#refusing to commit to killing major characters is not a gripe I only have with Discovery

[youngpettyqueen]

I was writing last night so I didnt liveblog my thoughts on it but! I am officially all caught up with Discovery, until s5 premieres later this week. gonna discuss my thoughts below, so spoiler warning!

overall, I really like Discovery! I love the characters, I love the dynamics between all of them, and I think the plots each season have been fun. sure, some of them are a bit convoluted, but hey its Star Trek so I expect that

I think jumping 930 years into the future helped with some of the issues I was having with the first 2 seasons, in that it was really hard to see this series as a prequel. ive talked a lot about how while the writing and everything made it clear this was a prequel, it just didnt look like a prequel. now, it doesnt have to, and the writing isnt held back by having to be a prequel, so we get to see and do some really cool shit. the new species introduced were awesome, ive loved seeing the federation come together, ive loved seeing different species we already knew and loved but so far in the future. I think the choice to go so far into the future was, overall, a good one

I think my biggest gripe overall with Discovery is that so many characters just. dont stay dead. I think this was fine with Hugh, I thought how they did it with him made as much sense (as much sense as anything in Star Trek makes) and it was pulled off really well, and I was satisfied from a writing standpoint and from an emotional standpoint. with Gray it was... fine. it was well-explained, but a bit of a cop-out. still, fine. Book's made me roll my eyes. im sorry, his was stupid. here's why I think so

I like Book. im not super attached to him, but I like him. I liked the conflict with him in s4. and I thought his death was actually done really well. it was sudden, and jarring, but you also realized pretty quickly that yeah. it was always going to end this way. Michael did everything she could, but she was never going to be able to save him. for a brief moment we think maybe he's saved, and then he's gone. it was harsh, but it was good (lemme give a shoutout to Sonequa Martin-Green's acting again cause her crying is VISCERAL) and then its immediately undone because Book is miraculously saved by 10-C. so, now, on top of having a cop-out resurrection, we also have an established pattern of Discovery being unwilling to kill characters and keep them dead

this isnt true with every case, of course. Discovery has absolutely no problem with killing villains and minor characters, and even killing characters we're familiar with but who dont play major roles. but now that we've done this resurrection thing multiple times, its going to affect how I view s5 and any situation they present where a major character might die. the emotional stakes just won't be there, because im gonna sit there and think about how we've been here before, and its never stuck. ill have a hard time taking any of those situations seriously, because ill be wondering how theyre gonna bring them back this time

that said, im still excited for s5 and cant wait to see what it has in store. of the newer Treks ive seen so far, Discovery is definitely one of the better ones. its absolutely better than Picard. I have a hard time comparing it to Lower Decks, since theyre such vastly different shows, but ive enjoyed it just as much as I enjoyed Lower Decks. from what we saw of the SNW cast in Discovery, im now cautiously optimistic that ill at least enjoy the characters in SNW, even if I have to deal with. another prequel

I probably won't liveblog Discovery s5 when I watch it, just to avoid spoilers. so, see yall when I start SNW tonight!

[wonda-cat]

Some Thoughts on Tommy’s most recent stream (4/29)

(For the record, this isn’t going to be like my other formal analyses. I’m genuinely just ranting here, possibly unedited too. I’m only referring to the characters, unless stated otherwise.

Also obvious warning, this will be fairly negative/critical of the DSMP’s writing, so scroll past if that might bother you. I tend to criticize the media I love, so this is just par for the course in my case.)

Let’s start off with—

The Things I Liked

All of the comedy at the beginning of the stream was wonderful. Ghostbur was incredibly endearing and entertaining as usual, as well as the moments between bench trio. Tommy’s change of plans made sense and the entire journey through the prison was tense and fun to watch. As well as the moment Tommy got caught (it was inevitable.) 

It goes without stating, but cc!Wilbur and cc!Tommy’s acting was wonderful—they knocked it out of the park. I liked the little moments of Tommy calming Ghostbur down as Sam screamed at him. I also loved Wilbur's speech about his time in the afterlife when bench trio found him. 

As well as the moment with Wilbur admiring the sky and calling it ‘his sunrise.’ I’m also glad that the afterlife was explained to be caused by the Revival Book’s existence and not some general eternal torture every character will be sentenced to regardless of anything they did in life. 

But, sadly, that’s about where I stop and have to go into what I didn’t like as much, which is—

Everything Else

I’ll be talking about my major gripes with this particular stream in later bullet points down the line, but for now I’ll bring up the little things that annoyed me. This is all basically nit-picking and isn’t as awful or badly written as some of the others I’ll be discussing later. 

First off, Why is Ranboo There? In the stream before this one, Tommy had Tubbo promise to not tell anyone else about their plan. Did he just decide to tell Ranboo anyway? Why? What was the point of asking him to keep it secret if it didn’t matter? 

Adding to this, Tubbo and Ranboo were rather unnecessary for any of the other scenes that took place. They didn’t have any meaningful conversations with Tommy besides Ranboo asking why he was dreading Wilbur’s revival so much, as well as Wilbur’s comments to Tubbo about him being president. But other than that they have little to no notable speaking lines. 

They don’t Do Anything? Sure, they’re nice to have present so Tommy can vent to someone else and find comfort but, in the end, Ranboo was oddly angry and accusatory with Tommy and Tubbo was practically absent from the scene. The impression I got from Tommy and Tubbo’s conversation in the previous stream implied that Tubbo would be serving a larger role as a distraction, but I guess they changed gears or something? 

Then we have Ghostbur’s involvement, which, yeah, makes sense. Tommy, Tubbo, and Ranboo are not allowed inside the prison, so it’s best to find someone else who can get in without suspicion. But my first assumption, upon seeing Ghostbur with the group was, “Oh, he’s gonna go in there and Dream’s gonna use him to revive Wilbur. That’s the only reason why Ghostbur is here and not anyone else, who would also be willing to kill Dream. It’s not like they’re in short supply right now.”

And I ended up being right, which only frustrated me more. I wanted something unexpected. Something new. Something interesting. Yet, I got the most predictable outcome instead—Tommy fails, Wilbur is revived. 

Next, we have another big serving of ‘Tommy gets blamed for things he has no control over’ part 241. I am so, so sick of characters getting unreasonably mad at and blaming Tommy for anything and everything. It’s not new, it’s not interesting, it’s not fun. It’s just miserable. 

It is,, awful. And it’s highkey frustrating. I refuse to sit through another arc of Tommy being endlessly hurt and blamed for stuff he didn’t do or cannot control. Pick a new event in the plot. 

Try something out of left field. Do something, anything different to this. I’m begging you. 

Now, we get into the major writing pitfalls and shortcomings. Starting with—

We Need to Talk About Sam

I have no idea what is going on with Sam’s character right now. It is so genuinely confusing. I have no clue why Sam reacted the way he did to Tommy because it just doesn’t make any sense. Sam’s entire inner conflict is about him trying to cultivate and protect his humanity and morality while upkeeping a strict, closed-off demeanor.

He follows the rules, even if it hurts the people he loves. Even if these codes force him into a position to be unethical. He feels it is his responsibility should anything go wrong or if Dream escapes, because it puts others in danger.

His strict approach got Tommy killed, and it also took a life and an arm from Ponk. Both of these people are precious to him. So why on earth would he threaten to kill Tommy when, in their last interaction, he was glad he was alive—after he promised to never let something like that happen again?

He respected Tommy’s wishes to stay away from him, and rather politely too. Why would he then threaten to kill him just after weeks of saying Tommy’s death was his biggest regret? That’s not even touching on Sam saying, “This is why I let you die,” as well as blaming Tommy for something that was directly a result of his own refusal to act.

Why didn’t he have Ghostbur also hitch a ride on the same platform with Tommy? Why did he even let Ghostbur into the prison in the first place if he:

A.) Told Ranboo he wasn’t going to let anyone in there after what happened to Tommy.

B.) Also wouldn’t let people in lest they find out about Quackity’s plan.

C.) Couldn’t even kill Ghostbur because he’s incorporeal and thus cannot fully upkeep the contracts he is signing.

There’s also the issue of Sam breaking the rules he abides by when he decided to not kill Tommy after he snuck into the prison, despite it being in the contract. Why is it different now? He went against his own protocol but was also following it by refusing to let Ghostbur come back to the other platform?

Why does Sam refuse to listen to Tommy? Their argument is mind-numbingly ridiculous. Sam refuses to hurt Dream, despite him only being alive because Sam claimed Tommy wanted him alive.

But now Tommy is there, begging Sam to let him kill Dream, and Sam just goes, “No. We’re not killing Dream.” Fucking why??? Sam! You said you wanted to kill Dream at least four times by now! Maybe more!

You were on your way to do it with Quackity and the only thing that stopped you was your promise to Tommy. But now Tommy’s here, telling you to kill Dream and you fucking won’t???? I am absolutely baffled.

No matter how you spin it, it makes no fucking sense. However, if I tried,,, I could possibly come up with a reason or two. Maybe Dream is blackmailing him. Maybe Quackity is forcing him to keep Dream alive until he can get the info he needs (even though,,, why would he trust Quackity over Tommy, who he’s outwardly stated he trusts just as much, if not more?)

It feels like these plots are dancing around each other, trying to keep up this faux sense of conflict that doesn’t exist. But, here’s the thing, contrived conflict is never compelling. I can’t overstate it enough.

Dream’s Plan is Complete Nonsense

The method to revive Wilbur makes Dream seem even more short-sighted than I remember commenting on, during the stream where Tommy was brought back to life. He told Tommy that his plan was to test the book to see if it worked (which, okay fine, I can buy this.) But then he says all along he was planning to revive Wilbur in order to break out of prison, which is ???? This is baffling if he needed Ghostbur in order to pull this off. 

Which,,, I can’t even begin to explain how ridiculous it is that Dream’s entire plan hitched on not only the book working on people to begin with (which he tested on Tommy,,, for some reason, even though he would’ve lost his ‘favorite toy’ if he fucked it up. Which,, why even take that chance in the first place? there are other visitors he could’ve tried this with, surely. Like Sapnap and Bad,,) and it also relied on Ghostbur voluntarily going into the prison just to visit Dream?? And if he didn’t need Ghostbur after all, then why didn’t he bring Wilbur back weeks ago? 

That’s not even getting into the issue of Dream assuming that Wilbur, once brought back, would: 

A.) Want to be alive in the first place.

B.) Actually be willing to help Dream, instead of telling him to fuck off.

C.) Be even slightly capable of helping him at all when he has no allies, no PVP skill, no weapons, no armor, and no knowledge of the prison or its innerworkings. 

Why are the current DSMP writers so committed to making me think Dream is a fucking idiot? I don’t enjoy this. I used to like his character and think he was smart. Stop. 

ALSO, why did Tommy or Tubbo or Ranboo not think of the possibility that Ghostbur could very well be necessary to revive Wilbur? Why did that not cross any of their minds? It was the first thing I thought of when I saw him.

Another big thing that irks me is Tommy and Sam saying they saw Dream physically holding the Revival Book, which,,, how? Why? Dream said in previous streams that he burned the book and that was entirely the thing that kept him from being killed outright. If there was a book still in existence, did he hide it somehow? 

How did Quackity not find it? Why did Sam not take it from him when he was first arrested?? What? 

Also how the fuck did Dream kill a ghost?? They’re incorporeal? How does he not need the body to perform necromancy? That seems almost redundant. 

Also it took a matter of seconds to perform? It took,,, ?? nothing but words and sheer willpower to bring someone back to life? Why does it seem so easy? My mans just,, uses his vibes to bring people back from the dead??? 

Unless the book has instructions regarding that or has a proportional price in order to use, then I’d be more forgiving. But I’m guessing it doesn’t have too steep a cost if Dream could offer Tommy immortality despite that. But I’m sure we’ll get more information on this once Quackity (inevitably) gets his hands on the book. Hopefully… 

Which brings me to my last point—

Wilbur’s Revival (Derogatory)

Since the Revival Book was introduced, I have been actively dreading Wilbur being revived. It is the most predictable, low-hanging fruit of a plotline I could possibly conceive of. I understand that he’s a fan-favorite with a large audience (I love Wilbur more than you’d expect. cc!Wilbur is actually the reason I got into the DSMP in the first place), but there are other characters who could be developed more—utilized more. 

Unpopular opinion, I know, but I am just so incredibly unenthused about this plot development. In fact, I’d almost go so far as to say hate it. 

The Revival Book in and of itself is my least favorite thing the DSMP has ever introduced. It is a lack of consequences simplified. It’s also a lack of commitment to those mortal consequences. 

It is a ‘get out of jail free’ card for when they kill off a character and don’t want to deal with the hole that character will leave behind. Or a way to work around the reason they shouldn’t kill Dream on the spot. 

With Wilbur back again, I no longer feel compelled by his arc the way I used to. There is nothing to really leave a lasting impact anymore. Of course, there was a cater where L’Manburg once stood, but that was dug even deeper later on. You can’t make the death of a friend, of a loved one, worse than it is. It is death. 

The thing I found extremely interesting about Wilbur’s death is the way the other characters portrayed loss. It has consistently been the thing that was most comforting to me, oddly enough. When people die, there will always be loose ends. 

There will be holes left behind and things left unsaid. An unfulfilled promise. A forgotten relationship. A hollow memory.

What I always found compelling was the way Tommy and Fundy and Niki took this mutual loss and had to live with it. How they had to come to terms with the fact that Wilbur was gone and he wasn’t coming back. That they had to make peace with his memory, his legacy, and their connection to him. 

That they’d miss him and love him or hate him and try to forget him. It is a tragedy that someone like Wilbur wanted to die for so long, and in the end, he did. Because in reality, the people you love will die. 

There may be someone in your life that leaves you behind and all you’re left with is the broken pieces. And it is how these characters move on that brings me bittersweet company as someone who’s lost a lot of people. There is nothing more irritating than a story going back on its establishments—to have their cake and eat it too. 

All I want is the bare minimum—a story with narrative stakes and consequences.

The only way I could ever see myself enjoying this plot development is if Wilbur has a redemption arc and attempts to make amends with Tommy, Fundy, Niki, and Eret. OR if he aids in Dream’s downfall in some way and enjoys the simple realities of life and wants to live for the sake of living. I’d find that at least new and somewhat interesting. 

But if he’s just here to be a moustache toiling villain (or somehow worse than after his previous downward spiral), when the market is already so deeply oversaturated with antagonists, then I will probably drop the series altogether. 

Hopefully it doesn’t come to that because I love the Dream SMP and I want to keep loving it for as long as I can. 

I will hold onto more reasons to stay, so long as they keep giving them to me.

[whetstonefires]

Hi Whetstonefire. I have a question about the comic where Nightwing cheats on Starfire with Barbara: What happens directly after that? Does Starfire find out that Nightwing cheated on her? And, if so, how does she react? I've read online that (according to Marv Wolfman) Starfire is the opposite of everything Batman taught Nightwing to be and that Batman taught Nightwing to be repressed and cold. What did Nightwing contribute (emotionally) to the relationship between him and Starfire? (Cont.)

(Cont.) From what I can tell, from online, Nightwing was adamant about standards of mercy and monogamy - how do you think, if Starfire were to be written as her own character and not written around Nightwing and his emotional needs, she would handle and react to that? (This bit is an FYI for other readers: this is just speculation, not hate. Sorry about that.) Sorry about the questions! Have a nice day! 

Okay there are so many separate questions packed in here! I may miss some of them lol and I do not want to put in the hours it would take to produce an orderly response to all this, so this post is going to be a mess.

Initial query and important point: the cheating story was out of continuity. Like, literally, not just by ‘being rejected by the fanbase,’ it was just this weird retcon oneshot that seems to have been some sort of fuck-you to Nightwing or his fans or something. So no, it had no in-setting fallout lol. It, in more ways than most comics, didn't exactly happen.

It was just this weird thing where Dick hooks up with Babs before giving her a wedding invitation, which is both out of character for him in general and out of step with where he was leading up to the wedding--he was desperate to get married so they could have some Normal Stable Adulthood Happiness; the choice to recharacterize him as a fuckboy who regards it as a loss of freedom isn’t congruent, on much more than the level of principle.

As far as how Kori would feel about it, if she had learned...that is very hard to say. Apart from how it would require her to reinterpret everything about where their relationship stood at that point, the data is very unclear, and I don’t even have all of it. Gonna back up to cover some of the rest of the ask, get some context here.

So this actually brings up two of my biggest gripes with Wolfman’s NTT--weird Kori characterization and the weirdly negative interpretation of Batman as parent that backwashed heavily into other titles and influenced the character for the worse, in ways we're very much still dealing with today. 😩

The latter is pretty self-explanatory, though Wolfman’s take that the main thing Bruce taught Dick was repression does shed light on some writing choices and make others funnier. But Kori. Oh my lands.

So, item one, I wouldn't say that Kori is overall opposite Bruce, or even of his philosophy? There are just some very major points of opposition. She isn’t emotionally buttoned-down like at all, especially about positive feelings, although considered realistically with all the bullshit they’ve piled into her backstory she absolutely leans on repression to cope and stay positive, which makes her a lot like Dick actually.

To an extent, she was clearly written around foiling Dick’s Batman-derived traits in the same way that Robin was written to foil Batman, bright and glad and aerial. A Flamebird to his Nightwing in theme if not in name.

You could do some interesting stuff with that, and the bildungsroman aspects of this period of Dick’s life, like he has two roads forward in terms of how he’s going to define ‘adulthood’--does it necessarily require becoming more like his mentor-father, for good and ill, or can he make Kori in part a destination, as it were, and create an adult self that is derived from who he has always been as well as the man he’s modeled himself after?

To an extent I think this even was one of the things going on in ntt but like. Only a little bit.

(Given how much like Bruce Babs is in most of the ways Kori isn’t, especially once she’s Oracle, you could make a case for her as love interest being like. Symbolic of his not being in a rebellious phase? That gets weird and oedipal really fast tho lol.)

Okay stepping down one meta level lol, the thing about answering the 'what would kori' question here is that her character is deeply bound up in her culture, about which we are told and shown a great many contradictory things. Any attempt to read her as an independent character has to tackle not only the gender stuff you allude to and these inconsistencies, but how much of the sheer mess of her is rooted in racism.

'Fantastic' racism, technically, because Tamaraneans aren't real, but the 'taming the savage' narrative that kept surfacing between them and the language used in reference to it is just. The existing racism of presumably the writers, placed in Dick's mouth, and it's super gross. I hate it so much.

(I had a faint hope when they cast her for live action it was with a deliberate intent to directly tackle and better that history, but lollllllll nah. At least they didn’t double down in it tho! Can you imagine, with a black actress, in this day and age....)

So to predict and comprehend Kori, you have to make a lot of calls about Tamaran as a civilization. I like to slightly privilege stuff established earlier if there's no good reason not to, so while much is made over time of her inappropriate rage and the violence she was raised to normalize, I think what she says in her first appearance is good to keep in mind: in her culture, kindness is for friends and cruelty is for enemies. She doesn't understand why the Titans seem to have this backwards.

Kori is not a merciless person. She’s very empathetic, as a rule. With people she loves, she is self-destructively forgiving. That's not a trait only Dick benefits from--her family keeps betraying her in new exciting ways, and she keeps letting them.

Her arc of growing away from that habit is however greatly crippled by centering Dick in the narrative and by the awful 'civilizing' overtones that keep coming into it. When she comes back after the 1986 breakup, still married to Karras, she brings with her a commitment to doing things the Earth way--to eschew lethal force as more than a compromise with her friends’ values, but as a deliberate choice.

This deserved a lot more space and time than it got, and the fact that it didn’t get it is only somewhat due to her being subordinated to Dick and to general writing fail; a lot of it’s just the team book problems of everything happening to everybody all at once.

I mean, Dick’s journey later on to deciding he loves her enough to date her even though she’s married and it’s technically against his principles was packed into this absolutely heinous issue where he was inspired by a woman refusing to separate from her husband who’d just threatened to kill her and their kid with a knife, until being stopped by Nightwing. Because he’s apologizing for what he did.

This is his inspiration for accepting Kori’s marital status! It’s supposed to be heartwarming, as far as I can tell! Not heavyhanded messaging that this is a self-destructive terrible choice in which Kori will inevitably harm him somehow! This issue is pro ‘consensual open relationships under certain circumstances’ and also ‘giving abusers another chance’ as expressions of love. Welcome to the 80s ig.

(Notable is that the wife in this issue was black and the husband and son both looked very white, so it’s probably her stepkid and she probably wouldn’t get to keep him if they separated; this is not even vaguely treated as a factor.)

Point is, everyone was getting too little space to actually go through the amount of development they were getting, and it was clumsily handled; it’s not just her.

In an overlapping period Gar processed his issues with his adoptive father with whom he constantly fought and their shared trauma over the rest of their family (the Doom Patrol) having died violently not long ago via a batshit several-issue storyline where Mento went crazy, created supermutants, and abusively mind-controlled them to attack the Titans. It is literally all like this.

Back to the infidelity thing, now. So much to unpack. So like I mentioned above, their first big breakup, while partially driven by Dick’s existing conflicted feelings about their different ideas about things like ‘killing in battle’ and ‘her identity and loyalties being tied up with her home planet,’ is explicitly over different takes on monogamy.

When Dick is breaking up with her, Kori makes it clear she thinks it’s totally reasonable to have both a husband and a love, since Karras also has someone he loves and they’re both fine with it, but the story doesn't really explain how nonmonogamy works on Tamaran, or even if it's practiced outside the context of political marriage. They do do a sort of...soulbond fusion dance...thing, as part of the ceremony, so marriage is definitely serious business. There are so many levels of cultural difference that get poor to no development.

But to return to the weird ooc retcon cheating story: because of this context, no matter what her personal norms are, Dick specifically casually sleeping with someone else would be something for Kori to be mad about, because of the hypocrisy.

Then there’s the Mirage Incident, which I haven’t read through properly and which was very poorly handled by the writers. Kori is upset about Dick having slept with someone impersonating her and there’s a general vibe of this being treated by Dick’s social circle as unfaithfulness even though he was in fact sexually violated by deceit; it famously sucks.

We still don’t learn a lot here about Kori’s ideas about monogamy, from what I have seen, because her focus is mostly on feeling like Dick doesn’t care about her enough or in the right way since he couldn’t tell the difference. Which is an understandable feeling, even if it’s not an appropriate reaction to have at him at this time.

What Nightwing contributed emotionally........hm. This is a mess, honestly; he was all over the map, and not just because of having Brother Blood in his head. I cannot speak definitively on this, it’s too inconsistent.

For most of their relationship, Kori was the more intensely invested one, the one to initiate and the one who was shown at length to be excited to come home at the end of the day to their shared apartment because her boyfriend was there to see and talk to. If we set aside his more egregious white male bullshit, Dick was pretty emotionally available most of the time, though? They were cute.

Since they split up a lot of ink has been spilled making him less into her in retrospect, but he was pretty invested--leaving her coincided with mental breakdowns both times, and it wasn’t even mostly because she was doing his emotional processing for him, because she wasn’t, although it’s fair to say he often fell into using the relationship as an emotional crutch. Kori was definitely doing the same thing though so...it wasn’t the most balanced relationship in fiction history, but apart from slight codependency and the racism, it was decent enough.

She gets more evenhanded development than most superhero love interests, honestly, because she was costarring in a team book. She had her own storylines. She had other friends.

Mostly both of them just needed some space to finish growing up and stop being retraumatized long enough to process some of the existing trauma better, and I think they could have gone on being good for each other for a long time.

[crowsent]

Reaper At The Gates

Full disclosure, this book has 458 pages and I kinda cried on page 448 so this may or may not make sense because I am FUCKED UP right now. Page 448 has no goddamn diddly fucking RIGHT to be that emotional and Page 449 is fucking CRUEL. The page header. The fucking PAGE HEADER telling me which goddamn POV the chapter is in made my heart SAD and that shit should be illegal. Chapter LVIII had no fucking RIGHT and I’m suing for emotional trauma.

I am crying in the goddamn club right now. I am inundating this club with my tears and bringing about the second great flood because THIS FUCKING BOOK.

If you’ve been with me for ANY amount of time, you already know about this book because I started this book in the goddamn SUMMER of 2K19 and I only just finished today, on the day of our lord, February 10th 20 FUCKING 20. Took me a goddamn year to read this book and honestly?

Honestly I should have fucking finished this book earlier because HOLY SHIT.

The book is a rollercoaster that I got shoved on without a seatbelt or something to hold onto, then subsequently yeeted into a sea of emotions that hit me on the head like a fucking WARHAMMER. The author, Sabaa Tahir, is a goddamn sorceress. Her words are twists and turns and it is all I can do to hold on.

With every fibre of my being, from the pull of my muscles to the creaking of my very bones, I wish so so desperately to have copies of the first two books so I can experience them again. So I can start the journey all over again. So that when I read this FUCKING BOOK, everything is fresh on my mind.

It’s the third book in the Ember In The Ashes series and when I say that I am shooketh. This book swung for my goddamn kneecaps and went for my jugular.

It is painful.

Let me say this right fucking now that it is PAINFUL. The imagery is beautiful and brutal. The sentences are skillfully crafted knives that are thrown at me with precision. It is a thunderstorm that has long since been spotted but has yet to strike. Anticipation builds and builds and builds until you feel like you’re going to crack under the pressure. And then the storm comes. And you break.

This book is fucking painful. Characters I’ve loved, characters I saw laughing, crying, howling with hurt, characters that I’ve grown attached to, are subjected to so many things that I can’t help but feel for them. They are clay, Tahir is the sculptor, and I am the poor fool watching them get broken down to be molded again, hoping desperately that this time, this time, they’ll be fine.

It’s fucking painful.

And beautiful.

Because this book is a goddamn thunderstorm, and it finally struck. It set fires that burned down trees and houses, but lit up a dark night. These characters grow so much and I grow with them. My mind is constantly thinking with every page I turned, trying to find some comfort when the book offered me pain, trying to find the wounds when I am offered mercy.

The plot is strong. The characters are stronger. All three of the main leads are thoughtfully crafted. You can see into their minds when they speak. You can feel every beat of their heart when they act. You can hear their goddamn fucking souls crying out with every atrocity they face and witness and commit. And the villain? I pity him. I pity him and hate him and love him. The villain is not a force of pure evil. The villain is broken. And some part of me wants him to win. The side characters are no slouch either. That small snippet of Alistar made my breath hitch and my heart harden. And Alistar is one of the lesser side characters, not as prominent as Harper or Dex, but he was there and I was not okay. And Keris. Just. Keris.

And the best part is that ALL of the characters change. They grow, for better or worse.

I don’t think it’s for everyone because of its kind of sensitive content. War. Slavery. The brutality of mankind on full display. Pain and pain and pain with nothing to show for it. Failure and sadness and betrayal. Hurt that runs so deep it colours the soul. But if you can handle that kind of content, read it.

You kind of have to read the first two books, but the third one is worth it. The first two books are good, but this one is visceral. I felt empty when I finished, and I felt different when I finished. Not in any kind of profound way, mind you. This book didn’t change my life or anything, but it did change me.

It made me think of things a little bit too deep for my usual shitposting fuckall veneer. It made me think of life and death, of duty and sacrifice, of pain and love and of people. Not everyone is black and white. Even the darkest of souls, the most monstrous of monsters, the most ruthless, heartless, cruel, vicious beasts have some good in them. They can love and they can mourn. They can fight to the death for what they believe in. And even the kindest people, the ones with bright smiles and gentle hands, the ones who are sunlight on a dark day, can be capable of wickedness.

I don’t think about the duality of man that often. By that I mean never. On a subconscious, hidden part of me, I know that mankind is never black and white. Everyone is grey. Someone who hated you so deeply can love someone so much it aches. Someone you would bring the stars down for could be a hideous sinful creature. And this book brought that to the surface. It made me LOOK.

The series was always a little dark, but I underestimated how deep this cesspool of emotions ran. The line “Skies save me from the men in my life and all the things they think they know” did not, in any way, reveal just how much of a painful, beautiful, vicious thing this book was.

The prophecies made me wrack my head for an answer. And just when I think I have it in my grasp, something else gets revealed. “When the Butcher bows to the deepest love of all.” A love for kinsmen, for the Butcher’s people, for the Butcher’s family. And the Ghost? “The Ghost will fall, her flesh will wither.” When the meaning, the TRUE meaning of that line got revealed, I lost my shit. This book yall. This fucking book.

My only major gripe about it is how much it used the word “bleeding” as a swear word. Y’all call Keris “piece of shit human being” Veturia the Bitch of Blackcliff but y’all won’t let Laia of Serra say the word fuck? Okay. But we ain’t talking about that.

Fourth book is coming and boy fucking howdy I was not prepared for how much I want it. I want it so much I can’t put it into words. What I can put into words, somewhat, is how much I feel for THAT scene. You know. THAT scene. Spoilers for the three things that destroyed me the most emotionally below

What we are talking about, is Helene Aquilla. She deserved none of the shit that happened to her. My beautiful, beautiful daughter deserved none of the pain, none of the suffering, none of the tears and the worry and the strife she was given. My daughter deserves to be HAPPY goddammit. And what? First you subject her to emotional trauma by having Marcus torture her sister over and over. You poison Livvy and subject Helene to a terror so visceral and vicious that she blames herself for putting Livvy in danger even though it wasn’t her fault? You tease the Harper thing but then you take it away from her. Just like you take everything away from her.

How fucking dareth????? Helene deserves more than that??? Like the Harper/Helene ship has set sail and docked in the empty harbour of my heart. Their interactions are so goddamn GOOD and then you take everything away just like that. They kiss near the end of the book and all of a sudden, it’s gone. It’s nothing.

That moment in Navium? Where Helene was almost killed but saved at the last and final moment? The scene where Harper urges Helene to trust him, to let him carry some of her burdens, to allow Harper to see part of her. “Needing protection is not a weakness. Refusing to trust your allies is.” That quote ripped me the fuck apart. And I think it was this moment that the Helene/Harper ship truly and irrevocably burrowed within me. I will not let this go. I will, and I do not say this lightly, go down with this fucking ship. Even if it burns and drops into the bottom of the ocean as nothing but wasted wood, I will go down with this fucking ship because BRUH.

And Laia of Serra? First you have her captured. Then you have her see her people beaten over and over again. Then, and fucking THEN you have her discover her mother’s identity and the violence her mother has committed right before her meeting with Cook? You fucking do that shit?????? HELLO?????

That reveal destroyed me. Cook has been with us since the first book. She was something familiar. Amidst all the chaos and suffering, cook was the one single constant in the book. No matter how much the scene changed, or how the plot shifted, Cook was always there. Always present. And we learn that she is Laia’s mother. And THEN she fucking dies. And Laia has to live the rest of her life knowing that her mother had been so close to her, and she never noticed. Knowing that her mother died to protect her. Like nani the fucko was up with that??????

But you know what really hurts about Cook? What really hammers the rusty nail of pain inside my long-dead heart?

It’s the stutter.

For some goddamn fucking reason, when Cook said “You’re just like your f-f-f-fath-” I FELT that. Some part of me recoiled. I wanted to put the book down. Because while I knew that she killed her daughter and husband, I never had to actually KNOW that she killed her daughter and husband. That scene was impersonal. That scene was much like how Mirra of Serra snapped the necks of the people she loved. Quick. Painless. I did not know that she killed her daughter and husband because when that scene happened, Mirra of Serra was just putting them to sleep. But then she stuttered. “L-L-L-L-Lis.” “F-fath-fath” And she can’t say it. Because their deaths haunt them.

Because she killed them.

That was the moment it sank in for me. She is not Mirra of Serra. She is Cook. Because Mirra of Serra died with Lis. Because Mirra of Serra died with her husband. Because Mirra of Serra died long ago and this was the moment I realised it. “Curse this world for what it does to the mothers, for what it does to the daughters,” Helene said. I fucking agree. Out of everyone in the cast, the world took the most from Cook. I will never get over that.

But you know the one thing that really destroyed me? The one thing that made me realise that this book IS merciless and this book WILL shoot for a killing blow?

LVIII

The penultimate chapter.

The bitch of a chapter that took what’s left of my heart, raw and bleeding from the miraculous escape and alliance in the previous chapter, and just shattered it. It squeezed my raw, vulnerable, bleeding heart until it was nothing but dust.

Look at the chapter title.

LVIII: The Soul Catcher

Not Elias. The Soul Catcher.

He’s not Elias anymore.

Elias is gone.

He’s just the Soul Catcher now.

[nealdanderson]

I actually really liked Samus Returns. What were your issues with it? Also, there's always AM2R to fall back on. It's on the Internet forever, whether Nintendo likes it or not

I’m glad you liked it!I have a lot of issues with it, so prepare for a lengthy answer, haha. And just a disclaimer to everyone- I played through the entire game and beat it 100%, so no one can say I didn’t give it a fair shot. Since it is a remake, it can’t be judged as entirely separate from the original, so here goes. Spoilers ahead.1. It largely misses the point of the original. Metroid 2 for the GB is far from a perfect or even great game, but it is an ambitious sequel as far as tone goes. M2 is easily the most ‘horror’ feeling entry in the franchise, and it directly correlates to how to the game treats your objective and how the map is laid out. Metroid 2 doesn’t feel like a heroic quest- you’re playing a character committing mass genocide of a species incapable of intergalactic travel and as she travels increasingly downward through the planet, the more desolate, lifeless and lonely it gets. Upon killing the Queen and finding the Baby Metroid, it is a somber moment and retroactively, the most unique ending in the franchise(no thrilling escape sequence, no enemies…etc.). Samus Returns abandons most of these unique aspects and paints your quest in a generically heroic light, the darker atmosphere is completely done away with, and the ending is totally botched. These tonal problems may only be a problem to a few people, and may come across as nitpicks to many, but I think it’s worth mentioning. 2. The map and item placement doesn’t make for an enjoyable experience. The original Metroid/Zero Mission, Super Metroid and Metroid Fusion have maps that are designed in a clustered fashion, meaning that traversing from one major area to another and backtracking to get previously unobtainable items feels organic and convenient. Metroid 2 on the other hand has a directly linear path descending through SR388. Due to this linearity, the designers didn’t implement the backtracking for items that the series would go on to be known for. I know this is a criticism Metroid 2 often receives, but this approach makes sense given the game’s map design. Samus Returns instead tries to encourage more backtracking, but due to the map not being designed for it, it always feels tedious to go back and find these items(usually normal missile packs that are extremely useless so late in the game). The teleporters only further illustrate the lack of organic interconnectivity the map has and feel like a lazy solution(this is something AM2R handles much much better). Basically, Samus Returns tries to make the original Metroid 2′s map do something it was not designed to accommodate.

3. The enemies and bosses are extremely repetitive, boring and/or tedious to fight. This is definitely a valid complaint and massive oversight on Nintendo’s part–Samus Returns’ enemy variety straight up sucks, which is made more pathetic due to the fact that its 25 year old gameboy predecessor and even the NES original have way more. The parry mechanic is cool to start out with, but after a while, it really becomes the only way to dispatch of enemies, and it is used the exact same way every single time- wait for tell, parry, kill enemy in one hit.  The Metroids, well, let me say that they’ve always been the weakest aspect of Metroid 2- they’re boring, silly looking and really only serve to be an irritation. Samus Returns gives them a much needed visual facelift, but doubles down on how much of a chore they are to fight. Meeting a new Metroid form for the first time was pretty neat, but after fighting your 20th gamma, each fight taking longer than it should, it isn’t any fun. Each encounter is basically a tedious game of waiting for the Metroid to be parried, but if you miss that parry window, it makes the fight drag on way too long. And then to ‘mix up’ the experience a bit, the designers decided to have Gammas run away like cowards mid fight, only for you to play a very irritating game of hide and seek with the damn thing. The few bosses Samus Returns has aren’t that memorable or enjoyable, the robot in particular spends most of the time in a state that can’t be hit(like the Metroids), reducing the fight to being 90% running away and dodging. Ultimately, these boss fights and Metroid encounters don’t feel challenging and feel more like a test of patience.    4. The graphics are rather subpar or inconsistent and the overall aesthetic feels rather uninspired. Some rooms look really cool, while others are just ugly. Samus’ Redesign looks too edgy, haha. I love Super Metroid, it’s my favorite game ever made, but lately, most Metroid games just try to recycle moments, areas and music from it, and it really annoys me. Metroid 2 has a very unique soundtrack, but inevitably, they replace its tunes with more upbeat or heroic remixes, and and its worst, replace tunes with Super Metroid themes. 

5. Ridley. Why. 

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So yeah, I’m not saying I don’t like Samus Returns just to be a contrarian, I genuinely found the entire game to be a rather tedious and unenjoyable experience. I will commend the few things it does well- actually implementing different abilities in boss fights(like the spider ball), implemtning new uses for old abilities(spider ball+power bomb), the DS being a perfect fit for Metroid with its map and inventory screens, and the overall engine having a very solid and fluid feel.AM2R handled everything better, and the few things it misses the point of regarding the original Metroid 2, it still handles much better than Samus Returns. Just because AM2R exists and will continue to do so doesn’t make Samus Returns exempt from critique. Even if I thought that Samus Returns’ announcement was badly timed after Nintendo’s DMCA on AM2R(which was completely unnecessary, learn the difference between trademark and copyright), I was still excited that Nintendo, after 13 years, was finally making another 2D Metroid game.  I’m more just disappointed that the company who created this genre, a genre that may be more popular than ever, generally refuse to capitalize on it, and when they do, it’s a sub standard effort. I may be harsh to Nintendo, but they’ve objectively treated this franchise like crap over the past decade, and I have a very hard time trusting them anymore. To those telling me to ‘lol, calm down dude’, like, I’m perfectly calm, I was never planning on ever buying a switch anyway, but Nintendo should seize on the opportunity to mend fences with the gaming community outside of their devoted fanbase(I’m a Metroid fan, but I’ve never been what you’d call a Nintendo fan). Since I’ve never been a Nintendo fan, E3 is really the only gaming event I’m fully aware of, and I felt it was a wasted opportunity for them to even merely mention that Prime 4(which isn’t even it’s final title, lol) was still being worked on.   I highly recommend watching The Gamer’s Toolkit and Gamingbrit’s videos on Samus Returns, they illustrate the gripes I had with the game in ways more eloquent than I could.