to better justify their survival. And the introduction of The Ways and time travel into the plot, in spite of the nuggets of foreshadowing for the latter especially, felt very out of left field for the relatively grounded material prior to it, and ultimately took the overall plot in a direction that I very much did not agree with.

I know that you have enjoyed the anime, and I don’t say this to diminish your love for the series. Rather, I say this as a former fan of the series who was ultimately disappointed and upset with the story’s late-game developments, and did not want their concerns, or the concerns of their fellows who had similar reasoning, to be dismissed out of hand as bad faith whining instead of legitimate issues.

I still do hope you enjoy what remains of the series, but please, don’t ignore the heartbreak and disappointment of so many fans who felt burned by the it.

Thanks for sharing! I don't mean to give off the impression that every critic of AOT is just a salty manga fan; there are plenty of valid reasons to not like it. It's just that so many of the loudest voices I'm hearing right now- the people loudly expressing how much this season sucks and how it's all going downhill and how the ending was terrible- are complaining about "issues" that either don't seem like issues to me or are actually positives. I remember people lambasting the pie scene from episode 8 because it supposedly represents AOT becoming cringe shit for babies, and I'm just sitting here thinking how joyless these people must be, because that scene was fucking hilarious. Veeeeery different breed of AOT-disliker.

Now, in regards to the Holocaust imagery, because I know that's one of the thorniest issues in regards to this show... look, I'm ethnically Jewish on both my parents' sides, though I don't practice the religion. And my single opinion on the matter isn't the be-all-end-all. But from where I'm standing, while the Jewish/Eldian allegory is messy, I think it's important to recognize that it's not intended to be dehumanizing. Quite the opposite, in fact; like I mentioned in my review, showing the Eldians being persecuted like Jews in Nazi Germany is supposed to make us realize that these beings we've been trained to see as mindless monsters are actually the sympathetic victims, and both we and the protagonists were misled by propaganda that made us dehumanize them in the first place. We're not meant to go "Wow, I guess Jews are all cannibal monsters who deserve to be slaughtered." We're meant to go, "Holy shit, we bought into Nazi-esque propaganda and condemned an entire ethnic group as deserving genocide because we were made to see them as subhuman. I need to go home and rethink everything."

Like, is it still messy? For sure, and I don't blame anyone who feels icky about it. But I don't think there was any active malice on Isayama's part here, just cluelessness about how certain allegorical elements could be interpreted. If nothing else, it's clear he has nothing but sympathy for the tragedies the Eldians have endured, and he wants to impart just how fucking horrible this war has been for all the innocent people caught up in its wake. And for me, at least, that effort was successful.

[shihalyfie]

A timeline of Ken’s fall into the Kaiser persona

The timeline of Ken meeting Wormmon and going through a sequence of events that made him into the Kaiser is relatively unclear, especially because Ken’s own memory is distorted, but production notes and other minor clues in the anime hint at a timeline that works with it:

August 2000: Ken goes on some kind of adventure with Akiyama Ryou and Wormmon

Late 2000-early 2001: Osamu dies

Around 2001: Ken goes on a second adventure with Akiyama Ryou, is hit by the Dark Seed, Oikawa sends him the fateful email, Ken visits the Dark Ocean

Late 2001-early 2002: Ken begins his conquest as the Kaiser

Yep, that’s right: Ken went on two different adventures with Akiyama Ryou.

A further breakdown of this timeline is under the cut!

So the thing you’re probably wondering is “wait, this is supposed to be a Tag Tamers tie-in, but Tag Tamers doesn’t make sense with this at all! Didn’t it say Ken went on an adventure with Ryou in March 2000 right after the Diablomon incident?” The thing is that for as much fanfare as there is about Tag Tamers being important to 02′s timeline, in fact, very little of Tag Tamers makes sense with 02 itself, and the game is is so contradictory that it doesn’t actually help you understand 02 much at all. This is, unfortunately, par for the course with Bandai licensed games, which don’t exactly have the greatest track record of keeping true to anime characterization or being remotely consistent with it at all (Daisuke’s characterization in Re:Digitize is borderline insulting), and everything we know about Adventure and 02′s planned lore doesn’t make sense with it either. In the end, we’re just going to have to follow our very loose attitude towards the concept of canon and default to the anime’s depiction of things for the sake of this particular analysis, pulling from Tag Tamers only when we can incorporate details from it in a way that doesn’t contradict everything.

02 episode 33 has Ken explicitly bring up the idea of “an encounter with a Digimon” that led to him becoming a Chosen Child happening in August 2000 (Koushirou had just mentioned the recent wave of Chosen Children having had a preliminary encounter via the 1999 incident). Unfortunately, we don’t know any more than this, due to Ken’s own memory failing, and the subject is left there.

(Again, yes, this is contradictory with Tag Tamers, but remember that said depiction of “Ken and Ryou watching the Diablomon incident” also contradicts Ryou clearly being seen by himself in Turkey in Our War Game! The anime is consistent with itself; the game is the outlier here.)

So when the Digivice emerged from Osamu’s computer (actually meant for Ken) in the flashback in 02 episode 23, we see a very young Ken with a purple shirt. Let’s take a closer look at this design.

We’ve received a lot of versions of this design sheet over the years, but all of them are consistent about one thing: this design depicts Ken as nine years old, in third grade. (Whether it gives grade level or age depends which version of this reference sheet you’re following, but everything is consistent about this.)

All of Ken’s various designs as depicted in this episode and other flashbacks are very clearly marked and depicted, and even the younger design of “Ken at the time of blowing bubbles with Osamu” has its own sheet (he’s four years old at that point). Moreover, the above nine-year-old design has an explicit instruction on this particular sheet: “please use this for his interactions with Osamu,” meaning that this is the design everyone was instructed to follow up with during any scene where Osamu is alive.

The Animation Chronicle confirms that this happened in August 2000, so it seems to be shortly after Ken’s “initial encounter”. (Or maybe this is the “initial encounter”? Ken might have conflated both.)

This is the same design Ken is depicted with when he first is sucked into the Digital World (again: he’s clearly depicted as going in alone, not with Ryou as Tag Tamers depicts). While Ken’s memory is understandably very muddled, a lot of the details here make sense with each other:

The worst thing we see of this little venture is Wormmon having to fight a Gazimon. It’s not a big deal of a thing they have to fight through.

It’s clearly short enough that Ken can go in and out during the duration of an afternoon without anyone in the real world noticing (besides Osamu).

Ken’s looking like he had a lot of fun -- definitely not the kind of thing that seems like he went through a lot of trauma.

It’s unlikely anything much of a big deal happened during this point, other than some emotional bonding with a new best friend.

Osamu also died shortly after, given that Ken is still depicted with this design in the surrounding events as depicted in 02 episodes 21, 23, and 45. (Spring 2003 also refers to the titular spring as “the third spring” since Osamu’s death, confirming that Osamu must have died within the time period of late 2000 to early 2001.)

Ken is depicted at Osamu’s funeral in 02 episode 48, and while his clothes are different and we don’t get a full-body shot of him, note that there’s attention paid to making sure his design aligns with the above purple-shirt one -- his bangs drop in the center, rather than pointing left.

However, Ken remembers a trip through the Digital World in 02 episode 43, and Ken is depicted with a very different design that doesn’t match up with the one depicted in 02 episode 23. This has often been passed off as animator error, or Ken’s memories perhaps being extremely muddled, but what we know about the surrounding circumstances doesn’t actually suggest that...

This design is consistently written in notes to depict Ken as ten years old, in fourth grade. Not only that, if you look closely, Ken is visibly slightly taller, so it’s not just a simple question of clothing; his bangs are also depicted as pointing left, the same way they’re generally depicted with him at eleven, and not dropping in the center the way his nine- and four-year-old designs depicted.

On top of that, the surrounding circumstances behind this adventure depicted in 02 episode 43 also seem to be very different from what was depicted in the one from 02 episode 23:

The battle is clearly depicted as being against Millenniummon, and, regardless of whether this is following Tag Tamers or not, that’s clearly a big deal of a defeat.

Ken’s injury from the Dark Seed is enough to completely send him on the verge of death, which probably would not elicit the same kind of casual reaction he had during his emergence in 02 episode 23′s flashback. It was mild enough that Ken “recovered from his injuries and went home,” but that’s definitely not the kind of thing you’d expect to result in Ken be emerging with a big smile on his face (especially since Osamu’s violent reaction back then was implied to be out of jealousy for Ken’s happiness). Moreover, Ken returning in a poor state of health would probably be much less likely to be noticed by his family when Osamu is dead (and therefore not there to notice) and Ken’s parents are deep in grief.

This incident is the one that directly caused Ken’s trauma, meaning it’s more likely that this incident is going to be the one that got scrambled up in memory (it didn’t take long for Ken to recall his initial adventures with Wormmon in comparison back in 02 episode 23).

Ken refers to this incident as “two years ago”, but recall that, on top of his own unreliable testimony and scrambled memory, 02 episode 43 (when he brings this up) takes place during late December 2002, meaning that an early 2001 date doesn’t necessarily fall out of the question here, and it’s also not the first time 02′s final quarter taking place at the very end of December has thrown off date references. (02 references to “age” and “relative time” are often very rough in general and a bit too overly realistic, considering how long of a period 02 spans over and the question of things like exactly how long Daisuke can be said to be “eleven years old” over the course of the series, or the fact Osamu is said to be 7 when Ken is 4 and 11 while Ken is 9, so the more important part is paying attention to the fact the design sheets are so explicit about referring to different things.)

Moreover, this design of “ten years old, in fourth grade” is used in 02 episode 23 to show the events that we retroactively know happened right after that:

Once Ken had the Dark Seed in him, it makes sense that Oikawa wouldn’t hesitate to reach out to him, since he now had a great opportunity to exploit him mentally! Remember that this design debut all the way back in 02 episode 23, which meant that we knew that there was some kind of “timeskip” between Osamu’s death and Oikawa emailing Ken, but...if that were all there was to it, why would Oikawa wait so long between Osamu’s funeral (which clearly had Ken with his nine-year-old design) and now, especially since this “timeskip” would have given Ken extra time to mull over and recover from Osamu’s death? It makes much more sense when you apply 02 episode 43′s context that Ken’s Dark Seed implantation happened between Osamu’s death and the email, with Ken still having a really horrible year mulling over Osamu’s death, then getting dragged out like this and having something traumatic stuffed into the back of his neck that had the potential to feed on his already thick emotions of grief, and finally being at the right emotional point for Oikawa to make use of him.

It also explains why the Kaiser didn’t become enough of an issue to merit intervention until all the way in April 2002 -- presumably, of course, the Holy Beasts needed time to prepare, but if Ken wasn’t implanted with the Dark Seed until 2001 and Oikawa’s email shortly after that, that means Ken building up his persona as the Kaiser only really had less than a year to form (especially since 02 episode 23 states that Ken suddenly “doing well in school” didn’t start happening until Ken roughly got to the same height as Osamu was when he died, and the illusory meeting between the brothers in 02 episode 49 shows that Ken’s not actually that much taller than said height at eleven).

Moreover, if you do know the development circumstances behind Tag Tamers and 02: Tag Tamers already existed by the time 02 episode 23 was released, and so did Ken’s ten-year-old design (hence why it and Ryou’s design consistently show up together in concept art). This ten-year-old design had already been associated with “the time Ken got hit with a Dark Seed” (which really seems to be the only holdover in common between Tag Tamers and the anime) by the time 02 episode 23 was made, and despite that, Ken was given a completely different nine-year-old design for the flashbacks in 02 episode 23 that consistently got its own sheet. And you can’t say the animators forgot the ten-year-old design existed, because they clearly were fine using it for the other flashbacks in 02 episode 23 that happened to not be that flashback -- it’s hard to easily pass that off as “animator oversight” when it’s conspicuously introduced in the anime in a context it’s not known for and only revealed to be in its original context later.

Why did they suddenly change designs and depict such a “timeskip” back in 02 episode 23 when, if it really were supposed to all be related to the same events anyway, they could have just reused the designs and called it a day instead of making a whole new model sheet for an entirely new one? Whole entire character designs don’t just come up for no reason, especially when sheets are so consistent about them corresponding to different things, and the nine-year-old design seems to be made specifically for the purpose of having a distinct one for anytime Osamu was alive -- so it’s much more likely that this distinction is actually intentional (regardless of whatever the game says in terms of specifics).

As an amusing side note: Ken’s unusual height has been pointed out by a lot of people, and it’s sometimes been speculated as a bit of fridge horror that his unusual height growth might have also been impacted by the Dark Seed (especially given the 02 episode 23 comment about Ken reaching Osamu’s height correlating to when he started expressing similar “genius” tendencies), but even putting aside the fact he’s consistently portrayed as tall even in Kizuna and the epilogue: if Ken indeed got hit by the Dark Seed at 10 instead of 9, that means the kid had some pretty considerable height growth between those ages even before anything supernatural came into play. His father’s also tall, and Osamu was pretty obviously around the same height as Ken at age 11, so there’s clearly something in the Ichijouji family overall. Ken’s just tall.

[murasaki-murasame]

Thoughts on Higurashi Gou Ep19

OK this episode was actually just fucking with me by having Rika at a Western-style preppy boarding school drinking tea in a parlor and having debates with people. This level of concentrated Umineko content bait is going to literally kill me at some point.

Thoughts under the cut. [Plus even more Umineko stuff, but honestly who can even blame me at this point, lmao]

I don’t think I commented on it last week, partly because I was hoping we’d get the actual visuals for it in this episode, but the new ED theme is extremely good. I think I like it a lot more than the first one, but they’re both really good. I’m kinda biased though, since the new ED feels extremely Umineko-y, but still, it’s really good.

I’m kinda surprised that we still haven’t gotten the visuals for it yet. And instead of just having the ED theme play over the final scene of the episode or something, it was another round of having the credits roll over a black screen for the duration of the ED, which makes the continued lack of visuals really noticeable. I guess it’s possible that they just haven’t completed the animation for it yet, but I’m hoping that they’re holding back on it because something about the visuals for it is a spoiler for something that’ll happen in the next episode or two. And that makes me really curious to see what it might show, since at this point there’s only a narrow list of things that could probably be ‘spoilers’ for upcoming stuff in this arc.

Realistically I doubt it’d be on the level of straight up showing Umineko characters, but I’m probably still gonna get my hopes up anyway, lol.

At the very least, with how this episode brings us to 1987, and we know that Rika dies as a teenager in 1988, we’re rapidly approaching the point where everything goes to shit, and we already know that Satoko apparently got contacted by Oyashiro-sama, so honestly it wouldn’t be that strange for some kind of witch character to show up, even if maybe they’ll be presented in a somewhat abstract and indirect way.

Anyway, this episode went a long way to show the path of trauma that leads Satoko to initiating the new loop, but I think there’s going to be more going on in the next episode or so that really pushes her over the edge. Obviously she’s already in a downwards spiral because of Rika drifting away from her, and her being socially isolated all over again, but I don’t think this alone would make her go as far as trapping Rika in an endless torture loop.

I wonder if maybe Satoko is going to start getting directly bullied by the other girls at the school, rather than just being ostracized by them. It’d suck to see it happen, but it’d be the sort of thing that’d make her situation even worse than it is now. 

From what we heard here about how the school runs, I don’t think they’d directly expel Satoko for having low grades, but if she winds up slipping into the Special Class, it’d probably make her feel more and more like everything could fall apart for her at any moment, which could also make her way more volatile.

I’m pretty sure we already know that Rika ends up getting killed in 1988, and that’s how she got thrown into the new loop, so I’m curious to see how that ends up panning out. Satoko might just end up snapping and straight up killing her out of anger, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s some kind of horrible accident. With what Satoko was saying in this episode about wishing she could just have fun setting up traps around the school, I could see her setting up a situation that ends up getting Rika killed.

Either way, it feels like we’re on the brink of disaster, and I’d be surprised if it takes more than one more episode to show how everything falls apart and the loops start.

Which is also making me wonder how the arc as a whole will be paced out. In spite of being the longest arc in the show, it feels like there’s still a LOT that needs to be covered. We still need at least one more episode to conclude this big flashback sequence, then we’ll probably get some sort of flashback to show how the Gou question arcs played out in the background to solve those mysteries, and then we still have to go back to the end of Nekodamashi to follow up on that whole cliffhanger, and get into whatever the true ending of the show will be.

I still doubt that we’ll get a full second season, but I’m just not sure if five more episodes will be enough to do everything it needs to do.

At the very least, I’ve basically given up hope on Gou doing more than the bare minimum to touch upon Rena or Shion’s backstories at this point, lol.

I’m also still wondering what the ending will be like in the first place. Ideally everything would just work out fine and Rika and Satoko will talk things out and resolve everything peacefully after we return to Nekodamashi, but I’m feeling more and more like this will have a darker ending than that. Mostly because it really feels like this is barreling straight towards the ‘Bern/Lambda origin story’ route, and that just makes me feel like the ending will be really depressing and make it more clear why Bern is so messed up in Umineko.

And on that note, on top of it just being really nice teasing, it’s actually kinda neat to see Rika entering this sort of Western-style ‘high society’ life, since it goes a long way to clarify why Bern’s entire personality and aesthetic is the way it is. They never really ‘explained’ it in Umineko, aside from it just matching more with Umineko’s more Western-style setting, and in a lot of ways it feels like this ‘explanation’ was thought up way after Umineko was written anyway, but even as a retroactive explanation it’s still nice to see them show why Rika ends up that way. They haven’t shown exactly why she’s so bitter in Umineko, but at least now we know why she’s the sort of person who likes stuff like this.

In a lot of ways, everything about this whole arc and the St. Lucia’s stuff kinda feels like Ryukishi’s sort of clumsy way of directly tying together these loose threads between Higurashi and Umineko, and showing us exactly why Bern ends up the way she does. I kinda agree with the criticisms I’ve seen that Rika apparently idolizing high society upper-class life and seeing St Lucia’s of all places as Heaven on earth feels really forced, and I think that has a lot to do with what I said about how Ryukishi probably just designed Bern as a Western-style goth lolita because that fit Umineko’s setting more, and he’s only just now trying to go back and give an in-universe explanation for it via Gou. So for better or worse it kinda has this vibe of retconning parts of her character in order to brute-force this connection between the two series.

Though I can’t help but be OK with it, at least for now, since it just makes it feel like he’d only be this overt about it if he was actually setting up for something better that justified making up all this new story stuff just to contextualize Bern’s whole character in Umineko. It might just be his way of tying things together and he’s not setting up for anything, but it’d feel like a waste at this point if he’s not, considering how many people are already feeling like he’s messing with Rika’s character retroactively to make it all tie into Umineko. So it’d at least feel more justified if it’s actually setting up for something along the lines of an Umineko anime remake, even if that’s still probably just wishful thinking. 

Anyway, I think this episode is gonna cause lots of discourse about how people feel about both Rika and Satoko’s choices in this episode, but my stance right now is just that they’re both understandable, while also both being in the wrong in their own ways. Ultimately this just boils down to them not communicating with each other properly. I can see what people mean by Rika’s whole attitude here feeling out of character, but I can understand why she’s genuinely enjoying her new life, and honestly she’s always had major issues with not talking to people about things and just going with the flow, so I get why she’s not doing more to reach out to Satoko, especially since doing so would mean rocking the boat with her new friends who clearly all look down on Satoko.

And on the other side of things, I think Satoko’s whole side of things makes total sense, even though she’s also in the wrong for continuing to respond to trauma by bottling it all up and rejecting any help or communication that people offer her. That at least feels like a totally natural extension of her personality, especially when you think about how the current timeline is one where Teppei never came back to the village, and so she never had to have her whole character arc where she learns how to open up about her trauma to people and seek help. Also the end of the episode makes it feel pretty likely that this is going in the direction of her re-developing HS, which would go a long way to explain why she’d go into a full on downwards spiral, mentally. I highly doubt that she actually got completely cured for good, even if Hanyuu’s absence changed how the virus works.

Which also reminds me that we still haven’t heard anything about what happened to Satoshi, despite them talking about the virus more or less going away. At this point I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s past the point of no return, and learning about his fate might be one of the things that fully pushes Satoko over the edge.

Either way, I get why a lot of people don’t really like where this is all going, but I’m at least enjoying it for what it is [even though I’ve had to really readjust my expectations for it, lol]. But tbh at this point a big chunk of this is just me being hype about the pipe dream of a new Umineko anime, and if this ends up not leading to that, I’ll probably be a lot harsher on Gou in hindsight after it ends.

[ponett]

i was finally able to see the bad star war that everyone said was bad. as it turns out, it was bad. here’s a read more post with my thoughts on it so that i don’t spam my twitter with spoiler tweets

for a baseline: i like the original trilogy, but i don’t think any of those movies are perfect. i think the prequels had some good ideas but i were mostly terrible. i love the clone wars (both versions) and rebels. while i admit that tfa was extremely similar to a new hope, i thought it was executed great and had a wonderful new cast that showed a ton of promise. i liked rogue one, although i found its first act really sloppy. and i have some quibbles about tlj, but it had an incredibly strong vision and actual themes, and i’d consider it my favorite in the series

i’m exactly the kind of person who was always going to hate the rise of skywalker, because it’s basically a bad fanfic written by someone who didn’t like tlj and wanted to “fix” the story. like that bizarre story treatment jenny nicholson read for this movie. the bad one. it was like that

it wasn’t all bad i guess. here are the small things i liked:

some of the new environments were cool. there was cool imagery and practical effects work

i appreciated that the moon of endor where the death star wreckage was wasn’t just the one with the ewoks, and thought the vibe there was cool

zorii bliss’s armor was really cool

the image of the fleet of star destroyers all lined up was striking

i liked that the ghost showed up for the final battle

i liked that ahsoka was one of the jedi voices rey heard, even though that kind of implies that ahsoka is, uh... dead?

while extremely fucking trite and dumb, i’ll admit the closing scene on tatooine got me. yeah, rey has no real connection to this place and it’s just a nostalgic throwback, but i’m a sucker for full circle endings like that

uh. that’s about it

this movie kicks off in the middle of an action scene and just kind of keeps jumping to new setpieces nonstop until it’s over. new characters and locations get introduced and then moved past in the blink of an eye. there’s no time to let any of it sink in. it feels like abrams crammed two movies worth of shit into this one to make up for the the fact that some people didn’t like tlj, and as a result none of it resonates. i just felt so empty throughout most of the film. events were happening on screen and none of it mattered

thoughts about individual elements:

LEIA

putting the scenes with the recycled footage of carrie fisher at the beginning of the film completely took me out of it. it was so obvious that she wasn’t really responding to what was being said, and the conversations had just been built around the limited leia lines they could use

the dialogue scenes with leia felt like a space ghost interview

C-3PO

was in this movie a lot for some reason? i guess abrams wanted to make up for how little c-3po there was in the last two movies. they tried to have that emotional moment where his memory is wiped, but then they just turned his memory loss into a big joke?? and then he got most of his memories back anyway

in general, the movie is afraid to let the audience be uncomfortable for long. 3po’s memory loss. the supposed deaths of chewbacca and babu frik, that sort of thing. you’re not allowed to be sad. after tlj so effectively built tension throughout the film and really pushed the heroes to the brink, this is a disappointment

LANDO

is here because he needed to show up, and because it’s a throwback to have him pilot the falcon again. he’s just kind of there with little to do and no arc

FINN, POE, AND ROSE

before the movie came out, i had low expectations. all i really wanted was to get one last fun adventure with the new characters. when i started to hear about the spoilers, my expectations sank even lower. but maybe i would still get this

nah! rose gets like two minutes of screentime because redditors hated her, and finn and poe are barely even characters. they don’t have arcs in this film, they’re just sidekicks on rey’s journey

finn really hurts. prior to tfa’s release, finn was framed as the new star. this was, of course, a bait and switch, as rey was really the new jedi. (finn apparently IS force sensitive according to this one, but hey! we can only have one big jedi hero, so like leia before him, i guess we’ve gotta wait for some EU novel to give finn a lightsaber)

but finn was still a central character in the last two films, and he had so much potential. he was a stormtrooper who defected! that’s something new! that’s interesting! it complicates the black and white morality of the series. but no. that’s been all but abandoned at this point

many have complained about how tfa establishes that basically all the stormtroopers are people who were kidnapped as children and brainwashed by the first order... but then they still have no qualms about gleefully killing them. in the first two movies i was like “yeah, it sucks that they have to kill those guys, but if it’s to prevent genocide, it’s understandable. that’s just war. maybe they’ll touch on it in the last movie.” so in this one, they kept reminding the audience that the stormtroopers were enslaved as children. jannah is even introduced as another stormtrooper who defected like finn. but then... it goes nowhere. finn doesn’t get any first order troops to defect. they don’t care about the other stormtroopers. how many hundreds of thousands of enslaved soldiers did they kill when they blew up those star destroyers

it was nice to see finn and poe take the charge as leaders in the end, but it also feels like they didn’t take the lessons from tlj to heart. the whole point of that story was that one-in-a-million shot heroic suicide missions aren’t worth it, and that they’re more useful to the resistance alive than they are as martyrs. but then in the climax of this film they take like 30 ships to go fight a fleet of a hundred fucking star destroyers

on the subject of that final battle: i thought that the ending of tlj was so powerful. the resistance was decimated, but they still had hope, because they knew there were others out there who could help. people like rey, or the broom boy, who came from nothing but had good hearts. in this one, though, they say that apparently nobody responded to the leia’s call for help in the entire year since the last film. everyone only shows up during the climax after lando’s like “no, but for real guys, we need help”

and i did think that that sequence was cool. and i did like seeing the ghost among the ships. it was fun. the message that fascists like the first order rule by making people feel isolated, and that they’re defeated by realizing that good people are never alone? that was good. i thought that was a strong message. but it’s such a minor footnote on a movie that’s so bad in so many other ways

oh and they made the latino dude a drug dealer. okay. thanks for that

KYLO REN

i hate that they redeemed kylo and i hate the way they did it

yes, him being coerced to turn to the dark side by snoke (who was apparently just a puppet controlled by palpatine all along (UGH)) as a kid was tragic. but that doesn’t excuse his actions. kylo was given infinite second chances throughout the trilogy, and every time he responded with violence. he killed so many people himself, and willingly took part in a fascist regime that killed billions. yes, his story is sad, but he’s not some poor little boy, he’s thirty fucking years old and he vents his trauma by slaughtering innocent people

literally the entire main trio of the original trilogy died because of this asshole. han tried to talk to him in the first movie, and got stabbed and dropped into a pit. luke died astral projecting to face him in tlj. and now leia just kind of arbitrarily died to flip the switch in his brain from bad to good from across the galaxy. it’s literally as simple as that. he doesn’t have a personal journey here. he just stops being evil because his mom made him through the force

like, again. all those enslaved stormtrooper grunts who had been brainwashed since they were kids? gunned down. but giving kylo endless second chances is the most important thing in the world

and then they end the movie by having this creepy abusive stalker genocidal asshole sadboy kiss rey, retroactively framing their dynamic as a romantic one. just, gross as hell. even in this one, for most of the film, all he does is threaten rey and boss her around

i dunno. i thought the first order were interesting as antagonists. yeah, they were just the empire 2.0. but i thought it was appropriate! the idea was that just because palpatine was dead and gone didn’t mean that fascism was gone. there were still hateful people who wanted to rule the galaxy via genocide. like how we still have nazis in the 21st century. except, oops! palpatine was actually alive and pulling the strings the entire time, so now that theme’s out the window. we just have to kill him again FOR REAL this time and now the galaxy will actually be safe

people wondered where the first order would go after snoke died in tlj. but it was so obvious to me? kylo was in charge. kylo was always the most interesting bad guy. just let him call the shots and be the final adversary. but no. that wasn’t good enough. we had to bring back palpatine as the jrpg final boss to have an epic conclusion

REY

oh, poor rey. youtube critics got mad that a girl could be a strong jedi without being related to some other powerful force user from the old movies, so now she’s stuck being a palpatine forever

i will admit, the protagonist of the new movies being related to palpatine but still being a good person in spite of her heritage... that could have been something. but it’s so clearly not what they had in mind from the start, and it spits in the face of the last movie’s themes. it turns out greatness CAN’T come from anywhere. it has to come from one of these select few Special Bloodlines

oh! and this ALSO reframes rey’s parents abandoning her and selling her into slavery as an act of kindness, because they had to hide her from her spooky evil grandpa. so THAT’S fun. (edit: OH! and luke and leia knew about rey the whole time!!! and didn’t go out and look for her!!!!)

it’s just. it’s so bad what they did to rey. i don’t know if i even have much to elaborate on there, everyone’s already said how stupid it is

---

overall, i still wouldn’t say it’s the WORST star wars movie. it’s more watchable than the phantom menace, that’s for damn sure. the actors put in effort. the sets and practical effects are nice. it’s just so... empty

tros possibly feels the closest to how i imagined the new trilogy would be when it was first announced, but in a bad way. a movie built entirely on established ideas of What Star Wars Is with nothing new to bring to the table. it’s like a bad eu novel. just recycled imagery, cameos from characters we already know, palpatine coming back from the dead, that sort of thing. it’s a movie made by committee to appease reddit. it’s nothing

now i gotta use that free trial of disney plus to watch the mandalorian and wash the taste out of my mouth i guess

[gunnerpalace]

How do you think how Ori would do as a villain?

In my view, Orihime’s pathway to villainy would be using her powers to reject all the events that get in the way of her getting what she wants (which is to say, mostly Ichigo). In other words, going Full Spooky Galadriel and deciding, “In place of a Dark Lord, you would have a queen! […] All shall love me and despair!”

Now, she could settle for the present where Ichigo already knows Rukia, and Aizen and Yhwach are off the board, but we already know what that yields because of 686: a universe where Ichigo is at his absolute happiest when he just sees Rukia again and argues with her, rather than when he marries Orihime or she gives birth to their son, or whatever typical things might be cited as the happiest moments of one’s life. And, honestly? From Orihime’s perspective? That must really fucking suck.

So, if Orihime is going Full Spooky Galadriel (Orihime Untethered), why would she settle? Surely she can do better than that. And the simplest way to do better would be deleting Yhwach and Aizen at the right times in history. 

The right time for the former would be during the late 1980s or early 1990s, and would keep Masaki alive and fundamentally alter Ichigo as a character (probably significantly dulling his focus on protection and removing his disaffection), and removes future problems associated with the Quincy coming back.

Doing the latter could only be done in the latter-half of the 1980s, after Ichigo had been conceived, but before Aizen set any of his other plans in motion. So the Visored and Urahara Shop would still be around, and Kaien and Miyako would still be dead. Regardless, doing this would keep him from doing what he did with Rukia.

Trouble is, the Hougyoku is already in Rukia’s soul by that time. And it seems highly likely that Aizen did not “send” Rukia to Ichigo, but rather that the Hougyoku bent Aizen’s machinations so that it happened. (Why would Aizen be immune to the Hougyoku’s effects?) In other words, the Hougyoku being stuffed in Rukia’s soul makes it seem likely that Rukia would still encounter Ichigo eventually, regardless of how normal and happy his life was, because their encounter is essentially fated. (Kaien more than likely reminds Rukia of Ichigo, in a non-linear framework, rather than Ichigo reminded Rukia of Kaien.)

So the trouble for Orihime Untethered is that she has to:

Delete two of the most powerful dudes in the series (admittedly not at their strongest) to get a lock on the guy she wants (i.e., by removing “incentives” for him to not want to be human, and to remove her main competition) when her powers don’t work on any sufficiently powerful reiatsu.

Her main competition still having a reality-altering device shoved into her soul which may or may not be beyond Orihime’s powers to mess with even if she could kill a merely Shinigami Aizen and a comatose Yhwach. (As it was never made clear whether she actually could destroy the incomplete Hougyoku with her powers, and it sure seems like Aizen is impossible to destroy with one in him in the present.)

So the question here is: where does Orihime Untethered get the kind of monstrous power that would be necessary for such feats? And the only place she could reasonably get it from would probably be if Uryuu decided to somehow lend her the power by going beast mode in a reishi rich environment. 

Whether Uryuu is stupid enough to do that for her without knowing what she really intends, for the sake of making her happy even if he’s not in the picture at all, is an open question. (Perhaps yes, because Uryuu can be dumb like that.)

So, Aizen and Yhwach get deleted and the Hougyoku is plucked out of Rukia. (I feel it’d be going a bit far for even Orihime Untethered to delete Rukia, and I really don’t think Uryuu would agree to that.) This of course means it is never around to be in proximity to Orihime herself and Chad, so she is also retroactively keeping herself from getting powers in the first place.

Oh, that’s a problem. It’s a one-way ticket. This isn’t Donnie Darko or The Butterfly Effect: if your powers get deleted from the timestream you can’t get them back and you’re stuck. Ooh. So maybe don’t delete the Hougyoku from Rukia, even if you can. But doesn’t that then mean you’re relying on encountering her…?

Masaki would probably teach Ichigo about Quincy powers once he was of age, so he’d probably have noticed and gravitated toward Uryuu in school?

But the thing is, even if Masaki (and Kanae) didn’t die, Souken still did. So Uryuu would still become bitter toward Shinigami. Maybe he would turn Ichigo onto that way of thinking too? So they probably still become embroiled with Soul Society.

Okay, so Orihime has to have deleted Mayuri too now, to keep Souken alive and keep Uryuu and Ichigo from fighting against Shinigami. Uryuu in the present giving her the power to change shit carte blanche would probably be cool with that.

So, Souken is alive too. His big thing was cooperation with Shinigami. Working with them to eliminate Hollows in a non-destructive way while protecting humans. His proposal seemed to have been working at least a little.

What’s to say that Rukia isn’t sent as Soul Society’s representative as part of that program? Or one of the people sent? Or that she isn’t sent to walk the beat in Karakura anyway, since it seems to be the 13th Division’s responsibility? Especially so if she still has the Hougyoku in her, warping events around to take her to Ichigo?

So, there’s Quincy Uryuu and Quincy Ichigo (with latent Shinigami and Hollow powers…) working with Shinigami, including maybe Rukia. If Rukia didn’t have the Hougyoku, and turned up like this, Orihime would have no ability to get her powers back and keep up. If you can’t get powers then can’t keep up if Ichigo and Uryuu start getting adventurous in this new, happier Bleach with more functional familial and friendly relationships. So she needs the Hougyoku to still be in Rukia no matter what.

She can’t remove the Hougyoku from Rukia, let alone delete her even if she wanted to, and her having the Hougyoku means she is almost assuredly going to show up. (Plus, even if you could delete her, karma is a bitch. Who’s to say she wouldn’t reincarnate even if you did delete her? Especially if you do it too early? She might just Senna her way back. Hell, even if it works, maybe Senna herself shows up to take her place! Especially since a lot of the filler is now being treated as semi-canonical.)

So, we go around in circles with the real problems.

The first real problem for Orihime Untethered is ultimately that Rukia is absolutely necessary to her own ability to have a role in Ichigo’s supernatural nonsense. Meanwhile, she can’t really strip Ichigo of powers because they’re fundamental to who he is. So there is no way to really undo things when it comes to either of them directly, just the things around them. Ichigo and Rukia are effectively “status locked” in a fashion similar to Doctor Who’s “time locked” concept.

The second real problem is that even without Aizen and Mayuri, Soul Society is still its corrupt self and likely to draw the Kurosaki and Ishida into its shenanigans. And even if Yhwach is eliminated, Wandenreich is also still out there. As are all the Espada. So some version of supernatural nonsense is basically guaranteed to happen, no matter how many other pieces you knock down.

At the end of the day, Ichigo and Rukia are going to meet. They are going to have adventures. They are going to develop a rapport. And her only real solution is going to be social engineering, not her powers. And the truth is, Orihime isn’t really that great at the Mean Girls game, and I doubt Orihime Untethered is either.

I see her trying to force, as much as possible, the series into being a slice-of-life school comedy series, and it kind of playing out like Groundhog Day as she selectively undoes things and redoes scenarios, and it just never works out. And that leads back to the fundamental issue she’s encountering: she is trying to fuck with something that is more or less written into the fundamental laws of the universe itself.

Even if she gets Ichigo, it’s always going to be some form of settling for less. She is always going to be the second-place prize. And she is also likely to be only a temporary one, because if souls are kicking around at a rate of aging ~30 years per 2000 years that pass, an awful lot can change. And that’s before taking into account the confirmed mechanic of reincarnation.

(And this is, ultimately, why 686 is stupid in addition to being a non sequitur: okay, IH and RR had kids. So fucking what? Divorces happen. People can change, grow apart, and move on. As I said once before, what is “five lifetimes” in comparison to like, 5000 years? Or an infinite cycle of maximally 5000 year reincarnations? Barring their souls being killed somehow, Ichigo and Rukia are going to be around for longer into the future than we are now from when the Pyramids were built. You think some possibly expedient marriages are going to keep them apart all that time? Or into their next lives? Yeah, no. That’s the thing: their story isn’t over even if Bleach is. That’s yet another reason that ending is so shit beyond its character assassination and ass-pull pairings: literally anything could happen beyond it. It is not definitive because these are not normal-ass normal people.)

So what does she do, trapped in this hell of her own creation? As I see it, she has three options:

She goes completely crazy and decides to delete existence itself or massively restructure it a la Yhwach. I also really don’t think Uryuu would agree to that and I can see it ending rather tragically.

She decides to just accept being second-best with a smile until it eventually burns her out, at which point she probably tries to find someone who actually appreciates her. (One guess as to who that is.)

She skips being miserable and instead grows up and realizes that Ichigo is never going to be as happy with her as he is with Rukia, and that she needs to find that person immediately rather than wasting everyone’s time, including her own.

So we’ll call (1) the really angsty ending, discard (2) because it’s just a drawn out and angsty version of (3) which admittedly a lot of real people fall into, and we’ll call (3) the happy ending because hey, at least Orihime’s selfish efforts to rewrite the timeline would have improved the pile of shit that is life in Bleach by restoring some sense of family bonds and healthy relationships.

[callunavulgari]

YEAR-IN-BOOKS | 2020

So. Last year I read 112 books. The year before that I read 89. The year before that I read 39. This year I have (thus far) read 87 books out of my goal of 75 and will likely at least one or two more before the end of the year. So, click below if you want rambly book recs!

1. a book you loved?

This year has been rough. Like, I’m looking back at the books I read in January and am genuinely horrified to realize that I read them a scant twelve months ago when it feels like I read them at least three years ago. I’m glad I kept my limit lower this year, because enjoying anything this year has been harder than usual. I did read some decent books though, and I think the one I loved the most was Gideon the Ninth (and it’s sequel, Harrow the Ninth). They’re both fantastic books, and so deeply unexpected. Reading the first chapter or so of Gideon’s book is like getting whiplash. You go into it expecting angsty lady necromancers and get a crossdressing bee that secretes hallucinogenic substances and pulsates in time to the music in your head. Literally, Gideon’s dialogue is so out of left field that I spent half the book delightedly confused. But it is genuinely funny? And lesbian necromancers in space is just.. such an underutilized concept. Harrow’s book was a little harder - her head space is weird and everything is intentionally fucking with you so you really are confused for 90% of it, but I think the pay off was more than worth it.

2. a book you hated?

I was deeply, DEEPLY disappointed by The Secret Commonwealth. I finished it near the end of January and was just so fucking mad for days. Because the thing is, my expectations were not super high. I was excited for it, mostly because a grown up version of Lyra is something that I thought I would only ever experience in fanfiction. Now, I wish I’d only experienced her in fanfiction. Graphic attempted rape, retroactively confirming a rape happened in a previous book (one where it was implied that the victim got away in time), retroactively raping a character from the previous trilogy... like. I’m sorry. But fuck that noise. Fuck Philip Pullman. Fuck any douchebag asshole who thinks a woman has to be raped in order to write compelling fiction. I was riding the high of the new HBO series (which was good) and I guess I just... thought the author would have some goddamn integrity.

3. a book that made you cry?

We Are Okay was a really gorgeous, tender little book about grief that I read in one sitting in my bed when I really should have been sleeping. I read this book in March, when things only kind of hurt for me. When things were still largely okay. Before the bulk of covid hit my side of the world. Before self-isolation was an every day thing, not just something in books. Before Mal. Before getting covid. But ultimately, this was a book about healing. It aches, yes, but it also soothes.

4. a book that made you happy?

Both Beach Read and Written in the Stars made me pretty happy. Both romcoms done right, the first is a book about a romance writer falling in love with a thriller/mystery writer. They’re staying at neighboring beach houses and spend a summer getting themselves out of their comfort zones by challenging the other to write in the other person’s chosen genre. It’s sweet. It’s sexy. Over all, a really fun read, with enough depths to keep me engaged.

The second book is a meet-cute that involves astrology, fake dating, and lesbians. It’s written phenomenally well, and gave me a brief surge of happiness when I needed it most.

5. the best sequel?

Probably Harrow. The Dragon Republic is a great second choice though. Again, it’s a hard book, and I wouldn’t have been able to read it any later in the year than I did, because it is... not a happy book. But it is, in my opinion, a good one. And I am still excited about the third.

6. most anticipated release for the new year?

I am hoping to get the as of yet Untitled sequel to Ninth House in 2021. I am also hoping to actually be able to read The Rhythms of War in the new year, since I doubt I’ll get a chance in 2020. I’m looking forward to Mister Impossible, the second book in the Ronan trilogy by Maggie Stiefvater. I’m looking forward to the Hourglass Throne, which I think is coming in 2021? A Desolation Called Peace in March. The Thorn of Emberlain might actually be out in October, which will be wonderful it doesn’t get pushed back again. Rule of Wolves, the King of Scars Duology in the Grishaverse will also be March. One Last Stop by Casey McQuistion in May!!!!

7. favorite new author?

Defintely Tamsyn Muir. I will also be keeping an eye out for Alexandriua Bellefleur’s stuff...

8. favorite book to film adaptation?

Uh, can I say MDSZ/The Untamed without actually having read the original text? Well, I’ve read a few chapters, but damn.

9. the most surprising book?

Taproot. It’s this little graphic novel about a gardener who can see ghosts. And like. It still makes me warm to think about how tender it is.

10. the most interesting villain?

Does Loki: Where Mischief Lies count? Since Loki is technically a villain, even if he’s only villain adjacent in this book.

11. the best makeouts?

I... don’t know? I didn’t real read any of these books for makeouts. Not this year. 

12. a book that was super frustrating?

Boyfriend Material. It has great ratings! It has fake dating! But the story was very so-so for me. 

13. a book you texted about, and the text was IN CAPSLOCK?

I think I yelled at Nick a few times about how pissed I was at the Secret Commonwealth.

14. a book for the small children in your life?

The House in the Cerulean Sea is a book about a case worker at the department in charge of magical youth and he is charged with traveling to an island and making a very important decision about the children living there. It was adorable and I wish I’d had a book like it when I was young.

15. a book you learned from?

That is not the sort of book that I was reading in 2020.

16. a book you wouldn’t normally try?

I read a couple mysteries. Some were good. Most made me remember why I don’t read mysteries.

17. a book with something magical in it?

Call Down the Hawk, because all of Maggie’s books are at least a little bit magical. And while this definitely didn’t hit quite the same vibes that the Raven Cycle did, it was still very, very good.

18. the best clothes?

Gideon the Ninth and Harrow the Ninth have the best goth aesthetic I have ever seen in a book. Also, The Invisible Life of Addie Larue, because Addie’s clothes always sounded cute and comfortable.

19. the most well-rounded characters?

The City We Became had some fantastic characters. It was really interesting to see Jemisin get out of her typical fantasy setting and this novel was so out of this world. 

20. the best world-building?

Deeplight! It’s described as Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea meets Frankenstein and that is pretty accurate. Old gods that traversed the sea tore each other apart and now the world tries to get a hold of their corpses for amazing powers. It was really, really cool and probably the best book I could have chosen to read at the beach.

21. the worst world-building?

Eh. Most of the books I hated I didn’t keep reading this year.

22. a book with a good sidekick?

I really like all of the characters in the Tarot Sequence. There are some solid characters, even if there’s basically no women. Also Graceling.

23. the most insufferable narrator?

I was not a fan of The Mysterious Benedict Society, mostly because of the narrator. It was so boring and I quit halfway through.

24. a book you were excited to read for months beforehand?

Return of the Thief. Which... was still mostly good. But the ending felt lackluster for me. I may go back and reread the series and see if it feels more genuine after I’ve read them all together.

25. a book you picked up on a whim?

I literally picked up Written in the Stars because the cover was pretty and it looked like the romance was between two girls. And it did nooooot fail me.

26. a book that should be read in a foreign country?

Shrug emoji.

27. a book cassian andor would like?

I still don’t know what to make of this question.

28. a book gina linetti would like?

Shrug emoji.

29. your favorite cover art?

Gideon and Harrow, honestly. I also really liked Under the Udala Trees.

30. a book you read in translation?

I genuinely don’t know.

31. a book from another century?

Teeeeechnically The Great Hunt?

32. a book you reread?

I reread the Diviners and the Captive Prince series near the beginning of the year. They were still delightful.

33. a book you’re dying to talk about, and why?

Into the Drowning Deep was fucking amazing. I love Mira Grant’s work anyway and there’s this scene where a character pilots a submersible into the Marianas Trench and experiences your first face-to-face encounters with the sirens and like. AHHHHHHHHHH. It was so spooky and beautiful and just genuinely amazing.

TLDR; 2020 sucked, most books still couldn’t pierce through the depression, but there were a few bangers.