#only for them to have a few lines and reduced importance in the plot? Especially in Nopes?

[randomnameless]

The only time to consider a VAs opinion is the OG Japanese Voice Actors anyways. They tend to be part of who the character is crafted for and are employed for life to be said character.

Merging the two asks!

I wouldn't say a seiyuu's opinion should also be considered as "important" or having as much authority on canon as the devs or the game itself, and maybe I don't spend a lot of time on social media but I don't know if they comment or interact with their fanbase as much as the non jp VAs do.

en parlant de ça, je crois qu'il y avait la doubleuse de Bulma de DB/DBZ - je ne sais pas si elle continue pour DBS - à Paris Manga le week-end dernier?

Ultimately I agree, whatever they're posting/saying on Twitter X is, I'd day it's their own opinion and feelings about the game/lore/whatever they're posting, and it doesn't reflect the devs's vision or the like. Even if, say, Sho Hanamiya would end up saying Reptor did nothing wrong and was Jugdral's true hero, I'd be disappointed, but write this off.

[quirkwizard]

(1/3) As a Kaminari fan... I'm deeply dissatisfied with everything about him in the series, from his extreme lack of character development, from his lack of battle creativity (It's not like there's a message for it to be learned or anything, it's just... It's like that)! The discus launcher that is not only boring, but manages to be an obvious target? And let's not even talk about his radio that he almost never uses for one reason or another.

(2/3) But it was reduced to a mere battery of energy in the background in most cases (He's not even the best at it, the guy from 1-B does the same and better...) , with a few lines here and there. But he is the only Emitter user who does not control the energy he produces in any way! Endeavor, Dabi, Mina (to some degree), Shoto (to some degree), Backdraft, Nejire, Manual, Burnin, all of them control their emitting Quirks to some extent!

(3/3) Damn, Uraraka even gets a Power-Up that puts her alongside Bakugo and Shoto, when Kamainari had the potential for that since the beginning of the series! *sigh* Yeah, I'm dissatisfied with everything about him in the series.

I'm of two minds on this. On the one hand, I do agree that Denki has the most wasted potential of everyone in the class, at least with his Quirk. He's got a cool power that has a lot of room for growth. Compared to all the other characters and how they expand on their Quirks, he's very lackluster. However, that is kind of the point of his character. Your capabilities depend much more on the user than your actual power. Denki is an idiot. He's easily one of the least capable Quirks users in his class. He is a guy scrapping purely because of how strong his Quirk is rather than any real training like his other classmates. And in this series, your power grows and changes to reflect a change in the character. It's why he gets the disks. His entire mini-arc is about relying on himself and using strategy to do so. His disks then facilitate the need for greater thinking. If you tried to force more growth on him or his power, then that would be out of character for him. And you know what? That is totally fine for him and his character. 

You know why? Because Denki is a comedic side character. Denki is simple in his role and character. He is not that deep, and you don't need to force him into a more important role. This is true of a lot of characters, especially Class 1-A. The story does not spend time with characters that don't matter in some way. This isn't like Naruto, where the other Konoha members are heavily set up and never focused on again. He isn't wasted because he isn't meant to be a major player. He has his mini arc, a few moments of comedy here, a couple cool moments there, and that is it. The gripe about his usage in the final war is especially confusing. What else would you have him do? What would be his story or arc to complete? I can understand being upset about a character you liked being shafted. But you need to reconcile that with the fact that a character you like isn't that important to the plot and they may not get as much time as you want them to get. If you want to lodge those complaints, save it for someone who deserves them, like Tenya or Momo. They're way more important than Denki and they got just as much of a role as he did.

[alphamride]

What’s especially sad is that this pattern of profits over storytelling has (in my opinion) been going on for quite some time even before the Universes Beyond stuff happened.

MTG used to have blocks, which were groups of 2-4 sets that would take place in the same setting and feature specific mechanics to tell a story. For anyone unfamiliar with this game’s lore, MTG takes place across a vast multiverse. Each block would focus on one world or major event. The first set of each block was meant to introduce the world and its characters while the others were meant to expand upon it. This ensured that each featured plane would get enough time to develop while advancing the overall plot.

While Ixalan was the last official block, the next three sets, all of which took place in Ravnica and were meant to wrap up a major plot point that had been in development for over a decade, were considered to be their own unofficial block. Once that ended, however, the departure from blocks started to be felt as the game began to jump from plane to plane with each set(1), making it hard for many of these settings to have the same depth the previous ones had. Having fun with the vampire wedding sets (Innistrad Midnight Hunt and Crimson Vow)? Great, you’re off to futuristic not-Japan (Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty) in 3 months only to go to a plane filled with 20th century mobsters (Streets of New Capenna) 2 months after that. We’re currently on a set (Duskmourn: House of Horror) that takes place in a spooky haunted house plane based on scary movies and the next set (Aetherdrift/Death Race) will be about, well, a race that takes place across three different planes. I’m interested in seeing how this will be handled but that’s besides the point.

I’m a newer player (started playing in early 2019) so maybe I’m not the most qualified person to ask this, but is it just me or do some of the newer planes feel a bit… gimmicky? I’d love to hear others’ thoughts on it.

Speaking of gimmicks, let’s talk about the Planeswalkers, more specifically how they’ve been handled over the years. A Planeswalker is a powerful mage who has the special ability to travel between dimensions(2). In regards to the overall story however, the most important ones are the members of the Gatewatch, a group of Planeswalkers who defended the Multiverse. If you’ve seen a Magic character, chances are they are (or were) one of these guys.

While Planeswalkers were originally a smallish group of godlike beings, their numbers grew (and their powers diminished) as a result of the Great Mending, an event that occurred during Future Sight. This (as well as another decision a few years down the line(3)) was done in order to introduce the new Planeswalker card type and ensure that they would be accurate to the lore while preventing them from being absolutely broken.

In March of the Machine: The Aftermath, many Planeswalkers, a couple of whom were in the Gatewatch, lost their powers in an event unofficially known as the Desparkening. To be exact, 21 out of the then-existing 31 Planeswalkers (≈ 68%) lost their powers. Additionally, the number of new or preexisting Planeswalker cards in each set was reduced to 1(4). Storywise, I understand why Wizards may have wanted to reduce the impact of Planeswalkers in the story, but did they really have to limit the characters themselves to accomplish this? Gameplay wise this may have been an overkill as well as the results of a recent poll run by Mark Rosewater (MTG’s Head Designer) suggests that most players want 2 or more Planewalkers per set (5). Overall what does this change in direction mean for the story and game overall? We’ll have to see ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

While recent news surrounding Standard and its sets isn’t all bad (6), it is easy to see why it might be harder for players to engage with the game and story than it was a few years ago back when the writers had more time to flesh out each world. According to Rosewater, the block format isn’t coming back anytime soon, which is quite unfortunate in my opinion.

By the way, I forgot to mention that I’ve only been talking about Magic’s Standard sets this whole time. If that sounds exhausting to you, please note that this stuff (along with all the previews and whatnot) was going on while Universes Beyond, Secret Lair (non-legal FOMO sets), Commander sets, Alchemy sets (exclusive to MTG Arena), and the utter bullshit that was the $1,000 anniversary box(7) were released in between. This also doesn’t include the other controversies going on with MTG and Wizards as a whole as of late such as the AI stuff, the recent Commander controversy (though a lot of that was not due to Wizards iirc), and art infringement.

In conclusion, the Universes Beyond sets are only a small part of the problem.

Thanks for reading. I know this was incredibly long but I’m super interested in the lore. Like I mentioned before, if you have any thoughts, I’d love to hear them. By the way, if you enjoyed this go check out Tolarian Community College. He goes into depth about tips, decks, and current issues surrounding the game. Here’s a video of him reviewing MTG Hot Pockets.

Footnotes:

(1) Please note that there are a couple of exceptions, namely Innistrad: Midnight Hunt and Crimson Vow as well as Dominaria United through March of the Machine: The Aftermath (which was a weird set in and of itself).

(2) You, the player, are one of them :)

(3) As of Commander 2014, a Planeswalker card does not indicate how powerful the Planeswalker themself is but rather how much they’re willing to help you, which I think is kinda funny. Tezzeret, Cruel Machinist isn’t a crappy Planeswalker, he just doesn’t like you.

(4) Up until this point, the amount of Planeswalker cards in each set varied dramatically (we’re talking double digits), but to my knowledge there were usually three per set.

(5) As an irl researcher I feel obligated to mention that it may not be representative of the Magic community as well as that there may be confounding factors in play but whatever ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

(6) As of Wilds of Eldraine, sets are rotated out of Standard every three years instead of every two years, THANK GOD.

(7) PS: The $1,000 cards were randomized? What??

Final Fantasy and Spider-Man are going to be Standard Legal???

[sweettsubaki]

People who say Horikoshi would be a coward if he brought Bakugou back do not understand anything to writing

Cowardice would mean not going through with his plans because he felt threatened by something.

So first things first, Horikoshi said he was allowed to finish the manga however he wanted now since it's almost over and WSJ doesn't try to keep series on forever anymore. So the "cowardice" thing wouldn't be likely in that sense.

Now in story.... The basic concept of BnHA is an hommage to super hero comics. If you've read comics you know that death isn't permanent in those (one of the longest lasting was Barry Allen for 23 years IRL and like... 6-8 years in world) with very few exceptions. So while I'm not saying Horikoshi abides to it, I still think it's an important concept to remember when going into these kinds of stories. The "they were brought back to life" , the "their death was faked", the "they were just injured but no one knew whether it was actually deadly", the "they were healed just in time", the "they were put in stasis"... They're all common tropes in fiction but especially so in comics.

Which brings us to the concept of a cliffhanger. It's a writing device to keep readers on their toes and make them want to know either "what happens next". It cuts in the middle of a climax. Bakugou is on the verge of death so far. He's not actually dead yet because the scene was cut before we got confirmation. (Because Horikoshi knew what he was doing to his readers and is enjoying it.)

As I said....cowardice means not going through and changing your plans. While the tragedy of Katsuki's death when his character arc is not finished would make the death work on an emotional level for the readers, the plot would not be better for it, quite the opposite as Horikoshi treating his Deuteragonist only as Deku development fodder would not be great writing (not saying he wouldn't still be fodder for Deku's development, he just wouldn't only be that). There's only one instance where he wouldn't just be fodder and serve the plot directly if he died and it would require his consciousness to still be around for a conversation... Honestly I'd find that to be meh at best. Point is, I highly doubt his death was the point of this storyline. It seems to be more something along the lines of "this is where Katsuki's at right now so we can see how he's gonna evolve again" and either "How he is not going to die? " or "how is his /near/death gonna provoke this quirk reveal" to go with it. So to Horikoshi reversing Bakugou's death/showing he isn't actually dead would be his plan. aka not cowardice.

Especially considering there's the simple concept of consistency with the worldbuilding and with the themes. With everything that Horikoshi has established in his world, there are so many possibilities to move the plot, develop the themes of the story as well as its thesis by keeping Katsuki alive. Much more than by him dying here. The save to win/win to save dichotomy (and Katsuki learning to save while Izuku learns to win especially when faced with ShigarakAFO), the various quirks and the versatility of their use, 2nd's quirk, Deku and Bakugou's parallel to Shigaraki, Katsuki representing society and its capacity for change, Katsuki taking Deku's hand, ect... (seriously I've barely breached the surface here).

So from a narrative standpoint, his death makes little sense. I'm not saying it's impossible for Horikoshi to have actually killed him, just that he'd reduce his possibilities by doing that and that he rarely exposes themes and worldbuilding without acting on it (Chekov's gun and what not). He may not be the best at writing his ideas but he almost always follow through with what he's given the audience. He also particularly loves the bait and switch technique.

There's also the idea that killing a character is brave or whatever. Well to a lot of writers that's not the case. So long as a character's death isn't necessary for the plot to advance or to develop themes, then they can be tortured used. And it's more fun from a writer's PoV. A good character is a character that has a use. A dead characters can be used to torture develop another one but even then, it often limits its possibilities. That's not always the case of course, sometimes it allows for greater use than would have otherwise been possible, but that's the thing, it should be dependent on weighing whether the death is actually worth it to move your story and characters along and not on a very subjective 'bravery' factor.

[haleigh-sloth]

I put together some final thoughts on the past arc, cuz now that it's pretty much over and we can look at the past 20-ish chapters as a whole, I have some.

Apologies in advance cuz this turned out long.

I feel like with the appearance of Stain and Aizawa, the mention of Kurogiri, the callback to Toga, and the end of Dek's solo adventures, it is finally safe to give some final thoughts on the past arc. Specifically talking about the chapters ranging from 306-324.

I want to iterate that I am completely in understanding of the fact that the author is very much overworked, and that if he had been able to take a proper break after the war arc, (or a proper break in general) this past arc would have been better. This is not a jab at the author's abilities, because the man can tell a story. We've seen him do it. He's capable of it, especially when his heart is in it. Which, for the record, I don't think his heart was in this past arc at all--not like it was for the war arc and the very few chapters following up to 305. I think he was forcing these chapters out because he had to. Anyway.

Hardly any progress was made in the plot this past arc. Almost every chapter was boring. Like, we usually get HYPE when spoilers drop! Notice how that hype has completely died down. I will say that chapter 314 lit a bit of a spark in the fandom, but that spark died immediately when we got the three completely useless explosions (All Might's car, Nagant, the mansion in the forest), and when we kept seeing Endeavor and Hawks--two characters in desperate, desperate need of some serious development--remain completely stagnant and hollow.

Yes, some moments were worth being excited about! Toga came to Ochacko's mind, Midoriya has thought of Shigaraki several times--as well as thought back to specific lines from his (very important) speech--Shouto went off on his dad in front of UA, and Bakugo and Midoriya finally had a moment of clarity and unification. Those things were all nice. But beyond that....

I think my biggest issue is how Hawks is being handled right now. Other bloggers have said it before, but Hawks feels really retconned and it seems like Hori is backing out on kicking Hawks's ass in-story. Twice's death feels as if it didn't even happen. Which, I'm still holding out hope that that is going to change at some point down the line. BUT--the fact of the matter is that the writing has reduced Hawks to this extremely flat, 2-D character who only is constantly accompanied by/associated with Endeavor and cannot seem to exist in-story otherwise, not thinking a single thought about the fact that Endeavor is a grim reminder of his abusive past, not struggling or regretting even a little bit about the fact that he murdered someone who was running away crying, and suddenly has all these optimistic lines that really don't belong with his character. So after waiting all this time for his character to have the same substance he used to during the war arc and before, it's going to feel extremely jarring for him to suddenly be as important as he potentially could have been to the end game, and suddenly go back to being as complex and intriguing as he used to be out of fucking nowhere. I mean I'm holding out hope still, because Twice deserves better. And Hawks being made into a flat Endeavor worshipper is pretty cringe. There is still time for change though 🙏🏼, for now. Hawks is on thin ass ice.

Endeavor....ugh. Stagnant, plot-wise. But his character is fine, for now. His arc is pretty straight forward, but there's concern it'll just be....lightly painted over with a completely uncalled-for layer of optimism. Like, it's already optimistic and hopeful that his family is going to be together in the end. Nothing story-wise has changed that ending to come. If anything, because of the ridiculous happy-go-lucky last few chapters (sans 325-326), I'd say it's even more solidified. The question at this point is how dark and serious will it get on the journey to that ending. Will there be any stakes, any losses, etc. Endeavor should not get to remain a hero in the end. He shouldn't, and as of now I still think he's gonna lose his hero status in the end. But....heroes and civilians alike do not seem to give a single shit that he abused his family. They only yell at him because of what Touya did. Not because of what he did to his family as a whole, or the fact that he's still considered a fucking hero in the eyes of society. It's very...disappointing, and raises the possibility that nothing will actually be addressed with him and he'll still be a "hero". Nothing has called him out, except for Shouto! But Shouto has hardly had ANY screen time in so long, that it doesn't feel as heavy watching him (rightfully) bitch out his dad. That's another issue that would result in a way longer post than this already is, but Shouto needs his arc back. He still hasn't gotten it back, still. Yes, the kids are back on screen, but it's obvious which kids are gonna be saving some villains, so it'd be nice to put some focus on them and their inner struggles and their arcs, instead of pandering to everyone ELSE pointlessly if they're not going to carry the plot further (Endeavor and Hawks I'm looking at you).

Other smaller complaints:

I can't get over how there were three chapters dedicated to Ochacko and that megaphone. We got Toga out of it, but at what cost..

The villains were established to be central to the remainder of the main kids' arcs, but hardly any mention of them at all. It felt to me like the plot was literally dancing around that topic. Just trying to put it off for as long as possible.

I don't really have complaints about 325 and 326. They could have been better if everything leading up to them was...worth getting excited over, but ultimately they're okay. They at least gave us mystery (Stain and All Might) and suspense (Aizawa and Kurogiri) to look forward to. I hope Hori can enjoy himself more in the remaining parts of the story. It seems like when the happenings in the story are actually interesting, the story-telling is significantly better and the author seems to have more of a solid idea of where he's going.

He deserves a break too.

He has talent, I want to see that talent carry out the story to its end!

Anyway, here's to better chapters to come 🍻 🍻 🍻

[out-of-this-dimension]

Hypothetically Rewriting Assault’s Story + Some General Assault Opinions

There’s a game my husband and I like to play when we watch a movie, play a game, or read a book that has a story that we don’t really enjoy or we enjoy certain parts of but not others.  We look at things we’d keep and things we’d change and we build a story from there-- sort of like an AU but we don’t really go into the writing part, we just stick to theorizing and mapping a general story.

I decided to play that game with Star Fox.  Not because I think Star Fox has a bad story but because sometimes I think the stories could have been handled better.  Note: for the rewrite game, I only really look at story, even for video games, I don’t really look at gameplay mechanics, but I do understand those have a lot to do with story potential so I do take it in as a factor... I just don’t bother to “rewrite” the mechanics, if that makes any sense at all.  Some of my list today will include boss encounters but I wouldn’t necessarily say those are mechanic-related... more like “event-related”.

I’ve mused a bit in the past about rewriting Adventures and Command and I do have plans to do a mock up of an Adventures remake eventually.  However, today I was thinking about how I would go about handling an Assault re-write in particular.  Much like Command and Adventures, I don’t have any beef with the core story but I do think there’s a few things that could’ve been better about Assault’s storyline-- like they had good ideas rolling but they didn’t quite refine them.

Under the cut because SUPER long.

My basic feelings on Assault are pretty positive.  I think the game is generally just fun and I like that it feels like the natural progression from SF64.  I liked getting to see planets we haven’t seen since the N64 era in better graphics and I liked seeing Star Wolf return.  I also just thought the aparoids were neat enemies. 

Generally speaking, though, when it comes to Assault, I think it suffers from the thing it tries to push the most-- the story.  I think a lot of people get caught up in thinking the story is better than it is because it’s the first game since SF64 that really follows the same Star Fox vibe without retelling the Lylat Wars.  Don’t get me wrong, the overall plot is great but the execution and pacing are... wonky.  Certain characterizations also take a hit in some regards but no one really talks about that when Command exists. That’s something we’ll talk about later on with this post.

That being said, Assault really does have a lot good going for it.  An absolute banger of a soundtrack, some great dialogue, a neat story synopsis, the introduction of cool characters like Panther and Beltino (who existed but was always off-screen), and just good levels.  

So, here’s what I would add, I suppose, if I were to somehow have the ability to rewrite Assault.  Originally I had this in paragraph form, but I’ve made it into more of a list under topic segments with main points bolded for your viewing pleasure.  Some of these points might be considered nitpicky and while I do understand that yes, this is a game about space animals, I do hold the developers in high enough regard to make a game with a continuity that makes sense.

The Story Changes

- Reduce Pigma’s storyline in Assault.  This is the biggest one for me because a bulk of the plotline feels like a giant chase to just get at Pigma and it feels like it derails from the actual plot with the aparoids.  We only go to Sargasso because of Pigma.  We only go to Fichina and then back to Meteo again, because of Pigma.  That’s 3 levels in a 10 level game devoted to just tracking down Pigma and chasing him.  While it makes the build up to fighting Pigma kind of nice, I personally feel like the plot could be reduced to 2 levels.  If Assault overall was a longer game, I could see them making it 3 levels.  Overall, though, in its current state, I feel like the side plot overstays its welcome and the aparoids promptly get shoved to the side in favor of “Oh no, we gotta get to Pigma!” And I get the main motive here is to show how the aparoids affect people and because of the build up, it does a good job at showing how utterly terrifying the aparoids are.  But it’s still too long given the length of Assault’s story. The only alternative to this is make Assault longer, which... honestly, it should be.  

- Revise the scene with Tricky.  I’m obviously not well-versed in dinosaur biology but I’m pretty sure dinos didn’t grow that fast from what studying I HAVE done.  And why is he suddenly king now?  Did his parents die?  He seems not affected by this at all?  Like it’s a funny scene with him, Fox, and Krystal, but it’s odd if you really look at it.  Give us, as players, more context because I’m still not even sure what happened to make Tricky suddenly the leader and... big.  As a note, you’re gonna hear me gripe a lot about the Sauria level in this post.

- The Star Wolf + Peppy sacrifice is a low effort way to raise tension/stakes and then cop out.  Oldest trick in the book, imo, is to act like you’re going to kill off important characters only for them to be alive miraculously.  And let’s face it, as an audience we all know they aren’t going to kill those characters because it’s Nintendo and those characters are too beloved.  I would’ve forgiven them for only doing this with Peppy or Star Wolf, but when you tack them both together and throw in the fact they make it seem like you’re going to have to kill General Pepper too... yeah, it’s just a bit much of the same trope over and over again.  I wanted to put a note in here about how I’m fine with the Great Fox being “sacrificed” but overall, it needed to return to the series because of it’s icon status, but I think that’s more of a gripe at Command instead of Assault.

- Keep Pigma alive.  This will conflict with a point I have later on about the game consistently having characters cheat death for easy drama points but with Pigma, I would’ve kept him fully alive... but maybe with some physical damage from the aparoids.  I understand he’s semi-alive in Command and tbh I don’t know where I stand on that.  Why keep Pigma alive, you might ask?  I feel like his character has a lot more potential than being “just the greedy guy”.  Like he’s got good potential future villain material for future games and... if I’m honest?  I just don’t see Nintendo wanting to keep Pigma dead so why even bother killing him off?  They couldn’t even commit to him being dead in Command anyways so it seems very moot.

- Bring Bill and Katt back.  Assault is acts a bit like a big reunion of all of our SF64 favorites but our two favorite side characters are suspiciously missing.  Wouldn’t Bill be out on the front lines fighting against Andrew in the beginning?  Or maybe back in Katina?  And wouldn’t Katt inevitably show up in the midst of the invasion, maybe to pointedly check in on Falco?

- Bring Andrew back for the final fight. I think Andrew being defeated early into the game is fine overall but I think bringing him back in for a reunion final fight against the aparoids would serve to really solidify that it’s really everyone vs the invading aparoid force.  It would show that not only is Star Wolf willing to put aside their differences but so is basically everyone in the Lylat System in the name of survival.  Imagine the Venomians and Cornerians working together against an aparoid fleet, giving Star Fox and Star Wolf time to attack the queen?  I just think it’d be neat and it’d open up the potential for some fun banter mid-mission.  I do understand that quite a few people consider Andrew canonically dead after Assault but personally, I feel that his defeat left his fate questionable (I’m a staunch believer that unless there’s a body, they’re probably alive, especially for Nintendo games because, again, they never like to kill people off) so him returning in Command never really bothered me.  

- In general, reconsider some of the character portrayals.  Unfortunately, when a series has a different studio for each game, character portrayals will inevitably have inconsistencies.  While I give Namco a lot of credit for putting in oodles and oodles of detail into the game (particularly the levels), I think they failed in their portrayal of Fox, at the least, and Wolf is a considerable offender as well.  While it’s obvious that Fox in Adventures was effectively modeled off of Sabre even in terms of personality, Rareware was at least able to justify Fox’s newfound jaded attitude with the passing of many years and a distinct lack of steady income, resulting in the team being in disarray.  Assault’s Fox is a stark contrast to his cynical interpretation with seemingly no explanation other than maybe “Oh, I have more money and a gf, maybe I should behave myself”.  As if the sudden change in personality wasn’t random, Fox also just seems very blah, like a blank slate stereotypical shooter game protagonist dude with little to no emotion.  Wolf is less obvious but gets slated into a mentor-like role midway through the game and ends up in a respectful rivalry with Fox... which there’s nothing inherently wrong with that except for it happening abruptly (and, I mean, Peppy is right there).  But I take less issue with this and more of an issue with the fact that there’s an entire level establishing that Wolf now runs a crime den with effectively what seems to be an army and no one bats an eye at this.  He doesn’t even call on them to help with the aparoids.  Did they all die when the aparoids attacked Meteo?  Are they safe somewhere else?  Where do they go?  How was Sargasso able to operate without the CDF being on their doorstep with warrants for arrests?

- Don’t kill all the dinosaurs.  A bit of a dramatic statement but the ending screen that showed all the damage to Sauria really bothered me.  While I understand that the dinosaurs had less of a chance against the aparoids than a more technology-focused society like Corneria, I was a bit disappointed that the decision was made to just state that a lot of tribes had been wiped out.  I know this could easily be retconned in a future game and I feel like it should be.  “But why, Amalia?  Why are you disappointed by that?”  1) It’s a little too grimdark for my tastes.  2) The fact it all happened off-screen felt very hand-wavy.  And 3) It brings into question the entire point of Adventures.  Why did we bother to save this planet if it was going to be reduced to rubble and ash 1 year later?  Where were the Krazoa in all of this?  Why did they not make an appearance at all to try to stop the invasion with their alleged powers?  It just raises too many weird questions and I feel like Namco didn’t think it through too much.  Which I mean, sure.  Family, kiddo game.  I’m not asking for bigbrain plot and lore but I’m squinting at this bit because it does feel very contrary to the lore from the previous game.

- Make the aparoids more relevant.  As nice as it is to have a random bad guy from another galaxy, I feel like there was more that could be done with the aparoids in terms of their origins.  Tiny things, mind you, not huge revelations.  Off the top of my head, they could have been tied into Krystal’s backstory to help alleviate some of the complaints that she was too random to be added to the series’ main cast.  Alternatively, they could have been a product of Andross or even a weapon prototype from Corneria that fled the lab (I actually thought the game was leaning in that direction for a bit then just Nothing Happened).  I get that the vagueness of their origins leaves room for people to speculate and speculation is nice but... when you leave too many things unknown, it starts to feel less like giving fans room to interpret and more like just doing random things for the sake of it.  I think a lore tidbit here or there would work wonders for the aparoids instead of leaving them as just borg/zerg clones.

Level-Based Changes

- Add either Aparoid RedEye or Aparoid General Scales as a boss to Sauria.  Given that this level mysteriously lacks a boss, which is just weird compared to the other levels, I think that they had the opportunity to add something cool to go along with the cinematic feel they were going for with Assault.  Assault’s cutscenes do play in a movie-like fashion and it’s clear they’re trying to make the game as epic as possible.  It’s a shame they had so much fodder for a great boss here but they failed to go through with it.  Alternatively: Add a Krazoa-Aparoid fusion.  Why?  Because Star Fox is about cool epic sci-fi and that would be cool epic sci-fi incarnate.

- Add a boss to the Aparoid Homeworld Level, aka the penultimate level.  Another one I felt was personally weird that there was no “final defense system” to challenge the team.  Would be cool to do an aerial battle over the aparoid planet with some giant flying aparoid.

- Be kinder to Sauria.  The level had some good homages but overall was incredibly small and incredibly short.  It felt like a bone tossed to Adventures fans but was not entirely true to the setting built by Rareware.  I’m... not even sure where the Sauria level is supposed to take place?  I presume it’s Walled City but it doesn’t really have the same color scheme or aesthetic?  Also where is my revised Adventures music?  Why do all the other levels get it but Sauria doesn’t? 

- Put some of those funky items from the multiplayer into the main campaign.  I don’t know why some of these things, items especially, were omitted unless it was purely due to time constraints.  I remember having missile launchers and jetpacks in the multiplayer and was a bit sad that they were not in the main campaign.  Retuning the levels and adding those in would be a nice breath of fresh air for the more tedious on-foot missions.

- More levels.  Self-explanatory.  Still sad we didn’t get the Zoness or Titania levels in the single-player mode.  

I think all of the above changes would improve the game, though I recognize all of this is being said 16 years later after lots of time to contemplate Assault’s weaker points.  I’m not entirely certain how long Star Fox Assault took to develop but given that there’s obviously quite a bit scrapped from the game (an entire arcade mode was scrapped as well), I’m going to assume that the studio felt pressured to shove the game out the door and into the hands of customers.  It’s a shame, really, because I think a little bit longer in the oven would have done a lot of good.  Still, the product we got was good in its own right and a game that many people look back on fondly.  I haven’t gotten to replay it in years but I hope to quite soon.

You might wonder why I bothered typing this all out and I guess my point was this-- Assault was great but it wasn’t perfect, and while a lot of other games fall under a crushing amount of scrutiny, Assault seems to dodge it.  And don’t get me wrong-- I adore Assault.  But given that not many takes exist out there about rewriting it, I decided to give it a shot.  For variety’s sake.  

I do want to a mock up of a revised Assault story, which I think I will get to work on after completing this while all my ideas are still fresh in mind.  So stay tuned for that sometime in the near future.  I will also be doing my Adventures mock up at some point but probably not for a little bit as I do wanna focus some of my free time on actual fic-writing.

Anyways, if you stuck around this long, thank you for reading!  Have any changes you’d like to see to Assault if you could time machine your way back to the early 2000s?  Feel free to post in the comments, I’d love to read your ideas!

[sylvies-chen]

Chicago PD's Characters and the Role of Reform: an Analysis (???)

Hi everyone! The finales of One Chicago aired a couple of weeks ago by now but I've been preparing this post in my head ever since PD's finale aired. I wanted to talk/write about each character's (and maybe even the writers') interpretation of police reform and how it affects the plot. This will also talk about police reform in general. Before I start, I'd just like to state that this will be a bit long and probably biased since a lot of it is influenced by my own views on reform. I'm not interested in debating people on the internet, just putting out interesting perspective on an interesting TV show. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this and feel free to add thoughts of your own— as long as they’re respectful!

Chicago PD's handling of reform in this season was far from perfect but I did enjoy a few things they did with it. We had Kevin, a POC, stand up and fight back when even the people closest to him tried to shut him down. I did have some issue with the way they reduced Kevin's entire set of beliefs/morals to something so trivial and disrespectful as a "woke card" but I think the writers chose to do that on purpose to show how blinded white people can be sometimes. It's more the characters using that term, not the writers, which I thought was a good move since in both situations— Kevin v. Voight in 8x02 and Kevin v. Adam in 8x16– they made sure it's clear that Kevin is in the right. Voight may have been frustrated and Adam may have been spiraling over losing Kim (love me some #Burzek), but Kevin was still in the right. If only we could have some more varied representation on this show! That way, Kevin wouldn’t have to be used as the emotional punching bag all the time for these white characters and their misplaced frustrations with the system (added onto their personal frustrations which fluctuate on a episode-to-episode basis).

Now, onto the view on reform because this is where it gets interesting. I'm going to go ahead and say something that might be controversial: I think the majority of conflicts in this season have come from a gross misinterpretation of the concept of reform. This is especially highlighted in the finale when we see Adam saying he should be able to change/bend/break the rules to save someone he loves. It's also shown in the case with Miller's son Darrell and how they need to break the rules to save him, the case in 8x11 that Hailey considers breaking the rules for. It could even be loosely applies to 8x06 when Jay feels the need to break the rules only slightly in order to serve proper justice for their victim's father. Proper justice, in this case for Jay, being mercy towards the father and doing what's right in Jay's mind. Notice a common theme? These characters who are against reform (I know Voight was so good most of the season but he still falls into that category because of the first and last two episodes) all have one thing in common: the way they view reform. Voight, Hailey, and Adam, somewhere along the line (in my opinion), have all come to think of reform as a social push to get police officers to adhere to the proper guidelines when in reality, that's only a small fraction of an otherwise complex concept. Reform isn't all about getting police to follow the rules-- reform in and of itself is recognizing that the rules that are set into place aren't always effective. There are rules that are discriminatory, rules that are bureaucratic nonsense, rules that disproportionately affect specific groups of people, and rules that create roadblocks to solving real problems. Hell, the original police systems in North America especially were created to persecute minorities and maintain military power over citizens. The need for reform is referencing a larger systemic issue and getting police officers to follow the most basic procedures is just the tip of the iceberg. I don't want to get too much into the principles behind reform here because I am no expert. I recognize that because I am white I benefit from these rules/systems put into place so my voice shouldn't matter in the grand scheme of things, but I do think the majority of the tensions in this season of Chicago PD stem from the extreme oversimplification of reform. It surprised me too when I thought about it because they've managed to explore the grey areas/more complex aspects of it, but I think the writers are intentionally making that decision which makes it really interesting.

Throughout the season, I couldn’t help but feel that these characters considered reform as the push from the public to adhere to guidelines-- as they should, obviously-- but while ignoring the more nuanced principles of reform such as asking themselves questions like: is what I'm doing truly helping the communities we've sworn to serve and protect? Are the solutions us cops in Intelligence are offering permanent solutions? Should we be rethinking our principles of justice to be less retributive and more procedural-- or even more restorative?

This is all in reference to the characters, of course, not the writers. We have Voight, Hailey, and Adam resisting reform because they don’t see value in following the rules. But reform, in its purest form, is recognizing that the rules need changing, which is why it’s so interesting to see the “opposing side” against it even though they also believe the rules aren’t helping them. So I think it's really good and interesting how the writers have written these characters as having very complex and layered discussions/arguments about reform and about justice while still doing that. Because their contempt for the rules comes from a place of wanting to carry out justice, just like Kevin and all the others who push for reform, but they’re motivated by ideals closer to retributive justice and using their position of power to exact a more personal form of justice. Because of Hailey, Adam, and Voight’s more personal and intimate views of justice, their solutions always feel short-term. For example, Voight murdering suspects, bashing in cars, etc. This is all stuff that creates a temporary fix but their passion towards justice makes them care more about the personal, emotional release that kind of justice brings than the actual, long-term change. This is especially shown in that one scene where Hailey tells Jay the story about how a clerical error made an offender walk, which she sort of views as a reason why breaking the rules should be allowed whereas Kevin would view that as a reason why the rules need changing. Again, short-term vs. long-term.

This is not to say that Hailey, Voight, and Adam are evil, obviously. They're complicated, but they're far from evil. (Well, the jury’s still out on Voight. Haha!) What this show is portraying, however, is how the ideas of reform can be fleeting and temporary and all-around fickle in the minds of these characters when they reach a certain breaking point. They're able to throw this aside because they're all white, so it doesn't affect them personally. But right off the bat in season 8 we've seen it affect Kevin professionally AND personally in every single way. Others are almost viewing it as a social trend or a push to be a rule-follower though which is why both Adam and Voight, when put under emotional distress, are so easily able to downplay Kevin's push for doing things the right way. (Even though, really, he's asking for the bare minimum here of following the rules and not killing people.) Kevin, ever the conscience of the group, doesn’t put up with it and keeps people in check which can be extremely aggravating when you’re in a very emotional state and want to let your emotions lead you on a rampage. Hence, this is the root cause of the majority of tensions between the unit— in season 8 especially.

Anyway, this is all to say that I think this season of Chicago PD has done quite a lot in terms of portraying reform and the need for systemic change while still staying true to their characters and delving into how their privelege has led to them misinterpreting reform. Which leads to the portraying of some fairly corrupt policing, but never condoning it. At the very least, they show how it's less important for these characters since they all have a breaking point where reform becomes moot whereas for a black man like Kevin, it's more firmly ingrained into him. That’s a concept that is all too common in the real world, and one I appreciated that they represented even though some things weren’t so great.

[thosch3i]

The finale of Ultimate Note airs 12/9 (tonight in China) for VIP. Thank you to this drama for bringing me my favorite Iron Triangle ❤ Longer discussion of why I love it so much, and why I strongly recommend it to book fans (especially those upset with certain previous adaptations) below the cut, apologies if it’s not fully coherent at times because I haven’t slept enough and also it’s almost 1am. But your TLDR is basically: characterization, plot, pacing, relationships are the best of any DMBJ drama. Iron Triangle especially.

First, the pacing of this show is excellent. Pretty much all cdramas I’ve seen or heard of have been inundated with filler, and the previous DMBJ dramas fall victim to this as well. Ultimate Note took 36 episodes to cover 4 book arcs, whereas previous adaptations have taken more episodes to cover far fewer. There’s really not any content you’d be wanting to skip, as almost all of it is plot-relevant or character-relevant.

Second, the plot is the most cohesive out of any DMBJ adaptation. Frankly, this isn’t saying too much, given the novel plot can also be confusing as all hell sometimes, but Ultimate Note goes above and beyond in pulling in information from later books and, if I heard correctly, common fan theories, doing their best to fill in the plot holes left by the author to create a more complete story.

Third, the female characters are actually done well. (As well as they can be, given the source material’s unfortunate habit of fridging its women.) For example, A-Ning’s decision to go the Tamutuo wasn’t because she was ~in love~ with some man. She is a determined individual who has made her choice about her path a long time ago, and she is willing to risk death to achieve her goals. Even her death was done about as well as it could have been--it wasn’t drawn out to the point of it being sickeningly cheesy, and Wu Xie tried his best to honor her goals and bring her to the Palace of the Queen Mother of the West (even emphasizing to Pangzi, “if you died, I would carry you too”). In addition, Chen Wenjin wasn’t stuck in some ridiculous love triangle. She loved Wu Sanxing, of course, but her loving a man isn’t made out to be her entire personality. Her goodbye to Xie Lianhuan is poignant but not mushy. She’s steady and sure in her goals, and she knows what she has to do in order to save herself. Yuncai’s character, as well, I think was handled about as well as it could’ve been given the source material. Her relationship with Pangzi wasn’t overexaggerated and nauseating, and I think their relationship was more tolerable in the drama than it was in the novel overall. (In addition, I prefer how they handled her death in the drama versus the novel--instead of just killing her offscreen, they give her a redemption, and show how she’d grown attached to her new friends, Pangzi especially, resulting in her hesitation to deal the final blow.)

Related to the above point: no added forced romances that destroyed the female characters’ personalities and reduced them to just love interests for men, thank god. Pangzi and Yuncai’s relationship was already there in the novel, but nothing about their relationship was distorted in the drama to the point of being annoying, and Yuncai is shown to have her own goals for cozying up to Pangzi (at first, at least). If you want to get technical about “added romances”, you could honestly argue that it’s Pingxie. (And Hei///hua, but I’ll be honest and say they’re not my cup of tea, so I won’t really be discussing them. However, I do think their characters, while also exaggerated for humor at points, were also done well, and their relationship--while AFAIK was not a really a thing in the books at all?--was written in a way that the development made sense, and their personalities compatible.)

But anyway, while Ultimate Note does make Pingxie seem closer to each other than they were in the novel, we do have to remember that the novel is from Wu Xie’s point of view, and he’s a little bit of a blockhead when it comes to noticing how much Xiaoge cares about him. (IIRC, he wonders if Xiaoge even considers him a friend in Zang Hai Hua...after Xiaoge’s literally called him his “only connection” to this world in book 8.) However, from an outsider POV, it’d be natural for us to see Xiaoge worrying more over Wu Xie. Because from Wu Xie’s perspective, what did he actually see? Xiaoge dropping in to save him a few times and often vanishing or turning away right after, leaving Wu Xie with mixed feelings and confusion about his value to Xiaoge. Xiaoge being aloof before they set off to Tamutuo, claiming that he is a person with no past and future, and that no one would remember him if he disappeared. (Xiaoge smiles before telling Wu Xie that he’s on Wu Xie’s side--that’s a smile that the viewers see, but that Wu Xie doesn’t.) Most of Xiaoge’s visible worry for Wu Xie in the desert was also when Wu Xie himself was not there to see it. During the scene where the fungus was growing in Wu Xie’s stomach, he was entirely out of it while Xiaoge visibly panicked about hurting him, and after the fungus was dealt with, Xiaoge only stood off to the side--only to smile faintly to himself, relieved, after Wu Xie wakes up. (Again a smile that the viewers see, but that Wu Xie doesn’t.) But because from an outsider POV we can see all this, while Wu Xie remains partly ignorant, lines like “thankfully, I didn’t bring death upon you” and Xiaoge calling Wu Xie is only connection to the world seem that much more logical, now that we can see some of the depth and development of how much Xiaoge does care about Wu Xie.

That brings me to the primary reason why I love Ultimate Note, because the main selling point for me on any franchise is not actually world-building or plot, but rather the characters and the relationships between those characters. And for DMBJ, the relationship I’m always looking for--and the relationship that the entire franchise ultimately centers around--is the Iron Triangle. And the mutual trust and the strength of the bond between this Iron Triangle is unmistakable; no one is treated as expendable.

As much as we have joked about Xiaoge's double standards with Wu Xie versus Pangzi, the end of the Banai arc especially and the last five episodes have cemented the importance of Xiaoge and Pangzi's friendship. Their relationship is often the weakest leg of the Iron Triangle in DMBJ adaptations, but Ultimate Note has nailed it. Pangzi helps carry Xiaoge out of Tamutuo, and Pangzi's the one who primarily takes care of Xiaoge after he loses his memories. There's also Xiaoge's clear worry over Pangzi after Yuncai's death, and his assurance that Pangzi won't die as long as he is here in the later episodes when the two of them are separated from Wu Xie--showing that the Iron Triangle is a triangle; Wu Xie isn't the single connection that Xiaoge and Pangzi's relationship hinges upon.

Pangzi and Wu Xie's friendship doesn't need much explaining: the two of them bicker like they're brothers, and they could probably star in their own buddy-cop comedy together. Both Pangzi and Xiaoge are shown to be clearly worried for Wu Xie after the Xie Lianhuan reveal, and even though neither of them quite know how to handle it, they are there for Wu Xie. And of course, there's the scene where Pangzi pours out the water while they're waiting for Xiaoge to leave the meteorite. Wu Xie cries for Pangzi when they're in the Miluotuo cave and he chooses to carry out Xiaoge first, and once again, his worry for Pangzi after Yuncai's death is palpable. Even when Wu Xie has to leave Pangzi in Banai, he instructs Xiaoge to look after him (not that Xiaoge really needed the instruction, anyway--that’s his best friend, too).

Wu Xie and Xiaoge's relationship needs even less explaining: anyone who's watched the show can attest to how much they care about each other. From Wu Xie's frantic scrambling to grab the tapes upon hearing they were from "Zhang Qiling" and Xiaoge's introduction in the show being him stopping outside Wushanju to stare up (longingly?) at the sign, we see their relationship unfold in all of its quiet pining and lingering looks. When Xiaoge claims no one would know if he disappeared from this world, Wu Xie doesn't hesitate in promising that he, at least, will. Xiaoge smiles before telling Wu Xie that he's on his side, and Wu Xie vows to walk with Xiaoge until the very end. During the entire Tamutuo trip, Xiaoge is visibly worried for Wu Xie--when the parasitic fungus grew in his stomach, that worry was the most clear. But Wu Xie worries for Xiaoge too: insisting on going to save Xiaoge from the snakes that night when they all went blind; swearing that even if he faces death, he would wait for Xiaoge to leave the meteorite; telling Xiaoge that he will take him home. (Related: the soft, almost vulnerable way Xiaoge tells Wu Xie “take me home” in episode 31.) Not to mention--even when Xiaoge loses his memories, he still remembers Wu Xie. (And Pangzi smiles knowingly right after that scene.)

There are too many character/relationship moments I could write about, but one that stuck out in particular was when they were facing the spiders, and Wu Xie stopped Xiaoge from cutting his hand and using his blood to make the spiders retreat. At this point, Wu Xie and Pangzi don't know the extent of how Xiaoge was (mis)treated as a child (and used as a blood bag, apparently), but they know about how "A-Kun" was captured used as bait. Wu Xie and Pangzi would never ask Xiaoge to bleed for them, no matter what. Not now, let alone 10+ years later. (I won't name names, but if you know what I'm talking about, then you know.)

Which brings me to my main point: the characters in Ultimate Note are the closest to their novel selves I have ever seen in a DMBJ adaptation, and this is objectively the best adaptation of the DMBJ novel. (Whether you prefer another adaption or not is your opinion--I absolutely love the Time Raiders movie, even though that plot is literally all over the place, and Xiaoge is decently OOC--but Ultimate Note is the best adaptation of the novel, and the characters are the most true to what they actually should be.)

You can see the innocent and naïve Wu Xie, but you can also see the developing confusion, frustration, and anger he feels because he's been lead around by his nose his entire life. And he is angry in the novel; he is a bit of a hot-headed bastard; he's not just a naïve child. I remember seeing some complaints that Wu Xie felt "OOC" in the first episode for being so furious with his San-shu, but I think his reactions were spot-on with how he felt, and how he wanted to react. A similar point is the scene where Wu Xie slammed Xiaoge against the car--aside from just being some fun fanservice, in the novel Wu Xie really was furious at Xiaoge for vanishing on him and never contacting him after leaving the Heavenly Palace in the Clouds. A lot of the novel is Wu Xie's inner thoughts, which are difficult to portray in a live action adaptation, but he really did pretty much want to pick a fight with Xiaoge about disappearing, and  Ultimate Note decided on how to express this frustration in a way that suits a drama adaptation. In addition, you can see how Wu Xie’s past experiences like the trip to Tamutuo has changed him in how he manipulates Panma into bringing him to the lake; and you can see how almost losing Xiaoge and Pangzi to the Miluotuo changed him as well, when he thinks he’s lost them for real in episode 36 (leading up to his decision to put on his San-shu’s mask by the end, despite the fact that “some masks, when worn too long, can no longer be taken off”).

As for Pangzi: even though he has scenes that were clearly exaggerated for comic relief, he has plenty of moments that build his character and the Iron Triangle’s bond. These include him pouring out the water while he and Wu Xie are waiting for Xiaoge, his grief over Yuncai’s death, his standing by Wu Xie during the hotel auction scene, and his almost mother-hen-like worry about Xiaoge while they’re entering the Zhang Family Mansion in the last five episodes. Not to mention, he’s really quite a smart and perceptive character, despite his goofiness: he sees through Xiaoge’s worry about Wu Xie, and he knows when to step in and liven the atmosphere (see: Wu Xie being all awkward about his gift to Xiaoge in episode 31, and Pangzi being there practically just for emotional support). Also in episode 31: Pangzi telling Xiaoge that he’s getting more and more humane (the implications about Wu Xie here are pretty obvious). All in all, Pangzi is a funny person; he is often comic relief, but he’s also a steadfastly loyal friend and someone who loves deeply and without regret. Initially we saw more of his humor, but we definitely got the depths to his character by the end of Ultimate Note.

Finally Xiaoge, who I’m discussing last because he’s my favorite character: for once, I can see the humanity behind the title “Zhang Qiling”, and in a way that isn’t OOC. Xiaoge isn’t treated as a free source of bug-repelling blood; he isn’t treated as some overpowered, untouchable idol; he isn’t treated as a rescue machine for whenever another character needs it. He is a human, not a god. For the rest, I think his actor’s words speak for themselves. (And now I really don’t trust anyone else except him with Xiaoge's character.)

Ultimate Note succeeded in capturing the nuances of its main characters: Wu Xie’s loss of his “tianzhen” and slow maturation to the man he will eventually become by Sha Hai; Pangzi’s outwardly humorous pseudo-caricature but inwardly deeply loyal and loving spirit; Xiaoge’s vulnerabilities, painful humanity, and the “heart” given to him by his mother, hidden beneath a seemingly impenetrable armor. This is an Iron Triangle that feels like the Iron Triangle, without needing say so much in words. This is an Iron Triangle with mutual respect and a friendship I can see and believe in.

In conclusion: Ultimate Note does the story justice; it does the characters justice; it does the relationships justice; and it did all this with a low budget and almost no promotion. You can tell the crew definitely cares about the source material.

My only complaint is that they couldn’t film the finale.

Rambling over! All my love to the Ultimate Note cast and crew <3

[fermented-writers-block]

Who and what is Kikimora?

Although she has only made a single appearance in the show with just barely three lines to her name, Kikimora is an interesting character to me in what her apparent position and possible inspirations could mean in terms of the overall plot and history of the Boiling Isles going forward. 

Starting off, it is interesting to note how, so far, Kikimora is THE most respected character we’ve actually seen in the show - as Belos has yet to make an official appearance - as well as having one of the biggest yet understated impacts on the plot. Of course, the former can be inferred by how Lilith - THE leader of the best of the best witches outside of Emperor Belos himself - defers to her in a subservient manner, but for someone with such little screentime, Kikimora’s appearance set into motion an impending deadline that Lilith now has to fulfill soon if she wants Belos’ end of their promise. 

Additionally, it’s a subtle detail, but Kikimora’s use of just Lilith’s first name implies a ton of familiarity between the two and or that Kikimora is much, MUCH higher ranking than Kikimora in the hierarchy. As for figuring out what position she fills, well:

She is most likely Belos’ right hand woman after all, and quite literally at that. 

However, besides the literal wordplay of her design, I’ve been looking into the origins of her name and found that "kikimora" refers to a kind of spirit within Slavic mythology of which there are two kinds: one from the forest married to the spirit Domovoi,and the other from the swamp married to the spirit Leshy.

There's conflicting accounts on whether kikimora are evil or simply a difficult spirit to appease between the sources I could find, but a common thread seems to be a close association with spinning and being a symbol of impending misfortune with her psychic abilities. 

However, what I find most interesting and what I’d like to focus on here is the way she is most commonly depicted in terms of appearance. Between the unclear translated details of her exact stance and attitude towards humans, all of the sources I’ve seen more or less agree that she is a kind of powerful house spirit that is small enough to pass through keyholes, and that she is either a goddess of or are highly associated with chickens - sometimes bearing chicken feet like the ones in the drawn rendition below:

As to why I find this detail interesting, for those of you who haven’t been following my discussions with my friend @sepublic​, we have been working on plotting out the various possible narrative parallels between the characters of The Owl House and the in-universe characters of the Good Witch Azura series for a while now, with Luz and Amity being Azura and each other’s Hecate, Eda and Lilith as the old lady/mentor figure, and King and Emperor Belos as the likely small animal companions/proclaimed group leader.

With these parallels established, I have come to the conclusion that there is a FOURTH set of characters - one whose correlation in the Azura books we’ve yet to see or hear about, but will play an important role in both the overall Owl House plot and the in-universe Azura series - of which Kikimora makes up one half on Amity’s side. 

Assuming that Kikimora takes a decent amount of inspiration from her namesake in a number of ways, the most likely candidate for her parallel that I can see is - as surprising as it may seem - none other than Hooty, aka this goofball:

TLDR: Why I think both Hooty and Kikimora might turn out to be/have been bird-themed deity-like entities supporting their respective rulers, or how the epic kaiju fights were in our houses all along

To explain what I mean, with the major fan theory that King used to be the Titan/an actual king of demons and some of the recent character interactions these last few episodes, I believe that Hooty and Kikimora might be even more similar than just the mythological connotations behind Kikimora’s namesake.

For a long while now, I have been theorizing that Hooty will turn out to be a powerful owl-like spirit or being with a very severe case of power and memory loss, but to be more specific here, I think that Hooty - or the Owl Deity as I’ve taken to calling the being in the owl mural - used to be King’s second in command. 

Here, I think such a revelation would fit well with the kind of misdirection present within The Owl House’s storytelling. After all, for as much as Gus picking Hooty in UW was played as a joke, one must remember that Gus had been looking for THE most interesting, accomplished, and noteworthy person he could get, and it would be just like this show for Hooty to turn out to actually fit that criteria, much like Luz’s “bad girl chosen one” description in WBW being extremely applicable to Amity the next episode. 

In a similar vein, while King immediately shutting down Hooty’s declaration to become his recruit in AitE was a quick and funny joke in the moment, Hooty calling himself King’s “faithful pal” and the bonding moment the two shared after the carnage when King found himself ultimately relying on Hooty’s strength in the end feels to me much like the Owl House writers setting up hints for what kind of dynamics the two might have had in the distant past. 

Now, I know you must be wondering how exactly this would further tie into Kikimora being parallels with Hooty. Well, the thing about that is that I suspect that both of them played a major role in helping their respective rulers come to power a long, long time ago.

Specifically, as two bird-based deities - not necessarily gods or chicken-based ones per se, but incredibly powerful beings that might have been seen as akin to such - that King and Belos turned to for help in different ways.

I admit that this sounds like a pretty major stretch - especially in regards to Kikimora and her three lines of dialogue - but given the multiple posts of evidence-adjacent details I’ve made for Hooty being the Owl Deity, I think this would make the correlations between the two all the more cleaner. 

With King and Hooty, I could see the latter potentially being the former’s first loyal follower and or main enforcer of his will, a reliable friend and powerhouse that King depended on until both of them were overthrown and reduced to the sad state we see them in now. 

And with Belos and Kikimora, I could see the former having been a fresh new recruit in King’s army back then, one who became fed up with his arbitrary demands and impulsive abuses of power - much like Private New Guy in AitE - and called upon Kikimora for her help in staging a mutiny against Hooty and King. Meanwhile, I could also see the latter being themed after a different bird within the world of The Owl House than chickens, potentially even being the basis behind Lilith’s corvid iconography and maybe the wings on Belos’ symbol.

That said, to contrast Hooty and King’s relationship, perhaps Kikimora and Belos’ is more transactional in nature befitting how in some folklore, kikimora - when pleased with the family of the house she resides in - apparently serve as their guardians and can warn her family of impending disaster with her powerful psychic talents, whereas only when she is displeased does her mischief to act up for the residents within. As such, Belos may or may not be doing something to make sure he keeps her favor as an asset to use and keep control over her/to enhance her powers, something which possibly could even be connected to the apparent search for items of eternal youth.

Though just to get this clear, I am NOT saying that Kikimora is the real mastermind behind everything while Belos is a mere figurehead. Rather, I’m suggesting that Belos and Kikimora might be more like business partners in crime compared to the possible past friendship Hooty and King might have had.

Furthermore, to develop Hooty and Kikimora even more as foils of each other, I think it would be rather fitting if the latter was revealed to have been in this picture the whole time as Belos’ castle itself:

After all, I’ve made note before of how the majority of the Owl House looks like it used to be a portion of a large “Owl Temple,” so considering how Hooty is the house itself and how Amity and Luz’s groups are positioned on opposing extremes, it would make sense if Kikimora leaned into the “house spirit” aspect of her inspiration by being Belos’ castle itself - or at least, being able to animate it, that is.

I mean, there IS always the possibility that she will stay closer to her inspirations and be a separate entity from Belos’ castle - aka where she’s still capable of traveling through keyholes and that’s how Kikimora was involved with Belos’ mutiny by sneaking through Hooty’s mouth entranceway - but personally, I think it’d be rather fitting if in a reversal of folklore kikimoras, she was the keyhole of Belos’ castle instead.

After all, if she IS the castle like Hooty is the Owl House and both of them turn out to be deity/bird-like beings, then I predict that we might get to see a clash of the titans somewhere down the line after Hooty regains his former form and memories - potentially even having gotten back the rest of the Owl Temple to more evenly match Kikimora in scale for a battle of epic proportions.

Overall, to summarize, I think Kikimora and Hooty will turn out to be parallels in terms of being powerful bird-themed deity-like entities, being capable of becoming and or already being giant “castle/temple demons,” and being/having been the respective second-in-command of Belos and King. 

As for how they would contrast with the other, it’s too early to tell with how little we know of Kikimora at the moment, but judging from how the other characters between Amity and Luz’s groups parallel each other, it will be rather interesting to see how her personality and motives might serve as a reflection to that of the Owl Deity across the extremes of individualism vs conformity.

[popculturebuffet]

Star Vs The Forces of Evil: Is Another Mystery (Prince of Wishful Thinking) or Wasted Potetial

Happy Valentine’s Day Lucifans! And while I originally intended to cover this along with the much worse Booth Buddies I had too much to say about both to try and clown car both together so here we are. And just in times for V-Day we have a StarTom episode.. that isn’t as focused on thier relationship as I thought because I hadn’t seen this in a while because every time I think of things in this series I think of all the wasted potetial and it gives me a migrane. I’d also like to thank @jess-the-vampire for talking this one over with me as usual, and helping me think through some stuff. And as with last time we’re picking up about where we left off, so no real exposition to get through. Join me under the cut as we solve a mystery and marvel at HOW much potential from this episode the show squandered. 

We open with Marco chasing Glossaryck.. and it’s only now I realize I have not talked about this subplot at all. Or Glossaryck really. As you probably know Glossaryck is the tiny man who lives in the big book of spells, created the magical high comission and is a colossasl assshat whose likeablity plumted this season. For starters his voice actor Jeffery Tambour was outed as a massive creep, making him harder to stomach even if the show had reduced him to stock footage of one line. Speaking of which he came back from the dead... and despite it being revealed he was fully sapient the whole time and just saying Eclipsa’s husbands name without context a twist coming up int he finale that i’ll give out about here as while clever when you first hear it. makes NO sense in hindsight, as Eclipsa might of mentioned it before now especially since Glossaryck was around her quite a few times, had no reason not to, and you’d THINK Star, Marco or Moon, especially the latter two, would be curious why he can only say that and has seemingly been reduced to an infant. It’s an annoying subplot tha’ts just casually part of the series and no one seems to care about despite Glossaryck being a big deal and the spellbook revealing there IS a way to make copies, one that would be used next season. 

But what really just made me HATE him.. is how he contributed to how bad things on Mewni are, by doing nothing. Being omnicent and powerful does not mean you do nothing.. it just means you have to be VERY careful. Power is a responsivity not an excuse to say “Wheelp my kids were a mistake going to just let them overthrow the government, become far more entriched in mewni politics, and boss me around without EVER questioning them or trying to replace them”. His apathy is never really called out by anyone but Marco, and he’s treated with all this undue importance despite not doing anything but train the queens, which even then i’ts questionable how good he was at that. Just an asshole, not the worst character in the series, he’s coming up in a few episodes, but just wholly unlikeable. And I get he’s supposed to be comically douchey but after what we learn about eclipsa it just passes into unforgivable and it’s never brought up or talked about. Which is a trend for this series and I don’t know why i’m even bothering being annoyed at this point when I could easily COUNT the number of potential plot threads the series half finished, dropped or wasted and it’d probably hit 50+. 

So Marco is chasing after Glossarcyk and ends up in Buff Frog’s office. Buff Frog was Ludo’s former second in command, who reformed, and became close with Star and Marco, and who Star gave a position as Royal Monster Expert in order to have an ACTUAL MONSTER doing their job since the previous person was a crazy lady who thought of htem as less than sapient and tried to drown them all for reasons I don’t quite remember. This.. has not come up since and this is the first time we’ve seen his office since and it’s empty. 

Marco finds a note for star but accidently reads it before he can get it to her, and we do get a glimpse of the old Marco as he’s disgraught over “reading someone’s mail without their permission!” I missed this.. I think I blocked out the GOOD times with marco in my brain behind a butter-like wall of all the stupid shit he did this season and the next and the whole resolution to the starco thing that left a taste in my mouth not unlike sardine juice mixed with vinegar, aka what causes Mitch Mconnel’s face to look like delfated and to sound like the ghost of Michgian J Frogs Condederate Uncle. 

Meanwhile Star is with Tom and is distruaght after finding our her life is a lie and feels there’s no one she feels she can talk to about this, and Tom’s face when she says this just...

You can tell the poor guy is just hurt. HIs girlfirend is hurting.. and she dosen’t even CONSIDER talking to him about this or think she can trust him despite him being RIGHT THERE. This expression is only on screen for half a second but it says so much. And another thing it says is that he dosen’t know HOW to help her, as evidenced by the fact his offering to is very awkward and sitlted, that he’s clearly HURT she dosen’t think she can confide in him, but is so awkward in general and out of his depth her ehe dosen’t know how to help he just wants to.  But while Star eventually seems receptive.. Marco busts in and we get a seen of EVERYONE involved being a canoe filed with dicks and old vhs copies of biodome. After of course Marco tells Star, Buff Frog is gone. To wit

Star: Immediately plans to take off with Marco and only Marco despite tom being right there, that he could help even if he has no stake in it, and the fact that cloudy can both grow, and Tom can you know.. FLY. That’s a thing we’ve seen him do a lot. So space isn’t an issue, sh’es just forgetting tom exists. Which WOULD work if it was an intentional issue but is sadly the beggining of Star being a pretty terrible girlfriend to tom. This example is lighter since you know , one of her closest friends and his small children are missing, and this is the day after her entire world got flip turned upside down, so I can forgive her a bit since she’s probably not thinking clearly.. but it’s the start of a LONG pattern fo her forgetting tom exists when it’s not coinvent and not thinking about his feelings.

Marco: When Tom asks to take Marco’s place, Marco says, not that he’s buff frog’s friend or he’s worried again about the fact he has kids that could be in danger but “I’m her squire it’s my job”... BEFORE you know the fact his friend WITH YOUNG CHLIDRNE WHO COULD BE DEAD VIA HATE CRIME, is missing. 

Seriously it says something about how far Marco has fallen by this ponit that even in an episode wher eh’es largely his old self.. he STILL make this about him and star to her boyfriend’s face. HiS FRIEND’S FACE. There will be worse from Marco soon enough, and far worse we won’t be covering, but it does say something that they did him so wrong this season that THIS is minor in comparison to some of the other shit he pulls. 

Tom: The only INTEITONAL one of these, as Star’s neglect feels like it was an accident, as he insists on coming along as her boyfriend despite this being a fairly serious situation and him clearly just wanting alone time. 

OH and if you thought the writers you know ACTUALLY cared about STar’s anguish over finding out her whole life was a lie, her newly found grandma who actually relates to her and treats her with respect unlike her mother isn’t biologically related (Not that blood relation matters but I can see why finding out the one family member besides your dad who was anything like you in recent memory.. isn’t related to you would hurt).. 

This highlights the show’s biggest flaw, and yes folks it’s bigger than the ending with the accidental genocide and the horrible implications. That was bad.. but what really tripped the show up long before that.. is the lack of payoff. Now sure some plots get payoffs, especially the Metora one, it’s one of the series best arcs.. but TONS of other threads are just outright ignored, casually dropped or never really pulled.  Look I know that every show has things we wished they’d done more with, and most of the greats of this generation have stuff they dropped the ball on by dropping it or never really getting into it: She Ra never really had any closure with Catra and Scorpia, despite Catra hurting her the most out of anyone and that could’ve been a good thing for her character developent and Scorpia’s own character development. Ducktales had NO intention of going into Della’s reaction to Scrooge and Donald’s feud and quitely ignored or retconned the fact Scrooge clearly erased Della’s long history from the web and wherever else he could, as why else would the kids have never known. Did they just not use google? Steven Universe, if partially by design as it turns out, skipped over a LOT of things and ignored a lot of intresting characters human and gem. It’s the nature of writing seralized teleivsion: Sometimes you just forget to take care of something or simply don’t have the space to. That is fine.  The problem is star does this.. for major plot points that really CAN’T be ignored. Starting with this season they flat out ignore Star telling Marco how she felt for pretty much the entire season. They only deal with it in booth buddies.... THREE EPISODES before the season finale two parter. Despite it having massive impliciations, doing so IN FRONT OF JACKIE, who was her friend, and Jann who is both Jackie and Star’s friend and is not subtle.  We never get any fallout from this and the show weirdly acts like Marco can’t easily visit home. I mean yes he’s star’s squire but she’s not a heartless monster> The DIazes were her parents for a while too. And that’s not even getting into Marco Junior... “Shudders”. But that part of the cliffhanger was just the start after that the pile just kept getting larger. Before it was basically JUST the monster arm and it possibly being involved with the blood moon. So to prove my point i’m making a list of EVERY dropped plot point or storyline from the series, most of which are from season 3 onward. And naturally I asked jess for help with this after the first 25.. and the list DOUBLED. One or two of these are nitpicky.. but the fact the vast majority AREN’T .. yeah.

1. Jackie’s reactoin to Star’s feelings for Marco 2. Janna’s Reaction to Star’s feelings for Marco 3. Buff Frog being head monster expert 4. Buff Frog and Co fleeing this dimension and where they WENT exactly 5. Tom being a Monster 6. Star not being a Butterfly by blood 7. Moon’s reaction to not being a butterfly by blood 8. Rhombulus feeling guilty 9. Marco’s reaction to hekapoo being a terrible person 10. Marco and Kelly’s Relationship (Technically resovled but done poorly) 11. Tad not being over Kelly 12. Hornanne never getting a horn (I know minor but it bothers me a lot) 13. Eclipsa having to win over the other kingdoms 14. Related, the Johnasons being the hardest one of those to overcome 15. Related to 13 again: Why Tom’s Parent’s didn’t suppport eclipsa 16. What the Jaggy Mountains are or are like at all 17. WHy Glossaryck was worried about Globgor 18. Why Glossaryck faked being feral for a season 19. How Star had a piece of the spell book 20. What Mr. Candle’s Deal is 21. The Pie Folk knowing the true lineage of the queen 22. Was the commission conspiracy ever made public.  23. Meteora possibly having memories from her previous self 24. Lobster Claws 25. River’s reaction to moon’s betrayal 26. Toffee’s Past  and Motivations 27. Marco’s Cheekmarks 28. Any reaction by Star and Janna to said cheekmarks 29. The kingdom’s reaction to the book being stolen is never brought up again 30. The Past Queens (Never brought up in show itself, but Jess feels there was supposed to be more there and I agree) 31. The Septarian Painting in ST.O’s (While i’ts a hint at who meteora is WHY it’s there and why ST. O would even allow it and why it’s of septarians is never explained) 32. Monster Arm 33. Relicor’s Wife 34. Why the dance memory was different 35. How do people in other dimensions get dimensional scissors? 36. How Did Toffee Know of the Whipsering Spell? 37. Where did Toffe, Ludo and Rasticore’s dimensonal scissors/chainsaw come from? 38. Toffee’s Damage to Mewni (Never gets brought up aagain after silver bell) 39. Why Globgor eating Shastacan was “Complicated” 40. Upwards Waterfall Unicorn 41. Star spying on Marco and Jackie 42. Any Explination for Green Magic 43. The photo’s of star and marco’s kiss (To quote jess, into the void they go) 44. How Metora Learned Soulsucking and why she can do that 45. Metora taking Rasticores arm with her.  46. The Neverzone’s weird time dialation 47. Star’s Neglect of Tom 48. The Spiderbites reaction to globgor being freed 49. The “Big Surge of Dark Magic” 50. Eclipsa “gets into your head 51. Star learning wandless magic with no effort 52. Where did Brian Go? 53. Star and Marco Never apologize for the kiss on screen 54. “I know how this all ends 55. Why Lekmet was never Replaced and why reynadlo didsn’t replace him

55 in the span of an hour.. and that’s not even getting into the fact Jess was thinking these up off the top of her head and probbaly coudl’ve kept going, but I didn’t want to overtax her since I was asking a favor of her, and  fifty goddamn three is more than enough to say ya done fucked up. Just.. holy shit. MARVEL has less dropped plotlines than this, and that at least has the caveat of changing writers and some writers being dipshits who don’t CARE about resolving what happened before. The Star team has an excuse for maybe 10 or 20 of these.. but 55! Fifty Goddamn five! And that’s stopping as we could probably have found more and just tying this paragraph we did, hence 55. How much do you have to NOT care about your audience, your plots and your characters to miss this much? The three I mentioned before all have understandable explinations behind them: She-Ra had a set episode count and only so much space and it made more sense story wise to have scorpia be taken over by the horde. Ducktales is on a kids network and Disney isn’t at all supportive of adult plots to the point a courtroom episode was deemd too confusing for kids... which first off , no, and secondly you see what they were dealing with. and Steven Universe again did this slightly intentionally, with things happening offscreen because that’s how life works, sometimes it worked sometimes it didn’t. 

This is just incompetence on a MASSIVE scale that boggles the goddamn mind. I have seen shows do worse, but i’ve never seen a show flush most of i’t spoteital drama nad character development down a goddamn hole again, and again and again in such a consitent manner. There’s no wonder I didn’t see this at the time. This is a level of messed up you have to see from helicopter view! The show just stopped carring about finishing most of it’s storylines and just brought shit up when it was convient and threw it out on a scale that just... just.. 

It sucks. It sucks to see a show that had so much potetial squander it, it sucks the show ended up like this, as only a handful of those are from pre season 3, and it sucks that the clock is ticking on how much good I have to say about the show without having to add the button “And then this was never properly resolved.” Good. Fucking. Grief. And Jess wanted to find MORE, and probably could, but I didn’t want her to dedicate her life to this. It’s monuentally frustrating, and saddening to see waht a waste of potetial this series was by the end. All of this is one big list of what if and most of it shoudl’ve been resolved in some way. “Sigh”.... let’s move on.. for my sanity’s sake. I made myself very sad. 

So with Marco out of the way Tom and Star start investigating and Tom is a bit of a dick about it, suggesting they abandon the search for her friend and his CHLDREN to go get a corn shake and that the monsters just went out grocery shopping.. the former is just horribly out of character, as even if he would WANT to leave he woudln’t be so cavialer about it when sh’es this upset just a few episodes AFTER monster bash, where he learned you know.. not to do that. The other is just ehhh... like you think he’d react to an entire town being missing and Star’s JUSTIFIED fear mina did it , after she easily swatted both of them aside, with more than “eh maybe their doing pesant stuff I don’t know” Thankfully the “Tom is a huge dick and also star is grossed out by him liking monster food revealing she might still be a touch racist without realizing it, which itself is nver touched on, let’s call that number 54″, portion of the episode ends when dark gets a little something on him

Star gets one in her arm, and the two pass out and wake up with sacks over them. We do get the best part of the episdoe where both try to run around blind, and Tom realizes he’s claustrophbic and starts panicking, which results in him falling around and kicking in a circle, while Star takes a guy out and while she can’t see assumes she did something cool. Eventually we find out their kidnappers are related to the buff frog thing and tell her to stop looking and just to be serious are going to break tom’s horns... before Buff Frog arrives wondering what the fuck their thinking and stopping them, and he and his kids are fine. Turns out he’s leaving Mewni and Katrina, his oldest daughter who has giant legs now, wanted to make sure they got to say goodbye, so she left the note in his name knowing Star would come and find them. Before we get into all of that, just a quick aside.. okay so baiscally these monsters who threatened are either fleeing mewni or running some sort of underground railroad to cover up the monster exodus. Which begs the question... why did they tihnk breaking the horns of a crowned prince of one of their allied states and kidnapping and threatning the princess of mewni, who is PUBLICLY pro monster and thus only makes them look worse, was at all a good idea. I get wanting to hdie this but breaking Tom’s horns is only going to lead to a fight at best and two kingdoms coming down at them with their full might, putting innocent people in the crossfire at worst and most likely

But yes the Monsters are leaving.. and this is part of where the episode misteps as the scale is kind of hard to figure in hindsight. On one hand the montser villiage is abandoned , meaning that the episode implies ALL the monsters are leaving.. but not only are some left, once Eclipsa takes over plenty of monsters come back or may of never left, making nit very vauge just how many actually left, especially since the party leaving that we see is just about 10 monsters not including buff frog’s babies.. where did they come from by the way? Ludo just kinda stole them but from where? Jess brought that up but i’m not sure I got it on the list so 55. The show is entirely too vauge on if this is a mass exodus of eveyr monster at long last or just a large migration of them wanting a better life. Instead of explaining any of this when it’s a very intresting and engrossing idea, the monsters leaving the predjuicde outright, the possible hateful reactoins of the commission given how paranoid they are, how star would combat this, a possible divide in monsterkind with one half going back and the other staying put, WHERE they went exactly.. there’s a lot of great questions and stories here.. but as the list the size of my gut should make clear, none of them get answere dbecause this series just didn’t care about it.. and if so then WHY bring it up. That’s why I brought up the list in the first place.. because this is one of MANY times they bring something up and just.. do nothing with it. Then why did you bring it up in the first fucking place?! As I said I can abide by dropping a plot point for time or beacause Disney is kinda dumb or you just want to get to other good stuff and you had to make a cut. And while a portion of the list is that. i’ts mostly things like this: really fascenating stuff.. that’s ignored because htey just stopped caring. 

So before they all can leave despite Star’s best efforts, TOM steps up and calls them cowards.. and admit’s he’s a monster too. And while one.. WEIRD looking guy points out he’s rich, so should he count, Tom counters with the fact that sure he’s rich.. but when he gets in an elevator he’s a monster. He may be part of a diffrent “catageory”.. but to a stranger he’s just the same as them. While it dosen’t feel quite earned by the episode, it is a moral that needs to be taught: prilvage dosen’t insulate you completely from prejudice. You can still be discrminated against no matter how much money you have or how far you get because the system sucks.  And once again this is a waste of potetial: tom technically being a monster and being the son of a human and a demon is never brought up again.. despite you know also being a massively powerful monster child of a monster and a mewman.. like a certain someone who’se the big bad for this half of the season. It just never comes up... and I get it’s a categorical bullshit thing, that the comission werne’t worried about a lucitor doing any of this because “Well demons are okay and we have a treaty and stuff”, but the show had no trouble pointing out categorical bullshit before.. why not now? 

The ending however is good as Buff Frog.. isn’t convinced. HE admit’s tom’s speech is good.. but he’s been dealing with this stuff for too long. It also works because him leaving the job they never focused on.. isn’t framed as him being ungreatful or anything. He’s genuinely appricative of what Star is trying to do and gets her heart is in the right place.. but she doesn’t have the power to fix this. She’s just a kid, and while she has some power her mother has no real intention of making things better for them. And he has to think of a better life for his kids.. so we get some tearful goodbyes as Buff Frog promises to return when she’s in charge.. even though he does because she’s in charge in the season finale and we never see him , 56, and he has to be talked into coming back in the last season... so they leave but Tom promises her it can work out because their a monster and a mewman and they hug and I sigh a little knowing how this relationship ends and the accidental message it sends. 

Final Thoughts: This episode is DECENT on it’s own but in hindsight.. it’s just depressing, bringing up some good ideas.. that end up going nowhere and the ending REALLY isn’t great in hindsight when he leaves star so she can be with another human-type person. Also tom’s charcterization is a bit lopsided starting off worse than ever and being fine in the end, and while that COULD just be that he felt he coudln’t admit he was a monster... it honestly just feels liked they wanted the moral without having to work for it as him being a monster has nothing to do with how he acted earlier. Till the next rainbow... UUGGGGHHHh. 

[toxicsamruby]

hello! i have to ask: what do you think about supernatural au's where monsters don't exist/monster hunting is not a thing? do you think the characters could even exist out of that realm? i honestly have conflicting views on this because on one hand i do enjoy the character dynamics but i also feel it would be wrong to just take away something that is fundamental to this show, idk though

i LOVE this question. thank you. im going to write a very long post now

obviously there are infinite ways to interpret a story, right? but sam and dean (and castiel too of course) as characters are completely inextricable from their backstories, and their backstories are inextricable from themes of transience, poverty, loneliness, violence, familial duty, masculinity, otherness, american protestantism, horror, humanity, and monstrosity. i dont think that it’s Wrong to take away the monster hunting as an element in the story, but i DO think it would be bad storytelling to do so bc the fact is that these characters w these personalities wouldnt EXIST without a few VERY crucial plot points/themes. and thats a GOOD thing!! say what u will abt the writers (and i do. i do) but the early seasons do an EXCELLENT job of building characters who are inseparable from their stories, characters whose every action is reflective of the Story itself in a bigger sense, characters who are interesting because of the way that they’re used to tell that bigger Story. there’s a sense of cohesiveness between character and theme and narrative, and removing one of these aspects would lessen the other two. that is the mark of good storytelling (that, in my opinion, distinguishes seasons 1 and MAYBE 2 from all the rest; although funnily enough i think castiel’s arc in s4 is the best example of what im talking about outside of s1-2. but anyways).

without these crucial themes and narratives, who ARE sam and dean? why do they even matter? what’s the value of them as characters? aus that strip away all those VERY important themes and plot points strip away the actual artistic value of the characters, and reduces them to objects of the audience’s emotional whims. the only reason u have any affection for these characters in aus is because you know and understand the source material, and you remember why those characters STARTED to matter to u in the first place. this is something that happens in a lot of fanfiction i think: the most essential themes of the original work are ignored for the sake of emotionally expedient scenarios where both writer and reader can clock out of having to do a bigger analysis of the story and just focus on, for example, a certain ship getting together and/or having sex, or a certain character getting a happy ending. and like i wont deny that theyre fun to read! they are essentially transplanting already-developed characters from their already-developed stories into a new fun scenario without the themes and narratives that actually made the characters compelling. and sure, sometimes a truly good author offers us a compelling new set of themes and narratives, ones that are interesting and make us think, but i’d argue that the characters in those rare good fics are 1. not...really the same characters from the show, since the story they’re in has been so completely transformed 2. basically shortcuts for the author to cut their teeth on writing original fiction. in any case, a vast majority of fics that remove the themes and narratives of the original story DONT offer a truly satisfying replacement, so the point is almost moot.

my answer, in short, is that aus without monster hunting destroy the character-theme-narrative cohesion that all good stories require, and by extension doesn’t require either author or reader to think critically about the story as a whole. you know that joke that goes around about supernatural just being a crate full of toys that we’re all sitting around and playing barbie dolls with? that is what the fics ur talking about basically are. it isn’t seriously engaging with a story as a piece of art, it’s grabbing a few barbies from a box and putting them in different clothes. and i think the fact that supernatural does fall apart both thematically and narratively so early in its incredibly long runtime is what allows people to treat it as a box of dolls, because most of the time it seems like the writers themselves treat the show as a box of dolls instead of a story that deserves respect and care and thought. so i actually do understand the urge to play with the barbies, so to speak, and to a certain extent i dont even think it’s a bad thing. but i DO think that sometimes, especially online, ESPECIALLY with a show like this where the lines between genuine engagement with the text and playing barbie dolls gets so blurred, people actually start to lose track of which is which, and THATS what irritates me. people start to view the ENTIRE STORY as just a way to see their personal favorite character do what they want that character to do. the character (and their emotional attachment to said character) becomes the whole reason for the story, instead of the story being the reason for the characters. playing barbie dolls is fine! but it DOES need to be balanced out with actual engagement, with literary analysis, with criticism if the story needs it (and my GOD does supernatural need criticism!), and there needs to be an understanding of the difference between genuine analysis and personal loyalty to a character. 

like, not to be a snob or anything, but it is important to engage truthfully and fairly with a text. things arent good just because you want them to be good, and stories can only offer you genuine satisfaction and critical/artistic growth if you truly engage with them. engaging with supernatural means thinking/writing about monsters and the Other, and to remove monstrosity as a theme and narrative hollows out the story completely.

[vs-redemption]

Crime is Common. Logic is Rare (Ch.27)

Chapter Twenty-Seven: Tension (HawksxGN!Reader)

Plot summary: As a quirk geneticist, you never really imagined yourself getting involved in hero work. Of course, you never imagined catching the eye of a pro hero either. What starts as a great career opportunity turns into a relationship built upon mutual secrets and trust.

Warnings:

⚠️This story contains spoilers from the manga.

⚠️Some events and plot points have been altered from the original manga

Tag List: @gayforkeigo @marshmallow-witch @redflannel @toyo-shiro @elsasshole @astronomyturtle @iambashfulperson @omiwashere

Next Chapter : Chapter Guide

Considering everything you and Hawks had to cope with as a new couple, the relationship itself had gone quite smoothly as far as you were concerned. There was a lot of pressure due to the secretive and dangerous nature of your jobs at present, but disagreements were few and far between, and you were both flexible enough to resolve issues quickly without much heartache. However, the time had finally come for you to butt heads in earnest, and as far as first fights went, you had to believe you both deserved awards for the amount of self-control exercised from both parties.

Neither one of you were allowed to raise your voice, not even on accident in the heat of the moment. Actually, neither of you were allowed to speak at all. You could only scribble back and forth aggressively to convey your feelings because the subject you were arguing over was something neither one of you should have a reason to be discussing in the first place.

That unfortunate topic was Dabi.

You had refused to accept the fire villain’s request for you to spy on your boyfriend, and Hawks was quite adamant that doing so had been the wrong decision. Obviously you understood his concerns about crossing someone as dangerous as Dabi, but as long as Shigaraki’s wellbeing was in your hands, you were fairly certain the villains would leave you basically unharmed. Besides, Hawks was the one who had been against you getting involved any deeper with the League in the first place.

‘He threatened you,’ Hawks scratches down on the paper you were using to have the conversation. This method of communication was becoming frustrating for the both of you, especially since finding time to be together was hard enough as it was without having to waste precious moments of it writing everything you needed to tell each other by hand.

Your eyes slide across the words and the tension that you’d being fighting back ever since the encounter with Dabi began nagging you more persistently in the back of your mind. You do your best to lock the feelings back down and then meet Hawks’ eyes while shrugging off his concern. Certainly, Dabi had threatened you, but your life had already been in danger from the moment Dr. Garaki showed you that he could synthesize Nomu DNA. It wasn’t easy living with that fear, but as long as you had the knowledge inside your brain of what the villains were doing, there would be the chance of them deciding to silence you by taking your life. Adding Dabi into the equation didn’t make that any more or less true.

‘Tell the doctor you’ve reconsidered the offer,’ Hawks aggressively adds a period at the end as if it would turn his words into more of a demand than a suggestion.

It didn’t matter whether he wanted you to do this for your own safety or because he really thought it was the best course of action. You still shake your head even though you hated to see the look of disappointment in his eyes over your answer. You just couldn’t bring yourself to risk it. The villains were already suspicious of your relationship with Hawks. Both Shigaraki and Dabi had brought up the strangeness of dating a hero while helping out the villains. They’d be stupid not to even consider the possibility that you knew about Hawks’ involvement with the league or that one, if not both, of you were playing the role of double agent.

‘Changing my mind now will only make things more complicated.’ You write down the words despite knowing Hawks was smart enough to have already thought of them himself. It was just like the times when you’d mysteriously passed out in Garaki’s lab and encountered Shigaraki for the very first time. Backing out or changing your mind at the wrong moment would send a message to the doctor and the villains. They would wonder who you’d been talking to, or what had transpired after the fact that had made you think twice and go back on things you’d said in the past. It was better to stick to your guns and continue playing the role of morally ambiguous scientist.

‘Not if the information you give them is valuable,’ Hawks counters with a serious look on his handsome face. He looks over at the news reporter rambling from your TV, probably jealous that they were able to talk so freely while he was reduced to passing notes with someone he cared about. He looks back down at the paper and adds, ‘You can give them my real name.’

Upon reading the words, something inside you suddenly snapped, and you fight off the urge to ball up the paper and chuck it at your boyfriend’s head. When you’d first asked him about his name, he’d insisted that ‘Hawks’ was his real name. He’d never explicitly told you that he’d lied back then, but he’d dropped plenty of not-so-subtle hints for you to figure it out on your own. So, it wasn’t so much the reveal that rubbed you the wrong way as it was the timing of it. You pull the paper towards you and pick up the pen.

‘Absolutely not!’ You write and then underline it twice before throwing the pen back down. Hawks looked shocked at your little outburst and slides the paper closer to himself to simply draw a question mark.

A sigh escapes your lips as you study the confusion in his golden eyes. Perhaps it had been a bit of an overreaction. Both you and Hawks had been so careful and logical about everything for so long that there was a certain intimacy missing in the relationship. You had been trying to cope with that fact as best you can, but something about learning his name this way hit you a little differently.

‘Sorry.’ You write the words slowly. ‘I don’t like the idea of finally learning your name just so that I can hand it over to Dabi.’ It made you feel vulnerable to make such a confession because it wasn’t like you to let your personal feelings affect your behavior so strongly. You wanted to be honest with him though, so that the lines of communication between you could be as open as possible.

Hawks reads over your words, features morphing from surprise into sadness as comprehension dawns on him. He meets your gaze before reaching out and pulling you firmly against him. You weren’t sure what to make of the reaction but you wrap your arms around him and bury your face into his chest.

“I never thought of it that way,” Hawks mumbles awkwardly and refuses to let you go for a moment. “You’re right though. It’s not fair.”

You push away from him to look at his face, feeling surprised that he’d even risk saying that out loud. It could probably be passed off as a comment about whatever the news reporter was still ranting about, but you put a finger to his lips to silence him anyway.

“Sorry,” he whispers against your skin.

“Shh!” You reprimand him before taking your finger away and replacing it with your lips, pressing a kiss to his mouth to show him everything was all right and that you weren’t upset with him. He relaxes right away and warps his arms more tightly around you to hold you closer. You had to pull away after a moment though because your time together was limited, and you’d yet to agree on a solution to your problem.

“I love you,” he tells you with a longing in his eyes that told you he hated the current situation just as much as you did.

“I love you too, bird-kun.” You smile while taking his hand and giving it a squeeze. He glances back down at the paper on the table and picks up the pen begrudgingly.

‘I’ll think of something else for you to tell him.’ He meets your eyes to see how you’d respond and is once again disappointed when you shake your head.

‘I won’t be the one to give him anything he can use against you.’ You write your reply.

“I appreciate the sentiment,” he smiles sadly before jotting down his response.

‘If you don’t cooperate, your life will be in danger once Shigaraki wakes up.’

Seeing the truth once again so plainly spelled out gave you pause, but you were determined to stick to the original plan the two of you had agreed to along with the Hero Commission.

‘That’s why we’re going to make sure to end this before that even happens.’ You scribble down the reply before clicking the pen closed. Hawks understood then that you weren’t going to be changing your mind. He sighs quietly and puts his hands up in surrender.

“Ok,” he tells you while glancing at the TV again to check the time. “I have to get back to my patrol soon.”

“I know,” you lean in and kiss him again on the cheek. “I wish we had more time.”

“Can I stop by after you get back from the lab?” he asks although he already knew your schedule.

“Sorry,” you frown. “I’ll be there late tonight. It would be better if you stop by in the morning.”

Hawks grimaced at the thought of you spending so many hours watching over Shigaraki’s unconscious body, but it was at least a little better than being involved with a fully awake Dabi. It was going to be so important for the Heroes to find a way to stop the villains before Shigaraki woke up. More lives than just your own would be in danger if they failed. You trusted Hawks though, and knew he and the commission would do everything they could to prevent the worst case scenario.

“You bet,” Hawks stands up from the couch and stretches his arms and wings as much as he could to prepare himself for his patrol. “Send me a text when you’re awake and I’ll bring coffee.”

“That would be much appreciated,” you smile as you watch him go to the door and pull on his boots and flight jacket. He gives you another quick peck on the lips, says his goodbyes, and before you know it he’s taking off into the sky.

[p1harmonyofficial]

[📰] K-Pop Rookies P1Harmony Are Writing Their Own Coming of Age Story

By Crystal Bell

K-pop group P1Harmony debuted three months ago with their audacious single "Siren," and member Jiung is already dreaming of the perfect solo vacation. The 19-year-old singer wants to emphasize that this is a trip he'd like to — no, needs to — do alone, when he can safely do so. ("You need to bold the word 'alone,'" leader Keeho adds in English, a knowing glint of mirth in his eyes. "Put it in italics too.") So, more about this excursion: "If possible, I want to go to a foreign country," Jiung tells Teen Vogue from an office in Seoul, South Korea. He doesn't have a specific place in mind, just somewhere new and exciting and, most importantly, a place where he can be alone to freely organize his thoughts without any other responsibilities.

It sounds like a lyric ripped from the pages of his notebook, or the plot of a coming-of-age movie his 17-year-old groupmate Intak would enjoy: a young man on a voyage of self-discovery, chasing a feeling to a faraway land to escape his adolescent ennui. For now, however, it's just a lofty resolution for the new year.

"I also want to travel alone because I've never done it before," youngest member Jongseob, who recently turned 15, enthusiastically offers in Korean. Jiung, always one to help the younger sort out his feelings, is quick to quash the teenage rapper's theoretical plans. "That's not very realistic," he says. "You're too young to travel alone." Undeterred, Jongseob carries on: "Then my goal this year is to drink more milk."

"He wants to grow taller, but I don't think milk helps that much," Keeho comments, shaking his head while his teal quiff stays firmly in place. "I heard that's a myth."

Technically, they're not wrong. Unaccompanied minors can't travel internationally without a parent's formal consent in South Korea, and there's no proven scientific correlation between dairy and height. But spoken aloud, this interaction sounds more like playful goading among good friends. It's a testament to Keeho, Theo, Jiung, Intak, Soul, and Jongseob's comfortable dynamic as a group that the copper-haired youngest just earnestly smiles through the minor sting of his hopes being swiftly dashed.

For all of the training that goes into a K-pop artist's career, perhaps the most vital lesson is learning how to symbiotically coexist in close quarters with someone who is unfamiliar to you. Like most things, it is a process. Harmony isn't achieved overnight, especially among six teenage boys who have differing definitions of the word "clean." Cultural differences present unique challenges, too. When Keeho left his home in Canada to pursue his musical dreams as a trainee at FNC Entertainment in Seoul, he didn't have much trouble fitting in. Or so he thought. "He was funny," Jiung says in retrospect. "But I don't think we were able to communicate well." It wasn't that they couldn't understand what Keeho was saying — the soulful singer grew up speaking Korean with his family — but rather they couldn't understand him.

"Everyone would be stressed out, and I would be like, 'Guys, relax. Why are you stressing out over this?'" Keeho says animatedly with his hands. "They couldn't understand why I was so relaxed. How could I not care about anything? And I couldn't understand why they were always so stressed about things. It took a while to get on the same page."

That's where communication comes in. "The key is being honest," Jiung explains. "We have a lot of talks." These regular conversations allow the members to resolve potential issues before they spiral into larger, more disharmonious problems. Keeho is refreshingly open about this. "We're always stuck together," he adds. "We live together. We see each other 24 hours a day. Seeing anyone 24 hours a day, you'll eventually be, like, ugh, get away from me, but because we communicate so much, that [feeling] is reduced." Establishing rules and boundaries also helps. "We have a basic rule that you clean up the mess you've made," Jongseob says from where he's perched behind Jiung. (This rule is especially important to methodical Jiung.) And then there's vocalist Theo, the eldest member who also takes on the role of the group's even-keeled mediator because he's a good listener, and he likes giving advice.

"I'm not very opinionated," the blonde says. At 19, he's a few months older than Keeho but harder to read. He's both lighthearted and enigmatic. "I'm not good at expressing my feelings," Theo explains. "But the members are really good at expressing themselves and their emotions, so I'm learning how to open up because of them." According to Keeho, Theo is "bad at being serious," adding, "We'll have to have a serious talk, and he won't be able to take it. He's always trying to lighten the mood. He's the comedic relief."

Keeho makes a habit of describing the members' various idiosyncrasies in fervent detail. It's a very leaderly thing to do, to make sure that everyone feels understood. Occasionally, he also jumps in to help interpret their answers into English, or to encourage others to speak. Soul, who is half-Korean but was raised in Japan, could be described as a quiet person: an introvert who wears a lot of black, listens to metal, and has a particular obsession with massive skull rings and accessories. But he's also acutely perceptive. He'd rather listen and observe than be an active participant in the conversation. "I like when the rest of the members are discussing an idea," he says quietly in Korean (he's still learning the language). "I like watching them talk." It's not that he's not involved, but as Keeho puts it, "He's always supporting us silently and observing us." For Soul, it's more fun to sit and watch.

You can get a sense of these dynamics as they unfold on the last track of the group's debut EP, Disharmony: Stand Out. It's a skit, or audio recording of the members — then, just trainees — as they talk candidly about their dreams to perform and contemplate the implications of such aspirations. "I work hard here for the debut, but when I go to school, I wonder, 'What am I doing here?'" Intak says on tape, recalling how strange it feels to not have the same priorities as his classmates who are all preparing for their college admissions. Theo quells his concerns, telling him how lucky he is to already be working toward his dream. "That's a cool thing," Keeho adds, as Soul silently listens in the background.

While his peers prepared for their academic futures, Intak was spending his evenings dancing, rapping, singing, and writing lyrics, while also stunt training alongside his groupmates and preparing to become a… movie star. A few weeks before the release of their album, P1H: A New World Begins hit theaters across South Korea in early October. The first K-pop origin story to hit the big screen, the feature film introduced P1Harmony and their sci-fi lore to the masses. Long story short: After a deadly virus spreads chaos and violence around the globe, six boys with extraordinary gifts are humanity's only hope for survival. The filming experience was invaluable for the artists, who until that point had only ever studied music and performance. "Acting training really helped with my facial expressions," Intak says. "I learned how to portray my emotions on stage." Keeho agrees, adding, "We got very friendly with the camera."

Singers who rap, rappers who sing, dancers who act — the boys of P1Harmony forgo clearly defined roles in favor of being versatile and, well, good at everything.

As for their music, Disharmony: Stand Out is a snapshot of Gen Z unrest, simmering with angst ("Siren") and bucking wildly, vibrantly against convention ("Nemonade"). Teenage turmoil has been fueling the K-pop industry since the very beginning, and there's a certain nostalgia to P1Harmony's no-holds-barred approach. Members Soul and Jongseob both credit B.A.P and their hard-hitting style with inspiring them to become artists, with Zelo influencing Jongseob to pursue rap in elementary school. You can hear those more aggressive, hip-hop-tinged influences on Disharmony, as well as softer, more lyrical R&B flourishes ("Butterfly").

"We wanted to convey feelings and situations that are not harmonious," Jongseob says. "We want to say don't be afraid to stand out and to say what you want to say — speak your truth, and do it with courage and confidence." Despite his age, the young rapper carries himself like a veteran. By all accounts, he's earned the title, having won the competition series K-pop Star 6 at age 12 in 2017 and competed in YG Treasure Box less than two years later. These experiences, he says, helped him feel more comfortable performing. By the time he came to FNC, he was already a prodigy with the confidence and flow of a performer twice his age.

"There are so many people, our age especially, who aren't always able to speak courageously and confidently," Keeho adds. "So we wanted to encourage everyone, especially ourselves, to never be afraid to say what you want to say."

And they practice what they preach. All of the members are credited lyricists on the album, with all six collaborating on the roaring hip-hop track "That's It." Part cypher, part vibes, "That's It" is teeming with boyish swagger and possibility. "Even though it was the first time all six of us worked on a song together, surprisingly we were all on the same page from the very first meeting, and it came together quickly," Jiung recounts, adding that each member wrote their own verse. "It was fun," Keeho chirps.

That creative energy is also channeled into their performances. "Because we do take part in a lot of the songwriting, we also want to convey that in our dance," Intak explains. Though he's part of the group's rap line, his first love was dance. He started taking lessons as a child. "My mom is a dancer, so she's where I got my love of dancing," he says. As such, he's well-versed in conveying emotion through motion. "We always have an idea of how we want to portray these emotions with our bodies," he says. The members choreograph their own center gestures. These movements are a small but significant part of any performance, because this is where their charisma and individuality shine brightest.

"I wanted to become a singer because I wanted to perform onstage," Theo says. "So being able to be on music programs performing on real stages, surrounded by bright LED lights and visual backdrops, I feel like a main character. When all of the lights are on me, I feel like a star."

Unsurprisingly, even when he's offstage, he's still singing. He even likes to call his friends and take song requests. "I like to sing to my friends through the phone," he says. "I'll sing anything they want. I play piano for them, too. They're very open to listening to me." Next to him, Keeho adds, "My friends would not want me to sing to them." (The internet respectfully disagrees.) Meanwhile, Jongseob turns to making music and writing lyrics in his downtime. It's a great way to relieve stress, he says. These days, Intak turns to animated films to ease his mind. He's a fan of Studio Ghibli films, and he really likes the Japanese manga characters Doraemon and Shin Chan.

"I watch a lot of coming-of-age stories about these innocent kids who are in the process of becoming adults," he explains. "I get inspired by watching them. I don't want to lose that innocence, so watching those animations make me feel youthful." It's hard to imagine Intak without his boyish sensibility. It's seeped into every social media post and YouTube vlog (or, #PLOG). Yet, as an artist, as a teenager, it's an unusual phenomenon to be perceived by thousands of fans before having the clarity to perceive yourself. It's something no amount of Miyazaki or training prepares you for.

Initially, Theo had a hard time opening up on camera. The mere thought of it made him nervous, but the more he did it, the easier it was for him to parse his own feelings. "I'm not very good at expressing emotions like thank you and I love you," he says. "But it's a lot easier to express those feelings now because I feel them so sincerely. I can say thank you for loving me [to fans] because I truly mean it."

"There are people from all around the world who leave me messages, and that makes me so happy," Intak says. "It drives me to do more and to give more to them."

And there will be more to give. Disharmony: Stand Out was just the beginning, and Keeho already has some very big goals for 2021. At the top of the list? "Rookie of the Year, come on!" he says spiritedly of the K-pop industry's coveted award. "It's definitely possible. I'm manifesting it right now." He also wants to make more music, maybe release more covers. "We want to come back a lot," he smiles. "I'm thinking [of] at least three releases next year."

Then there are more personal goals, like Jiung's solo travels. "I want to take better care of my mental health," he adds, noting that it starts with a more positive mindset. "I want to be a better person overall." Intak wants to, for the first time in his young life, maintain a consistent routine for a healthier lifestyle. That includes getting enough sleep when there aren't any schedules. ("He could sleep, but he chooses not to," Keeho jokes.) After monitoring his fancams, Theo has decided that he wants to build more muscle. And Soul hopes to go home to Japan to see his dog, a Frenchie named Mochi.

As for Keeho, in true Libra fashion, he wants to maintain a sense of balance: "I want to stay true to myself," he says. "I don't want to be like, oh, the fame is getting to me. I don't want to change. I want to stay grounded and stay thankful and be grateful, always. I also want to make some more money." He laughs, then adds, "I can't lie!"

No, he can't. Honesty is the key to harmony, after all.

[a-little-slice-of-fandom]

A) hi how ya doing? B) I miss you C) can you analyze anything of Aragon? Thank you :)

Hey anon! I’m doing good ❤️❤️❤️ thanks so much for asking! I hope you’re doing well too!

Aragon is really interesting to me, because her song is kind of like the bohemian rhapsody of six. Very few people will say that it’s their favourite, but everyone will instantly sing along because it’s so catchy! Plus, it’s a great song to follow ex-wives with. It keeps the energy up and introduces the audience to the plot of the show.

I will say this until the day I die: while I would love if more songs were as scathing as say AYWD...you could never start with those songs. It’s too much too quickly. You need the more catchy, light-hearted songs of Ex-Wives, No Way and DLUH to start with because it helps get the audience invested in the show and the plot as a whole. Six, first and foremost, will always need to work dramatically. That’s why the old, more openly bitter No Way was changed to something a little more light-hearted.

The first thing that always comes to mind when I think of Aragon is regal. She’s the queen who was married to Henry for 24 years and was a Spanish princess as well. She’s the refined, confident queen who knows her own worth and honestly? I get the vibe she just wants a little bit of respect from the other queens. While some people characterise Aragon as rather cold, I honestly don’t get that? The show portrays Aragon as a very loyal person despite all that Henry put her through, and she clearly cares for Mary and also, to a lesser extent, Parr as her god daughter (remember she calls Howard “the least relevant Katherine”...meaning she does see Parr as relevant.) and she often refers to other queens as “babe” even though she was just arguing with them five seconds earlier (harking on the idea of forgiveness, something I think Aragon is very good at in the show!). Plus, while there’s only one line referring to Mary, Aragon is always so protective of her and warm to her. In the album, Renee’s “aw, hi baby!” is the most adorable and heartwarming part of the song and it’s clear she adores her daughter, while the “oh, you don’t remember?” in the live versions is so protective of her baby. It’s honestly something we don’t discuss enough. Moreover, Aragon’s song is one of the most energetic, but she has her earnest moment of pleading as well, along with her undisputable strength of refusing to back down and accept Henry’s lies. She is also incredibly passionate when talking about something she loves or defending herself when she has to (which make sense! This was the woman who rode with an army wearing armour while pregnant. Aragon was not to be messed with!).

I personally disagree with people who try and claim that Toby and Lucy wrote Aragon as the “angry” queen because she never truly gets to the levels of boleyn or seymour (yes there’s the miscarriage argument where she does raise her voice but like...are we ignoring Seymour’s “boohoo Mary had the chickenpox” or the fact that Boleyn is also shouting in that argument??? And she usually goes louder than Aragon???) and yet she’s so often defined by that trait even though other queens share it and are even more extreme. And yes, Im fully aware of why certain people characterise aragon in this way and I’m so annoyed that even though we continually call out the fact that’s it’s problematic, it continues to happen. However Aragon does have flaws like every good character should. Aragon just won’t try and listen to the other queens. She refuses to accept that Boleyn or Seymour might have had a worse time than her. Now I personally never got the feeling that Aragon blames the other queens for anything. Her feelings are directed at Henry. Notice in now way she talks about how henry is “running around with some pretty young thing” and she refers to him having “one son with someone who don’t own a wedding ring”. Those people? They’re clearly supposed to be Boleyn and Bessie, two people who are actually on stage at the time. But Aragon doesn’t take an easy shot at either of them in her song. She doesn’t say their name or call them out or try and involve them in her song. Contrast this with DLUH where Boleyn grabs Aragon, forces her to be front and centre in this verse and then insults her constantly (“three in the bed” = airing Aragon’s and Henry’s ✨ intimate issues ✨ with the entire world while “Don’t be bitter, cause I’m fitter” and “he doesn’t want to bang you, somebody hang you” are both pretty self explanatory). I think it’s absolutely key that Aragon doesn’t blame Boleyn or Bessie or direct any misplaced feelings towards them in no way or the show. Her (very justified) feelings of anger and betrayal are (generally) directed at Henry. And that’s something so many people ignore! And I personally wish more people would be like Aragon in this regard in the real world. I don’t know if other people agree with me, but it’s your boyfriends/husbands job to not cheat on you, not someone else’s. I do know some people think that Aragon is slighting Boleyn and Bessie in that verse but if we’re sticking to tudor ideals, Aragon not mentioning them by name (in essence keeping their “dignity” and “honour” intact) would be the kinder thing to to. (Note I’m only saying this with Tudor ideals in mind. I also think Aragon fully knows that Bessie was 13 when Henry started making advances on her and again, refuses to blame Bessie for what happened because she knows she’s a victim).

However...Aragon doesn’t ever try and listen to other queens and will insult them if she has to. She (along with the other queens like Boleyn and Seymour) gets more and more defensive and petty as the show continues. However, she never gets to the same levels of hard hitting insults has say Boleyn. But I mean...Aragon was a queen who went through so much in her lifetime and never was able to really talk about it. Yes, she resisted Henry trying to get their marriage annulled, and she was one of the strongest women at the time, but she couldn’t deal with her emotions the same way that we can today. She never got to told Boleyn to go away or leave her alone. She never got to bad mouth Henry because he was the king. She was, first and foremost, a lady, and she was expected to act in a certain way all of her life. And now that she’s reincarnated in modern days, she doesn’t have to do all of those things. She can be annoyed and let it show, she can tell Boleyn all those things she wanted to do back in the day. Some actresses even lean into the idea that it’s sort of cathartic for Aragon to FINALLY just say what she wants to say without having to worry on how it would reflect on her as queen. Mind you, I still think that Aragon considers how her words would reflect on her (much more than any other queen) but she definitely has more wiggle room within the show than she did during her reign.

In addition, while the fandom also like to reduce Aragon to obsessed with her religion, I actually really like how her relationship with Catholicism is portrayed in the show. While I do concede that Aragon’s faith is sometimes reduced to the butt of the joke, that’s not always the case and I personally really enjoy how Aragon seems to gain a lot of strength from her religion, instead of it holding her back or hindering her. While I do understand why so many characters in media struggle with their religion or find it suffocating (my relationship with Catholicism is...fragile at the best of times), but I genuinely love this idea that Aragon’s faith is what guides her and gives her inner strength in times of need. I mean,,,when she’s pleading to Henry during now way, the music slows to something that sounds more like a gospel song, Aragon is kneeling with her hands clasped and there's bright white light around her (i also vaguely remember something that looks like a crucifix behind her as well? But I'm not 100 percent sure on that). At the time where Aragon is most vulnerable and needs to find inner strength and wants guidance...she turns to her religion and that's seen as a very positive thing!!! The same with Aragon's verse in Sox. Moving to a nunnery and finding friends there is something that's now postive and liberating instead of being stuffy and boring and restrictive like nunnery are often portrayed as in media. (yes I know that's also a play on Henry wanting to send Aragon into the nunnery after their divorce but I do think that there’s no malicious religion-basing in Six is a nice touch that’s often overlooked).

Finally, Aragon’s costume is quite important to her character. It is one of the more feminine outlines (especially the updated version on broadway) and I do think it’s an inadvertent issue that the queens with the more stereotypical feminine costumes are more catty whereas the more stereotypical androgynous or masculine outfits (aka Parr and Cleves) are often the voices of reason, but I don’t think that’s intentional or is intended to comment on anything. It’s just a coincidence. However, the gold of Aragon’s outfit obviously symbolises her love, courage and passion, along with indicating her status as a noble. While yes the rest of the queens were all noble in some way before they married Henry, Aragon was a Spanish princess and the daughter of two incredibly powerful monarchs. She was probably the highest standing out of any of the queens, and her costume reflects that. I also think that her wearing gold to flaunt her status could be her trying to make up for the years between her marriages to Arthur and Henry (where she didn’t have many provisions made for her as far as I know) and also the last few years of her life. (I’ve seen differing reports on how Aragon was provided for after Henry divorced her, with her claiming that she was living in poverty while others state she got 3000 pounds. If anyone has any confirmation then let me know). Either way, her wanting to flaunt her status after her reincarnation by wearing lots of bright gold makes total sense. I’ve also seen a few people say that the bust on Aragon’s costume is the most historically accurate but I can’t confirm that, although if it is then that’s a really nice touch.

Well this took ages, but it was fun to finally get to analyse stuff again AND do it on a queen who doesn’t get discussed very much!!! Aragon often gets reduced to “catholic” or “angry” within this fandom, even though she is just as complex as any other character within the show but she just expresses things in very different ways. And that’s okay! This whole show is about how women (and NB folk!) are different and do have different experiences and do express things differently and have different personalities and that’s okay! We should celebrate our differences.

[lonestarbabe]

How do you think the writers could improve the characters? Like aside from Owen because we all know how he needs to change, they just aren’t doing it and making these changes for his character. I mean for Mateo, Paul and Marjan. I feel like when they have their little storylines, they don’t rly show much I mean they are interesting and I love seeing more of my faves of course but they don’t rly show these characters progressing in any way aside from Marjan’s recent storyline where she saved the girl in the house and maybe Paul’s with his sister. But with TK or Judd and even Grace’s storyline after the crash, we have seen slow growth in their characters and how they have learned from some experience to be better and be more open or something. Mateo’s was interesting because we saw his roommates and life outside of work which I loved but he moved in with Owen and we rolled right into another Owen-center or Owen-related plot line and it’s just annoying. Of course it was nice that Owen offered Mateo a place to stay because his burned down but as soon as Mateo moved in, it was all about Owen’s man pain and we cut to a later intervention about Owen lying about his surgery and other behavior. Paul’s first I think was when he went on the date with that woman who basically told him she couldn’t date him because he is trans at least that’s what I got from it. And like that’s not a nice storyline Paul didn’t learn or grow from that and probably only felt like shit in the end despite brushing it off. And the one with his sister was eventually resolved but I want a storyline for him that doesn’t involve his identity because that’s not just who he is- of course it’s a very important part that shouldn’t be ignored but I just want storylines for him that aren’t JUST about that- he’s Paul with great observation skills and he’s a good friend and a nice guy. And Carlos, too. The one in 2x8 with his dad was *chef’s kiss* amazing but I want more solo storylines for him. I know he’s TK’s partner and I love that for him because they’re cute but I want storylines for just Carlos. And I don’t meant to complain because the arsonist storyline where his place burns down looks rly good and maybe that’s a start if it’s just him in the house but I hope you get what I mean? And I love Marjan, Mateo, Paul and Carlos I don’t mean to complain about their storylines because I’m grateful we even get anything on them with how much the writers have eyes just for Owen but yeah I just want more (and better) for them

You make a lot of strong points, and I really think you’re right that there’s still more to do, adn that there’s a lot I hope for when it comes to those characters. Yeah, I think the main thing is to give them time, but not just time, they need to give them quality screentime. Some characters have been getting more screentime without being more developed, which is a major struggle that the show needs to get over to better showcase its characters. Oh no, this is going to wind me up!!

(TLDR: they just need to flesh out the characters and show that they are more than just one part of their identities.)

You’re right about those storylines not allowing growth. Paul’s storyline with his sister ended up being about his sister’s growth, and the thing is, the Josie storyline was very similar in all the wrong ways. It was about Josie’s discomfort. Transphobia becomes something that is about the phobic people rather than the person who is experiencing it! These people also claim to be accepting of his transition, but they also show the opposite with their reactions (Josie was like, “you’re perfect but I can’t date you because you’re trans” while Paul’s sister also commented that she didn’t care that he was trans but also droned on about how she missed her sister... who Paul points out never existed. Like the whole storyline seems to be a pat on the back for transphobes, as if to reassure them that their behaviors are what we should be empathetic to.) Ultimately, Paul wasn’t the active participant in his own story; thus, he can’t really grow and develop. Paul needs to have more storylines that he is an active participant in (by making the scenes in his perspective rather than that of the subjugators). We also haven’t seen Paul’s flaws, whereas we’ve seen flaws of the more fleshed out characters. We know he’s heavily intellectual, observant, and a great listener, but I also want to see a moment when he has more of a struggle (one that is not related to him being trans because he needs a plot beyond that one part of him).

Mateo also is reduced to basically an object in other storylines. His screentime is rarely about him. Even in that last episode that featured a storyline about him, that storyline basically reduced him to a pawn in Owen’s storyline, which didn’t allow Mateo to have any growth. We didn’t learn anything new about him (at least not anything meaningful to the deeper nature of his character). We know very little about what makes Mateo ticks, and I think he is the character who is most reduced to just a few characteristics. He’s constantly a ditzy figure, and I want to see him as more than the probie. In the first episode, we saw that he’s attentive, and that he works hard. Let’s show those qualities some more. I think that especially because he is dyslexic, that it’s harmful to not showcase more diverse sides of him and to neglect the ways that make him stand out. He’s treated as a kid too often, and it’s okay to make him naive on some things because he’s newer to firefighting, but he needs to grow and show that he is making progress and is growing. I like that they bring up his dyslexia, but I don’t think they’ve utilized it as well as they could have, and it would be nice to show how he deals with it and how it impacts him. Just like I want to see mentions of Judd’s PTSD continue to pop up (and they’ve brought it up several times, whcih is nice), it would also be cool to see his dyslexia pop up casually and not as a forced “look he has dyslexia” plot. Like it has to do more for his character. Further, I would never want to see him reduced to just his dyslexia, so I think it’s a careful balance. With Mateo, I just want to see him become a real person because right now, he just feels like a stock character.

Marjan has seen some more development than Mateo. I’ve liked that she’s joined the Austin Annihilators, and I also enjoy the storyline we just saw with her, which really showed us more of her, and I’m glad we saw a storyline that wasn’t about her religion (because like Paul, she deserves to have storylines that show the full extent of who she is as a person). You see a lot about Marjan’s flaws as well as her deep drive for good in the episode. You see that she cares, but you also see that maybe ego does influence her in a way that isn’t always positive (which let’s be real... that’s true of ANY person haha). She’s going in the right direction, but I still think there’s more developing to do.

Also, Grace seems like she has more development, but she also still hasn’t had that much. Like in the episode where she could have been featured more, that was still Judd’s perspective, which I have no problem with. The episode was beautiful, BUT I still want to see a moment that is just Grace’s. 2x10 gave us some of this where Grace was struggling with her injury, and that was excellent. We know a good amount of her history, too, but I want to see the world from her perspective. Also, add in flaws (which again we got a little bit of in 2x10)! I want Grace to be more than the diligent wife who is constantly there to support Judd. She needs to be her own character.

In some ways, they’ve been letting Tommy down too. They started well with her, but they’ve still got some ways to go for me. We’ve seen a lot of her with her family and the same issues of her feeling out of touch and disconnected from them when she goes back to work, but I’d like to see some fresh storylines on that front!

Carlos, of course, still fails to get all the attention he deserves as well. He’s had some independent development, but I would like to see him in more scenes with other charaters. I live for Tarlos moments, but I also want Carlos to be separately connected and have relationships of his own that they explore in the show because he should never just be TK’s plus one! Like a lot of the other characters, I don’t want him to become an object for other people’s storylines. I’d like to see more of his mental processes and how he deals with his career and maybe see him in action more because we don’t see that a whole lot (and Owen somehow became the hero in 2x08, which is okay, but it was also Carlos’ plot so it was a funny choice to me). Anyways, MORE CARLOS. Let us see this wonderful man in all his multifaceted glory.

Even TK and Judd could use more development, but they’re obviously much better off. Owen, on the other hand, the character we’ve seen so much of, also has an interesting development. We’ve seen a lot of him, but I don’t know that he’s even developed that well (he’s pretty stagnant even if we’ve seen more sides of him) because his storylines are a bit repetitive. That repetition in general is an issue for Lone Star because they tend to latch on to just one trait of a character and then they keep doing plots based on that one trait.

Really the theme here is that without flaws, characters are always going to feel flat. They don’t need to be big dramatic flaws like having murdered someone or something equally dramatic, but I need to see the gradients in the characters and see more range of reactions and their personalities. They need to have balance, and they need to feel like they have depth and aren’t just being used to tell plots. Moreover, I don’t want characters to be props for plots that are not their own. Of course, characters always support other plots, but if they never have any moments that are their own, they become objects rather than actors!

[derangedhyena-zoids]

I guess now that I featured The Kids in something I can elaborate on them and everything related slightly without seeming completely insane.  BIG HEADCANON BLATHER TIME: Raven and Ryss had 2 kids, both boys. 

Ryss wasn’t a terribly good mother. She loved her kids but was a little panicked about them at all times, and didn’t really like the distraction they were. Specula was a good mother and did the majority of keeping them out of trouble. 

They were also psychic as fuck, but that didn’t show up until they were hitting puberty. I’m sure that was an entire Time.  

Ryss literally didn’t think she could get pregnant by Raven. She based this off of both what she’d been taught by Hiltz (humans=/=Zoidians) and the fact that Fiona had never been pregnant despite sleeping with Van for years*.  So, once Ryss figured out she was pregnant**, telling Raven was a bit of an event because Raven was under the impression that such a thing wasn’t possible. He also had little interest in being a parent. Ryss also had no idea what pregnancy even entailed for a Zoidian, and neither did Fiona. Again, all she knew was what she’d learned from Hiltz, and it wasn’t as if he went out of his way to teach her the finer points of anything. (Knowledge is power after all, and he wanted wanted to hold as much power over her as possible. What she didn’t know to begin with, she couldn’t know was being withheld. All she knew from Hiltz on the topic was Zoidian pregnancies are of a greater duration than human pregnancies - mainly because he’d irritably snapped about how ‘the vermin’ reproduce faster.)  Raven’s main reluctance about parenting had to do with... you know, his massive unresolved parental trauma. Which after some extreme stress he and Ryss managed to work through, largely because they had a lot in common in this department. Afterwards Raven warmed up to the idea of being a father, and was... well, Okay.jpg at it. Let’s just say he had Shadow helping Specula with the kids a lot. ...the kids were raised by Organoids. SO.

An attempt was made to keep track of Ryss and her offspring, especially after Raven’s death and she began to make herself scarce. But nobody expected the kids to be psychic af, and they quickly sussed out that something was up and followed their mom’s lead, making themselves and their families impossible to find.  ....

The Guardian Force pretty quickly lost tabs on them, but did know what to “look for”, so to speak. 

However, this attempt was never linked up with the information the Empire had on Ryss, mainly because too much time had passed and no one knew to bridge the info.

Anyways. All three Zoidians were aware there were differences between themselves and humans, Hiltz more than most. Hiltz was the only one of them that had an adult level of knowledge from Zoidian times. Fiona and Ryss were literal children and were only ever, at best, taught the very basics about things. Part and parcel of subscribing wholesale to the we’re-the-best group’s newsletter, Hiltz also a keen interest in biology/related, obviously interested in scholars of that group’s discussion on what amounted to Zoidian eugenics. ‘we’re the best, and here’s why.’ Hiltz didn’t even remotely consider that humans and Zoidians could hybridize, nor was he interested in finding out. (though he had well-established to Prozen and the Imperial scientists his “ownership” of Ryss and the fact she was not to be messed with, I’m sure he had to mindfuck and/or sic Ambient on a swath of folks to get them to stop bothering him about jizzing in a cup.)***

Joke’s on him because he fathered *at least* these three: 

while living in the small colony with the scholar. 

because he, Hiltz, the weird guy, was hot, amazing in bed, and quite DTF.   scholar: ...   Hiltz:  (ツ) scholar: ... Hiltz:  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯  scholar: ...sure, whatever, what could it hurt anyways ^^^THESE FOLKS HAD A TIME. Unlike with Ryss’s kids, who at least had a slight understanding they were different and some guidance on the situation, any and all of Hiltz’s offspring HAD NO IDEA WHAT WAS GOING ON. And not that any of the fertility restrictions were enacted at this point in time (there’s wars, you live in the wild west, please have kids), but the addition of Zoidian into the mix fucks the inbuilt population-control-genetic-engineering-bullshit straight up, which resulted later in a lot of confusing surprises for people annnnnd is part of why miscarriages became common later down the line. 

Nobody expected the spanish inquisition weird side-species fuckery. Nobody even knows to look! By NC0 times there’s just starting to be coherent, unified inquiry into the various vanilla-human mutations running around.

WHOOPS THO: Backdraft & Co have been at this shit for a while and already know a lot about this. Because they have a hard-on for the Empire and a lot of OG Backdraft are basically really rich, bitter offspring from Imperial families who think they’re better in just about every way. Including genetically. When Backdraft became predominantly a moneymaking, black-market, illegal-battling underground enterprise, a rift began and never stopped growing. Backdraft has a strong preference for recruiting folks of Guylos descent (hi, Bit), but in recent memory had stopped turning people away for not being so. Because money.  It did kinda...  go in peoples’ file though.  In the game of historical telephone, Ryss (and Raven’s) bloodline were more or less demoted to the same: ‘from Guylos.’  Alteil was in range of figuring a few important things out. Unfortunately, HE DED. His successor with this information is Layon.  Surely nothing can go wrong there. ANYWAYS. A massive and valid concern Ryss had was what would happen with hybrid offspring, since to her knowledge her kid would be the first. Hiltz’s were already adults, they were fine. They were better than fine, they just needed a lot more water and salt than everyone else. So, as we all know, Hiltz uh, actually succeeded in removing a sizable chunk of the human population on Zi. Once everyone had scraped semi-functional society back together, the powers that-were-to-be basically prioritized secure settlements and making everyone feel safe so... you know, they’d have kids. Important for the whole rebuilding society thing.   The Zoidian offspring became slightly more statistically relevant during this time, because them and potentially even their kids had all been scared shitless and fled into the hills from the Death Stinger bullshit long before anyone else had. Once there they were good at Not Dying In General, because they had a variety of inexplicable abilities and were just WELL I’M A FREAK BUT I’M ALIVE SO, YOU KNOW, WE’RE COOL. 

Greater than zero chance that someone started a cult. Very, very obviously: these folks knew to keep to themselves. Though the original offspring and their mother had NO idea what was going on, over time any kids at least had fair warning, and knew to keep oddity to themselves. When the most blatant expressions of things were bred out, only the subtle but strongly expressed items remained, discussion of familial strangeness subsided.  Then you’re left with people like Brad who can basically see in the dark, but thinks everyone can see in the dark, it’s no big deal right?    RELATED, BUT NOT: This is technically a spoiler, but not really, because I’m not sure this actually “plays into the plot” so much as it is just “a fact of the plot” annnnnd I sort of want/need to explain this a little because it’s related to all of this.  In this hc, the Zoid Eve is a metaphorical hyper-simplification of ‘resources.’

Back in Zoidian times, some scholars - namely those aligned with the group(s) Hiltz was eventually born into - theorized that the Zoid Eve’s power was not an infinite resource as many believed, but actually an incredibly finite one. Not in the sense of it being used up, but the sense of “there are only ‘100′ of these, there will only ever be ‘100′ of these, we cannot add to or take away from this”  (sidenote: I subscribe to the idea that the Zoid Eve was some kind of supernaturally-occurring power source that the Zoidians shaped into what everyone now calls the Zoid Eve. They did this so long ago that its origins became unclear; beliefs from various groups ran the gamut from “LITERALLY GOD” to “it was built by us”)   The power of it gave life and longevity not only to all Zoids but them too. And it seemed that the more individuals there were, the smaller the “slice of the pie” they received. They began to project apocalyptic futures in which the “slices” were so small that death ran rampant, and Big War would be inevitable. Obviously, nobody wanted this. But unfortunately the group who theorized this also started a huge, lengthy campaign to reduce the population, which - after many years, a lot of societal sabotage and and many smaller conflicts between groups - eventually culminated in ongoing, wholesale slaughter, which led to the big Zoidian-apocalypse nonsense that we’re all familiar with. Cool story bro, right? Well, y’see, those ancient scholars weren’t wrong, though. To an extent that’s actually what led to the hyper-concentration of strength in the DSaurer/DScorpion battle, and why Zero and One are functionally god-tier Organoids. But what this means in modern times, is that the remaining Zoidians - and to a proportionately-relevant extent, the hybrid offspring - are the only remaining folks (besides the Organoids and Zoids) benefiting from the pie anymore. Ryss is the last Zoidian; she’s basically non-aging at this point. 

First-gen hybrids? Aging at a complete snail’s pace.  Second gen? Still having a very strange time. So on and so forth... Can they die? Absolutely, but it’s pretty hard to kill them.  Basically only complete destruction of vital parts works. Does this also apply to Organoids and Zoids? Absolutely. “then why’s Fiona dead” Because the double-bond with Zeke seriously fucked her up. Van dragged her down, hard. “but-”  Zeke could’ve pulled away from her at any time and she would’ve lived. Been a nutcase probably, but lived. She suspected it, Zeke was outright in denial; she never called him on it because she cared about him too much and didn’t want him blaming himself for whatever happened. This is what Ryss suspected/understood as well, and likewise didn’t want to break Zeke. “wait, what about zeke?” HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM IN CLOSING: I don’t have names for any of the offspring discussed here, but I have thought about the appearances/other stuff. Obviously. I’ve never specified how many original offspring(s) were running around. But it couldn’t have been too many. So anyone in NC0 times related to either Ryss or Hiltz can trace back to ^^^the folks pictured above, most likely.  I actually have no idea how to properly calculate the amount of population vs how much impact a handful of reproducing individuals would have over x generations. So please excuse vagueness there, as I’m both open to adjusting that number when/if it becomes feasible to do so, and also don’t think it’s terribly necessary to have this information nailed down because let’s be real nobody cares and that’s a lot of work. Also as I’ve mentioned before, there’s several serious confounding factors here: -these people can LIVE A LONG TIME. The original hybrids and their kids ARE POTENTIALLY STILL ALIVE. They mature relatively rapidly, but then coast into a very slow aging process. That means that - especially the males - could still technically be producing offspring.  -that makes my head hurt and makes figuring out lineages stupid nightmare mode. so don’t expect me to actually do that because I’m not sure how to. The main Facts(tm) you need are:  Sara is 4th gen. Vega is 5th gen x2. Brad is 5th gen. Stoller is 7th gen.

that’s the important part, okay.  (*’s from earlier: )  *tl;dr the bizarre situation they’d inadvertently created with Zeke wreaked havoc on Fiona’s ability to reproduce. Conversely, Raven and Ryss *almost* had a ‘proper’ setup, so Ryss was fine. Nobody knew this. **Ryss figured this out with Fiona’s help - and who did they both go to, to ask in confidence?

Yep. ”isn’t he-” YEP. ***The Empire knows next to nothing about Hiltz. The Republic, however has AN OBSCENE AMOUNT of information about him. Difficulty level? The data was both classified, and never really tied back to him. Because Hiltz murdered the scholar and burned down his house/lab, the connecting information was all lost. The scholar had moved the material to his house in secret, due to fears of an Imperial spy in their research facility - he was telling Hiltz the truth.   The most that the Empire ever learned at that time was that the Republic had “captured” a Zoidian (Hiltz), and that was about it. This drove the fervor which led to them grabbing at the Republic’s continued excavations - eg what happened with Shadow, and presumably them attacking (and IMO, overpowering) the Republic group that’d also seized Ryss.   Before Hiltz became involved, Imperial scientists gleaned a lot about Ryss, but as I’ve mentioned before, she wasn’t treated anywhere nearly as poorly as Hiltz had been. She also had Specula, which helped a lot.  So, the Empire knew nothing of Hiltz, but a lot about Ryss.  Thanks to Alteil and his predecessor’s longstanding obsession with the Imperial military, Backdraft has almost all of the Imperial military’s data from the past few centuries.  Ergo...