#my head is spinning with the amount of details and lore

[fivekrystalpetals]

I have some 200+ questions about the story so far lol; I am on Retrace XXIII and I need some time to let everything sink in before I move on to the next arc; let me try to frame all my thoughts in a coherent and chronological manner (lol)

1] starting from Alice, because everything in this story seems to revolve around her: she was a human who lived 100 years ago and was murdered during the so-called Tragedy of Sablier with a pair of scissors. the current Chain Alice is only assuming her form and has no memories of her past (which she is trying to collect but I fear the picture they piece together won't be a good one)

after all (re: Rt. 16)--

because her memories were that painful.

I feel like the ‘twisted’ Alice is the actual, remnant spirit of human Alice that created both the dimension inside the musical watch and the one Cheshire is guarding, is also the one Oz met in Retrace I from the graveyard. tho, idk how human Alice became the Chain Alice. or, rather, in Break's words, which is the true version of the chain--is it the Rabbit or is it the girl?

2] Vincent and Gil belong to the same era as Alice. there is some time leap shenanigans going on with them, that's how they landed in the present (or, well, 15 years ago from the present). Gil got adopted in the Vessalius household (as a nine-year-old so 15+9=24) whereas Vincent in the Nightray one.

a minor point: how is Gil growing older with his contract with Raven whereas Break and Sharon stopped aging?

3] Vincent.....this man knows everything. literally everything. Please someone squeeze out the details from him, please. and he is involved (heavily) in the Tragedy, going by these two panels (Rt. 19)

(poor baby ;-; if I have to make a wild guess, either he was lured or brainwashed into this....and he immediately goes into defensive mode, claiming everything is 'that person' 's fault. who is that person? Glen? Alice? although he carried a pair of scissors with him and Oz follows after him, I doubt this pair and the one found near her dead body is the same. def a blind. but I won't leave it out of the options that Vincent did kill Alice)

something else I noticed during that mindscape of Sablier Tragedy is that Oz knows how to get to Alice. he knows the place that was destroyed 100 years ago. idk what to make of this but interesting. this means he must have been alive at that time (Jack Vessalius reincarnation route or something else?)

4] I thought Gil's fear of cats was played for the sake of gags but if it makes him freeze up in a fight against a humanoid looking cat--Cheshire, then it's a serious matter.

5] Cheshire might try to kill everyone in his territory but I am still gonna love him bc he is the cutest cat with the cutest bell that goes ring ring (even if it's for a little while, he made Alice smile while she was alive, look at him snuggled up in her arms)

plus I don't believe Break's words that the Cat is a ‘fanatical follower of the Will’ (Rt:15) and since the Will hates Alice, Cheshire must hate Alice too. I doubt Cheshire would want to kill Alice in any form. he is very loyal to her that even 100 years after her death, he is still here trying to protect the fragment of memory in his bell. he is still trying, in his own little catlike ways, to protect Alice from getting hurt from her painful memories and I just </3 </3

5] Sometime in the past, the Will of the Abyss plucked out Break's left eye and gave it to Cheshire. Why? plus again to my question: what exactly is the Will of the Abyss? What is its connection to Cheshire, Alice and Break? Why does the Will hate Alice? What does the Will want with Oz? and so on

6] Also interesting that here, it’s the Mad Hatter that takes Alice to the mad tea-party conducted by Cheshire Cat

whereas in the original story, it was Cheshire Cat that sent Alice the Mad Hatter’s way. Mad Hatter was not at all gracious to Alice during the mad tea-party lol

Talking of that, Break’s chain seems like some sort of nullification ability (Rt. 20)

aaannd.... Break wonders if the power of the B-Rabbit and that of the Mad Hatter is the same? Break vs Alice soon? But Break's body can't take much of his Chain's power so he will be the first to lose anw

7] Oz feels so strongly for Alice that he singlehandedly started to pull down Cheshire's dimension. In a way, both Oz and Cheshire are the same. they want to protect Alice by destroying everything that hurts her. Cheshire was even ready to go up against the Mad Hatter, against which he stood no chance, just to protect her.

8] Jack Vessalius..... is an enigma. He is hailed as a hero of Sablier, and he, along with the Four Dukedoms, put a stop to the reign of terror under the Baskervilles and saved the country from sinking completely into the Abyss and so on.,..

what I am more curious about is that he appears a lot in Alice's memories and her (the human one, not the chain) reactions to him vary from being highly pleased to be in presence to eagerly waiting for him to downright wanting to kill him. Is she mistaking Oz for Jack? Even Gil mistook Jack for Oz for the same shining golden hair, emerald green eyes. (Rt.17) But Jack was quite affectionate to her in those memories, patting her head and lightly scolding her (Rt.8), then why would she want to kill him? What is their relationship? do I want to know

9] after his speech via Oz's lips, the Pandora officials now believe that Oz is Jack's reincarnation after completing his 100 year cycle. means more burden for Oz to not only maintain the Vessalius House but also the image of Jack.

10] anddd I dunno how to feel about Jack's constant possession of Oz's body. It’s already happened three times now (Rt. 11, Rt.18, Rt. 21) Oz being a hundred year reincarnation of the hero is a bit iffy and cliche but ok, but to be able to ‘possess’ (for the lack of a better word) him every time something arises... if Oz is gonna be under the shadow of the celebrated Jack Vessalius all the time, he won’t have any character development for himself. Oz might try to rely more on Jack than becoming stronger by himself. (two souls possessing one body is only interesting and chaotic when they have opposing interests like Sukuna/Yuuji or Greed/Ling etc.)

11] Baskervilles are even more mysterious. What's their deal? Why do they want the Will of the Abyss? Why did they sink the capital city into the Abyss? Were they trying to make Chains out of the humans by forcing them into the Abyss? and why to massacre everyone? to make crests of blood, FMA-style? After the Tragedy, the remnants of the Baskervilles went into hiding and only came out now with Oz coming of age. According to Jack, they are preparing for a comeback by their master Glen who isn't actually dead apparently. ofc everything starts when our protagonist hits 15

12] The organization of Pandora is... sketchy to say the least. Among many other reasons, but primarily this (Rt. 9)

The members of Pandora too can make a contract with the otherworldly Chains, but apparently, legal. No Seal, no ticking needle, nothing. They get all the benefits from the Chains without risking their lives, which automatically creates a hierarchy of sorts, a kind of divide between the ‘upper class’ and the commoners who blindly walk into these contracts. 

since I am guessing only the people from the four Dukedoms (Rainsworth and Nightray being two) get to make ‘legal’ contracts

the common people get lured into making contracts with the Chains at the promise of ‘ability to change the past’ and eventually, inevitably, failing (bc let’s be real, there’s no way you can do that by killing a bunch of people and even if you do get to change the past, only a hundred new problems will arise and so I never understand the prospects of doing that re: all of those time traveling movies) 

and sinking into the Abyss or dying at the hands of the Pandora

—and watch over the other households (Rt. 13)

(I think Vincent is easily the most perceptive characters we have met so far. He could understand all the underlying politics among the noble families at the age of what? six? seven?

he agrees that part of their status was because of the four families' role in the Tragedy of Sablier but more because they got their hands on the Door to the Abyss. which is really interesting. because it means that the war (massacre?) from 100 years ago also benefited the 'heroes' in many ways. hmmm. was it simply coincidentally spoils of the war? or... was something else going on?)

well, anw my point is that’s for Chains that have already devoured people. But what about Oz and Alice? Oz hasn’t killed anyone nor has Alice eaten anyone bc (Rt.15)

Oz had no choice. He didn’t have any kind of greedy ambition to change the past, to save his business, save someone etc. etc., he just wanted to get out of the Abyss where he had been cast by the Baskervilles in the first place (which they are at again even after ten years)... and the only choice he had, to escape and escape from the mouths of the other Chains dwelling in the Abyss was to make a contract with the strongest Chain there– B. Rabbit. He is not at fault, he had no idea of Chains or Contracts prior to meeting Chain Alice, he did it in the spur of the moment to save his own life and no ulterior motives. 

My question is: If Pandora does have a means to make legal contracts, why don’t they legalize the one between Alice and Oz? The needle’s already moved by two degrees (Rt. 20) and it won’t be long before he is pulled back into the Abyss, this time into the very depths. 

Unless that’s what Pandora wants. 

I literally don’t trust any of the adults around Oz and Alice (except for Gil. I don’t consider Gil as an adult) because Vincent, one of the top echelons of Pandora, is working with the Baskervilles. I don’t know if it’s just him or there are more working with the Baskervilles. (oh but it isn't like he is actually working with them. He is probably planning to backstab them when the time comes and capture the fifth door from them to get hold of the Will.)

[razmerry]

me: haha it’s just a silly little star trek au. I promise I’ll be normal about it

me when it’s time for locus:

Fr the amount of lore I have stacked up in my brain for this man... all 3 of you who read these posts better be ready to do some scrolling because I am rotted in the cabeza. 

Here’s some feverish rambling about one of my favorite rvb characters (of all time):

- Locus is a changeling, courtesy of my most genius moment in this AU 2 years ago. At the time I was only watching bits and pieces of DS9 whenever my mom had it on, but I got enough to immediately know it was perfect for him. Like Odo, Locus is one of the hundred baby changelings who got sent out into the galaxy with no memories. But I think he probably floated in space for a long time before landing anywhere, so he is decently old physically. 

- As continued, Locus followed a similar path to Odo, but instead of landing on Bajor, he crashed onto Cardassia in the wild lands, where he lay for a very long time. Until one day, he was found by a Cardassian military group - which included Felix and Siris. Since the equivalent of the Halo Great War would be the Dominion War, that’s when this is set. At first, the Cardassians just think this is a mildly interesting slimy sample, but when set near their weapons, they find that it can transform into them. All of a sudden Locus becomes very important to the Cardassians, even more so when they discover he can change from one weapon into another. And that’s what they think he is at this point - some kind of shapeshifting weapon. This is also why they call him Locus - I’m twisting canon a bit, but I’m gonna say that a particular type of phase rifle that they use is a “Locus” model. 

- Eventually, one day as the squad is sitting around talking, they start to prompt Locus to change into one of the soldiers. To all of their utter shock, they discover he can do this, and is in fact a sentient, living creature. But they are in a war after all... and he is still a weapon. (can I get a you are nothing more than a suit of armor and a gun?) Locus becomes an unofficial member of the military squad, who manages to survive in ragged numbers. He’s used both as a soldier and as a physical weapon/armor, which as he’s known nothing else but these Cardassians, he accepts as a fact of life. After the war ends and Cardassia is ravaged, his story would proceed much like it did in canon - he joins up with Felix and Siris, working as a mercenary on distant worlds. I’ll talk more about Siris once I draw him, but at some point Felix and Locus end up working together without him and eventually make their way to Chorus. Which I’ll talk more about when I draw Doyle and Kimball. Goddamn the thoughts in this head.

- Just as Odo has limits to his shapeshifting, I wanted to give some to Locus as well. He does still have to periodically rest in his liquid state, because I think that’s very funny. But his main weakness is that he’s an incredibly good shapeshifter, able to mimic people and things down the smallest detail - he’s just an incredibly terrible actor. He can look like your friend, but if he opens his mouth he cannot convince he’s them. So Locus mostly does spying/background work, which makes Felix desperately he - the “people person” - was the one who could shapeshift instead. 

- Locus’s weird little obsession/mancrush with Wash is one of my favorite little details about him, and when you can literally turn into someone I think that leaves some very fun doors open. Just to explain that ridiculous second extra drawing I made. 

- During the equivalent to seasons 11/early season 12, Locus is fully presenting himself as a normal Cardassian, and he and Felix are riding on basically the same backstories they use in the show - old war buddies turned rivals, etc etc. I think Felix would spin himself as a soldier who was forced to do terrible things during the war, but is trying to redeem himself by helping out the rebels (who are Bajorans in this AU). However Locus, as he is wont to do, just plays himself as an ice cold mercenary who is neutral to either side of this conflict. 

- As time goes on during the late season 12/season 13 equivalent arc, Locus does spy work, frequently disguised as a Bajoran or a Human. He begins to favor these forms (as he grows more and more conflicted about himself), something that Felix absolutely hates. Post-season 13, he would rarely change into a Cardassian again. His scar is something that he keeps, though - originally he gave it to himself because the leader of the original military squad (the suit of armor and a gun guy) had the same scar, and Locus saw him as an authority/father/mentor figure. Post season 13, he keeps it a reminder to himself and to keep him in check. 

- God I can talk about Locus for hours. I’m so fond of changelings. Can I get a hell yeah for any pronouns Locus? Changelings are literally The gender fluid. 

Alright I’m done now, I promise I’ll be normal about the rest of this AU (lying). Next week is Siris!

[wfagamerants]

A thing I often see people bring up and have also had some…questionable experiences with, is the concept of Mario canon and lore.

Because of it, I wanna give my take in a more detailed manner, to have it out in the open.

Right off the bat, I do think Mario has a degree of lore, because frankly, a certain base amount is normal to have. We do see concepts revisited and older games referenced. Every once in a while, we even get some surprising examples of tighter continuity.

The shining example of this is the Mario & Luigi series. These games are remarkably tightly knit into each other, with many recurring characters, original and established, as well as genuine arcs for characters like Fawful, Luigi and Bowser. There is also Super Mario Land 1, 2 and Wario Land all following up on each other or WarioWare calling back to old stuff in a surprisingly tight manner a lot.

Those are some examples and here is a key thing: this tends to happen more when a series keeps the same developer. A sub-series can have surprisingly continuity at times on its own, but how much we see of that elsewhere varies strongly. Luigi’s ghost hunting career has gotten plenty of acknowledgement, but Mario being the head of a toy company? Not so much.

While there is something there, I do heavily, heavily disagree with the idea that Mario has a consistent continuity and canon, because frankly, it doesn’t.

This Miyamoto quote says it best:

He doesn’t say the characters are actors, but more so compares Mario to old cartoons that could always do their own thing with say, the characters taking on new occupations every episode, without needing to fit in with what came before. Mario is very much like that.

To add to this, Mario has no officially recognized canon. There is no Mushroom Kingdom Hystoria or leaked internal documents or interview statements or TailsTube kind of shows that give us a timeline of when what game happens or which ones ‘’count’’.

This especially goes for the spin-offs. Nothing ever stated them to be lesser or any kind of ‘’non-canon’’, Mario is Mario and Nintendo has never made a hierarchy of how much each game ‘’counts’’ or ‘’matters’’.

The only games I’d genuinely call out of the picture are Smash, due to official statements that the characters there are toys and old licensed stuff like Hotel Mario or the edutainment games, which Nintendo has distanced itself from.

Aside from that, I firmly believe every game is fair game to take into consideration and not be dismissed, which often happens with the spin-offs when discussing inconsistencies, which Mario has a lot of:

Dry Bowser

While multiple versions of the same character appearing on spin-off rosters is nothing unusual, Dry Bowser has some more oddities to him.

In the first New Super Mario Bros, Mario Party 10 and Jr’s Journey, Dry Bowser is Bowser’s undead form, simple as that.

Meanwhile in spin-offs he often appears as his own character, but that isn’t where it ends. He appears as a explicably separate character in the Mario & Sonic games, even in a story mode capacity, Puzzles & Dragons has him as a bonus boss and unlockable character, with Bowser already in your party at this point and Mario Party Island Tour goes as far as to call him a close family friend:

It extends outside of spin-offs too, since he also appears in Super Mario 3D Land and New Super Mario Bros 2’s special worlds, even kidnapping Luigi in the former right after Bowser is defeated. What’s notable here is that Bowser is shown alive and well in the credits of both games:

So yeah, there is no consistency here. 3D Land and NSMB2 are more of an implied case, since we never see them together, but it does show how Dry Bowser is just whatever the game needs him to be.

Where did Mario come from?

The Yoshi games and Mario & Luigi Partners in Time portray Mario and Luigi as having been born and grown up in the Mushroom Kingdom, even knowing Peach since toddler days in case of the latter. Many take this to assume that the original backstory that Mario is from New York, was a western invention, with no basis in japanese materials but that is not the case.

Miyamoto himself has confirmed that Mario Bros takes place in New York:

And Perfect Ban Mario Character Daijiten, a japanese Mario character guide book, written in collaboration with Nintendo, further states that Mario is italian, Foreman Spike an american and that Pauline lives in New York, indicating that Donkey Kong Arcade, Mario Bros and Wrecking Crew all take place there. Most recently, we found out the movie is gonna go with the New York backstory.

While the movie is it’s own take on Mario, Nintendo is directly involved with its creation, so them accepting this backstory in Mario’s biggest mainstream outing outside of video games yet, is telling. It’s even specifically Brooklyn, which was only specified in western materials, showing once again those do matter.

Worth noting is that the series has had other instances of a real world too. The GBC and GBA Tennis and Golf games have story modes centering around humans in a real world, who compete to earn the right to travel to the Mushroom Kingdom. The Mario & Sonic series is also a thing, as odd as the series is, it has never been singled out as not counting and the same can be said about Mario Kart Tour’s real world themed tracks.

Super Mario Odyssey meanwhile goes for an odd middle ground with New Donk City. The New York inspiration is blatant and it is said to be the place Arcade Donkey Kong took place in. At the same time the New Donkers are at odds with the otherwise cartoony Mario humans and we previously already had Big Ape City in Donkey Kong Land, as the city implied to be where DKArcade took place in. It’s not impossible for them to be the same place, but there is nothing official that confirms or denies it.

Dr. Mario 64’s Wario Land Cast

In Wario Land 3, the mooks you were facing are eventually revealed to be the people of the music box world, cursed by Rudy and once he’s defeated, the curse is broken.

In Dr. Mario 64 meanwhile, these same mooks return, either explicitly as minions to Rudy or hanging out, away from the music box world. There is no explanation for it, it’s just a very different interpretation of them.

Paper Mario

The Paper Mario series was never really implied to be a different world from regular Mario. Several PM64 characters even show up in other games and things like Mario’s paper abilities are contextualized as curses, rather than natural abilities, with nobody ever pointing out someone being made out of paper.

Sticker Star onwards change the latter at least, significantly. The paper gimmicks go from visual gag reminders of the artstyle, to being a main attraction and the characters are so fully aware they are made out of paper that they not only regularly point it out, but part of Origami King’s plot even hinges on it.

That said, while this is a big shift in the series, it still makes it little more than an increasingly more stylized take on the Mario universe for the day. It’s not unlike how Yoshi’s Story and Yoshi’s Topsy-Turvy gave a story context to the visual style of the games, while Woolly World and Crafted World just treated it as being how the world always was. It’s just how the world looks for the day, like a special cartoon episode to call back to that Miyamoto quote.

Paper Jam meanwhile specifically treats Paper Mario as its own world, which has never been revisited or acknowledged since. It’s just a one-time thing they did for the sake of the crossover, rather than something with big franchise-wide implications.

The lack of non-Sticker Star elements in Paper Jam and how difficult it can be to reconcile the old Paper Mario world with the current one (especially how much the current genericness of the species is being pointed out in the new games), invites the idea only the new games take place in the book, but that is again, never officially said in any capacity.

The Star Festival

The Star Festival in Super Mario Galaxy is said to occur every 100 years. Despite this, a new one happens in Galaxy 2.

I have seen many arguments that this is the result of the universe being reconstructed at the end of Galaxy, but not only has this never been officially stated, but it’s framed like Mario never met Rosalina before, with her even introducing herself during the ending:

And no, there was no implied memory vibe, Mario even hears her voice at the end of Galaxy.

King Boo.

Luigi’s Mansion Dark Moon frames it like King Boo hasn’t seen Luigi ever since the first Luigi’s Mansion, since he just broke out since, which is framed like a twist:

In the context of the LM games on their own, this isn’t a problem, but it is strange given the many appearances King Boo has made between the two games as well as a line where he mentions Baby Luigi as if he was a separate person, like in the spin-offs:

Just an oddity since there is no official timeline that places the games into a particular order and no, LM King Boo and Spin-Off King Boo have never been treated like separate characters.

Those are some notable examples I can think of. There isn’t a clean way to reconcile things without jerry picking and I don’t agree with that practice because again: Mario has no officially recognized canon, so doing so would only end up being a series of pick and choose with no official backing on what sources are the correct ones.

And the thing is, that’s okay. As that Miyamoto quote already went into, Mario is a loose cartoon canon, where things can be altered as needed in the name of making a fun game.

There are plenty of series with a genuinely defined canon you can track, read up on and see officially set in stone. Mario is not one of them and it doesn’t need to be.

[redux-iterum]

A Moment of Sincerity

We’re putting down Puppycat today.

I’ve talked about her before here, but as she influenced a section of the lore of the Redux, and now Iterum, I feel it would be appropriate to tell you all about her and pay her respects before we take her to the vet this afternoon. Sentimental nonsense under the cut.

It’s an unfair thing, really. She’s only 11 years old and has been through a hell of a lot in her life, and now it’s cut short.

For starters, we originally got her to be a playmate of our other kitten, Jack the Ripper. He was named appropriately, because when we brought her home, we discovered that we had underestimated how much bigger than her he was, and he proceeded to “play” so hard that we half-jokingly believe he gave her brain damage from knocking her around and hitting her head. She developed some odd traits afterward, earning her new name after she began to wag her tail like a dog, adore belly rubs, and come when she was called.

Jack ultimately died young, and from that point Puppycat (nee Kelly) dedicated all of her free time to eating. All of it. She ate and ate and ate, to the point that we could no longer just let our cats have food out all the time, because she’d scarf it down, vomit it up, and go back for more. I’ve always described her as “looking like a tick: big round body and tiny little head”.

It got to the point that one night, during the development of the Redux, I was sitting in my room while she waddled about in circles, trying to get me to pet her. I noted with no small amount of irritation that she was the epitome of gluttony - and then it struck me that such a creature would be an amazing monster in Redux!Clan lore. It took no time at all to spin a tale of a hairless, bulbous animal that eats endlessly and will devour anything that can fit down its broken jaws. 

Puppy, of course, was nowhere near as aggressive as Yrrun, only bopping or hissing in self defense. The meanest thing she ever did unprompted was reach out and gently tap one of our other cats as she was walking by (who at the time was being bullied by the whole house of animals). It wasn’t appreciated, but it certainly was funny.

She had the habit of coming to sit on my chest when I woke up in the morning to bug me to feed her, as if that would speed up the process, and once stuck her foot in my mouth when I yawned. She's always been awkward about how to express her affection, but her favorite way was to gently reach out and touch a human’s face, doing her best to purr (she didn’t know how to for a long time; she just wheezed happily as a young’un). It’s sweet, but she also has really long claws and so your face always gets scratched up. Still, it’s the thought that counts.

I’ve discussed a cat on Seeker’s blog before named Andy. This was Puppycat’s best friend in the whole world. The two were fat and slow and that only exacerbated as they aged, but they still played in a geriatric fashion with each other. That said, Andy had a hell of a bite, and often Puppy would have to slap him and refuse to stop playing when he hurt her.

One of my absolute favorite memories of all time involves these two. I was at the table in the dining room, which was connected to the office, which they were playing in. Out of nowhere, I heard a scuffle and a hiss, and then Puppycat came out into the hallway waddling for her life, unable to run with her weight. Andy, who was injured at the time, limped after her as fast as he could, as if he could possibly catch up to her. I could have outpaced them both crawling. It was pathetic. The sheer absurdity has never left my mind, and I can see the details of this instance perfectly to this day.

When Andy died is when things really went downhill. I’ve never seen an animal grieve properly before, but Puppycat was clearly devastated. She refused to eat or come inside, even in the cold and rain (she’s hated the outdoors all her life before this), and she lost almost all of her personality. It got to the point where she got skinnier and skinnier until she was actually at the average weight for a cat her age. A bittersweet milestone, but at the very least she wasn’t struggling to walk five steps before giving up and flopping over in exhaustion.

Unfortunately, just as she was recovering from her loss, she came down with a gum disease that made it impossible for her to eat in comfort, bringing down her weight even more. We ended up having to remove all of her teeth except her fangs and put her on pills that she would be on for the rest of her life to keep the disease down and let her get back to her favorite hobby. Notably, she still had the gumption to eat dry food without being able to chew it, but we needed to help her pick up strips of cheese or whatever snack we gave her while we were making food.

I’m not particularly sure what hit her now, but after she started vomiting up her pills no matter when or how we gave them, she’s completely stopped eating and drinking. She’s just stayed outside, crumpled in the gravel much in the way an animal is when they’re trying to run out the clock and pass on. I can’t let her just starve to death like a hospice patient, so in a couple hours she’s going to our nearest vet to have a much swifter, painless end. Lucky thing she’s always been comfortable and cheerful when she goes to appointments.

That’s about all I feel like saying for now, I think. She’s currently lying down in the hall, still limp, still silent. I wish I could talk to her in a way she’d understand, just to let her know she’s been endlessly valued as a member of the family in all the time we’ve had her. She’s brought countless hours of amusement and jokes with her strange little self and even our vets love her to pieces. I would like to tell her the house will not be the same without her.

Rest easy for a bit, Puppy. You’ll be seeing Andy again soon.

[krshush]

Alright. So. SO. I think I’m gonna set a lot of my JJKai thoughts down now, after just kind of gradually reblogging more and more abt it with little other context (except my rising agony over the arc I just finished in the manga, anyways)

JJKai is already Pretty Popular, but in case you aren’t familiar at all, lemme introduce it: Jujutsu Kaisen is a Horror-Action shounen manga made by Gege Akutami, with the first season of the anime adaption available on CrunchyRoll. It’s set in modern-day Tokyo and follows protagonist Yuji Itadori as he learns of the world just underneath the mundane, a world of Curses made from mankind’s fears and regrets, and the Sorcery select people can use to dispel these cursed spirits. Yuji learns of this world after encountering, and absorbing, a special cursed artifact and he himself becoming half-cursed, a vessel of one of the most evil beings known to jujutsu sorcery.

If you’re already familiar with shounen as a subgenre, JJKai will feel very familiar, but I do not mean that in a harsh way: it’s clear Akutami grew up on the same anime and manga, but also spins away from many of the negative cliches and tropes of the genre, in ways I can’t even fully articulate as I’ve not been into the genre in a long while. Some I can think of are

the cast doesn’t start out Huge-- it does grow, yes, there’s many characters, but by the nature of the premise you aren’t introduced to like a dozen at a time. There’s space for the main characters to breathe, to take up room befitting them, and yet not take from shining moments for each of the supporting cast either.

Every Sequence is Important-- bro everything happens so much. I know shounen loves to throw things around so everything lands like a blow, be it the action or the lore dumps, but JJKai just does this with purpose, it does not waste any time and I’ve yet to find a detail that didn’t then lead somewhere else plotwise, that made more sense in context to something else learned dozens of chapters later. The amount of purpose in everything.

look, there are SEVERAL tropes just, turned on head-- I’m still not even sure how to articulate this one without context of Seeing The Series, but trust me. TRUST. Akutami is DOING things and is AWARE. From Understanding that these characters all have to be unhinged to survive, to the autonomy of all the ladies in the cast, to the shades of rivalries, to the way the villains function oh my god, just--AUGH.

Action is only kind of my genre, meanwhile horror is not at all, but both are used so effectively, the Horror is important, there are HORRIFIC things that have to be stated, understood, seen for the stakes to rise and they continuously rise. Which isn’t to say it's grim at all times either, absolutely not, but I do think it sticks the landing on every tone it aims for in any given sequence. 

[SIGHS] [HOLDS HEAD IN HANDS] y’all. I don’t say this lightly. JJKai is popular with good reason. I’d recommend looking for a warning list if you’re squeamish but otherwise 9.7/10 if you wanna fry your brain with Everything All At Once [compliment]. You can watch the anime first and then jump into the manga afterwards if you want

[cielsosinfel]

its 4am so i need to log OFF and go to BED but my mind is spinning with dishonored dishonored dishonored. this game really meant the world to me when i was... fucking... 18 years old lmao wow. i'm really not very far at all, i have just made my way to Claring Blvd, but some thoughts, i guess:

for a game that came out on consoles in 2012, it looks amazing. the stylization aged very VERY well even if some gameplay elements didn't. (and to be honest, the gameplay isn't as clunky as i was worrying it'd be.) (i do think there must have been a better, less confusing button mapping option for sneak-stabbing vs sneak-choking.)

i still love how beat up everyone's faces look in this. though, the women could stand to be more beat up and have more varied face shapes. also the NOSES

forgot that literally everyone wears pants because apparently skirts and dresses don't exist in the dishonoredverse? at least not in dunwall. which seems very fitting tbf.

the amount of thought and depth poured into the lore of the world dishonored takes place in, the amount of WORLDBUILDING, when you never even leave the walls of dunwall, is still one of my favorite things about it. i think the writers in charge of the flavor text strewn about as notes and books did a good job giving all of these details that flesh the setting out but still leave so much mystery that could be expanded on.

i love the atmosphere obviously but i love the just, entire atmosphere around the whales in this universe, their place in the world and its foundational myths and religions and the economic exploitation, everything it symbolizes for THESE ancient, magical leviathans to be brutally killed en masse to be rendered down to oil and heretical charms. and it reminds me yet again, of the common fanon of pre-DH2 fandom, where the outsider was a whale, or something older than the whales who brought them forth into the world or merely has a particular fondness and affinity for them, and he was never a human in anything but false flesh, only worn to put the mortals who reach out to him at something like ease, or just acknowledge the limitations of these beings who can't fathom whale song. what i'm saying is, i'm really still annoyed they canonized the whole "teenaged sacrifice victim" origin for him instead of having more fun with the magical ancient whales stuff u_u

something i hadn't noticed until this replay is the voice acting is very flat? i think it's easy to tell it's a voice direction thing. like, wow, so many charactes just speak Very Flat, almost monotone at times. it does take me out of the dialogue, ngl. i think as a 17/18 year old i wasn't paying nearly as much attention to like, writing and acting as i do now, so its sticking out. havelock especially sticks out. also funny to realize just how many background NPCs are voiced by the same three or four VAs...

the heart mechanic is still one of the most fun and enjoyable game mechanic gimmicks that ties in SO perfectly with the narrative itself. it's also just so funny to imagine corvo following people around the hound's pit, like barely a foot away from their back, holding a freshly-beating heart in his hand and burning a hole into the other person's head with such an INTENSITY trying to wring every little observation out of the lump of metal-choked flesh he holds (while the heart tells him how god dang suicidal they are. oh lydia and cecelia)

i'm thinking of all the woobie corvo angst fics i ever read where the heart is basically an emotional support haunted organ and going wuwuwuwu while i replay

i think now, as a 30 year old gay man instead of a teen girl, i desire samuel carnally (more specifically desire to see him and corvo fuck each other senseless) even MORE STRONGLY

ok i gotta do homework today good night

[jackals-horny-jail-archive]

devil week slowly approaching and my gore/adjacent interests coming back again like

lemme out-

anyways dragon priest musings under the cut cw for scarification + the inherent power imbalances at play

also this is only barely horny mostly world building welcome to All Plot No Porn Time With Jackal Ur Host

anyways gnawing on them i always toss around if it's like...tattoos or scarification when it comes to a dragons claim on their priest and im leaning towards option number 2 bc. it's MY horny au i get to be a freak if i wanna

like the concept itself is in my brain as another way for the dragons to like hold them up and go this is MY special little bastard don't touch them or we'll be having problems. but it's like they usually have their disciples being the ones doing it on their priests right bc they don't often care that much Initially until they get close and etc etc etc other world building details im touching with my lil hands

i think as a treat to me alduin takes particular interest in the whole process tho,,,both bc he's never had a priest before and. he's gay as hell. local dragon god was not interest in mortals before this Dragonborn decided to square up with him and call his bluff (despite shaking like a leaf the entire time and being sick Immediately after)

so now he has a priest AND he's having idle daydreams about fucking them will wonders never cease

anyways- he can't yet bc he's pretty sure if he pressed they would like. ACTUALLY kill him in the middle of the act. + he has Standards there's certain lines even He won't cross but also he wants to take every opportunity he can to touch them

so he JUMPS at the opportunity. probably scares the ever living shit out of his disciples definitely has jackal going "haha. WHAT-"

anyways there's many more lore thoughts in my head but i cannot stop thinking about.....the fact that the dragon language is made via their claws scratching marks. cannot stop thinking about the way he pushes their head down to bare their nape in a way that's almost tender...but still sets all their hairs to raising because there is an instinctive part of them that is Terrified and spinning around the fact that he could use this opportunity to kill them

but he! doesn't!

just carefully cuts the letters of his name into the flesh of their neck, looping around into a permanent collar. and he's so... perfectly precise. almost tender about it. brushing their hair out of way and wiping away the blood as it spills

jackals little masochist streak is loudly purring the entire time and they're trying to blame their wandering thoughts on the fact that they're losing y'know. a not insubstantial amount of blood. and Not on the fact that the situation is rudely hot especially the one time he absently licks the blood from his claws and OH BOY are they glad they don't have a dick in this moment at least they would be popping SUCH a boner

alduin smug and pleased and predator like vs jackal casually vibrating and somehow flushed and pale all at once and

they touch the scars after as a nervous tic + alduin absolutely 100% pays so much attention to them. licking and kissing and lightly nipping at their throat....

[mischievouswritingblog]

Meta Essay: Medivh The Bisexual Icon

As of the time of this post, there’s going to be an update coming to World of Warcraft where the once all female ghosts in Karazhan will be changed to include male varieties as well.

Full details on the update can be found here: https://www.wowhead.com/news/female-only-ghosts-in-karazhan-updated-to-include-male-versions-324371

This has caused a lot of fun posts and people to take this as an ‘accidental confirmation’ by Blizzard that the character Medivh is bisexual. Pair this along with how some of his portrayal in Hearthstone was made into Warcraft canon, and in my opinion, it’s an excellent update to his character.

It’s no secret that Blizzard’s had a massive lack in LBGTQ+ representation for the longest time. Often when such subject matter did show up it was treated more as a punchline in some quests or was kept conveniently to the sidelines, with nonconsequential, blink and you miss it text, side characters, moments. It’s insulting, to say the least, and is the source of a growing frustration from the LBGTQ+ members of the audience. What’s more, whenever this frustration gets voiced it’s always talked down to. We are told that to ‘keep politics out of gaming’ and that we are too sensitive, when these are the same people that get bent out of shape when even a single thing changes or is called out in their game. It’s bullshit. LBGTQ+ people exist and the act of existing isn’t a political issue.

But of course, with people even making lighthearted jokes or posts of Medivh being a ‘Bisexual Icon’, there’s folks crawling out of the woodwork with reasons from “But the loooooooore!” (as if the lore isn’t constantly changing and being retconned from one expansion to the next) to “Well A-C-T-U-A-L-L-Y, those male guests were just for the female nobles that visited and attended his parties, Medivh was very straight”. To that, I’m going to say: “Nah, Medivh is a bisexual icon, deal with it”.

In my personal opinion, Medivh is an excellent character to explore queerness  with. He’s a character that’s been around since Warcraft 1 and the effects and ties from his story are still felt throughout World of Warcraft in various ways. Medivh is also a character that’s gone through a large amount of evolution and various portrayals. My personal favorite being the One Night in Karazhan take on him because it’s so different from the usual ‘brooding, grand powerful hermit-mage’ that his type of character usually is. Medivh in One Night in Karazhan is instead, vibrant and is a thriving social butterfly that loves to have and treat people to a good time. His reasonings for being this way make a lot more sense when you really think about what Medivh’s situation was.

Now, I have to mention that I do a much deeper dive and deconstruction of Medivh’s circumstances and just how messed up they were in this self indulgent essay/headcanon dump: ‘My Completely Self-indulgent Medivh Essay’. Feel free to give it a read but here is the basic gist for this essay:

Yes, Medivh was the Guardian, one of the most powerful mages to exist at the time. He was also possessed by Sargeras and was the one that created and opened the Dark Portal that brought the Orcs to Azaroth and changed Azeroth forever. But here’s the thing, Medivh had no choice in any of it.

To be the Guardian means you have to put your life on the line for Azeroth’s sake. This is a role that had to be kept to secrecy, people had to make a lot of sacrifices to be the Guardian. You gain phenomenal powers and it is a great honor but none of this was anything that Medivh ever asked for. He was literally born to become the Guardian, there was no other choice for his own future. 

Then you have Sargeras, he had his plans in play long before Medivh was even a thought. A sliver of Sargeras had entered Aegwynn (Med’s mother and the Guardian before him) from a battle between Aegwynn and his avatar. This influence hid within her and made its move when she decided that she wasn’t going to allow the Council of Tirisfal to choose her heir for her title and powers for her. Ignoring Chronicle’s softening of her, she used Medivh’s father, Neilas Aran, the court magician of Stormwind to sire a child. In TLG she let him know she flat out used him and felt nothing for him then came back later and tossed baby Medivh to him for free childcare. What neither of them knew at the time was that Medivh was possessed by Sargeras while he was in the womb. Sargeras would then screw him over even further by causing his powers to lash out when he was fourteen, causing him to accidentally kill his father and fall into a near 10 year coma, and wake up mentally and emotionally fourteen in a twenty-three-year-old’s body. So from the very beginning Medivh was always set up for failure.

So with this summary out of the way, the point of the matter is that Medivh is a character that had little autonomy for most of his life. His career and his fate were chosen for him from the start. Sargeras was in his head messing with him throughout his life, in TLG Medivh even tells Khadgar that he tried to fight it as much as he could. His story is a tragic one but with his reappearance in Legion there’s potentially a ray of hope.

I think there’s a lot of aspects in Medivh’s story that can tie well with the feelings and experiences of queerness. Not so much the being possessed by discount space Satan, but more so the struggle of trying to have autonomy and hanging onto who you are as a person. Being queer myself and looking at it through that lens, I see Medivh being vibrant and throwing parties as an attempt for him to seize what autonomy he could for himself. To exist, to be seen, and to have an identity of his own that had nothing to do with being the Guardian of Tirisfal. I think that it’s also something that separates Medivh from Sargeras. There were likely times where Sargeras may have forced the lines between them to blur as he gradually poisoned Medivh’s thoughts and twisted his soul throughout the years. Medivh likely had to struggle a lot with separating who he truly was from Sargeras. This being inside him, who wasn’t him but would at times take over his body suppressing Medivh’s true self. It’s a horror story where some elements can really hit close to home.

Medivh I believe surrounded himself with like minded, free spirited people like Barnes and the theater troupe (while there’s the joke Medivh’s only seen three plays, I choose to headcanon he’s a theater kid, given how he has a theater to begin with and his own love for theatrics). Whether you picture Medivh as aro, ace, gay, bi, pan, or trans, with the upcoming changes he clearly accepts many kinds of people into his home.

This also has the interesting effect of changing some of the tones for some events in his lore. One example being the titans sending down the Maiden of Virtue to punish Medivh and make him live a more ‘pure’ life. The Titans are Azeroth’s closest thing to a pantheon of gods. They are beings of order, having taken Azeroth in her rawest form and molding her into something they saw fit. Apparently, Medivh’s parties and behavior was seen as something that required ‘correcting’.

On one hand, it’s really easy to read it simply as Medivh being a selfish, spoiled brat. But with looking at it through a queer lens one can put a more positive spin on the situation. The Maiden of Virtue was sent to shame and punish him into conforming into something the Titans believe someone like Medivh should behave. It clearly didn’t work. Looking at this situation, one can read it as Medivh refusing to relinquish his identity because a ‘higher power’ wanted him to. In the real world there are so many that have to hide their orientation and gender thanks to people using religion and belief as a cudgel. So having a character like Medivh as queer, with the power and willfulness to flat out refuse and shut it down is a refreshing power move.

Medivh’s story and the way he is in general has elements that I believe many people of the LBGTQ+ can relate with. He’s a complicated character that has dealt with abuse and being forced into roles without his consent, he made identity for himself and it was stripped away by an oppressor (Sargeras), and, depending on if Blizzard decides he’s actually resurrected/alive instead of being a ghost, is a survivor.

So to me, I love the idea of Medivh being a queer icon in Warcraft. It hasn’t been officially stated by Blizzard at the time this essay was posted but it has started a fun conversation. There are and will be the haters who will scream and tantrum about the LBGTQ+ touching their precious (when convenient) lore with their filthy paws and tarnishing ‘their game’. But in the meantime, I’m going to continue having a blast with the idea and enjoy working the story potential it gives into fanfics, speculations, and essays.

If you enjoyed this essay, I did a few other bits of meta, headcanons, and speculation for fun: My Completely Self-indulgent Medivh Essay

A Bit About Wizards and Sorcerers

Headcanons: Medivh is Alive and Currently Uses ‘The Guardian’s Study’ as his Home

[darkpoisonouslove]

Tangled: The Series Review

I just watched Tangled: The Series and I finished all three seasons in four days. TL:DR It’s good. It’s really, really good and I definitely recommend. This might be the best thing that has come out of Disney in the last decade or more. Now head under the cut for a more detailed look at the show and my thoughts on it.

Plot

The plot is actually pretty simple and is a direct continuation of the storyline from Tangled: Before Ever After. Granted, there are a lot of elements that answer questions not only from that movie but also from the Tangled movie itself but they are introduced with a lot of time in between that lets you process and even get disengaged at a couple points.

Not gonna lie, the pacing can be pretty slow sometimes and you almost forget what the end goal of the journey is but that allows for a lot of character work to be done (which I will talk about in a sec). It doesn’t seem like it has enough plot for three seasons but they do end up filling it out. Sometimes it’s a little frustrating but it works about 98% of the time.

The finale of season 3 wasn’t overly hyped up by the set up so it didn’t feel anti-climatic like it so often happens when shows just oversell their final showdown in the build-up and then it’s just... eh. Here the emotion and suspense definitely felt proportional to the action you’re getting most of the time.

Characters

The characters were great! They build up on what we’ve seen from Rapunzel, Eugine and Cassandra in the two movies and gave a lot of screen time to side characters as well. Pascal gets two episodes that are centered on him and he gets his own arcs! He’s a chameleon! And you feel for him as an independent character and Rapunzel’s friend, not just her pet. There are a lot of moments where other citizens of Corona that aren’t part of the main focus of the show get attention as well to a point where the kingdom truly feels populated and the world comes alive off the screen. It’s truly moving to watch most of those stories develop.

A little complaint I have would be with Rapunzel’s parents. The focus on them wasn’t bad–not at all–it just wasn’t enough. To be fair, I was actually surprised that they even touched on them but when you truly examine how they did, it just isn’t enough. We get a look at the trauma of losing a child mostly through Rapunzel’s father who definitely got more screen time than her mother but, ultimately, neither of them feels well developed. You are just not sure who they are as people and it feels unsatisfying precisely because the show tried to focus on them. It just didn’t work out fully.

Other than that, most of the characters just work really well. They all get arcs and go through a lot of character development that makes you attached to them and you really get invested in the story which is great. I genuinely cried a couple of times because I was so touched.

Villains

The villains might just be my biggest issue with this series. They have some good minor villains, some cases that are engaging despite the frustration they breed and a couple of villains that are just frustrating in their execution. I’m going to break this down a little to express what I mean.

The main villain of the show is okay but is a little underwhelming. She’s not on screen until season 3 and the thing is that she feels a lot more menacing while she is just a presence that hangs over the main cast rather than she is when she is actually present. (Now this might spoil a little simply because there is no other way to word it) Her servants come off as more menacing than she does. The only time she’s truly pulling her weight is in the finale that I already mentioned was just the right amount of hyped up so that you don’t end up disappointed by it. I was pretty neutral about her and liked her more when she was just an incorporeal tale the heroes were hearing about.

There were several minor villains that worked great. They were the right amount of menacing and the show actually allowed itself to go into pretty dark territory with some of them. Most left lasting consequences for the main cast of heroes and were just all around perfect. The thing that I have an issue with is all (and those are several) the villains that switched over to the good side because it never felt executed correctly. It was either rushed or not well motivated. The writers of the show were making a point about how kindness can touch any kind of person but it still felt forced and not focused on enough. All of these cases would have benefited from a bit more time for the change to happen.

There are two villains in the series that are particularly frustrating when it comes to that because with them changing morality was like flipping a switch. With the first one both the good-to-bad and bad-to-good changes were just not motivated enough and were ramped up to eleven. It just leaves you thinking “You should go to sleep and then you’d calm down” but instead he ended up nearly getting dozens of people killed just because he couldn’t think to count to ten. And in the other case, the switch to the side of evil was definitely motivated in insecurities that were festering over time but the flip-flopping between good and evil was just really annoying and didn’t feel like it was grounded in particular thought or even emotion. It was just happening because the plot demanded it which was extremely jarring after two and a half seasons of a character driven show. And despite the clearly overtaking insecurities, watching this character make some of her choices is unbelievably frustrating because they just don’t make sense. No matter how hurt she is, she is just acting like she either is unable to think or like she doesn’t care about anyone but herself which clashes with the moments in which she is considering going back to the side of good. It is baffling and the worst point of the writing in any aspect.

Relationship Drama

Or rather the lack of anything I would describe as relationship drama aka unfounded jealousy and wild miscommunication that would take half a minute of intelligent conversation to be resolved. I was so pleasantly surprised by the way the relationship between Rapunzel and Eugine was handled. They are both supportive of each other and forgive mistakes. They talk about their feelings and resolve conflict whenever it arises. They trust each other even when it appears that the situation doesn’t warrant that. It is just a healthy relationship that is absolutely heart-warming and adorable to watch.

I am especially thrilled about the fact that they brought up Rapunzel rejecting Eugine’s marriage proposal in Before Ever After and touched on how it would feel to a girl who’s spent her whole life confined to one place to be thinking of settling down (not ideal since in a way it implied that marriage is a trap or at least boring and would cut off your opportunity for adventure but at least they talked about it). And I am especially pleased that they gave the characters time to explore their relationship and also explored the idea of them being in one without being engaged. Really, the message that you can love someone and still not be ready to get engaged is valuable and not something I would expect from a story about a Disney princess.

Some more highlights to talk about and some minor spoilers (don’t read if you don’t want to know more) – they explore how Rapunzel inspires Eugine to be better but it isn’t framed as her being his only salvation. It is framed exactly as what it is – Eugine seeing Rapunzel’s kindness and deciding that he wants to be better for himself and for her, too. I really appreciated that. They also have this episode in which Rapunzel and Eugine have to play parents and I liked the way it was handled. It truly felt like they have the connection between them to support a family and raise children but they are not in a rush and that goes back to the idea that they don’t need to get engaged and married if they don’t feel ready even though they might appear ready.

Lore

I loved the lore of the series. There is a lot more we learn about Corona as well as Rapunzel and the abilities of her hair. There is more information about the world and the surroundings of both the characters and Corona as a kingdom. We get a great expansion of the fantasy element of the world as well as the history and politics of it and I was immersed in the way it made the story and the characters richer. The show is doing its own thing and it is following whatever has already been established about the world and building on it in order to make both the story more compelling and to answer questions that have been raised in the movies without being answered. It’s doing quite well on that front.

Originality

A lot of times I would think that we are going down the route of a certain trope but then they’d put a fresh spin on it or at least a new angle that isn’t usually brought up and made the story that much more engaging. The show dealt with some serious topics that I never would have expected from a Disney princess property. They actually explore Rapunzel grappling with the responsibility that will fall on her shoulders once she’s queen of Corona and it was done in a very realistic and honest–even raw–way. Definitely not something you think you’ll find in the show when you sit down to watch it. There were certainly some cliches and moments that I wish they could have subverted the tropes they were using, but overall, I was often surprised by the way they handled the matter they were writing about.

[myhahnestopinion]

THE AARONS 2020 - Best TV Show

It was prime time for TV in 2020, with many more free hours to fill. I managed to get through a lot of my backlog in fact, finally getting around to watching shows like The Strain. It’s a show about a deadly disease that tears society apart because a lot of arrogant people think they are exempt from quarantining. The disease turns people into vampires, so it’s technically escapism. Here are the Aarons for Best TV Show: 

#10. The Plot Against America (Miniseries) - HBO

It’s not TV, it’s not HBO, it’s real life. The Wire-creator David Simon’s penchant for illustrating the human fallout of institutional failures made him a perfect collaborator for HBO’s Plot Against America, an adaptation of Phillip Roth’s alternate-history novel. Following a Jewish family in New Jersey navigating the increasingly-fascist America of a hypothetical Charles Lindbergh administration, the show is a terrifying warning of what happens when hatred and conspiracy theories are allowed to accumulate political force. Notably, while the book ends with history back on the right track, the closing moments here are left ambiguous. The show was a limited series, but in many ways, The Plot Against America is ongoing.

#9. Mrs. America (Miniseries) - FX

Its interests are married to The Plot Against America, but Mrs. America traces the country’s rising extremism from a more historically accurate perspective. The miniseries centers on political activists in the 1970s on opposing sides of the proposed Equal Rights Amendment, but its dialogue isn’t a strict dichotomy. The episodic format is expertly utilized to build out intersectional ideas from the likes of Rose Byrne’s Gloria Steinem, Uzo Aduba’s Shirley Crisholm, and Margo Martindale’s Bella Abzug, detailing the difficulties in building a diverse coalition, and the dangers of a single-minded one. Drawing parallels to current debates, its compelling centerpiece is how conservative Phylis Shafley (Cate Blanchett) successfully defeats the Amendment; voting against your own self-interests, Mrs. America says, is as American as apple pie.

#8. The Outsider (Miniseries) - HBO

Societal collapse comes from within in the two shows mentioned above, but the threat in HBO’s adaptation of Stephen King’s 2018 novel is decidedly an “other.” King clearly had his mind on modern manipulations of truth when crafting the ingenious premise: a man is arrested for the murder of two young boys due to irrefutable DNA evidence, only to provide an air-tight alibi for the crime. To match King’s procedural prose, HBO brought on The Night Of’s David Price, who layers the original work with meticulous mysteries. The Outsider has all the pulpy jolts expected of the author, but the show’s true horror lies in its overbearing grief, best brought to life by Ben Mendelsohn’s Detective Anderson. To say more would be to spoil its secrets; you’ll want to be on the inside.

#7. Perry Mason (Season 1) - HBO

Just like the famous fictional attorney, HBO can’t seem to lose, with Perry Mason marking its third entry on this list. The reimagining of the long running court drama actually takes place before the character’s illustrious law career; here he’s a down-on-his-luck private eye caught up in a scandalous child kidnapping case. The result’s a gangbusters production of old-fashioned moody noir: political corruption, femme fatales, and a more morally-complicated Mason, as played by The Americans’ Matthew Rhys. The lavish period details and character-actor cast, including Shea Whigham, John Lithgow, and Tatiana Maslany, will help draw viewers in, but, I’ll confess, I was already hooked by the season’s chilling opening moments.

#6. Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist (Season 1) - NBC

Dour seasons have dominated this list thus far, but Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist sings a different tune. It’s a lovably oddball premise: an accident during an MRI causes a young woman, played by Jane Levy, to hear other people’s thoughts in the form of popular music. It’s all karaoke, but, emphasized by the presence of Skylar Astin, a worthy inheritor to Crazy Ex-Girlfriend’s musical-comedy crown. The tracklist, workplace antics, and love-triangle drama all exist in a comfortingly familiar network TV realm, but the show takes additional steps for inclusion with stories highlighting Zoey’s genderfluid neighbor (Alex Newell) and an American Sign Language performance of Rachel Platten’s “Fight Song.” During a year in need of shuffling off stress, there was no better time to queue up Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist.

#5. What We Do in The Shadows (Season 2) - FX

FX’s expansion of the mockumentary feature film of the same name lit up some of the darker corners of its universe in the show’s second season, transforming mundane-seeming material into something completely, uniquely batty. Each creature of Shadows took their turn in the spotlight this season, from a middle-management promotion gifting energy-vampire Colin Robinson unlimited supernatural power, to undead Nadja befriending a doll possessed by her own ghost, to Matt Berry’s Lazlo forging a small-town persona as a bartender/volleyball coach to escape a vengeful Mark Hamill. As always, it was the sympathetic Guillermo (Harvey Guillén), a Van Helsing descendent desperate to become a vampire, who gave the show its emotional stakes, and the vampires within a different kind altogether.

#4. Stargirl (Season 1) - DC Universe

Shadows was lit, but few things burned brighter this year than Stargirl (perhaps too brightly for the flamed-out DC Universe). The superhero drama is one of several that will outlive its original streaming service - fitting, given its obsession with legacy. Based on a character created by DC Comics stalwart Geoff Johns after the tragic loss of his sister, the show finds a young girl taking on the mantle of a fallen hero after moving to a town run in secret by supervillains. With sprightly fight choreography and an unabashed embrace of its comic book lore, Stargirl outshines the overabundance of small-screen superheroes out there. Its highlight is the bright performance of lead Brec Bassinger; put simply, she’s a star, girl.

#3. BoJack Horseman (Season 6b) - Netflix

Throughout its run, BoJack Horseman garnered acclaim for routinely delivering unexpected pathos, and the final season kept it on that track until the end. ...Get it, because horses run on tracks? The unexpected porter of television’s legacy of antiheroes ended in much the same vein as its sister shows - with consequences finally catching up with its protagonist. No amount of fanciful animal puns could soften that painful catharsis, as the show finally trampled its tricky web of abuse through bittersweet means. The series closed out with an especially thoughtful scene, the kind viewers who looked past the wonky pilot years ago were regularly blessed with; to the very end, BoJack, you were a gift, horse.

#2. Better Call Saul (Season 5) - AMC

As good as Bad ever was and better than ever before, the fifth season of AMC’s spin-off completely upended the world of its eponymous lawyer while bringing Vince Gilligan’s universe one step away from full-circle. Saul Goodman found himself in way over his head, and viewers found themselves way on the edge of their seats, as his first foray into “criminal” lawyering swiftly dovetailed with an escalating drug war. Despite the emotional distress of watching fan-favorite character Kim Wexler placed in perilous situations, there are no objections to be had with the drama’s continued masterful storytelling. Ramping up the slow-burn storytelling, season five saw Kim and Saul’s relationship develop in rich and unexpected ways, while still keeping their final fates unresolved. Fans are thus waiting with bated breath for the show’s final call next year. 

#1. The Great (Season 1) - Hulu

Who could be the best but The Great? There was a minor television controversy this year over Netflix marketing The Crown as a historical drama despite its fictional interpretation of events; The Great has no such pretentions. An asterix adorns every title card of the show, letting viewers know that its take on Catherine the Great’s coup against Emperor Peter III of Russia is only “an occasionally true story.” The show indeed is not great for education, but it’s the most entertaining television of the year, locking stars Elle Fanning and Nicholas Hoult in a battle of wits and a fight for the country’s soul under the watch of The Favourite co-writer Tony McNamara. The uproarious comedy slyly collates leadership based in cruelty with leadership based in goodwill in the background of its quite bawdy escapades, a subtle bit of relevant political maneuvering that lets it successfully claim the crown this year.

NEXT UP: THE 2020 AARONS FOR BEST TV EPISODE!

[afreakingdork]

Review: Re:Zero − Starting Life in Another World Season 2

Oh man, it was so freeing to finally have time to just marathon the first season over again so I could watch to season 2! If I’m being totally honest, this is the type of show I despise to rewatch. With my ADHD rewatching shows is already difficult enough, but I also am not a fan of isekai anime with this being one of the few exceptions. For example, nothing could make me rewatch season 1 of That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime. It wasn’t that I disliked the show, I just would be so bored if I had to sit down to rewatch it. I probably won’t be watching season 2 of Tensura either, but that has nothing to do with Re:Zero. The point I wanted to make is, rewatching season one really gave me a totally different perspective than my first watch. It’s hard to put yourself in a mindset of where you were when you first experience something, but I can certainly say at the time I watched the first season if Re:Zero, I had been binging a ton of anime of varying quality and, because of that, Re:Zero felt like a breath of fresh air. When I reviewed my review of season 1, I was pretty confused though. The body horror was totally upsetting (Rem literally drags her, every bone broken, body across the floor!!!) and Petelgeuse does things that would make a Silent Hill monster go ‘ew.’ Also, why did I say there was classy perv pandering? It’s so annoying how many times Subaru gets pulled into Rem’s boobs. I was still impressed by the story, characters, and portrayal of trauma, but it’s not the perfect show I thought it was. 

I also want to note that I watched the two OVAs (Memory Snow and Frozen Bond) which, might I add, are pretty damn necessary to watch season 2. They recap Frozen Bond some, but mostly they allude to both episodes. I liked both of them, but I will say I struggled because there was so much that wasn’t said in Frozen Bond that, frustratingly, was still unsaid in season 2. Who made Puck give the oath that he wouldn’t intrude on Emilia’s life? 

Which finally brings me to season 2.

Right off the bat, within minutes I was enraged to find out that they made Emilia’s boobs bigger. There is nothing I hate more than forced perv pandering in a second season (see New Game!!). Also, I totally acknowledge that the pandemic interrupted quite a bit, but over the course of 25 episodes I never did get used to the fact that the ears are different. They went from having detail and shading to being totally flat objects and my eye would be consistently drawn to them. 

The art, however, is nothing compared to whatever the hell is going on in the story. By episode 3, "The Long-Awaited Reunion," there is such a massive lore expansion that I found it terribly hard to keep up. To further complicate matters, there’s all the sin witches and, to make it more confusing, they have their designated sin archbishops who happen to share the same name as them while also having their own unique given and surnames. Plus, apparently the witches and the like aren’t limited to the seven deadly sins as, I don’t know, the whole population of the world familiar with the concept would be led to believe. There’s the Witch of Vanity and then an Apostle of Melancholy, or whatever his name was, so I guess all negative personality traits are just powerful beings, Speaking of which, the line between human, witch, and spirit just blurs beyond comprehension. You think there’s an iron clad rule that spirits can’t hold a physical form permanently? Well, here’s Beatrice! Petelgeuse (the past version of him) is heavily implied to be a human, but he is also implied to be extremely old. Then to add insult to injury,  Regulus just straight up calls him a spirit. Plus the amount of times people throw witch around as an insult and a title is just head-spinning. 

Speaking of witches, is Echinda actually the teacher of Roswaal and the mother of Beatrice? I only ask because they keep her face totally hidden in all the flashbacks and there’s even a flashback after ‘that person’ has passed where Roswaal tells Beatice that he is going to visit the Witch of Greed and Beatrice doesn’t make an immediate connection to ‘that person’ also being her mother which she totally would have. Plus, on top of all that when they finally showed ‘that person’ in the casket it seemed like a big reveal that it might not be the same person even though they share the same voice actor, body type, and outfit. It was either supposed to be a different person or it was simply one of the worst framings I’ve ever seen in a show. 

The conversations in this season were totally exhausting. There were tinges of this in the first season; often times Subaru would talk to someone after returning from death and I, as the viewer, would be totally confused by his conversations with people because we would hear his inner thoughts to find out what his intentions to get out of a conversation are to be one thing and then he just says shit that doesn’t let him get to those answers. In season 2, you add a little of Roswaal‘s forced incomprehensible speech and, those annoying tinges become full blown episodes. The dialog between characters is more often than not just NOT HOW PEOPLE TALK TO EACH OTHER. Especially between Subaru and Emilia; I noted this in my review of season one, but there has to be at least a roundabout way for Subaru to explain certain things to Emilia instead of just leaving her out entirely. When the two finally had a shouting match in season 2, I was honestly glad because at least it felt like at least they could say meaningful things to each other for a change. 

As I reached the end of part two of season 2, I came to realize that so much of this season was just to set up the whole end half so it could serve some much needed flashbacks. The only problem with that is jam packing 15 million flashbacks in damn near every second of 10-12 straight episodes is ABSOLUTELY GARBAGE WRITING. There was seriously a point in the second to last episode where Beatrice didn’t have anyone to act off of and so she just TALKED TO HERSELF OUTLOUD to give flashback information. They simply did too much and just to twist the knife they even have a one off line that pokes fun at it. 

I remember thinking toward the end of part one that I didn’t even know what I was watching at this point. The show built up so much lore in season 1 that it then totally strips to nothing by having the second season take place in a newly introduced. Then it has that whole season take place there, with it’s new characters, and takes the burden of having to flesh those characters out on. It’s horrifying by a writing standpoint. All it really did was make the whole thing feel outlandishly jumbled while also leaving a litany of storylines, dialog, and characters severely underdeveloped and hemorrhaging the overall plot. I mean I can say a single sentence that sums this whole thing up: They shelved Rem. They shelved arguably the most popular character and everyone’s ‘best girl’ for the season (please note I’m an Emilia stan, but like when I see Rem in action I get it!). How can you just take her out of the show?! For what purpose could there even be!? Oh I have an idea: it’s because everything they add is just unendingly sad. In season one, there are, of course, characters that are hurt, this is a grueling world, but the story is really channeled through Subaru and his anguish. Season 2 was like, ‘what if everyone was in total anguish and many of them were suicidal?’ It was gore porn. It was anguish porn. It was sadness porn and above all else, it was just too much. Also, it is painfully obvious that the overarching themes of this season are family and love, but damn it gets really confusing when you don’t actually know a persons linage and they’re calling everyone mother and father and brother and sister. 

That being said, it wasn’t all bad. In Subaru’s first trial, I think it was really powerful that they never explicitly say that Subaru suffered being ‘his father’s child’ because his dad was this larger than life person. Instead, they presented those feelings through animation and raw human emotion. It was really beautiful, in a sad way of course. I thought it was fascinating that they bumped Otto’s role up. Someone at Re:Zero HQ said, ‘Subaru should have some dude pals, huh?’ and then made that happen and I’m not upset about it. I will say that I don’t think I wanted it either, but it is what it is.  

Verdict: 

[nothonks-ever]

Punz' Amulet Lore (REAL NOT FAKE)

This is really fucking old but I realized that I had done a large portion of it so I mustered up all my motivation and managed to finish it. This was one of my first hc's for how Punz got his amulet that I scrapped a long time ago. I spent too much time on this to not post it tho lol

When someone works for Dream, you would expect them to be unfathomably wealthy, so the predicament Punz found himself in shouldn’t have been possible. Turns out Dream is more worried about paying with diamonds and golden apples than trivial building blocks. It made sense, in hindsight, diamonds were one of the most valuable things available, but Punz didn’t really need any of it.

This is what lead Punz here today, at the mouth of a cave roughly 7,000 blocks from spawn. Almost every cave near spawn had been searched, so going this far was the best way to guarantee the cave was untouched. The cave was vast, a warm light softly emitted from the torch in his hand casting long shadows across the cave walls. Punz searched through the cave’s winding tunnels and many dead ends, feeling more frustrated as he continued.

“Another dead end! Dude, how bad is this cave? I’ve barely gotten a couple stacks of andesite,” Punz grumbled to himself, walking back out the way he came.

Punz was never particularly lucky, he understood this, but his misfortune should at least be courteous enough to not interfere with his mining expeditions. Maybe next time if he brought Sam with him he’d have better luck, Sam had always been unbelievably lucky when mining.

After searching through the entire cave and only finding a small amount of what he’d hoped for, the figures strip mining for a bit may pose beneficial before moving onto another cave. Mining into a cave’s wall wasn’t very fun, if anything it was time-consuming, but he needed andesite, and the more materials the better.

I hear a zombie up here somewhere, Punz thought, mining up toward the noise, I hope this ends up being a good cave.

The last thing Punz expected was to be directly under the cave, so the zombie falling onto him came as an unpleasant surprise. A startled yelp escaped him before he was able to grab his ax and kill the zombie, allowing relief to replace the initial shock.

“It was just a zombie,” Punz chuckled to himself, bringing his torch up higher. He tried getting a good view of the cave from where he was standing, but it still looked pitch black. The rocks were surprisingly smooth against Punz’s hands as he pulled himself up.

“What the hell is this? There’s literally no way someone has already been this far out,” Punz grumbled, gliding his hand across the smooth stone walls in the corridor he mined into. He held up his torch to a wall, looking over the intricate carvings.

Punz turned around, pressing his back to the stone wall. There was no way someone back home made this, it would be completely lit up, but the walls were too well designed to be random. For a split second, Punz humored the thought of it just being a fortress, but the walls didn’t resemble any fortress he’d seen. The carvings continued down the hallway, long swooping designs spiraling together, it was almost beautiful. The corridors continued on, twisting and turning but never splitting or ending. The lack of mobs seemed strange as well, there was no light and nothing seemed to have spawned after the first zombie.

Eventually, the hallway opened up to a large entrance completely made of black stone. Going in seemed absurd, but Punz was curious. In all the years he’d explored, he’d never seen anything like this in the overworld, it shouldn’t exist. Why wouldn’t he go in?

Punz expected a lot of things when walking in, for it to be incredibly cold, to be ambushed immediately upon entry, and to eventually find nothing were the top three on that list. What he didn’t expect was for it to be warm inside the large structure. The air felt electric, surrounding him with restless energy.

The tunnels were hard to navigate, with everything being pitch black and made of the same material. Small rooms littered the structure’s hallways, which were all completely empty, with no chests, no torches, nothing. As Punz continued on throughout the structure the restless feeling in the air only increased, the identical rooms and hallways only worsening his unease.

The last room should’ve been no different from the rest, but upon entry, Punz found a small chest laying against the back wall. Watching each step with apprehension, he moved toward the chest across the small room. Opening a chest shouldn’t have been so hard, but his hands shook so fiercely that he was forced to take a moment to steady himself.

There wasn’t much inside the chest, some string, a reasonable amount of obsidian, small pieces of gold, and some arrows. Now the lack of defenses made sense, there wasn’t anything worth protection. Punz raked a shaky hand through his hair, breathing in a sigh of relief, There’s nothing here.

Rummaging through the small chest, grabbing the small pieces of gold and obsidian inside, he found a larger chunk of gold, wedged in between some arrows. Pulling it out farther showed that it was a medallion, hanging from a chain. Etched into the front were carvings that seemed to match the walls, swirlings lines that tangled together seamlessly toward the center. A flash of purple crossed his thoughts as the medallion gleamed against the torchlight, but upon further inspection, Punz found it was completely made of gold.

This is weird, I’d better get back.

Punz turns toward the door, pocketing the medallion.

A sickening hiss is heard from under him, sending him flying against the wall. Punz is only vaguely aware of the warmth spreading across the back of his head, the room spinning too rapidly to concentrate.

---

“Bad, Ant, have you talked to Punz recently? He’s been on since before I got here and it’s showing that he’s still on.” Sam asked, turning toward the two.

“No, I haven’t talked to him in a while but I’m sure he’s fine. He’s probably just working on something. You could try messaging him though,” Ant replied, placing another glass block over the enclosure.

“You’re right, I should just do that,” Sam said, before messaging Punz a quick what r u up to? Sam still felt uneasy, Punz never stayed on for this long. The unease only worsened when he wasn’t getting a response. Of course, Punz could be busy, but he’s usually quick to reply, so why would now be any different?

He can handle himself, he’s fine.

Sam walked out onto the wooden path, following the familiar fauna.

He’s fine, he can handle himself.

Sam walked up the wooden stairs, up toward the large wooden house. Each step more frantic than the last.

He’s fine.

“Punz!” Sam called out into the empty house, his voice softly bouncing off the walls.

He can handle himself.

“Punz. Holy shit, Punz, are you okay?” Sam dropped down in front of him, ignoring the soft buzzing of the bees surrounding him.

“Hey, hey, Punz, Punz! Wake up! Come on,” Sam softly pats his face, trying to ignore the hair that stuck together, matted with blood.

“Oh god, please, be quiet.” Punz’ quiet whimper and meek attempt at escape only worry Sam further.

“Come on Punz, drink some of this,” Sam slowly tipped a potion of regeneration into his mouth, wary of how loose Punz’s grip was on the bottle.

Once Punz manages to guzzle down the potion Sam discards the now empty bottle, “Where the hell were you? I looked everywhere,” he wets a rag in the bee water and tries in vain to clean some of the blood from Punz’ head, staining the small pool a light pink.

“I just went out mining. Really, Sam, I’m okay,” Punz sends him a shaky thumbs up and a lopsided grin, the soft glare he receives back somehow hurts more than his throbbing headache, “Sorry you had to come all the way out here for me.”

Sam sighs, laying his head against the wall next to Punz, “I was headed out here anyway,” when Punz gives him a questioning glance Sam huffs out a small laugh, “Bee advice.”

Punz can’t help but laugh, wincing slightly at the sting of pain between his eyes, “Smartest person on the server and can’t figure out bees? You’ve really fallen off, huh Sam?”

“They’re confusing and you know it. They’re so fragile and get lost so frequently,”

“You literally build the most confusing shit with redstone, building a bee dome should not be this hard for you,” Punz has a point and Sam can appreciate the honesty, the worry from before seeping away as Punz seems to ease back into himself.

The setting sun casts long and bright colors across Punz’ face, showcasing every detail that Sam hadn’t noticed previously in his haste. Most noticeably a new medallion, strung along his neck, gleams purple in the sunset.

“I know I’ve been gone a while, but when did you get this?” Sam moves closer, softly cradling the medallion in his hand. It’s larger than what Punz would usually wear, but something flashier was never something Punz shied away from either.

Punz brings his hands up, shielding his eyes from the sun, and looks toward Sam’s center of attention, “What do you- oh.”

“I’ve never seen carvings like these before, they’re beautiful,” Sam looks up, stopped cold by the deep frown plastered across Punz’ face, “What’s wrong?”

“I've never seen that before."

[snicketsleuth]

What is “The Great Unknown”?

Who is it? What is it? Does it even matter? There is no greater mystery than the nature of the unknowable.

"We saw that on a radar screen," Violet remembered. "Captain Widdershins refused to tell us what it was." "My brother used to call it 'The Great Unknown,'" Kit said, clasping her belly as the baby kicked violently. "I was terrified, Baudelaires.” [The End, Chapter Thirteen]

The basis of the theory rests on a Doylist perspective as it tries to rationalize the relevance of “All the Wrong Questions” pertaining to “A Series Of Unfortunate Events”. Daniel Handler had to be careful while writing the second series as he was juggling with two conflicting goals:

The nature of the question-mark was a symbolic representation of Death and the Unknowable, and had to remain that way in order for “A Series Of Unfortunate Events” not to be ruined,

Fans were disappointed by the number of unresolved plotholes in “A Series Of Unfortunate Events” and Daniel Handler wanted to throw them a bone by expanding the lore and providing more hints to these mysteries.

So there was only one compromise possible: add more details to the lore of the Great Unknown but in a way which would leave the final fate of the characters in “The End” still very ambiguous. That was the mission “All The Wrong Questions” had to accomplish. Yet it’s still very ambiguous whether the infamous Bombinating Beast really is the question-mark which shows up on the sonar screens of the submarine in “The Grim Grotto” and “The End”. So why write “All The Wrong Questions” at all?

This article posits that there are more connections between the plot of both series than initially believed, if one digs hard enough. We just have to follow the clues to paint a more global picture. Here are all the smaller mysteries we have to investigate before rendering our final verdict:

How many question marks are in “The Grim Grotto” and “The End”?

Why are Ellington’s eyebrows shaped like question marks?

Was the question-mark-shaped entity a submarine or an animal?

To whom did the Carmelita octopus-shaped submarine belong?

What exactly happened to Fernald and Fiona?

More after the cut.

NB : This article is dedicated to @snicketstrange (a.k.a. Jean Lúcio). Please check out his Tumblr page for more amazing theories about the mind of Daniel Handler (and incidentally Lemony Snicket). There’s also a Youtube page (Link) if you speak Portuguese. Jean, thank you for your invaluable help in researching this topic, particularly regarding the nature of sonars.

How many question marks are in “The Grim Grotto” and “The End”?

Surprisingly, I have issues with this line of reasoning. Not because there isn’t a connection, but because there is evidence for two Bombinating Beasts showing up in “All The Wrong Questions”:

The proper Bombinating Beast from the legends of Stain’d-by-the-Sea (which we will name OBB, as in “Original”),

The genetic monstrosity created by Hangfire through experiments (which we will name CBB, as in “Copied” or “Clone”), which he planned to use to impersonate the OBB.

It’s pretty much established at this point. We see in “Shouldn’t You Be In School” that the CBB was still “immature” according to Ellington, and it’s very much implied that the tadpole who bit Lemony’s finger in “When Did You See Her Last” was the CBB at an even earlier stage. A significant amount of time happens between the two books, to the point Handler released a spin-off called “File Under: 13 Suspicious Incidents” to account for what the characters did in the meantime. Supposedly the CBB had time to grow. So it wouldn’t make sense for Stain’d-by-the-Sea to have legends about the terrifying Bombinating Beast if that thing was just a tadpole in recent history.

How Hangfire managed to create the CBB is left unexplained by Daniel Handler. It still seems to be somewhat related to the OBB because the whistle inside the statue seems to work on it, so there’s something similar about the way the two creatures function. My guess is that, though the OBB was lost to time, some fossilized eggs remained and Hangfire managed to find and hatch one. Much ado is made about the book “Caviar: Salty Jewel of the Tasty Sea” which used to be in Dewey’s library in Stain’d-by-the-Sea. All we know about the book is that it has a chapter dedicated to the tanks being used when the sturgeons are young. My guess is that the book is where Hangfire found the necessary information.

So the question remains: who showed up in “The Grim Grotto” and “The End”: the OBB or the CBB? Since one is essentially the child of the other, and since the entity shows up no less than three times (twice in “The Grim Grotto”, once in “The End”), there’s a possibility that both the OBB and the CBB showed up in separate instances and that characters mistakenly thought it was the same entity each time.

Why are Ellington’s eyebrows shaped like question marks?

Believe it or not, TBB is only compared to a question mark once in the entire series.

Supposedly sailors still saw the Bombinating Beast, swimming with its body curled up like an underwater question mark, although with the sea drained, I couldn’t imagine that this could be true, at least not anymore. [Who Could That Be At This Hour ?, Chapter Four]

Interestingly it’s rather Ellington who is compared to a question mark, far more often than the Beast. Usually next to a mention of a smile which “could mean anything”.

“Hello,” she said, “I’m Ellington Feint,” and I sat up to get a better look at her. It was not so dark that I couldn’t see her strange, curved eyebrows, each one coiled over like a question mark. Green eyes she had, and hair so black it made the night look pale. She had long fingers, with nails just as black, and they poked out of a black shirt with long, smooth sleeves. And right before she started climbing down the ladder, I saw her smile, shadowy in the moonlight. It was a smile that might have meant anything. She was a little older than me, or maybe just a little taller. I followed her down. [Who Could That Be At This Hour?, Chapter Seven]

But instead I just looked at the person with her back to me. Next to her were a large, striped suitcase and an oddly shaped case perfect for holding an old-fashioned record player. Hanging from her shoulder was a green purse shaped like a long, zippered tube as she stood and looked at the shelves filled with stenciled bags of coffee. Then she turned around, and I paid attention to her dark, dark hair, and her eyebrows, each one coiled over like a question mark, and her green eyes underneath. “Lemony Snicket,” she said. “Ellington Feint,” I said, and it was only then that I saw that smile of hers, the one that could have meant anything. [Who Could That Be At This Hour?, Chapter Eleven]

If you want to know the truth, I was thinking about Ellington Feint, a girl with strange, curved eyebrows like question marks, and green eyes, and a smile that might have meant anything. [When Did You See Her Last?, Chapter One]

And there was a girl standing in front of me. Her green eyes were the same, but her hair wasn’t black, not now. It was blond instead, so blond it looked white. Her fingers were still slender, with long black nails again, and over her eyes were strange eyebrows curved like question marks. She was using the same smile, too. It was a smile I liked. It was a smile that might have meant anything. [When Did You See Her Last?, Chapter Seven]

The something else was a girl, taller than I was or older than I was or both. She had curious eyebrows, curved and coiled like question marks, and she had a smile that might have meant anything. [Shouldn’t You Be In School?, Chapter One]

“Are you awake?” I asked me, but it wasn’t me who was talking. It hadn’t been all along. I turned my head and ached and blinked and found myself staring into a pair of green eyes. They blinked below a pair of eyebrows curled up like question marks, and after she blinked, the girl gave me a smile that might have meant anything. [Shouldn’t You Be In School?, Chapter Eight]

Ellington moved her mug to the center of the table. Her eyebrows, curved like question marks, felt like they belonged to all the questions in my mind, and then she gave me her smile, the one that might have meant anything. [Shouldn’t You Be In School, Chapter Nine]

“It’s all a big question mark,” Jake said, with a grim grin, and I gave him a fraught frown to match. Question marks made me think of Ellington Feint’s curved eyebrows, and the smile she always gave me, that could have meant anything. It made me unsteady to think of all of it, and the train rattling made me feel unsteadier still. [Why Is This Night Different From All Other Nights?, Chapter Seven]

“This is the only place on the train where you can find coffee,” I said, and showed her the tiny folded cup. She raised her curious eyebrows, shaped like question marks, and finally gave me the smile she always gave me, the smile that could have meant anything. [Why Is This Night Different From All Other Nights?, Chapter Eight]

I reached out to her, and she moved violently away from me. I had to grab the chain that bound her hands, in order to look into her eyes. Her curled eyebrows had always reminded me of question marks, but now they just looked furious. You’ll never see Ellington Feint smile again, I thought to myself, but it was a moment before I could bring myself to reply. “I hoped it wasn’t true,” I said finally. [Why Is This Night Different From All Other Nights?, Chapter Thirteen]

So at this point it looks like Lemony/Handler is throwing far more clues towards Ellington having something to do with the mysterious question mark featured in “A Series Of Unfortunate Events” rather than TBB itself. Why is that?

On one hand, there’s some semblance of symbolism going on there. In Lemony’s adolescent mind, he’s the detective and Ellington is the designated “femme fatale” of noir literature, somebody dangerous you can’t trust or understand, and who usually has hidden and nefarious motives. So of course she’d be associated with question marks and an undecipherable mind. She represents the Unknown, and the primal fear which goes with that.

Except readers end up realizing that Lemony has it wrong. Although Ellington lies often, her motives are neither hidden nor difficult to understand: she’s a traumatized child desperate to find her father. That’s what she presents herself as and she acts accordingly. It’s actually Lemony who fits the role of the “homme fatal” to Ellington: his motives are shrouded in mystery because of his association with VFD (other youngsters in the series call him out on it) and he ends up betraying Ellington for his own ends. Lemony is essentially projecting his own duplicity and manipulative nature on Ellington. She’s a mirror to his own sins.

So if Ellington is a clue to understand the true nature of the entity, it’s not just a clue which relates to the plot. It also functions as a key to understanding the symbolism and psychology of the entity. Our educated guess, therefore, would be that characters assume a lot of things about the entity which are just plain wrong, and that they are projecting their own identity on it.

Was the question-mark-shaped entity a submarine or an animal?

The following reasoning was helpfully worked out for me by Jean Lúcio (aka @snicketstrange on Tumblr), a prominent member of the Brazilian Snicket fandom. What he realized is that there are two kinds of sonars: active (emitting a sound and listening to its echo) and passive (listening to sounds in the vicinity). Both have merits: the active one is more efficient as it will detect objects for you even if there are silent, and the passive one is more discreet as it allows you to stay silent.

So in “The Grim Grotto” it seems that both Olaf and Widdershins assume the entity uses a passive sonar. Both of them insist that the people inside the Queequeg/Carmelita do not make any sound in order to remain undetected by the entity.

Why does that matter, anyway?

Well, as it turns out, some animals do have a “bio-sonar”… but there is no instance of a passive bio-sonar. All animals capable of echolocation function according to the principles of an active bio-sonar. They emit a sound and listen to its echo. It doesn’t matter if an item in their vicinity is silent, they will detect it all the same.

So we can infer two things from Juan Lúcio’s reasoning:

Widdershins was not lying, he sincerely believed the entity was or could be a submarine. If he knew for sure that the entity was an animal, he would not bother telling his crewmates to stay silent as it would be pointless. As a submariner, it can be assumed he knew how the bio-sonar of large marine animals functioned. Olaf is a trickier case as he’s been shown to be book-dumb in that he’s ignorant about many things. But his behavior regarding the entity is extremely similar to Widdershins so it’s likely he had the same line of reasoning.

The entity definitely detected both the Queequeg and the Carmelita… and chose not to attack them. Which would at least imply that the entity is far less malevolent or aggressive than initially suspected. Both submarines were spared.

So all of a sudden we have a lot more information about the entity.

This is where the constant comparison of Ellington to a question mark starts making sense. There’s a clear parallel between the way Ellington and the entity are treated:

Lemony is a liar and a manipulator, so he assumes that Ellington is a liar and a manipulator.

Widdershins and Olaf are shady people piloting a submarine, so they assume the entity is a submarine piloted by somebody shady.

So that’s what we can at least assume about the entity: the first guess is usually wrong. Confronted with the Unknown, the brain starts going crazy with theories which reveal our deepest insecurities. This is how bigotry works: when people are confronted with something they neither know nor understand, they assume the worst about it by default, because, deep down, they know on a psychological level that they are themselves capable of horrible, terrible things. It’s a survival instinct to assume the worst about what we don’t know. And one of the main themes of “A Series Of Unfortunate Events” is bigotry.

To whom did the Carmelita octopus-shaped submarine belong?

The origin of Olaf’s submarine is one of “The Grim Grotto”’s most easily forgotten mysteries, but it’s enough of a riddle to warrant suspicion. The nefarious villain seems to acquire a deadly submarine at the moment he needs it the most. More surprisingly, it seems that Olaf acquired it in a very short amount of time: barely a day goes by between the last moment the Baudelaire orphans see him at the top of Mount Fraught and the time they meet him again in “The Grim Grotto”. Of course it’s possible he may have acquired that submarine much earlier and simply put it in storage somewhere, but there’s a catch to that explanation: the submarine requires the hard labor of several child slaves to move. And we see that some of the children moving the oars of the submarine are the Snow Scouts whom Count Olaf kidnapped at the end of “The Slippery Slope”. So it would have been tricky for Count Olaf to move the submarine anywhere without the extra child slaves… which points to Olaf acquiring the submarine only recently.

And what do we know about that submarine? Not much.

"This submarine is one of the greatest things I've ever stolen," he bragged. "It has everything I'll need to defeat V.F.D. once and for all. It has a sonar system, so I can rid the seas of V.F.D. submarines. It has an enormous flyswatter, so I can rid the skies of V.F.D. planes. It has a lifetime supply of matches, so I can rid the world of V.F.D. headquarters. It has several cases of wine that I plan to drink up myself, and a closet full of very stylish outfits for my girlfriend. And best of all, it has plenty of opportunities for children to do hard labor! Ha ha hedonism!" [The Grim Grotto, Chapter Nine]

"We'll see about that," Olaf said, grinning wickedly. "I'm going to lock all of you in the brig, which is the official seafaring term for Jail." "We know what the brig is," Klaus said. "Then you know it's not a very pleasant place," the villain said. "The previous owner used it to hold traitors captive, and I see no reason to break with tradition." [The Grim Grotto, Chapter Nine]

It’s unlikely that Count Olaf stole the submarine from either side of V.F.D. At this point in the series, Olaf is still loyal to his bosses (The Woman With Hair But No Beard and the Man With Beard But No Hair) so if they had a submarine and he needed it for a scheme, he would have just asked for it. Since he was looking for the sugar bowl and the Queequeg, they had no reason to refuse him. It’s also unlikely that the submarine was stolen from the “noble” side of V.F.D. because Captain Widdershins seems to recognize it as a threat immediately when its icon shows up on the Queequeg’s sonar screen, and doesn’t contradict the Baudelaire orphans when they assume it’s a submarine piloted by Count Olaf. If Olaf had stolen the octopus-shaped submarine from the other side of the Schism, Captain Widdershins could have mentioned it in passing. In fact, the Captain mentions a number of “gone” submarines who were built by V.F.D. and doesn’t include the octopus-shaped one in the lot. Which implies its origin is altogether different.

"The amount of treachery in this world is enormous!" he cried. "Aye! Think of the crafts we saw on the sonar screen! Think of Count Olaf's enormous submarine, and the even more enormous one that chased it away! Aye! "There's always something more enormous and more terrifying on our tails! Aye! And so many of the noble submarines are gone! Aye! You think the Herman Melville suits are the only noble uniforms in the world? There used to be volunteers with P G. Wodehouse on their uniforms, and Carl Van Vechten. There was Comyns and Cleary and Archy and Mehitabel. But now volunteers are scarce! So the best we can do is one small noble thing! Aye! Like retrieving the sugar bowl from the Gorgonian Grotto, no matter how grim it sounds! Aye! Remember my personal philosophy! He who hesitates is lost!" [The Grim Grotto, Chapter Five]

To whom did that submarine belong before Count Olaf stole it, then? And why does the Captain seem to have a passing knowledge of its history?

What we know so far is that the previous owner:

Was evil enough to use child slaves,

Was obsessed with traitors within its own organizations to the point he had secured a place to lock up suspicious members,

Was wary of aerial threats,

Had gathered an enormous amount of matches to light a lot of fires,

Had someone in the crew who liked wine,

Had an octopus-shaped costume for some reason.

There happens to be another organization in Lemony Snicket’s world which fits nicely into this description: Inhumane Society. Let’s go down the list:

Hangfire uses child slaves in “Shouldn’t You Be In School”;

Nurse Dander keeps Ellington on watch in “When Did You See Her Last”

V.F.D. has Hector investigate from his balloon as part of its plan in Stain’d-by-the-Sea in “Who Could That Be At This Hour?” and “Why Is This Night Different From All Other Nights?”

Hangfire commits arson in “Shouldn’t You Be In School?”

Ellington mentions that Armstrong Feint used to like wine in “When Did You See Her Last?” and indeed we see Hangfire has poured himself a glass of wine when Lemony meets him at the end of the book,

Stain’d-by-the-Sea’s industry revolves around octopi and Hangfire is obsessed with the town.

So it’s tempting to believe that Hangfire built this octopus-shaped submarine for Inhumane Society back in its heydays. Why didn’t we see this submarine in “All The Wrong Questions”, you ask? Well, there is no sea in Stain’d-by-the-Sea by the time Lemony arrives, and almost the entire series happens there, so naturally Hangfire had no use for the submarine there. However Hangfire does a lot of background scheming and his plan is years into the making, so it’s reasonable to suppose that a submarine could have been useful to him in other places. Hangfire is persuaded that Killdeer Fields was flooded because Stain’d-by-the-Sea was drained. How did he come to that conclusion? Well, maybe he investigated the area of Killdeer Fields with a submarine to track down the origin of the flooding. It’s also possible he spent some years roaming the ocean in a submarine to look for the OBB or its eggs, before getting back to Stain’d-by-the-Sea to create the CBB. There are a lot of possibilities. The submarine was probably put in storage somewhere in Killdeer Fields for later use.

So it’s highly possible that Olaf stole the submarine from whatever remains of Inhumane Society, as Hangfire is dead by the time the events of “The Grim Grotto” occurs. We know that Beatrice and Olaf were investigating a “strange forest” at the end of “All The Wrong Questions”, and we see Lemony immediately stepping into the Clusterous Forest with the Bombinating Beast statue. Coincidence? Probably not. He went in to reunite with Olaf and Beatrice and decide what to do with the statue. Which means Olaf got a lot of intel about Inhumane Society from Lemony. Widdershins is also very much involved in Lemony’s investigation in “When Did You See Her Last?”, so he would also know a lot about Inhumane Society. That would explain why he seems to know so much about the octopus-shaped submarine and who is piloting it.

What exactly happened to Fernald and Fiona?

On a last note, we also have to understand what exactly happened to Fernald and Fiona after “The Grim Grotto”. At the end of the book, it seems that Fiona has truly betrayed the Baudelaire orphans and joined Olaf’s side of the Schism for good. But that’s not congruent with what happens next.

"These people are associates of ours," Dewey said fiercely. "They won't fail us." "Ha!" Count Olaf said. "You can't rely on associates. More comrades have failed me than I can count. Why, Hooky and Fiona double-crossed me just yesterday, and let you brats escape! Then they double-crossed me again and stole my submarine!" "We can rely on our friends," Violet said quietly, "more than you can rely on yours.” [The Penultimate Peril, Chapter Nine]

Fiona’s second betrayal is as sudden as the first. It took less than twenty-four hours for her and Fernald to escape with Olaf’s submarine. Why? Fernald and Fiona change loyalties twice throughout “The Grim Grotto”, but they appeared to have made up their minds. Interestingly, Olaf seems to conflate this act of betrayal with Fiona’s decision to let the Baudelaire orphans escape. Which is interesting because as far as we’re aware it was not Fernald who did that, only his sister. But Count Olaf believes that letting the Baudelaire orphans escape was a concerted plan on their part. Was it?

Well, let’s put it this way: without Fiona’s intervention, the Baudelaire orphans were pretty much screwed. Count Olaf had managed to get the Queequeg in his clutches. The only reason they even managed to escape is because Olaf foolishly left Fiona without supervision after he had ordered her to emprison the Baudelaire orphans in the brig. But that’s only because he trusted her.

Now let’s pause and think: what would have happened if Fiona hadn’t betrayed the Baudelaire orphans? From Fiona’s and Fernald’s perspective, it was extremely unlikely that the Baudelaire orphans had enough time to find an antidote for Sunny, cure her, and escape. Esme had already realized Fiona and Fernald were out of the brig, and it was only a matter a time before she understood they were lying to her. Time was running out and as soon as Olaf realized Fernald had let the Baudelaire orphans escape from the Carmelita to the Queequeg, things would take a turn for the worse. Fiona pretended to defect to the other side of the Schism to stall for time. It’s pretty explicit in the passage where she lies to Esme that this is a spur-of-the-moment decision. Things were not looking great for Fernald’s initial plan to escape with Fiona and her friends. It was dangerous and not really feasible.

So a reasonable person, trapped in such a situation, would naturally change plans. The issue is that by that time Fiona and Fernald were busy diverting Esme and didn’t have time to warn the Baudelaire orphans that they had changed strategies. Here’s what Fiona and Fernald probably decided off-screen while Klaus and Violet were busy curing Sunny:

Fiona would pretend defecting to Olaf’s side for much longer than anticipated,

Fiona would not tell the Baudelaire orphans that it was a ruse, for their shock and horror would make Olaf and Esme believe that the defection was genuine,

Using that newfound trust, Fiona would let the Baudelaire orphans escape with the Queequeg in the nick of time,

As soon as the Baudelaire orphans escaped, Fiona and Fernald would use the chaos and confusion to steal the octopus-shaped submarine for themselves.

All in all, a much greater plan. And it has an added benefit, too: capturing the octopus-shaped submarine would allow Fiona and Fernald to free the slave rowers. Such a noble deed would be enough to convince Fiona to let her friends hate her.

There is some reason to believe that Fiona and Fernald indeed freed the child slaves because Kit Snicket never mentions an octopus-shaped submarine in “The End”. It’s as if it disappeared. Fiona and Fernald apparently found their way back to Captain Widdershins in some other way. Probably aerial.

You're volunteers, ready to face the challenges of a desperate and perplexing world. You must go to the Hotel Denouement, and Quigley must go to the self-sustaining hot air mobile home, and I must go to a coral formation of dubious quality where an inflatable raft should be waiting. But if Quigley manages to construct a net big enough to capture all those eagles, and I manage to contact Captain Widdershins and have him meet me at a certain clump of seaweed, we'll be here on Thursday. Hector should manage to land his self-sustaining hot air mobile home on the roof, even with all of us aboard." [The Penultimate Peril, Chapter Two]

But the Baudelaire orphans, of course, had no living parents, and their closest friends were high in the sky, in a self-sustaining hot air mobile home, battling eagles and a terrible henchman who had hooks instead of hands, so the acquaintance of Dewey Denouement, and the comforting words he had uttered, were a blessing. [The Penultimate Peril, Chapter Eight]

"So do our friends," Violet said. "They're flying across the sea as we speak, and by tomorrow, their self-sustaining hot air mobile home will land on the roof." "Only if they've managed to survive my eagles," Count Olaf said with a growl. [The Penultimate Peril, Chapter Nine]

So it’s interesting that by the time Olaf arrives in “The Penultimate Peril” he knows Fiona and Fernald escaped with the octopus-shaped submarine and still believes his plan to take the hot-air mobile home with trained eagles will succeed. Why is Fernald enacting Olaf’s plan even though he’s already defected?

A possibility is that Fernald and Fiona were on their way to help the Quagmires and Hector fight the eagles, but that Isadora and Duncan, recognizing the face of the hook-handed man, flipped out and attacked him first. It’s unlikely that Fernald ever truly tried to harm the Quagmires directly as this conflicts with how Kit Snicket describes the incident:

"I failed you," Kit said sadly, and coughed. "Quigley managed to reach the self-sustaining hot air mobile home, just as I hoped he would, and helped his siblings and Hector catch the treacherous eagles in an enormous net, while I met Captain Widdershins and his stepchildren." "Fernald and Fiona?" Klaus said, referring to the hook-handed man who had once worked for Count Olaf, and the young woman who had broken his heart. "But they betrayed him–and us." "The captain had forgiven the failures of those he had loved," Kit said, "as I hope you will forgive mine, Baudelaires. We made a desperate attempt to repair the Queequeg and reach the Quagmires as their aerial battle continued, and arrived just in time to see the balloons of the self-sustaining hot air mobile home pop under the cruel beaks of the escaping eagles. They tumbled down to the surface of the sea, and crashed into the Queequeg. In moments we were all castaways, treading water in the midst of all the items that survived the wreck.” [The End, Chapter Thirteen]

It’s obvious we’re missing much of the story there as the Baudelaire orphans are not direct witnesses to it, but it’s obvious Fernald truly put his villainous ways behind him. The absence of the octopus-shaped submarine in this tale supports that. If it had been present, the circumstances of the Queequeg crew would have been much less desperate. Instead of staying on a sinking and damaged submarine, Captain Widdershins and his allies would have just gone to the octopus-shaped one. It’s possible Fernald and Fiona couldn’t use that submarine anymore because they didn’t have enough rowers after they freed the children.

Connecting the dots

We see that just by reading “The Grim Grotto” and “The End” back in 2006, careful readers would have been able to work out that the entity is more likely to be an animal and to be less aggressive than initially believed. That’s pretty much the best way to work out Widdershins’ change of behavior regarding the entity between both books. “All The Wrong Questions” was only meant to provide more clues to a mystery whose solution had already been carefully implied, and to expand on the mythology of the entity.

Here’s an attempt at explaining what actually went down during “The Grim Grotto” and “The End”.

Following the events of “All The Wrong Questions”, Ellington eventually escaped from the prison cell with Kit Snicket thanks to the skeleton key in Ellington’s bag. Kit and Ellington, before going their own ways, exchanged a good deal of information. Kit Snicket could not help noticing Ellington acted extremely angry towards Lemony and VFD in general.

In the following years, Ellington worked tirelessly to recover her father’s remaining assets as well as uncovering the secrets of Inhumane Society. Though the book Caviar: Salty Jewel of the Tasty Sea was destroyed, she had had the opportunity to read some chapters Lemony hadn’t. No one knew about the CBB more than her. With some effort, she managed to find the animal hiding in the Clusterous Forest, as well as the Bombinating Beast statue that Lemony had buried there. With the statue, she was now in control of the CBB. Eventually she managed to track down an octopus-shaped submarine which used to belong to Hangfire, only to lose it to Count Olaf.

As Olaf escaped with the submarine (now rebaptized the Carmelita), Ellington pursued him. She used the statue to control the CBB, ordering it to seize the Carmelita. The CBB first encountered the Queequeg in close vicinity to the Queequeg. Unsure whether these two crafts were allied with each other, Ellington ordered the CBB to stand down. Captain Widdershins mistook the question-mark shape on their radar for an enemy submarine.  Later, Ellington witnessed the Queequeg being attacked by the Carmelita, and decided to approach the CBB to scare Count Olaf and help the crew of the Queequeg. Count Olaf also assumed the mysterious entity was an enemy submarine.

The Queequeg eventually escaped from the clutches of the Carmelita. While making their way to the Hotel Denouement, Olaf, Esme and Carmelita Spats realized the Baudelaire orphans’ absence and were betrayed by Fernald and Fiona who let the imprisoned youngsters start a mutiny. Ellington followed the entire mutiny from afar. The youngsters were released. Esme, Olaf and Carmelita fled. The octopus-shaped submarine was eventually given back to Ellington Feint who promised to help Fernald and Fiona if they were ever in trouble.

Much later, Fernald and Fiona tried to track down Hector’s hot-air mobile home to warn him of an impending eagle attack. Isadora and Duncan attacked Fernald, believing him to have been sent by Olaf and his allies, which complicated Quigley’s plan to catch the eagles in a big net. Fiona and Fernald ended up landing on the Queequeg which had also been looking for the hot-air mobile home. Hector’s balloon fell down on the Queequeg a short time after that.

Fernald reconciled with his stepfather and told Captain Widdershins about the mysterious woman named Ellington Feint who had helped them with her strange, unidentified submarine craft. Captain Widdershins realized this helpful young woman had been behind the appearance of the question mark on the radar and that the entity hadn’t been hostile after all. Kit Snicket, however, thought differently. She was highly suspicious of Ellington’s intentions and thought she had been using Fernald and Fiona as a bait to find the Queequeg and kill more volunteers.

An argument occurred: as the Queequeg began to sink due to serious damage, the entity came back. Captain Widdershins thought Ellington had sent the CBB to save them, while Kit thought she had sent the CBB to eat them. Kit ended up escaping on her own ship, while the others took their chance with the CBB. But, in an ironic twist of fate, what showed up on their sonar screen may not have been Ellington’s CBB. It could just as easily have been the OBB, which leaves the fates of these characters even more uncertain and perilous.

[kinkymagnus]

20, 21, 25!!! for the ask game, please 💖 [also, hiii!!!]

thank you!!!! (also hii!!) i fuckign love video gaem im nerd

20 and 21. Book that would make a good game + Show/movie that would make a good game?

FUCK uhhhh first some reason my first thought was Artemis Fowl but I.... don’t think that would actually work. 

Okay, what’s really interesting is storytelling in different mediums, and one problem with taking a story that is written for a book or a show or a movie, is that it is written for that format. There are some that would make the transition pretty well, even though it might sacrifice parts of the story. Like, it’s harder to get thoughts or feelings a character has without awkward narration, and usually impossible to get good facial expressions or subtle body language cues and that kind of thing. 

I’m mostly talking written/screen to video game, but there are also notable differences between books and tv/movies that are probably why most adaptations are so infamously bad. Things like the amount of information that can be compressed for consumers of the media, the type of information such as inner thoughts/feelings and random worldbuilding details, and pacing. Both mediums have their strengths and weaknesses--the screen can be more immersive, and show you really cool ways of looking at things, and also allow for certain silent dialogue like body language or just more subtle implications (such as background characters behaving a certain way or expressions gone unmentioned) but also they can’t really do things that books can.

Video games have their own strengths and weaknesses, too. The interactive medium allows for all sorts of cool things you just absolutely cannot do in the same way in these other mediums. My favorite is probably environmental storytelling and the ways you can get stories across both purely from the setting around you (like in the Fallout game I forget the name of with the underwater city, or in Breath of the Wild with the ruins scattered around Hyrule, or basically all of Hollow Knight’s storytelling) and from little bits of scattered lore that you have to piece together into your own interpretation of what happened. (Again, Hollow Knight does this amazingly.)

So like, some stories can benefit from that, particularly either stories with a strong setting with good worldbuilding to base that on, or stories that would benefit from adding that yourself (although people might argue on whether it counts as canon or not). 

So the question is to really think about what kind of books, tv shows, and movies can benefit from being directly interacted with and even changed by the player, what ideas can play out through simple environments a player can move around or in small boxes of flavor text to be pieced together, what stories can be conveyed that can benefit from being actively sought out rather than directly fed to the person consuming them. Something like Artemis Fowl doesn’t work, because there’s a set linear narrative and the choices that are made rightfully should be set. While a game completely separate from the Artemis Fowl stories with its own characters simply set in Haven City could be really interesting (such as the life of a LEP officer who isn’t famous and tangling with humans constantly, or even the life of a dwarf or a goblin or whatever, perhaps even with multiple choices of class and species--?) it wouldn’t really be an Artemis Fowl adaption so much as a spin off or addition to the universe. It could be really interesting, as for a cool as fuck city of fairies Haven City isn’t really discussed or explored all that much, but it wouldn’t be a true adaptation. It’d be inspired by, if anything.

I honestly can’t think of any books/movies/tv shows off the top of my head that necessarily would make a good game. 

There are a few I could see being mildly fun--perhaps a sci fi survival game based on The Martian, a Mission: Impossible spy game, or (and I think this would be fun, tbh) a fantasy/mystery retrieval game based on The Librarians or Warehouse 13. I wouldn’t even mind seeing what a skilled game designer could do with A Series of Unfortunate Events, although I’d have no idea where to start. 

The problem is mostly those stories being kind of linear and set. The player can’t really affect them, so to be effective it’d be better if it was a new story entirely merely in that universe, rather than just an adaptation of the original canon. For example, playing Lord of the Rings simply would not be the same as watching it or reading it. There’s no way to really make it organic or have that same amount of emotion.

While it’s not impossible to have a linear set story for a player to follow (See The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, which has issues, but is definitely playable and enjoyable) it’s not really the same if you not only know the whole story but feel like you’re not actually part of it. You can have quick time events to see if Bilbo really got the the ring, or a sequence where you play as Legolas mowing down orcs, but it won’t really be the same. 

Sorry for the long and unnecessarily pretentious answer, this is just something I’ve been really interested in lately so I overthought it like hell.

25. What power-up or ability would you want irl?

Real answer: shapeshifting. This is cheating as it’s more superpower than actually video game related, but like, still.

But answering more properly to the spirit of the question... The things that come to mind for me are Revali’s Gale (just fucking whooshes into the air lmao), Shape of Unn charm (turns into snail and wiggle lol), and Shade Cloak (nyooms through things by becoming a shadow).

Wait, actually, forget all that. I want to be Link from Link Between Worlds, turning into a painting and shit for fun. That sounds rad as hell. Look at me, I’m a cool funky little crayon drawing. Sike! I’m 3D now! 

[handmaidensofnaboo]

“Ultimately, it is very apparent this novel was noticeably, lovingly, and carefully crafted by a Prequel fan, a Padmé fan, a Handmaiden fan... Queen's Shadow is a fitting tribute.”

❦

Queen's Shadow had a somewhat impossible task for me as a handmaiden “super fan,” a potentially “tough critic,” so I commend E.K. Johnston for willingly providing me with an early copy to share my thoughts on it with you all... I was nervous about how Queen's Shadow would turn out to be honest, but EKJ was up to the task...

I'll preface this review by saying Handmaidens were my first real community engagement in fandom. My older sister and I joined the Royal Handmaiden Society on TheForce.Net boards back around 2001 when I was about 14. The RHS was the reason I went to my first convention (Celebration II) and although the group isn't as present online as it once was (please follow @royalhandmaidensociety​), I made life long friends and it forever shaped and changed me. It was an overwhelmingly positive fandom experience at a very impressionable age and for that I'm forever thankful...  So for those of us who have such deep roots to this, who have, for the past 20 years, analyzed the handmaidens’ every micro expression, every costume, and have carved out our own understanding of them (from what little information that would could find), this book might be a bit "complicated " to process.

 At least it was for me.

With the announcement of Queen's Shadow, I was of course initially ecstatic, validated even, that they/we were being seen and heard, finally!! Yet mixed feelings slowly sunk in too. Despite us RHSers long lamenting the lack of content—handmaidens unjustly being overlooked in both Star Wars official media and for a long time in mainstream fandom—it also became this amazing small community space for each of us to freely imagine and play in. It’s been a kind of safe haven I've come to greatly appreciate. With a book featuring them... That could all potentially change. This fandom could change. I found myself wondering a few weeks ago, "Will I even like these girls? Will I love these new versions of Eiraté, Rabé, Sabé...” Something I've previously never had to consider. My fictional friends were about to be exposed on a larger than ever level, and reshaped, officially, forever. I was worried.



I knew I had to go into this book open minded, no way could EKJ take each one of our different headcanons and fantasies and appease us all in one ultimate text—but to my surprise, there were certainly select striking scenes, moments, I had while reading, where (for me) she did accomplish just that.  

After both the prologue and the first chapter in particular (which were centered around my favorite Handmaidens, from TPM), I had to put the book down for a while because I was so overwhelmed in the best kind of way. It truly was so close to capturing what I have wanted all these years that I just wanted to bask in it. Maybe that sounds silly but even simply one chapter filled with handmaidens, is an overwhelming amount of content for us to receive, let alone an ENTIRE book. This little fandom is just so used to excavating for scraps. I reread the beginning of the book again the next day, out of pure enjoyment, before I continued on.



The unbelievable news, the great news... Something I can't believe even is real... Is that Queen's Shadow starts with handmaidens and ends with handmaidens, and there are handmaidens in… NEARLY? Every. Single. Chapter. I really never thought I'd never see the day. I’m stunned. Yes, they are different then I imagine them, but I'm happy to see them, I still like them, just the same. And Padmé, who has also been sorely ignored, unappreciated, and underutilized within general Star Wars media/merchandise, is also finally getting the spotlight she deeply deserves.

❦

Queen's Shadow is woven like an intricate tapestry threading together Padmé's stories throughout the entire prequel trilogy (especially the first two films), and highlights some of my favorite stylistic and thematic choices within them. Similar to the prequels (especially TPM) it reminded me of a period drama, with it's more formal dialogue, richly detailed costumes, ceremonies and politics, and admittedly a more contemplative pace than the swashbuckling fairy tales of the OT (but still engaging in it's own way). Also like the prequels, you get that occasional ominous foreboding, that sense of pieces being moved behind the curtains by shadowy figures, of unclear motivations by supposed "allies," of tragic destinies being spun—but still find yourself swept away by moments of hope and idealism, despite it all.  There is a particularly heartbreaking yet beautiful finale moment of this book with her that was so fitting to George Lucas' vision of Star Wars, it was, as he once said, "like poetry—it rhymes." Anytime something can capture that Lucas approach to storytelling, I am thankful to be reminded of why I loved Star Wars in the first place. (Especially in the Disney era years when I've felt a bit "post break up" about the franchise, to be honest.)

Queen's Shadow is foremost about Padmé's work, shifting and hardening herself into her new role as senator. It does justice to the themes and qualities that originally enchanted and inspired me about her: fulfilling her duty to her people, her compassion for vulnerable communities, and fighting for what's right—through language, through political and inner power, strategy, and unexpected partnerships. And as always, Padmé is luminous. 

There is one cause in particular she is advocating for that is notably poignant in its connections to TPM. I was incredibly pleased it was there, relieved even. It was so important and needed for her character. It enriches the choices she makes in the later films. And it is just one of a number of political themes in the book that are timeless and ever relevant, but wasn't inserted into the story in a heavy-handed way. I love that the main audience for this book (young girls), will get these meaty concepts presented to them through our beloved political heroine and the diversely talented women supporting her.  While we do see the various skills and character moments of Padmé and her handmaidens, I admit (and this is just my first read impressions) they all still did feel somewhat at a distance for me. I personally would've liked to have dug deeper into their personalities. I'm not sure how to properly articulate it, but I just felt a bit left "wanting more"—for more walls to come down, to have gotten further into their inner thoughts... But I think it's partly the challenge of the large number of characters, the book’s YA length, and a personal preference of writing style. Which, in EKJ’s defense, does compliment these particular characters, who have long had these kind of untouchable, unknowable presences, these masks over them (and she does address that). I think as I reread it, my feelings on may improve as I retain all the subtleties better. But if they remain elusive, that gives us room to fill it out with our own head canons, which is something many of us all ~clearly~ enjoy! It is part of their appeal, part of why we first loved them after all. 
It's also important to note the impressive attention to various Star Wars lore that is entwined throughout Queen's Shadow, from remnant gems of "Legends" handmaiden lore (and even RHS in jokes), to architectural details found in Battlefront II, to various appearances by Clone Wars characters... And many more I’m sure I’ve missed. Yet thankfully I can't recall any of it is done in a way that comes off as showy, elitist, or hard to follow (if for example, you're like me and admittedly haven't watched hardly any of the Clone Wars).  Additionally, here and there, there were some scenes or lines that didn't quite hit the mark for me personally, one minor set of changes from "Legends" handmaiden ages irked me a bit (we had so little to cling to ok! lol), frustration at already established lore (such as Panaka and Clovis, which EKJ can’t help), and other things that were simply just creative choices of the author (which of course happens for me with almost every Star Wars spin-off). 



Regarding the last point, that was the only other occurrence where I put the book willingly down, this time because I needed to get some space—to process something I decidedly didn't like. It was about midway through the book regarding a particular minor storyline. I don't want to spoil, but I will say it involved a new character that, for me, was taking up too much room in a book that already had plenty of amazing characters I wanted to spend more time with. I just felt he wasn’t exactly needed, or that others easily could've substituted his place and it would've been more meaningful to the lore.  These critiques are relatively minor however, and most of them are easy to move beyond, especially when I consider the bigger picture, and the majority of scenes, quotable lines, and pivotal interactions in Queen's Shadow that do seamlessly work. Those more than make up for the handful of things I struggled with.

 Ultimately, it is very apparent this novel was noticeably, lovingly, and carefully crafted by a Prequel fan, a Padmé fan, a Handmaiden fan. For this I'm deeply thankful, because it's easy to imagine if it wasn't—How poorly or sloppily Padmé could've been mischaracterized or the possible omission and/or confusion regarding the handmaidens… The latter of which BOTH the revered Dave Filoni and Timothy Zahn are woefully guilty of, (full offense). It hits me sometimes how so much damage could've been done were this in less capable, less attentive hands, with an author that would've cared less. EKJ clearly cared a lot. Minor issues aside, that's really what mattered most to me, at the root of it. So I'm very glad.



The more open minded you go in, the more you will enjoy Queen's Shadow, and (I say this for myself, as much as for anyone else who can relate) we can still make space for and enjoy our old head canons alongside to the new lore, or even mesh them together... I admittedly struggled a few times, but I definitely enjoyed reading it overall, particularly all the scenes on Naboo (and another planet that will go unnamed for now)... 

If you love Padmé, the handmaidens, Naboo culture, prequel politics—this book is a must read. The more time that passes, and as I reflect back, the more I feel that Queen's Shadow is a fitting tribute to Padmé and our handmaidens, let alone the prequel era itself. Queen's Shadow will be comfortably situated on my bookshelf beside our other established classics: Queen Amidala's Journal and Queen's Amulet, and I’m looking forward to revisiting it again when the audiobook comes out (holy heck we're finally gonna hear almost all the handmaiden names pronounced??! Have we been saying them "correct" all these years?? Stay tuned lmao...) I'll probably be posting my spoiler thoughts on Queen's Shadow after the book's release on March 5, 2019. Pre-orders are available online, though I really recommend purchasing it at your local independent book store if you can, and/or requesting your local libraries get a copy! Please share your own pictures/thoughts/reviews on here, twitter, instagram etc. and tag it. We gotta encourage Disney to give us more, because this book definitively ends with an invitation for a sequel or spin off of some sort, and I, a bit desperately, want it!!  The more we can support Queen's Shadow with the language Disney knows best ($$ and exposure) the better chance of future Padmé and handmaiden content, and they deserve it!! All of it—books, comics, Disney+ streaming miniseries, video games—Give them the legacy Rogue Squadron got. It's their time.



Again, thank you so much E.K. Johnston for creating this beautiful book, and going out of your way to provide me a copy. I'll always treasure that moment when I got that surprise package in the mail, a book nearly 20 years in the waiting. I was 12 years old again, that snowy day on my porch.



Can't wait to read everyone's thoughts. MTFBWY. ✨✨✨

Thank you for reading,

@handmaidensofnaboo​

❦

♕ Pre Order Queen's Shadow 

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[mininky]

Heavy Lies The Crown-14

Summary: (Y/N) has the fate of her people on her shoulders and according to a seer, the only way to save her kingdom from the bloodthirsty wolves is by giving herself to the god of the hunt.

Pairing: werewolf!Namjoon x reader

Warnings: None for this chapter

word count: 2.9K

Prologue Chapter one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve twelve and ½ thirteen fourteen fifteen

A/N: I know that this chapter is muuuch shorter than my usual updates but this has a really good stopping point for the next chapter to pick back up on and honestly I just wanted to share, it was time for HLTC to see the light of day again! Thank you guys for waiting for the update!!

   The trip to Jackson's village was far easier than anticipated. There were frequent breaks along the way of course, but all of them were short-lived enough that you ended up making it there slightly early. Jackson had of course already been standing outside, waiting eagerly for everyone along with the rest of the village. In many ways, their village felt almost identical to your own. People were warm and friendly, greeting all of you with open arms and wide smiles. Even with all of their own hardships they've had to contend with they had banded together to make the most out of everything. You're sure that there have of course been some arguments and scruples along the way, but it was clear that everyone there adored Jackson and seemed to take his words to heart much the same way that your own people listened to Namjoon. While you hate the circumstances and the reasons as to why they need help, you can't help but feel a sense of ease that of all the villages you could stand with during trying times it was one as so lovely as this one.

   It's clear, however, that the land has most certainly seen better times. The soil is parched, every plant nearby other than the older trees have succumbed to the drought, what's left of the grass looks like it could easily burst into flames if the conditions are right. The air is stagnant and dry in a way that makes you feel the sun seep right into your bones. You've grown used to the sense of frenetic beast magick that hovers over pack villages, but this...this feels different. You aren't sure how to describe it, but the sensation is almost as though someone condensed all the magick into a tidy box and then forced it underground. As if it's laying there, but not to be seen or touched. There's a current that zips through you, a lethargy that grips strongly at your magick as though pulling you through the mud. It's hard to think or breathe, everything feels stifling and confining and you want to claw your way out of this.

   You keep this to yourself for now, however. There's work to be done leaving you with little time to dwell on the oddities of the situation at hand. Water and food need to be dispersed properly to each of the villagers, and Jackson luckily already had a plan figured out. Each person received rations while anything left over was to be stored in the bar that doubled as the meeting hall, the same as your village. You tried focusing yourself on the busy work, handing things out with the others and greeting each person at their door. But it was easy to be distracted, so many new scents, so many new noises, and a painful amount of new thoughts to try not to dissect apart.  

   It wasn't until the sun had set long ago that you could finally rest your weary feet at Jackson's cabin. His home was cozy, a small little abode nestled right in the middle of all the hustle and bustle a village could have. Jackson has a surprisingly large array of books, many of which you recognize as widely distributed works in human cities. Either he has a very good connection, or he dabbles in entering human territories from time to time. This might explain why you've never sensed a lick of animosity directed towards you from him, something that was as relieving as it was confusing amongst all the hate you felt when you met all the other pack leaders at the summit meeting.

   The smell of fresh bread coming out of the oven has you stirring out of the guest bedroom and padding down the hallway. Namjoon is sprawled across one of the chairs, his head resting on the dining table as Jackson puts down the fresh loaf of bread next to an assortment of dried meat and fish along with some pickled and dried fruits and vegetables. You have to admit, for ration food, it really doesn't look half bad. Or perhaps that's just your intense hunger pains talking. Before you can even sit down Jackson is speaking to you, a wide grin placed on his face. "I haven't had a chance to tell you guys yet, but congratulations!"

   It's a good thing you aren't the type of person who likes surprising others because wolf noses certainly ruin this one. "Thank you, Jackson!" Namjoon is beaming at you as he speaks, his dimples appearing and his face looking slightly less haggard and tired before he turns his attention back to Jackson. "By the way, we came out here for some other things too. Jisoo, the vampire who lives just outside of your village has...recently come to our attention. What do you know about her?"

   Jackson ponders as he chews on his bread, his gaze cast at the ceiling before his sights swivel back and forth between the two of you. "Jisoo huh? She's not bad company. Say what you might about vampires, but we don't discriminate around here. She's lived around these parts for a very long time, and she's always been a genial neighbor. And count this as you will, but during the great war, she refused to join sides. She said that she wouldn't kill any other magick kinds and that she had no interest in werewolf politics. I do kind of wish she would stop calling me a mutt though. She sticks to herself mostly, but when she stops over in any human towns or villages she's always sure to bring back a supply of books for me and some of the other werewolves. She sometimes even brings me these things called newspapers, it's fascinating what humans get into sometimes."

   Well good news, it looks like no matter where you turn Jisoo seems to check out as a stand-up vampire. It's also incredibly encouraging to hear that she has no desire to spill magick blood, this might explain why she doesn't seem to live near any other vampires. "Have you ever seen any other vampires visit her?"

   "Jisoo? Not really. I know she has some friends in all magick communities, but as I said, she sticks to herself. She's the type of friend to pop by once every six months to let you know she's still alive and then flee back into the darkness once again. But if she's spending time around your village I wouldn't worry. For one thing, she probably won't be there long. But most importantly, she's never caused any trouble. She's a bit rough around the edges, but as long as I've known her she's had a heart of gold. Honestly, she's probably just spending time in your parts because she's hunting." Jackson nods to himself as if agreeing silently as he speaks. You wish that you could say that's the only reason, although he isn't entirely wrong. You're sure that she was the culprit behind the drained dear carcasses.

   Namjoon grabs a piece of jerky, chewing slowly before speaking up. "That's good news. I trust your judgment Jackson, you've never been wrong before." It is indeed good news, but the truth of the matter is no matter how much the two of you dig up on Jisoo it's not your choice to make. It's Yoongi's. And as much as all you want for him is to be happy, you also can understand that moving forward with a vampire will be no easy task for him. All you can try to do at this point is reassure him that she doesn't appear to be doing this with any ill intent in mind. At least not if Jackson's opinion on her is truly accurate of her character. Namjoon glances over at you, silently handing the floor over as you stir yourself out of your thoughts.

   "Jackson, I also have some questions to ask you about the drought. However, I think it might be a good idea to have your village elder in this conversation as well. They might be able to shed more light on some of the questions I have." You watch as his face squeezes up in confusion for a moment before he nods slowly.

   "Of course, we can certainly do that. We can go as soon as we finish supper if you'd like?" It's clear that he wants to ask why exactly the village elder will be necessary for this conversation, but he doesn't ask for any further details.

   Namjoon and you agree quickly to holding the meeting right after dinner, and you try to relax into your meal. While it would be nice to be able to rest for a bit before discussing anything further this most certainly takes priority. The sooner you're able to figure out what's going on the sooner you can try to put things back to some semblance of normal. At least, weather-wise.

   There's something strange here, the drought isn't of natural causes. You can't explain why you know that. You just know that something has gone cosmically awry for unseen reasons. As if in just this section of the world things have started spinning out of place. It might also be the notion that gods are at play here though, and try as you might to say you have no biases you have already heard whisperings that may or may not be clouding your better judgment. As it is, you just need more information. Something more to fit the pieces together. And even if it is the gods, then what? How exactly does one proceed when the heavens have a vendetta against you? Unfortunately, there's no magical guidebook on how to get through situations like that. Just handfuls of myths and lore that might guide you correctly. Then again, that's only if the gods are in play. You could be wrong, it might not be mystical but rather just an unfortunate and unstoppable fate. You don't know what's worse. A climate change that you can't control, or having to devise a plan to go up against gods.

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

   The village elder of Jackson's pack looks more like a pirate with his hooked nose, scarred face, and a look in his eyes that says he's seen far too much and won't go down without a fight. Unlike your own village elder, this man clearly wasn't expecting you. It's almost refreshing that he doesn't seem to be an omniscient sage. He glares down at Namjoon and you for a moment before breaking out into a gummy grin, ushering the two of you inside as he hobbles around to pry out some wine he says he keeps just for special occasions. You had unfairly expected him to appear rather mystical, a savant who has seen it all akin to your own elder. Instead, he seems like a kindly grandfather who reminisces on war stories at random. If you're honest, it's throwing you for a bit of a loop.

   You kindly take a small sip of the (overpoweringly disgusting) wine before sliding it closer to Namjoon when the elder winks at you. "Ah, a little wine never hurt a pup. Congratulations you two! I just wish our own pack leader could finally find his mate. I'd like to see those rugrats running around this place someday, and someday soon. I don't have all the time in the world anymore. And what with this awful drought business we sure could use some good news like that to lighten our spirits."

   "About that, I actually have some questions for both of you. I noticed that the magick in the air feels rather stifling, have either of you ever noticed the same thing?" You peer at both of them, moving slightly closer when you see a hard glint in the elder's eyes.

   "You're a sharp one, even some of the other wolves around here haven't caught on. So you can sense it too?" He strokes at his straggly mustache as he watches you.

   "I sense something. What praytell that something is I haven't the foggiest notion of yet."

   "Oh but you do. You're a sharp one, but a skeptic at best I'd guess. I don't know what's a more foolish thing to do. To refuse to believe in the gods' will, or to refuse to believe in anything but their wills."

   "Would either of you like to tell me what's going on?" Jackson breaks into the conversation, his eyes swiveling between the two of you before landing on Namjoon before getting a mere shrug from your mate as if to say he doesn't understand what Jackson isn't catching.

   "Gods, my boy. Gods are at play. Do you think a drought just appears out of nowhere? With no warning from the winds, no prophecies from a single person in the village or even from the mermaids?" He pauses to swig down some more wine before scooching up to the edge of his chair, "You know humans often offer sacrifices, rituals. They do things to appease the gods as they don't have the ability to sense the magick that we can. They never know when they're in the presence of one, or if they've upset one or made one glad. But magick creatures? Even if we don't fully understand it, you can most certainly feel it. I fear that the more the gods constrain our magick the less likely people in these parts will be able to sense it at all. It's gone on for too long. And unfortunately, gods are out of our realm. We are in their domain, they're free to choose who to smite and who to cherish. Magical beings might claim themselves to be better than humans, but it's clear that we rest at about the same level as them in the eyes of the gods. We are simply at their mercy."

   "Are we, are we truly at their mercy? There must be something that we can do. There must be something that they want from this land or a reason as to why they've decided to bring on this drought. I refuse to sit idly by and simply say that we have no control in this situation without even trying. You might say that humans only give rituals and sacrifice and praise as they know not how to feel for the gods, but I disagree. I think even they can sense when the world is at a state of unrest. And perhaps as magick creatures we've been arrogant too long, assuming that they want nothing from us and only from humans. There must be something that we can do, or at the very least we might be able to figure out the root cause of this all to untangle this messy web they've weaved." Namjoon rests his hand on your back fondly as you speak, giving his quiet agreement before silence settles in.

   For a moment you aren't sure what they'll do, or how they respond. But then the elder gives a barking laugh, slamming down his now empty cup of wine before propping himself up on his elbows. "I like you girly, you've got a fire in you. I've met more powerful beasts than you with far less bite. I personally believe it foolish to go against the gods, but for some reason when I hear you speak I can't help but want to rear into a fight. I've seen some crazy things in my time, but never in all my years did I think I'd hear someone honestly try to take on the gods. I have a feeling though that if you're involved, you'll make sure things go your way."

   Jackson nods his head animatedly, jumping up on his feet as he speaks. "I don't know how I didn't put it together sooner. The two of you are right, there must be very powerful magick at play. I'll try digging up some more information, ask around the village to see if others have seen anything or had any prophetic dreams lately. Would the two of you mind staying a bit longer? I wouldn't expect the two of you to be here for too much time of course, but I feel it would be easier to sleuth with your great minds than by myself. Besides, it'll be much faster to come up with a plan while you're still here than having to wait to send messages back and forth. Of course, I understand if you have other pressing matters, but I would greatly appreciate it."

   "Well with glowing reviews like that, how could we turn you down?" Namjoon gives a wide grin when Jackson gives a whoop of joy. While you watch the scene with a sense of pride, you can't help but wonder what all you can do. It seems that it's time to turn to Merlin. Perhaps dear old dad might lend you some pertinent information from the afterlife.