#so literally every aspect of it feels like its still brand new in terms of how people react to and talk about it so fucking much

[thisgodwontforgiveyou]

its genuinely hard to believe the same people wrote ff7 and ffx within 4 years of each other

[cto10121]

Twilight Clown Takes—Part 5

Featuring not only fan dumb but anti fan dumb, which is arguably worse, Team Jacob dumb, and just another whole set of clownery. Without further ado, let’s get to it.

Anti Fan Dumb

“I own all the Twilight books and movies and have made custom T-shirts but also Twilight is garbage and it’s not hypocritical or bullying to say so!!1!!1 😡”

(Also, Twilight’s themes and even plot are anything but simple. There are so many interpretive lens you could apply, even critical lit crit ones, it’s dizzying. Like R&J, it only seems to be that way because people assume romance = dumb. Because they think romance = women, and women are inferior. It’s Sexism 101.)

This is going to sound truly crazy, but hear me out…if you don’t like something, just don’t engage with it? Ignore it???? Go be a fan of literally anything else????Out there, I know.

“I got what I wanted and I still hated it!!1!!11 😡”

Meyer Is Racist Round ♾️

…You know, I honestly can’t tell what this comment is supposed to aver. “Meyer’s portrayal is racist but also her series was ahead of its time in its portrayal of NA characters”????? Idek.

Anyway, it’s canon that Forks is neutral territory for both Cullens and the werewolves, so them looking after Charlie should be fine (I know Jacob says differently in New Moon but I have a feeling it is because of Alice’s presence—there is definitely a “we won’t be anywhere near you” component to the treaty). In Midnight Sun Edward says specifically it’s a five mile radius from the Cullens’ house.

There are so much wrong with this one sentence, it’s breathtaking. As in, I can’t breathe from choking with laughter.

1) “Despite its”—Because of, you idiot. It was Meyer’s success in tapping into ancient and nigh universal tropes and modernizing them without diluting their power.

2) Just because Twilight doesn’t have sex doesn’t mean it is chaste. There is nothing chaste about the erotic and sexual tension Meyer builds. It is literally off the charts.

3) “Forbidden love” and “steep imbalance of power” are not opposites. On the contrary, they are complementary. Literally every forbidden love romance has that aspect. Even Romeo and Juliet with its beautiful relationship of equals has Romeo’s privilege raised as male vs. Juliet’s raised as female. And yes, it does affect their tragedy.

4) “Damsel—” She is a human amid vampires and werwolves, idiot. Of course she is not going to girlboss her way out of danger. That would have been a one-way ticket to literal death. And she would have deserved it, for being too stupid to live. But Bella is not an idiot; she has more wit in her elbow than any of her antis combined.

Team Jacob Dumb

Ugh, kill this fanon with fire.

Meyer makes it clear that Bella is not attracted to all vampires the same way she is attracted to Edward. She isn’t taken in by James, she isn’t fooled by Laurent, and the vampires in Breaking Dawn are referred to in fairly basic terms. Even the way she describes the Cullens’ beauty differs—Carlisle’s and even Rosalie’s beauty (!!) she likens to Hollywood and Sports Magazine respectively. Very clichéd and emotionally empty descriptions. Most tellingly of all, she doesn’t describe other vampiric scents at all.

Meanwhile every little thing Edward does makes this girl cream. His voice, his scent, his crooked smile, his windswept bronze hair…because she’s in love with him, duh.

You may have had a point some years ago, Clown OP. Unfortunately for you, we now have Midnight Sun. There Edward does correctly guess Bella’s thoughts and feelings around 80-90% of the time. The only time when he’s consistently off is her attraction to him. He, like Bella, just sells himself short, as he relies on his mind reading too much.

Even if it were true that Jacob just naturally gets Bella better…in actual practice it’s mostly due to the fact that they are much closer in age. So their brand of humor (the running joke about ages, banter, the Simpsons allusion in Breaking Dawn) and style of communication are not that different (hence why Bella thinks he is so easy to talk to). Bella can truly be a regular 17-year-old with Jacob, and that is understandably attractive for a parentified teen.

Aside from that, though, Bella/Jacob don’t have much in common. Bella’s tomboyishness begins and ends with her truck and stretches to its limit to motorcycles. Otherwise she is a parentified class-conscious bookish Austenite and Jacob is your basic mechanic native boy who by all accounts is perfectly fine at the rez. He takes care of his father, but his situation is far from being as parentified as Bella.

Overall Edward is much closer to Bella in personality and likes than Jacob—he just has the disadvantage of being born in a different time and living a hundred years. Also, Jacob’s understanding of Bella doesn’t translate very well into respect for her—see forced kiss and manipulative second kiss.

Edward Hate Dumb

…I’ll give it to this one, this clownery almost sounds like a legit criticism. Almost.

First of all, it is clear beyond the shadow of a doubt that Edward would have never given up on Bella. Even when he left her he always planned to return and see how she was doing. In Midnight Sun he confesses that had he seen New Moon!Bella in her screaming nightmares he would have woken her up and stayed with her. And in Eclipse he tells Jacob explicitly that even if Bella did choose him he would always “be waiting in the wings,” seeing if she was okay and happy and watching out if Jacob imprinted on someone else.

So no, Edward would always be there for Bella, if just in his stalkerish way. That’s the problem with Edward, or what he feels is a problem: He wants to be this noble hero, but he is a simp at heart. He and Romeo could go neck to neck just on love clownery alone.

For fuck’s sake—

1) Edward telling Bella he cannot live without her is not and never was manipulative. For such a thing to be manipulative he would have said it in order to convince Bella to stay with him. He never does; he says it only as a simple statement of fact. Actually, Edward preferred Bella living her life as human—with or without him—so long as she is happy. That was literally his original plan except for Bella’s horror of growing older.

2) Edward actually does accept—deep down, but he does—Bella’s desire to be a vampire, even if he disagreed with it. He even accepted his family’s vote to turn Bella into a vampire quite fast. That’s because deep down, despite himself…Edward actually does want Bella to be with him forever. He just thinks it’s selfish of him to pursue that especially when he believes that humanity would be so much better for Bella. How do we know this? He admits this explicitly in Eclipse when Bella says she is afraid Edward doesn’t want her to become a vampire because he doesn’t want her to stick around for a millennia.

3) “Coercion” For fuck’s sake, it was just a proposal. Bella was free to reject it or negotiate (which she did! And Edward accepted her rejection!). Y’know, what actual irl couples do.

4) Ugh, I’m sick of these clowns whining about Edward dismantling her truck. Yes, it was shitty!!! Bella was annoyed and angry!!! He apologized for it!!! He said he was wrong to stop her and would not impede her from going to La Push from then on!!!! It’s called character development!!!!

Clown OP knows Twilight is horribly written because they’ve never read it. Works for me! Into the clownery bin you go.

[buttercupsfrocks]

Yo, tumblr.

Some thoughts I’ve been having of late to accompany yet another variation of this Monki frock, from last year’s summer sale, if memory serves me correctly. What can I say? When something works, why fix the dang thing?

I miss Fatshionista. For those who weren’t acquainted it was a livejournal community that, at its zenith, boasted about ten thousand members worldwide, mainly cis women and trans folk; all fat, most political about fat, and all of the mind that fat people should be better served for clothing options. While the community had its fair share of drama around hot button perennials such as cultural appropriation, it also provided plenty of food for thought. I did at least as much shutting up and listening as I did rolling my eyes, which is saying something at my age. Not that I was my age back then but I was still at least 20 years older than everybody else on there. Or why I lurked for a year before sharing my first OOTD. But it’s that aspect of Fatshionista I miss the most, the honest feedback, the helpful advice, the pooling of resources like whether anyone had tried their luck with such and such a brand, and if so what its merits or shortcomings were.

As the internet morphed and the fatosphere grew, the community went in one of two directions. The most politicised became the next wave of activists, penning blogs that spawned newspaper articles and book deals; while the style mavens started blogging and collaborating with the fashion industry, firstly as as models, then as designers, and consultants. At the time many criticised this commercialisation whereas I felt more positively inclined. By my reckoning the more our community made inroads into the mainstream, the more clothing options we’d have. The more clothing options we have the better we feel, the better we feel the more confident we become in our right to take up space and advocate for ourselves in other areas, eventually resulting in a societal shift in the way fat people are perceived and treated. Idealistic? Sure. And probably not in my lifetime but, to quote the zeitgeist, every ending has a beginning. 

These days, however, I’m beginning to think those who lamented the commercialisation of fatshion had a point. Bloggers became vloggers, influencers, and content creators, shilling for anyone who asked, and all the while claiming to give honest reviews. (Ever read a bad one? Me neither. Or why I turned down Bon Marché and J D Williams). And amidst all the shiny!shiny!new! and lucrative brand collabs, genuine honesty slowly bit the dust, along with the ingenious hacks, instant feedback on quality and fit, and most of all the celebration of true, diverse personal style. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still 100% less pernicious to fill my feed with than mainstream ladymags and sometimes I even get to see women with my body shape. But, just like the mainstream ladymags, it’s exclusively youth oriented. And a depressingly unimaginative, cookie-cutter interpretation of youth at that. And, while I’m aware of how predictably get-off-my-lawn that sounds, I have had a gutful of balayage, beachy waves, drag queen contouring, porn-mandated bald poonani, fake tan; and nail, hair and eyelash extensions. Femininity has never been so prescriptive, performative or oppressive in my lifetime and I was born in the sodding 50s. 

As static images on Insta are superceded by reels, and the next even fresher means of flogging fashion waits in the wings to replace them, has the plus size retail landscape changed all that much since Fatshionista? For the better in terms of online resources, though larger and infinifats are still often short-changed. On the other hand there are literally no dedicated plus-size bricks and mortar chains left in my city. Evans, Elvi, Simply Be, Taking Shape, and Anne Harvey are either online or defunct, and we never had a Yours to begin with. All the big stores with plus-size departments bit the dust on the high street aeons ago, and any mainstream chain that wants our custom still won’t stock the clothes in store or show them on plus sized bodies on their websites – even those that target an older demographic. Which is why Seasalt, Boden, and White Stuff can continue to whistle for my hard-earned dosh. Though there’s always the stand alone Marina Rinaldi boutique where a plain neoprene sweatshirt will set you back £290. 

Or perhaps not.

…which circuitously leads me to the other thing that’s been chomping at my gusset of late. Ethical shopping bores. Don’t get me wrong. I habitually recycle, have shopped secondhand since I was 15, and have jetisoned ocean polluting sponges and clingfilm for life. I draw the line at Ecover washing up liquid mind; it’s rubbish. (See? Honest to a fault). No, I’m talking sustainable clothing labels. Well, the few that deign to make plus sizes in any event. I’m talking clothes you have to take out a mortgage on. You can start guilt-tripping me about buying my clothes from places I can afford when fat women enjoy the same plethora of choice that straight-sized women have. And I swear if I have to read one more sentence with the word “intentional” in it, I’ll boak. If most of the vloggers spouting this holier than thou hooey really only bought two items a year when their predecessors were hanging in ribbons, they’d have mighty short careers. But maybe a wardrobe full of five hundred quid Selkie backhanders doesn’t count. 

It’s intentional alright; on the part of the brands who’d go tits up in short order if their customers didn’t buy owt from one end of the year to the next. What it isn’t is honest. 

Here endeth the rant.

[dmsden]

A History Lesson - Looking back at D&D’s history

Hullo, Gentle Readers. Well, this is the 5th Monday in March, and that means I get to write about anything I want! It’s also my birth month, which means it’s my anniversary of getting into D&D (42 years!), and that has me feeling nostalgic. Coupled with a discussion I had recently with some friends, I thought it would be fun to look back at the various editions of D&D and give you all a bit of history. I’m not going to get into Gygax vs Arneson or any of that. I’m only talking about the published game itself, not its creators or its storied origins.

The original D&D (or OD&D as it’s sometimes called) came in a small box. It had three booklets inside - Men & Magic, Monsters & Treasure, and The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures - along with reference sheets and dice. Each was softcover and roughly the same dimensions as a DVD/BluRay case. The game was pretty rudimentary - for one thing, it assumed you already had a copy of Chainmail, D&D’s direct wargame predecessor. It also recommended you have a game called Outdoor Survival for purposes of traveling through the wilderness. It had only three classes - fighting man, magic-user, and cleric - and nothing about playing other races. It did have the insane charts that 1st edition would ultimately known for, and it was possible to play a pretty fun game of D&D with it, as its popularity would come to show.

The game expanded through similar chapbooks - Greyhawk, Blackmoor, Eldritch Wizardry, Gods Demigods & Heroes, Swords & Spells. With the exception of the last one, each brought new facets to the game - new classes like Thief and Monk, new spells, new threats. It was clear the game was going to need an overhaul, and it got one.

I consider this overhaul to yield the real “1st Edition”, as so much of the game didn’t exist in those original games. The game split into a “Basic” game, just called Dungeons & Dragons and Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.

The basic game was a boxed set that included a rulebook, a full adventure module, and dice...or, well, it was supposed to contain dice. The game was so popular and new in those days that demand for dice outstripped production. My copy of D&D came with a coupon for dice when they became available and a sheet of “chits” - laminated numbers meant to be put into cups (we used Dixie Cups with the name of the die written on it), shaken, and a random number pulled out without looking. It was meant to introduce new players to the game, so it was a trimmed down version. Races were human, elf, dwarf, and halfling, and classes were fighter, cleric, magic-user, and thief. The box only included rules for going up to 3rd level, with the intention that players would then graduate into AD&D. This is where I joined, with the old blue cover box set and In Search of the Unknown, before Keep on the Borderlands even existed.

AD&D was the game in its full glory. Along with the races I mention above, we got half-elves, half-orcs, and gnomes. The four basic classes also had sub-classes, like paladin and ranger for the fighter, druid for the cleric, illusionist for the wizard, and assassin for the thief. There were rules for multi-classing, as well as “Dual-classing”, a sort of multi-class variation for humans only, which, when done in the correct combination, could yield the infamous bard...which didn’t actually yield any bard abilities until around level 13 or so.

This edition had 5 different saving throws for things like “Death Magic”, “Petrification & Polymorph”, “Spells”, and so on. It had the infamous Armor Class system that started at 10 and went down, so that having a -3 AC was very good!  It also had specific attack matricies for each class; you would literally look on a table to determine the number you needed to roll on a D20 based on your class, your level, and your opponent’s armor class. It was fun, but it was very complicated.

It also had some, frankly, shitty rules. There was gender disparity in terms of attributes, which my group totally ignored. Because the game designers wanted humans to be a competitive the game, and because non-humans had so many abilities and could multiclass, non-humans were severely limited in the levels they could achieve in most classes. In fact, some classes, such as monk and paladin, were restricted only to humans.

As the years went on, things got a bit muddled. It probably didn’t help that the rules in Basic D&D and AD&D didn’t perfectly line up. In D&D, the worst armor class was a 9. In AD&D, the worst armor class was a 10. All of this led to an overhaul, but not one considered a separate edition. AD&D mostly got new covers and new books, like the Wilderness Survival Guide and Dungeon Survival Guide, Monster Manual 2, and the Manual of the Planes. It got a number of new settings, too. In addition to the default Greyhawk setting, we got the Forgotten Realms setting for the first time, details of which had been appearing in Dragon Magazine for years, thanks to the prolific Ed Greenwood. We also, eventually, got the whole Dragonlance saga, which yielded the setting of Krynn.

In this new version, Basic D&D broke off into its own game system to some degree. Elf, Dwarf, and Halfling started being treated like classes rather than races, with specific abilities at different levels. Higher level characters could be created using progressive boxes - Expert, Companion, Master, and Immortal, each with its own boxed set and supported by Mystara, a completely different setting that got its own updates over the years. It was odd, because D&D essentially was competing for players with AD&D, and I remember arguments with friends over which version was better (I was firmly in the AD&D camp.)

In 1989, when I was in college, they finally brought forth 2nd edition D&D. This streamlined things a little. Armor Class still went down, but now attack rolls boiled into a single number called To Hit Armor Class 0, or THAC0. It made the whole process of figuring out what you needed to roll a bit less cumbersome, but it was still a bit awkward. The classes got a lot of overhaul, including making Bard its own core class. But what I remember best about 2nd edition was the boom in settings. This was the age of settings, and many beloved ones got started, including Dark Sun, Planescape, Ravenloft, and Spelljammer.

It was also the age of the “Complete Handbooks”. They brought out splatbooks about every class and race in the game, as well as books expanding several concepts for the DM, such as the Arms & Equipment Guide, the Castle Guide, and the Complete Book of Villains. There were also splatbooks about running D&D in historic periods, such as Ancient Rome, among the ancient Celts, or during the time of the Musketeers. The game got new covers for the rule books again, and a bunch of books about options started coming out. It was a boom time for books, but many people complained there was too much.

Without going too deep, TSR ended up in severe financial troubles. They declared bankruptcy, and there was real fear of the game going away. And then Wizards of the Coast (WotC) stepped in. They helped TSR get back onto its feet, and they helped produce some modules specifically engineered to help DM’s bring an end to their campaign...possibly even their whole campaign world...because something big was coming.

That something big was, of course, 3rd edition D&D. The game got majorly streamlined, and many sacred cows ended up as hamburger. AC finally started going up instead of down. Everything was refined to the “D20″ system we’ve been playing ever since. Races could be any class. There were no level or stat limits for anyone. After years of the game being forced into tight little boxes, it really felt like we could breathe. I had stopped playing D&D, but 3rd edition brought me back into the fold. I often say that 3E was made for the players who’d felt constricted and wanted more flexibility.

The trouble with 3E, and its successor 3.5, is that it was still a dense and difficult game for newcomers to get into. It’s been acknowledged that D&D essentially created many of the systems we see and know in other games - experience points, leveling up, hit points, etc. But trying to break into the experience for the first time was difficult. The look of 3E was gorgeous, but I understood that it must seem awfully daunting to someone who’d never played.

4E and its follow-up, Essentials, was an attempt to course correct that. They tried to make this edition incredibly friendly to new DMs, and, frankly, they succeeded. By creating player classes and monsters and magic-items that were all very plug and play, they did a great job of creating a game that someone who had never DMed before could dive into with no experience or mentor and start a game pretty easily. Encounter design was given a lot of ease, and there were promises of a robust online tool system that would help out with many of the more tedious aspects of playing.

There was also a lot of shake up in terms of choices. Suddenly, new classes and races were proliferating like crazy. We got the dragonborn, the tiefling, and the eladrin right in the core book, but we said good-bye to the gnome and half-orc at first. Suddenly the warlock was the new class everyone wanted to try. We got paragon paths and epic destinies that would really shape a character as time went on. The game went very tactical, as well, which some of us loved. The concept of rituals came into the game. Later books like the Player’s Handbook 2 and 3 gave us back gnomes and half-orcs, and also gave us minotaurs, wilden, shardminds, and githzerai. We got new psionic classes, brand new class concepts like the Runeknight and the Seeker...

But there was a tremendous backlash. People felt that, in making the game so very plug and play, they’d taken a ton of choice away from the players. Without the tools (which were never that robust, frankly), it was almost impossible to navigate the massive panoply of options. And, worse, it was harder and harder to develop encounters without those tools. People complained that the game had gone more tactical in order to sell miniatures and battlemats. Given that I have never played the game without miniatures and battlemats (since I started in the days when D&D was still half-wargame), I found this odd, but I also understand my style of play isn’t everyone’s.

The one argument I will never understand is that it didn’t “feel” like D&D, or it was somehow ONLY a tactical game and not a role-playing game any more. Again, given that the original game didn’t even call itself a role-playing game, this felt odd. Personally, I roleplay no matter what game I’m playing. If I’m playing Monopoly, I’m roleplaying, doing voices, and pretending to be something I’m not. I honestly enjoyed 4E, and I know a lot of folks who did, too. A lot of it may simply come down to style of play. But I also enjoyed all the games that came before, including Pathfinder. To paraphrase the YouTube content creator The Dungeon Bastard, “Does your game have dungeons? Does it have dragons? Great. I wanna play.”

As a sidenote, in the months leading up to 4E’s release, a lot of internet videos were released by WotC emphasizing the nature of change and talking about differences in the rules. They also released some preview books showing the direction they were heading. WotC must have anticipated that people were going to find this edition very different indeed. They also cleverly brought in some very funny folks - Scott Kurtz from PVPOnline and Jerry Holkins & Mike Krahulik from Penny Arcade - and got them to play D&D for podcasting purposes. Looking back, this must’ve brought in a lot of listeners who might never have played D&D and given them a reason to try it out.

After its release, WotC clearly noted that missteps had been made, as this edition of the game was losing them players. They began work on what they referred to as D&D Next, and, this time, they did massive amounts of playtesting, some of which I participated in.

I don’t feel like I have to describe 5E to any of you, Dear Readers, as you could go to virtually any store and pick it up. I am a big fan of 5E’s simplicity and elegance, and I suspect this is the edition of D&D we’re going to have for some time to come, especially given its popularity. Given the effect of podcasts like Critical Role (and I might save an article on Critical Role’s importance to D&D until my next Freestyle article), D&D is likely more popular now than it’s ever been, with a much wider and more diverse audience than ever before.

I know I’m painting with broad strokes here, but I hope this was, at least, entertaining, and maybe you learned something, Gentle Readers. Until we next meet, may all your 20s be natural.

[mg549]

rainbow high but they each have distinct and varying styles

hi im putting my Disscusion under the post cause ik lots of ppl just wanna rb the art but also i have Thoughts

-ruby’s style is the strongest in the series imo. they designed a butch lesbian and nobody told them ig. my only slight change was giving her cowboy boots cause if shes from “the country” then she should... actually... look like shes from the country. maybe its just cause i grew up in nc but i would love some southern rep from a character where being from the south isnt their whole Personality. anyways i think she should wear western style button downs is all im trying to say

-bella... her style is ALL over the place. since she is a set designer i wanted to make her a theatre kid!!! her style is somewhere in the 40s/50s zone of vintage inspired so that way she has a definite Range of styles and silhouettes to choose from! im a sucker for the new look bc its so Shapes but i could also see her pulling off some long wool circle skirts and peasant top blouses! i also gave her some hearing aids and braces which you can probably only see if you zoom in dhjnf

-poppy got the biggest design overhaul of anyone. i kept the butterfly theme and nothing else fbhdjd. since her music has some definite funk energies i wanted to give her a 70s inspired look with some glam platforms and denim overalls! i think we deserve bellbottom pantsuit poppy. i also changed her hair bc literally the rh main cast all have practically IDENTICAL hair styles save for the direction theyre parted in. i wanted to give her those anime butterfly headphones but toned down slightly hdsjdnd oh and! shes also wearing glasses bc once again we get a whole cast of characters and not one of them is wearing glasses like smh literally like half of all ppl wear glasses?? anyways in terms of personality i wanted to keep her bubbly but instead of just making music thru like Divine Inspiration i think she should take a more realistic and nuanced approach!! show her nerding out abt music theory and talking about the themes her pieces represent and the stories they tell

-sunny’s design is Mostly the same! her hair is slightly changed, i wanted it to match the cover she drew for winnerz! i also made the rainbows on her outfit pride flag colors, and gave her some button pins on her jacket! every Token Anime Kid ive ever met has buttons plastered all over their bags and jackets and its a nice touch that gives her some more Character i feel

-jaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaade. jade. i wish she had kept her dark lipstick. and also that she wasnt just billie eilish. and that she was the token goth of the group. her stitched up shirt is inspired by a shirt i wore in high school! it was from the 90s and SUPER beat up to the point where it was literally disintegrating so i just sewed up any new holes that would form with contrasting thread it was a Look. i hc her as wearing contacts bc when she tried wearing glasses she got upset that she couldnt show off her makeup as much gvhbnf! i also gave her a spider necklace bc i think she should still like spiders BUT i HATE the jokes abt “therapy tarantulas” bc only dogs and like 10 horses can actually be service animals and the whole thing w people lying about their untrained dogs/cats (or worse, exotic animals that they should not even own) being service/therapy/emotional support animals just so they can bring them in public is!! Really Bad!! and it hurts people who actually do need service dogs bc untrained dogs are well. untrained and set a bad example for how service animals will actually act! and owners who print out fake certifications also make it harder for disabled ppl bc it leads to store owners thinking that theres some sort of paper they can ask the owner to flash to prove the service dog is trained when that. is not actually true and theres no such thing as an actual certificate for this. if a service dog company offers a certificate/card/whatever to show authority it is specifically for disabled people to do when faced with this issue and has no actual official meaning. and ANOTHER thing that bothers me abt this joke is that.. Therapy For What? it would be really cool to see a canonically mentally ill character as a protagonist for a doll line! it would be fantastic to see them opening up that conversation for neurodivergent kids and their parents! but we have no indication for that at All just haha funy therapy spider :| anyways jade is an nd lesbian my canon now

-skyler is punk now! shes a fashion major and i think it would be a really interesting character to explore, someone who is shy but dresses really flashy and tough! i also changed her theme material from denim to the blue leather she wears at the party bc im biased towards alt fashion. her hair was really fun to design, with a big Cloud of Fluff at the top and long braids underneath bc get it!! its Rain Cloud Shaped :] i dont have much else to say bc this design is def in my Comfort Zone of styles. anyways we stan andershaw here they literally are in love

-vi vi! i didnt change much bc i dooooooont really know that much about influencer/mainstream fashion tbqh... i Did give her That One Halter Top Style that literally 2 other of the main characters are both wearing instead of a loose 1 piece dress tho. i also decided she should be into holographic fabric bc its very Sleek and Future Is Now and Influencercore. i also think the sleek tight fitting holo shirt/skirt is a good contrast to Big Fluffy Fur Jacket. she also has a prosthetic leg idk i just thought it would be a good Touch 

overall rh def has some MAJOR problems with diversity in all aspects and it shows in their fashion design as well! if you put the characters in black and white save for a few patterned pieces they would all be interchangeable and i honestly think that its representative of the larger problem! maybe i do follow the monster high design philosophy that every piece should only make sense on the character its from, but the fact that they cant even diversify FASHION despite it being a Fashion Doll Brand really Says It All.

[activelytaemin]

growing pains [lee taemin]

◇ lee taemin x fem! reader

angst-ish? | college!au | non-idol!au

warnings: mature language, unedited

2.0k April 8th, 2021

everything written in this story is completely FICTION. i personally do not believe that this story aligns with any of the idol’s real lives. ultimately, this story is not meant to intentionally defame any idol in any way.   

chapter one [congratulations, but not really]

Dear {Y/N},

Congratulations! I am pleased to offer you admission to the University of California, Riverside for fall 2021.

the golden word congratulations lit up y/n’s eyes as she screamed falling into her brother’s arms.  tears emerged from her eyes realizing that she would finally leave the colorful city of busan for the sunny shores of california; this was a cultural reset that guaranteed her an infinite amount of memories to come.  

“i did it! jimin, i studied so hard”, she sobbed, grasping onto his slim frame.  “it feels worth it like—“, she paused to wipe her tears with her sleeves, “all my late nights, immense sacrifices, and good grades have made this worth it.”  

jimin rolled his eyes playfully and lightly pushing her off of him. “yeah, of course you made it in”, he scoffed jokingly, “we’re a family geniuses. you weren’t raised to be a dumbass.” he ruffled her hair before y/n grabbed his wrist.  

“i guess that’s why both of my brothers are stuck here—“, y/n held his hand lovingly before sarcastically stabbing his back, “especially the one named park jimin, he didn’t get accepted into any ivy’s or safety’s. now he’s stuck going to an online university.” she released his hand before smiling to truly appreciate him, “but all jokes aside, i couldn’t have done this without you.”

her mind wandered to the thought of sunny california. the excitement built up in her like air filling a balloon. there were nerves trapped within because this sense of curiosity and control was foreign.

would there be snow? 

what types of people would there be? 

how perfect does my english have to sound?

there were several wonders because south korea was engrained to her memory.  for the past eighteen years, korea was her home. there would be no more hanboks on seoullal, honorifics for friends, and (most importantly) her beloved family.  without her family, she wanted to venture on the outside on her own. yet, there would always be a yearn for the feeling of home. the universe finally served her freedom on a platter. she could finally leave the nest to fly.

was she ready for it?

“y/n, don’t forget that you won’t be alone. taemin goes to riverside too”, jimin’s loud mouth interrupted y/n’s thoughts.  soon enough, all her freedom had crashed and burned. she was caged once again. 

her imagination was left to torment her. when she heard his name, a roaring fire lit up within her because of her discomfort; the fire will never go out.

scars can heal, but y/n’s are deep as ever.  like an evergreen, scars can everlasting.

“taemin—i thought he was in new york?”, she questioned with a sense of worry. “i haven’t seen him since he graduated, and i don’t really like him at all. are you guys still friends? ”, an awkward laugh slipped out. she was quite uncomfortable at the mention of taemin, and her confession proved it all.

there was something about taemin that irked her soul. whether it was the memory of his being or thought of him physically, taemin would forever be an uncomfortable and undesirable person to talk about.

she remembers the day taemin walked in and out of her life.  

it seemed so sudden.

he never wanted to cause pain, but he left her with the sharpness of his trauma.  whatever was rooted in his cruel being had isolated her from her well being.

it was one thing for taemin to make y/n happy in secrecy. however, y/n had to suffer in secrecy once taemin had walked out because nobody knew the depth of her adoration for him.

jimin groaned before taking a deep breath to keep his composure. “one, taemin has been my best friend since 2015. two, he had to transfer because he had a change of mind—”, he let out a brief laugh, “well, that’s what he says—and three, it’s him or mom watching you.” 

he was taken aback by her dislike for his friend.  in his mind, he believed that y/n would be quite fond of a familiar face.  however, he let it go believing it was just another “girl problem.”

little did he know, taemin was a disaster that filled y/n’’s life with hundreds problems. 

jay-z once said, “i got 99 problems, but a bitch ain’t one.” for y/n, taemin was the 99 problems and she was “the bitch.”

the seriousness in jimin’s tone was irritating to y/n, almost strangle-worthy. he doesn’t understand her dislike for him. in fact, he has a “bromance” with taemin.

to others, taemin is a cool and collected young man that seemed shy to the world while being confident to his friends.  jimin often saw his confident side, and that allowed jimin’s mind to feel as if taemin was heavenly.

to jimin, taemin had an aura about him that he couldn’t explain.  it drew him in. 

maybe it was because he was simply older than jimin.  or, he could’ve just been build with extra charm.

as much as y/n didn’t like jimin’s praise for taemin, she didn’t want her mom babysitting her because she is simply too grown to have her around. sometimes mother’s can be suffocating; they can control many aspects of your life.  it was a valid fear for y/n to have, and she was scared that jimin was going to follow in those footsteps.

jimin didn’t know any history between taemin and y/n.  he doesn't know she constructs taemin to be evil because he took advantage of her innocence. sadly in her heart, she believes the thought of him is bad for her health because he hurt her.

taemin is a monster. an emotionless, compassionless man who does not know how to love.

but, everyone is naive because they don’t understand his evil like y/n does.  

taemin does put up a front to the world, while y/n gets to see all of him at her own risk.

“i love mom, but you’re right”, she laughed in agreement. for jimin’s sake, y/n lied to him and herself, “i’ll take taemin any day.”

“yeah, but don’t forget to wear a mask. nobody wants covid in the states. you don’t have insurance”, jimin scoffed before y/n hit his back playfully.

jimin yelped in pain, “literally what the fuck? you’re a demon.”

 september 20th, 2021

the plane to california was unbearably long and did not comfort her senses.  although she did not mind wearing a mask, the uncertainty of her health on that flight kept her up the full thirteen hours. everyone was spaced out, but the enclosed space made her claustrophobic. normally, her senses are grounded. however, the pandemic blows everyone out of proportion and brings out a little bit of paranoia as well.

y/n was wearing a pink surgical mask to contrast with her plain wardrobe. before she left for california, she chose a long black coat, oversized uc riverside hoodie, and black jeans with her basic converse. she was trying to blend in with every other college freshman on move-in day.

a memory flew into her mind. while on the plane, the remembrance of what home felt like tugged at her.  the pain of missing someone never settled inside of her; the feeling was foreign because the past experiences weren’t genuine. or maybe, she is uncomfortable with missing someone or something because of insecurity within.

before y/n left, her mom hugged her tightly before sending her off with tears; love can be unconditional when it comes to your family.  on the other hand, y/n heard jimin laugh at his mom while giving a wave goodbye; hiding your worries with comedy makes you more worried at times. jimin was obviously good at hiding himself, but he made himself overly awkward this time.

when she knew she was saying goodbye, y/n didn’t feel anything because leaving was thought out to be normal. her mind didn't think her immigration would be sad. it was surprising to see her mother sad, but also the uncomfortable atmosphere jimin brought.

a ding from the intercom sounded off, “we will be beginning our decline to los angeles.  the fastened seat belt sign is now on for your personal safety. please remain seated during this time”, the voice was followed by another ding via the intercom.

as the plane began its descent, y/n gripped one of her armrests while closing her eyes. sadly, the feeling of traveling alone was brand new, not in a bad way. perhaps, the butterflies her stomach arose because she was going to be around a familiar face that makes her uncomfortable.

y/n wishes to hide away the memories of the two of them as if their world's never collided. in her mind, lee taemin was just another problematic teenage memory to get rid of

in summer 2018, the air was different. it was heavy, and the atmosphere was lethargic.  in the moment, y/n felt specifically upset as if the universe decided to rip out a significant amount of reality; the universe ripped something out, indeed.

lee taemin, long-term lover, graduated early behind her back.  suddenly, he is getting up to leave for new york. 

“i can’t believe you are leaving for college already”, her teeth bit her bottom lip before she felt his warmth encase her. tears were pouring down her face while creating a hurricane of bleeding makeup and anger.  “you can’t keep doing this to me. you told me no more fucking secrets!”, she gripped onto his waist before silently crying into him.

“i think you knew that this was bound to happen”, taemin brought a hand to her face, caressing her cheek to wipe away the tears. “the only difference between you and i is that we’ll be boarders apart.”

“i didn’t know this was your plan. you just dropped this huge ass bomb on me today!”, she aggressively pulled his hand down to suddenly push him away.  “taemin, this isn’t just about you. my love for you is real.”, she took a breath to let out a sarcastic laugh. 

“i love you”, her heart ached saying those words.  more tears came out of her eyes before she quietly croaked out with a general shakiness in her demeanor, “do you feel the same way at all?”

taemin shook his head, scoffing slightly. he grazed the back of her hand with his lips. no words were exchanged between them.

y/n was standing there confused, waiting for him to say something. even if the words were, "i don't love you."

however, his response never came, and his thoughts seemed distant. it was like taemin resisted y/n's desire and compassion for him.

the silence between the two filled the air. it finally hit her that his love was no longer apparent, and his place in their relationship became nonexistent.

just like that, taemin walked out the door breaking y/n’s heart as if it was glass. from her eyes, it truly didn’t feel as if he gave a damn to begin with. 

it was unreal, but most definitely her reality.

in her mind she is screaming because taemin makes her feel alive in the worst way possible. he is unbearable to think about because he is a reminder of everything that has gone wrong with love.

he is only a distant memory that she wishes to burn.

fuck love.

but most importantly— fuck you, lee taemin.

[kareofbears]

persona 5 strikers thoughts and feelings

This is going to be a long post. Like, the type of post you’d only really have time to read when you’re trying to sleep but you’re not ready to be unconscious yet so you’re just looking for something to do to spend your time with minimal effort. 

So in 2018, a masterpiece was born into the world: Into the Spider-verse was released and it was amazing—it’s honestly the best spiderman movie we have without a doubt, and it’ll be very far into the future before Spider-verse is beaten as the best spiderman movie. Them’s the facts. Then in 2019, Spider-man: Far From Home was dropped. It’s a great movie! Great characters, great continuation of who these characters are and works fantastic as a continuation of a story. It’s really hard trying to take the torch of a previous movie (or in Marvel’s case, juggling twenty something movies) and come up with a new movie that both works on its own, as well as being the next step in this series of films. Thus, with that idea in mind, I think it’s kind of unfair to judge into the spiderverse and far from home, because these are two movies with two completely different objectives in mind. 

Okay, so this is still a persona 5 strikers post, I promise, but the idea is the same: Persona 5 could basically do whatever it wanted—new story, new characters, new everything, and it’s just plain old awesome. However, Persona 5 strikers did not have that sort of freedom. It was bound to the original game, and it had its own rules and stuff it had to keep intact, characters they had to work with, and on top of that, it had to justify its existence as a sequel (lets pretend money doesnt exist lmfao). 

SO, the big question is: did it do that? Did it justify its existence? 

And my answer: holy fuck did it ever do that

I came into this game knowing the extreme bare minimum. I knew there was someone named Sophia, and i knew there was roadtrip, and i knew there were Personas. That’s my knowledge of it before i played it on the Switch.  I should also clarify like, early on, that i was not expecting anything from this game. At all. I was the world’s biggest cynic of this game—if you scroll down my p5s tag far enough, youll just see me complaining about a game that hasn’t even come out yet. I was fully expecting to have this be a Waifu show, and any male character that isn’t Akira to just be shoved aside like some kind of nerd in a high school hallway, and i have never been more pleased to be wrong. In fact, i actually owe it an apology, because of how fucking rude i was for no reason!!! Because this game deserves everything to be honest. 

Persona 5 strikers is, frankly, insane. Insane in the sense that it got to pull shit off that just would never have existed in the original game, because the original game is scared. It had to be as impressive as possible and garner as much attention as possible. Strikers does not have that problem—every single person who bought that game does not need to be convinced that persona 5 is a good game. They already played it. That means Atlus can just fuck around and have a good time, and man did they have a good time. There’s still scenes that still shock me if i think about it too hard, because i’m used to atlus having to follow this sort of rule set when it comes to persona 5 (or any of the main games im assuming, but i havent played them.) And on top of that, there’s still shit that’s Atlus Trademarked Branded in a good way. The style of story of story telling, and revealing the mystery that is so integral to what p5 is, is still there. 

So, to make this even a little bit comprehensible, i will make a list! 

First of all, What is this game?

In short, this game is an OVA of an anime. It’s bonus side content that has one thing in mind: to showcase these lovable characters more by putting them in fun situations. That’s it, and it is just phenomenal. That was the main point of, i’d say, like forty hours of the game. It’s just fun times with fun characters. 

But to get deeper of what i think is happening, or what they were thinking during the development, is that this is a second opportunity. Persona 5 (as we all know) had a lot of problems, and we were not quiet about those problems. We yelled it all out, made posts, made complaints on every social media platform ever. And Atlus heard all of them, and Strikers is a way to mitigate those mistakes. Aside from being a fun OVA, Strikers also works to be a deeper exploration of these characters—more specifically, the characters that did not receive much in the original game. Creating this sequel is having the ability to redo what they felt (or to be more specific, we felt) in the original game while adding new ones. I will get to that in a second.  

The format of the game 

Absolutely brilliant to throw them on a road trip. P5V already forced us to experience Shibuya for 200+ hours, and im so glad that they didn’t do that again. Going from town to town, making us experience these new places alongside our favorite characters is so good, and it just makes sense. It’s fun, it’s lighthearted, and it’s actually shockingly good. But one thing i do want to talk about early on is the way the story unfolds and the villains that they use, and what they do with it because it’s very interesting. 

So as we explore japan and stuff, we encounter jails, and with those jails comes an antagonist. This antagonist works to be a parallel to one of our characters. That character will find it in their hearts to feel bad for the antagonist, because the antagonist could have been them had the original game not happen. At first I thought all of the thieves were gonna get an antagonist, and i was really hyped for the ryuji one. And then came to hour forty of the game where i realized “yeah that’s not gonna happen. There’s just not enough time.” And i was right, and the game ended. But i am not salty at all, honestly, because the people who got a direct antagonist were: Ann, Yusuke, and Haru. (we wont count zen and sophie). 

Is there a trend??? Yes. these are all characters in the original game that have received the worst treatment by atlus. The three of them are basically cast aside the minute they finished their original arc, and its horrible! BUT that’s why this is the path that atlus chose for them—to give them more depth, and screentime, and a way to show their inner self. That isn’t to say that the ones who aren’t those three (makoto, futaba, mona, akira, ryuji) didn’t get anything. Futaba still has her thing at the end with ichinose, and she was very prevalent and animated during the rest of the game. Mona and Akira have to be a focal points, that’s just the nature of the game. The other two though, I will talk about in depth in a second.  

Makoto

Y’all i poke fun at shumako fans sometimes cause its kind of easy and fun, but i honestly love makoto. In my very first playthrough of p5 (my first ever jrpg game, first persona game, i had no idea what i was doing), i had only maxed out two characters: ryuji and makoto. And i know she had a lot of screentime and love in the original game which is great, but i truly felt like she was dissed in this game. Her only roles were

A driver

Someone to tell them “we don’t have a choice. Let’s keep going and see where this takes us.” (seriously, if you replay this game, you will see how much she does this)

Idk, i just wish she had more to do, especially compared to how much love they gave the other characters. 

But let’s talk about some of the new characters! 

Zenkichi

Damn you atlus. Damn you and your insistence at bringing in cop characters. I was fully on board with hating zenkichi, i was fucking ready for it. I was convinced that there was nothing they could do convince to like zenkichi. I was immune to their copaganda. 

And then i ended up loving him, which makes me sad a little bit. I didn’t realize how desperate i was to have an adult who has a persona. Someone who wants the world to change just as much as they do, while still having that aspect of them that makes them adult. Like??? As someone who is technically an adult, its a breath of fresh air. An adult. Who fights. For justice. Using a persona. And god i love akane so much, and her obsession with the thieves (that scene is probably in my top ten fave scenes of the game). Also what i loved about zenkichi is that he fucking hates the cops!! He hates the system of the cops!! And thats why i actually really started to love him!! Because i thought it was atlus saying that the systematic problem of the police cannot be solved by one person, and zenkichi threw away his badge. I actually cried at that part!! 

But then he became a cop again, and i was just :/ but as a character, i really love him to bits and would love to do a study on him, or at least use him as an outside pov. But! i absolutely love his persona, since im a les miserables fan hehe

Sophia 

she’s probably my favorite new aspect of the game. I was ready to not like her—again, i just suck like that, lmfao—and when i saw her, i was scared that she was just another waifu. I mean, she was very cute after all. But then as the game went on, i thought she was a little too cute. And even further into the game, i finally slapped myself in the face and realized oh my god shes not a waifu. Shes a sister. 

That blew my mind, im ngl to you. A female character that isn’t supposed to be romanced? By jove, what a miracle! 

And she…is an amazing character. Im sorry, i just love her so much. I love her so much that she  probably ranks as my fifth or sixth favorite character which is surprising even to me. Everything about her is delightful and invigorating. She’s funny??? Her comedic timing is amazing, and she has such chemistry with the rest of the team. She’s actually useful to the plot, and while her character design is a little too on the nose for me in terms of cuteness (i mean, good god she’s wearing oversized sweater to show how cute and tiny she is, and her hair has literal hearts in it), she is absolutely lovable. 

But what i actually really wanna gush about for a second is sophia at the last stage of the game. You get the idea, i dont really like to get excited over things, so at this point i figured that there was nothing this game could do to shock me. 

And then sophia had a persona awakening. 

Like. holy fuck did i yell. I didnt realize what was happening until the music had already kicked in. and its just so fucking smart!!! Sophia??? The ai?? With no heart?? gOT A PERSONA???? AWAKENING??? BECAUSE SHE LEARNED WHAT THE HEART IS AND THE PASSION THAT YOU NEED IN ORDER TO GET A PERSONA??? I started crying honestly, because it was just so smart. And looking back on it now, its obvious!! Of course it would lead to this, it only made sense that the culmination of her character arc leads to her getting a persona, nothing else would have been as good. Also, her voice actor is just amazing?? When she was talking to ichinose at the end, i actually got incredibly emotional because of the line reads. Its just so spot on and it really captures the essence of sophia.

Muah. five stars Atlus. You got me. 

Ryuji <3!!!!

Oh man. Oh boy. Okay. so where do i start. 

Yall know i love him. Hes probably my favorite fictional male character of all time, and he is the one i was the absolute most cynical about in this game. I was expecting literally nothing. Nothing. Like. nothing. I thought he was just gonna keep being used as a joke, or a gag, and he’s gonna be super horny all the time for the other girls and it was gonna make me mad and there was gonna be some insane homophobic/queerphobic jokes in every other scene and i know i was being unfair, but i cant help it. 

And then i played the first two hours of the game, and i cried the entire time. Because ryuji has never been better than he is in this game. Its crazy. 

The ryuji in persona 5 strikers is who ryuji should have been/how he should have been treated this entire time. From the actual funny jokes (for example, the gold bar joke + his reaction to it in the beginning of the game), defending his female friends instead of being the one people need to defend from (natsume arc), and the fact that he was the one to be there with morgana and akira in the very beginning of the game. Its such a small thing that they didnt even need to do, but it was such an integral part of the original game for me, that i just was convinced that nothing like this was going to happen. But then it happened. Its just small stuff like that that could have been overlooked but it wasn’t because this game? Persona 5 strikers? Fucking loves ryuji. 

The actual respect they gave this boy is insane and i wasn't ready for it. Like, they gave the shujin trio lunch, they gave the little charm of the katana when they were in natsume’s jail, and, in my opinion this is the second-best thing that they could have given ryuji is sophia. Ryuji and sophia are the pinnacle of a brother & sister bonding relationship in the game that isn’t akira & futaba. And its really prevalent too?? Small stuff from the beginning of the game (pulling her out of a jail, calling her shorty), but then you have the iconic “shut the fuck up” scene, and that scene was so well characterized and written and voice acted, that somehow him saying “fuck” was the least exciting part of that scene to me. Ryuji is an older brother to her, like its undoubtable, and its only further cemented at the end of the game where Ryuji helps out ichinose because he knows how much sophia cares about her. This game. Love ryuji. And i love. This game. 

You know what else i love? Akiryu. 

Guys. i was fully prepared to starve in terms of akiryu. But theres just. So much of it. I wont get too deep into it, because i think this aspect of the game for me still needs marinate a little bit. Like, what was that last shot when EMMA died and Ryuji walked to approach Akira so they could relish in their victory together?? And the smile from both of them??? What the fuck. That was amazing. Also Joker being saved by Ryuji when he was about to fall from the cliff to save sophia??? WHAT. The LEADER AND HIS RIGHT HAND MAN? WHAT. anyway. If theres anything i want to keep for myself in my own brain, its the akiryu aspect of this game, so i wont talk too much about that part of things (instead, itll probably manifest in fic lmfaooo). 

Sure, there’s tidbits of stuff i dont like that they gave ryuji: sexualizing ann in that one cut scene and making him touch the jails even though it hurts, and i recognize those and frown at them, but for the most part, i am blown away with how they treated him.

Basically, Ryuji has never been better. From the opening of the game with him being the first text message and the one to sling his arm around akira, to the very last cut scene where it was ryuji wordlessly leaving because he’s so confident that they would never be separated for long, this game adores Ryuji and i am so so happy to say that.

The Royal aspect of things

Yeah, i had to talk about this, but itll be a short thing i just wanted to point out. Because the last part of this game...is persona 5 royal. Which is curious. Like taking reality and giving that power to someone else so you dont have to experience suffering anymore? And even like, the final section just looked a lot like the top half of maruki’s palace?? And whats even crazier is that we had a boss fight with sophia, just like how we had a boss fight with sumire? Royal and Strikers have like, the same thesis statement. It’s kind of uncanny.It’s interesting, it’s like atlus came up with these two ideas, and then just decided they liked both of them so much that they just did it twice. I don’t mind though—actually, in terms of how the last Palace/Jails go, i probably like them both about equally. 

Though i did love the final battle in this one more than i did in royal. Splitting into teams?? Thats cool as fuck, and really innovative and i didnt see it coming. It also kicked my ass. A lot. 

Now for the last stretch: the small stuff!

The music — bomb as fuck. In my heart, Daredevil is ranked the same as Rivers. Axe to grind is also amazing, but Daredevil owns me

Akechi — i really debated whether or not to talk about him, but i figured a bullet point should be enough. Im really shocked that he wasnt in this at all. Like not even a name drop. If this is an OVA, and the point of the game is to please the fans, and akechi is arguably the fan favorite character, i was really ready for something. But there was nothing, except for the pancake hallway if that even counts as a reference. Thats it. Thats all i wanted to say about him.

The humour — FUCKING HILARIOUS im convinced that in my fifty hour playtime, five of that is dedicated to me laughing and unable to continue the game 

Akira — so much personality! His lines of dialogue are crazy sometimes (like. Whats up with him saying Ryuji has ‘nice abs’ when they were in bath? Im crazy and even i dont know what the fuck that could mean) 

Battle system — oh my god i almost forgot to talk about this. I love it! I kind of miss the turn based aspect just because i found it very comforting for some reason, but this hack and slash style of gameplay is so invigorating because i do feel like it justifies shit like the baton pass and huge attacks.  This battle system fully encompases how the Phantom Thieves are supposed to fight, you know what i mean?

Anyway, thats my thoughts on strikers. Loved it. Amazing. 9.3/10, wouldve been higher but Konoe’s Jail almost bored me to death. Also im a monster and i didnt do any requests that isn’t a fun one, teehee. As if i play persona 5 for the persona aspect of things.

[metalandmagi]

Summer 2019 Anime Worth Watching

Summer is here, and with it brings another new season of anime! In case you’re feeling lost and want to find some new shows to pass the time, here’s some of the anime I think are worth checking out...because some really good shows tend to fly under the radar. I think there’s some genuinely interesting stuff this season, so hopefully you’ll find something you like too. 

I also have a Winter list and a Spring list and a fall list now!

And here’s my master list for 2020

New Shows!

Given: A *cough* BL *cough* romance anime in which tsundere highschool guitarist Ritsuka Uenoyama is on the verge of losing his passion for music when he stumbles upon the sleepy-eyed Mafuyu Sato who constantly carries a guitar around that he doesn’t know how to play. Drama and musical shenanigans ensue. This was by far my most anticipated show of the season, because I happen to have read a few chapters of this manga and liked it a lot. The only reason I stopped was because I wanted to hear the music in this music oriented story...so naturally the anime makes me very happy. Not only is it sweet and cute with great animation, but it’s also hilarious. Sato is also basically a human incarnation of a lost puppy, and you just help but fall in love with him and the other characters! AND NOW WE HAVE TWO GAY MUSIC SHOWS THIS SEASON! 

Dr. STONE: An action adventure anime that takes place 3,700 years in the future after the world is struck with a mysterious phenomenon that turns the entire human race to stone. Our protagonists: the genius, scientific minded Senku Ishigami and the muscle-y comic relief Taiju Oki, must find a way to rebuild civilization and turn humanity back to normal using the POWER OF SCIENCE! It’s fun, good looking, and way more interesting than I thought it would be. I’m not very attached to the main characters yet, although it’s still early. I’m mainly sticking around for the plot, the comedy, and the answers to the crazy amount of questions I have after watching the first episode!

Fire Force: An action/drama where super powered fire fighters must protect Tokyo from people who are spontaneously combusting while our hero Shinra must find out who started the fire that killed his mother. More than anything, I’d say this show is definitely worth watching for the cinematography and action because almost every second has been high flying dynamic animation that really grips you. It reminds me a lot of Soul Eater, the story and characters have a lot of potential, and you know an anime will be good when the girls have muscles too!

If it’s for My Daughter, I’d Even Defeat a Demon Lord: Can you tell it’s based on a light novel? A slice of life set in a fantasy world where an adventurer named Dale stumbles upon an adorable lost little girl in the woods, who happens to be branded as a criminal. So of course Dale basically adopts her and tries to find out how she came to be with him. It’s basically fantasy School Babysitters without the tragic depth to it (but there’s room for potential). Yes, this is definitely the most wholesome show of the season, but it’s to be expected considering it’s basically Japan’s latest attempt to get people to have more babies. Personally, the most interesting aspect of this show is the fact that Dale and his “daughter” can’t speak the same language. Unfortunately, the light novel ends up pulling a Bunny Drop...so I sincerely hope the anime doesn’t try the creepy romance factor. So for now, if you feel like puking up some rainbows, give this one a try. 

To the Abandoned Sacred Beasts: An action drama where, during a civil war, one side used “forbidden technology” to enhance their soldiers and basically turn them into badass monsters. The only problem: the soldiers who were turned start to lose their humanity and end up killing humans for the fun of it. Now our protagonist must hunt down his fellow soldiers and kill them before it’s too late. Honestly, this show has some pacing issues and can be a bit stilted in terms of its character interactions, but what kept me watching was the last 5 minutes of the first episode. I was so not prepared for the roller coaster that was the first episode’s ending, and now I’m extremely intrigued. Besides it’s made by MAPPA so I would at least give it a couple episodes to see if it’s for you.   

Vinland Saga: The story of a young boy named Thorfinn’s journey to become a great warrior and while the adults deal with going to war. IT’S THE ONE WITH THE VIKINGS!!! It basically feels like a darker, grittier viking version of Moana. I’ve heard literally nothing but praise for this manga for so many years that my hopes skyrocketed as soon as I heard Wit was doing the adaption. And it has definitely lived up to the hype so far! It’s a great action historical drama to fill the void after Dororo. The only problem is no one will watch it because it’s on Amazon Prime.

Kochouki: Wakaki Nobunaga: A fun brightly colored historical anime about the famous warlord Nobunaga when he was a young teenager. I honestly don’t know what the tone of this anime is going to be from here on out, because it’s going to go from “fun thieving shenanigans with pretty boys” to leading people into battle, but it got me interested. I know putting Nobunaga in an anime isn’t exactly original, but this one seems like a fun ride...and it looks gay as fuck. 

And I have to shout out some that haven’t premiered yet...just in case...

Try Knights: This one doesn’t come out until the end of July, but you bet your ass I’m going to be watching it because it’s an original anime about PRETTY BOYS PLAYING RUGBY! And I have a feeling it’s going to be very... different from the other resident rugby anime All Out. 

Yokai Ningen BEM (Humanoid Monster BEM): Okay, this one’s not out yet either, but the trailer had a really cool vibe to it, so I’m including it anyway. It’s a remake of the 1968 anime in which a group of yokai who look like humans fight crime in the big city. If nothing else, the music is cool, and it’s made by Production I.G, so why not?

*UPDATE* The first episode finally dropped, and holy crap I’m so into this. It’s basically Durarara mixed with Psycho Pass mixed with Bungo Stray Dogs. The first episode has me completely hooked!

Next seasons and continuations!

As always there are some leftovers from the spring season that are continuing into the summer that I highly suggest!

Carole and Tuesday: The musical sci-fi anime directed by Shinichiro Watanabe wherein a rich runaway named Tuesday meets a streetwise girl named Carole, and the two decide to start a band together. Now Carole and Tuesday must rise to stardom in a world dominated by android created music. It was by far my favorite new show of the spring, and if you can find a way to watch it (because it’s still not available legally anywhere aside from Japanese Netflix apparently) I wholeheartedly recommend it. It’s got the best and most diverse music I’ve seen in an anime in a long time, an interesting setting (apparently it takes place in the Cowboy Bebop universe!?), and very well rounded fun characters. And I'm dying for a soundtrack release with all the songs!!!!

Fruits Basket 2019: Yes, the remake of the classic 2001 anime in which a girl moves in with a family who can turn into animals from the zodiac is getting a full run. And thank God because I just can’t say goodbye to it after only 12 episodes. It is so stunningly beautiful in both animation and story subjects that I don’t know what I would do without it. The characters feel so much more fleshed out, and I feel like I learn a lesson about life each week even though I already know most of what’s going to happen. If you never watched the original because thought you were too “cool” to watch a shoujo anime, give it a chance. Because if you think it’s just a generic love triangle romance show, you couldn’t be more wrong. The reboot is so good at portraying different kinds of love and how the presence of love and family can change lives AND IT’S JUST SO FREAKING GOOD! 

Demon Slayer Kimetsu no Yaiba: In case you missed Ufotable’s newest project, this is a shounen anime that follows a young boy named Tanjiro and his sister Nezuko who has been possessed by a demon and their journey to turn Nezuko back to normal while fighting demons along the way. I still feel like this is a pretty basic shounen anime story wise, but I really like the characters, especially the villains. It has some of the coolest fighting/power mechanics I’ve seen in awhile, and the animation is very cool and different!

Ace of Diamond act 2: Our favorite shounen baseball anime is continuing into the summer. And I have very mixed feelings about this season so far. We are getting some fun new characters and some great scenes with the team, but the games are very...choppy and rushed. Apparently this is how it goes down in the manga, and we’re in for some good Sawamura development...but it’s still touch and go for me personally.  

That’s it for now. Most of these are available on Crunchyroll, except Vinland Saga, Carole and Tuesday, and Kochouki: Wakaki Nobunaga. Since Try Knights and Yokai Ningen BEM aren’t out yet, I don’t know where they will be available legally. 

See you next season!

[coreastories]

Modern Royals: The queen bares her heart about her new project, her queenship, and the king

This author is very honored (and tickled) to be invited to the palace for a private tete-a-tete with the queen

This isn’t exclusive, but I did get a note from The Royal Public Affairs Office that I’m the first in the lineup of the press junket, so yes, I screamed in the powder room

Also in the note: As long as I interview the queen about her project, I can ask other questions I want. They’re confident that I would remain respectful of Her Majesty’s privacy.

Well! They knew how to rein me in, didn’t they?

The October air was crisp and cold that morning but the thought of meeting the queen warmed me up. We were offered breakfast upon arrival. My team ate. I couldn’t. I was too excited. You remember that I’ve been dreaming of an interview with the queen for ages!

At eight, we were brought to the interview location. The media room was simple, with zero clutter. The furniture was modern minimalist. The walls were white, the floor-to-ceiling windows were bare. Your eyes were drawn to the lush grounds.

And it was so warm you could forget it was autumn. Rather than a press junket, the room gave the impression that the queen was meeting you as a friend, invited to relax in that gorgeous room.

Once there, I discovered I could eat. I drank tea and had some of the best scones I’ve ever had.

At eight fifteen, the queen arrived in her trademark, understated elegance. Barely any makeup. No lipstick. Hair splendid and shining but unstyled. Her outfit looked like something you wore at home, because of course it might be a palace but it was her home.

Well, something you wore at home in different brands, unless you’re also upper crust Corean who can afford head-to-toe Chanel, because the queen’s outfit was all Chanel, from her Coco Crush earrings to her suede calfskin and grosgrain mary janes.  

Her Majesty was just lovely. She made us feel like friends. If I weren’t in love with her before, I would certainly have been head over heels then.

Don’t get me wrong-- the queen is not friendly in that overly familiar style that just manipulates you to respond in the same way. No, the queen simply charms you with her sincerity, despite her obvious shyness. If she asks you a question, she genuinely wants to know the answer-- it’s not just small talk.

When everything was ready, the queen sat in her chosen chair. We shared a laugh because it’s exactly the type of chair the king didn’t want her to sit on when Their Majesties dropped in on us for his flash interview.

Without further ado, darlings, here’s my interview with the queen on her new project.

Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day

The Queen’s project revolves around Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day, a day of remembrance for pregnancy loss and infant death, which includes, but is not limited to, miscarriage, stillbirth, SIDS, and the death of a newborn.

Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day is held on October 15 in several countries. Are we going to have a separate day for it in Corea, Your Majesty?

HM The Queen: I found out about Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day on the same day it was confirmed that I’m pregnant. So we’ve been working on this project for several weeks. I wanted to unveil it on the remembrance day, but I didn’t want that strict deadline on anybody’s head.

Thankfully, we still managed to be quite close to the Remembrance Day. So we are launching the Eomoni Foundation this year and Corea will join the international Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day next year.

The Eomoni Foundation

Eomoni Foundation is literally “Mother” Foundation. Is it for all mothers in Corea?

HM The Queen: Yes. Mothers do so much, even before the moment they learn they’re expecting a child. When they’re trying to conceive, or when they suspect they’re pregnant and they’re not sure yet if it’s happy or unwelcome news. There’s just so much there, unspoken and unrecognized. Eomoni Foundation stands for everything a mother needs before, during and after pregnancy.

Because of Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day, we’ve talked to experts on how to support this often overlooked aspect of becoming a mother.

Mothers who lose their children during pregnancy or infancy need the most support. So Eomoni Foundation is their safe harbor, where they can come for informational, emotional, medical, and peer support.

And the foundation is truly up and running?

HM The Queen: Yes. The helpline is up, the website is live, and Eomoni Foundation has fully-staffed centers in Seoul, Busan, Pyongyang and Hamgyong. Of course, we’re still learning everything, but we have reliable models from other foundations worldwide. The Queen’s Office and the Office of the Prime Minister are both working together to have a Eeomoni Center in every city in Corea.

What’s your goal for the foundation, short term and long-term?

HM The Queen: We’re in talks with the Ministry of Labor about requiring all private and government businesses and organizations to have training for Infant Loss and Bereavement. I want parents to have company policies and HR that support them. This is both the short and long-term goal, to change policies and laws to support parents in this difficult time.

I suppose this is very personal for you, Your Majesty, now that you’re expecting? How has that affected this project you whipped up so quickly?

HM The Queen: Of course, it’s personal. And this is almost never discussed because it’s terrifying, but this is a mother’s biggest fear: to lose her child. It’s very real to me right now-- I can understand that fear and I can imagine the devastation and grief at this visceral level, so I wanted Eomoni Foundation up, and we do have the means to do that. There were no impediments for this project to get on its feet.

No superstitions at all that might have cautioned you against it?

HM The Queen: Ahhh yes, there was something said about it, but even the most superstitious understood. I mean, of course I wouldn’t want anything to happen. But not touching this because of that has no logic at all. No one wants to get cancer, and should that mean we couldn’t touch support and research and funds for cancer patients?

So we pushed through with this, because this is absolutely needed.

Congratulations, Your Majesty, this is stupendous.

HM The Queen: Thank you. We had a lot of help. Her Excellency, of course. And Dr Chae. And Elizabeth Locke of the Infant Loss Foundation in the United Kingdom. The Corean Association of Counseling is also offering training specifically for Infant Loss Counseling, under Eomoni Foundation.

That’s wonderful. Your Majesty, you’ve had so many projects since becoming queen. It makes my head spin. Do these help with the adjustment from your previous job to this one? Did you have an adjustment period at all? How--what was it like? You’re handling so much, and now you’re also pregnant.

HM The Queen: I’ve been a public servant ever since I became an adult, and my role now just continues that, only on a bigger scale.

I got married. And my marriage happened to come with a queenship.

The adjustment period was more on the small “big” things, like people bowing, and not being able to go out and about like I used to, and events where I’m the center of attention instead of being invisible in the background.

I had to learn the protocol and I had to get used to so many things. I suppose I was already trained for this because a cop should be adaptive. You need to be nimble for every case, every situation, and if you transfer to another station or another department-- or if you even just get promoted--you also need to adjust there. You shouldn’t get comfortable, or be afraid of change.

It’s such a huge change, Your Majesty. Do you ever feel regret for what you gave up? Do you ever think of your previous career?

HM The Queen: No. I made my choice and it’s something I don’t regret at all. I do think of my previous job. Who wouldn’t? But even though I loved it, I wasn’t really in a position of influence.

After becoming queen, I had to wrap my head around the fact that I can do what I want. I’m in this position where I can help and serve people without all the bureaucracy I would have had to go through first.

Once I’ve done that, I filled pages and pages of notes on everything I could do for Corea. That’s why you’re seeing so many projects. I talk to the Prime Minister a lot. Secretary Mo is also a great advisor. I have a lot to learn if I want to be a working queen.

The king is supportive, of course. And the king and I have always planned to have a family. So having a baby is just part of everything, too. I went into this with both eyes open and I’m determined to do my best.

That’s what it’s like. I’m learning, adjusting, asking questions. I do have a lot of help. And for many of my projects, I’m simply a patron. I get it off the ground, I raise funds, the experts do the work.

I admire that so much, Your Majesty. Thank you for your candor. I’ve always been curious, what does being patron of these foundations involve?

HM The Queen: It involves signatures and funding for the most part, and support where needed, for both the best developments and any bad circumstances.

How are you, ma’am? No more morning sickness? I hope it’s alright to ask that. Everyone’s thinking about you.

It’s adorable how the queen refused to touch her baby bump throughout the interview, but often came close to doing so anyway.

HM The Queen: I do still get sick now and then. We’re told this is normal and might go away. Or not. And I thank everyone for their concern. I’m very well taken care of. Sometimes to the point of excess, but I’ve learned to accept some of it, and we’ve all gotten better at it.

Can you share something about that, Your Majesty?

HM The Queen: Well, the king is almost back to normal and no longer snaps at Jangmi’s every move. I mean Jang Mi-reuk. And Lady Noh is always giving me  tisanes and soups. I’ve told her which ones I like and which ones I absolutely wouldn’t drink, so we’ve all come to an agreement.

How is the king? Is he excited-terrified, or excited-impatient?

HM The Queen: I think he tries to be neither. We’re excited, of course, but we try to temper that and just stick to happiness every day. We just savor each day.

That is lovely, but also surprising. So you don’t plan for May, for example? No birth plan?

HM The Queen: That’s already done. We got it out of the way on the first days. We don’t dwell on it. We enjoy each new day, each new milestone.

So I suppose you have names ready?

HM The Queen: Ahh, I think I’ve been told not to say anything about that.

That reminds me of that time Your Majesties dropped by! Can I ask you some of those questions?

HM The Queen: Of course, you can ask me. I just won’t guarantee the answers.

I’ve always been curious about that blessing His Majesty mentioned. He said, and I quote, that you “were blessed by God to meet and stay together. God made sure our paths would cross and stay intertwined.” What does this mean?

HM The Queen: That’s exactly what it means. We were fated to meet, and then fate kept us together, as cheesy as that sounds. All our doubts and fears were answered and addressed.

That’s just as cryptic as what the king said. Let me capture something non-cryptic at all. The rings you’re wearing right now. They’re the Coco Crush rings. Any significance? We haven’t seen your wedding rings at all.

HM The Queen: My wedding and engagement rings are both very thin bands-- and they don’t fit my fingers right now. These aren’t part of my bridal jewelry. They are gifts from the king. I wear them sometimes when I’m at home.

And when he’s not home? When she misses him? The king is currently away on kingly duties to Russia, China, Thailand, and Singapore.  

First thing that comes to mind: what do you love about the king?

HM The Queen: His dimples. So I guess that’s his smile. The rest of him isn’t bad at all either. You think he’s vain but he’s not. He’s a man of principle. What he said in your interview was right: He does know how to joke in difficult situations.

It amazed me that I didn’t become a puddle of goo in that gorgeous press room at that point. Despite her smiles and giggling, there was something in the queen’s eyes that told me she’d witnessed a demonstration of the king’s stalwart principle. This queen admires and respects her king in the highest degree. And these two are so in love it’s almost contagious-- no wonder the whole kingdom is in love with their love, too.

It’s probably his principles that took him away from you these days?

HM The Queen: Well, these diplomatic visits have been scheduled for months. He comes home from Singapore in a few days.

Just in time for the King’s Birthday?

HM The Queen: Hopefully.

What is something you adore about the king, something we won’t see or notice at all because we don’t live with him, but something we can watch out for in public appearances?

HM The Queen: If you ever see him pick something up with his right hand, sometimes his pinkie would be sticking out. He hates it when that happens, but it’s not really something he can control.

And laughing at that little detail, our interview came to an end. I feel quite blissful. I don’t know if I’d asked what I’d wanted to ask, but I’m content.

Stay tuned because we’ll be back at the palace for the king’s birthday!

For more information about Eomoni Foundation, go here. 

Images from Elle Korea interview video. Love that so much.

LMH’s pinkie sticking out is as true as KGE missing her pockets lol 

[cynwritess]

My Outlining Technique As A Pantser

I despise outlining with every fiber of my soul. I don’t care how much people persist you need an outline, I will put it off to the very last minute and do it very half-assed. Even in school, its straight to the first draft. Outlining requires a very precise skill of breaking things down as small as possible and my mind simply does not function that way. It’s literally all or nothing. Unfortunately while this may work for writing school essays, it’s not exactly a good idea when it comes to a book. Writing a book requires structure and precision because you need to carefully place information, have an idea where your characters are going, tedious yet necessary things. Fortunately, I’ve come up with a way to outline without completely frying my brain.

Characters. 

I almost always start with the characters first and build the world, other characters, and plot around them. If you have a name in mine, perfect! Go ahead and use it! If you don’t have a name, don’t dread scouring through dozens of baby name websites. Give them a place holder name or better yet, give them a role/title. I’m going to use one of my current characters (steal anything about her and I’ll send demons after you). When I first created Selina I only had a vague aesthetic and the idea that I wanted her to somehow be attached to spirits. Her name didn’t come to me until 25k into the story, but I had to refer to her as something so I used a conjunction of a place holder name and calling her “Reaper of Souls”. This way I know exactly who I’m referring to. Also, this helps me know what path my character needs to go down. Reaper of Souls is who she’ll become, but its definitely not who she is when the story begins. It makes me thing: What steps do I need to take to get her there? This is where you can start brainstorming character arcs and give them trauma. 

Another essential part of creating characters in my opinion is giving them “role models”. Personally, if this is a brand new character I’m creating off the top of my head its hard to write them because I know nothing about them. I don’t know their sense of humor, who they would and wouldn’t get along with, their inner monologue, etc. Now you have to be careful with this and make sure to mold them into their own unique characters at the end of the day, but you can use other already existing characters to help begin the process. When creating Selina I knew vaguely she needed to be connected to spirits. What characters do I know like that? Jodie from Beyond Two Souls is a good one and Zelie is a bit of a different twist to it but still the same general idea. But wait! Selina’s vibe doesn’t match either of them. So in this case I might look at Jude Duarte for inspiration for her personality. Nitpick all your favorite things about different characters and use that to your advantage! It gives you the jolt you need to really begin to explore who your character is. 

Always do the main character first, then follow with the supporting character or villain. In my opinion, the main supporting character and villain should be foils of the main character in order to get the most out of each one, because you’ll be able to see different aspects and different arcs they could’ve/will have. Once you have those three characters you can create the others as you progress with your story.

Setting.

This can either be really simple or your worst fucking nightmare. For me, it’s a mixture of both. If your story is taking place in the real world then this can be relatively simple even if you’re creating your own town/city. If your town has a very specific location like a town square or maybe there’s a river running through it, then just google “towns with a river going through it” for a start. If you have a specific town in mind you can also google the map and start dissecting different aspects of the town and incorporating it into your own. You can even use your own town for inspiration! The town my story takes place in is made up, but my hometown actually resembles it quite a bit so I’ve been using it for references. So far, its been working out pretty good.

Now if you have a high fantasy setting... I wish you the best of luck. I’ve only written one high fantasy story when I was twelve and... well clearly its never seen the light of day for a reason (partially because I deleted it, partially because there was absolutely zero world-building). I’m sorry to say my skills have no improved much since then. I’ve dabbled with the idea of high fantasy worlds and honestly my only advice is to look at other fantasy maps and draw inspiration from that. Narnia, Ravka, the ACOTAR world, the shifting isles of Elfhame, the Avatar universe, Orisha, to name a few. You’ll also have to look at some basic geographical stuff like the climate, but overall you have pretty much free reign over how your world looks. This is the one part I feel like you can’t bullshit if you don’t want your story to seem halfway. Really go in with the details even if its just for you. The more fleshed out your world is, even if its set here in the normal world, the better.

The main issue. 

This is pretty much a given but you do need to have some sort of idea who the main antagonist is/what is the big issue your characters are fighting. If you’re writing a series then chances are book one will probably focus on an entirely different issue before the big one is revealed. There’s not really much advice I can give for this because it’ll be tailored specifically to your story. I don’t think your antagonist has to be fully fleshed out if you’re going to be introducing them very late, but do have a general idea who or what it is, their goal, and why your character feels the need to stop them.

Usually you’ll notice the problem in the beginning of the story isn’t the ultimate problem, its just a gateway to it. I wouldn’t necessarily call it a subplot but I guess technically that’s what it is. Think of Percy Jackson. The main issue of book one is him being accused of stealing the lightning bolt, but the ultimate issue was the war with the titans. Or The Cruel Prince. The main issue was Jude feeling helpless and wanting to create a place for herself in the faery world, but the ultimate issue was those attempting overthrowing the entire Greenbriar family from the thrown. 

This kind of goes without saying, but there has to be a strong motivation for the character to stop them or it just won’t work. You don’t see characters going after the antagonist because nothing in their life isn’t threatened. There’s always a motivation, something to fuel them even if done so reluctantly. For example, Zelie from Children of Blood and Bone was sick and tired of constantly fighting and being the hero, but she did it anyways because she was the only one who could truly help the maji. Or you can take a slightly antagonistic approach and look at Kaz from Six of Crows who did what he did out of greed for money, power, and revenge. Usually when I begin my stories, I only have a vague idea as to why my main character is joining the fight, which is perfectly fine. As long as you have some sort of idea and begin to build on it as you write, you’ll be probably be fine. 

Brainstorm.

I cannot for the life of me sit in front of my computer and write a bland summary of what it is that is going to happen in my book. Sorry, but I am simply not built that way but it also makes writing your books ten times harder as well. I’ve found a bit of a cheat. For one, brainstorm. Get a general idea what some of the main events you want to happen are. Do you want a character death? Does a specific location need to be mentioned? Is there subplots or character arcs you would like to explore? Is there any themes you’d like to explore? Jot them all down, along with your word count goal. You probably won’t be able to incorporate all of them in one book, but at least you’ll have an idea what path you’re going to head down in terms of your story.

And now onto my actual cheat. Because I’m a pantser who hates outlining, I usually jump into my stories without knowing what direction they are going. Recently I’ve discovered that I can outline the first five chapters, write them out, and give myself complete free reign. I’ll explore all sorts of character personalities, different beginnings, different writing styles, different scenarios, different relationships, anything I can realistically include in the first five chapters of my story. Then I’ll go back and edit it. Don’t completely delete anything, always save it in a separate file! I’ll go back and decide which characters are unnecessary at this point, what plot points can be introduced later on, what writing style suits this story, things like that. Then from there, I’ll go back to my outline and make any appropriate changes before proceeding to write the rest of the draft as normal (WITHOUT GOING BACK TO EDIT). The reason why I do this is because I need a solid base to begin my story, otherwise its so easy for me to go off track and begin to tell a completely different story. This way I’ll know exactly what I’m going after, I’ll be able to explore and get to know my characters and setting, and it’s enough chapters that I can even begin to incorporate the main issue at hand. 

[bloodys44]

Silence and Cigarette Smoke

Original story and bonus content found here! ↓↓↓↓

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13289933/3/Silence-and-Cigarette-Smoke

Unfortunately it seems FF.net is having some technical errors and new chapter updates are only viewable through the app. I will continue to repost in hopes it will be available for everyone soon! Chapter 7 is viewable through the app and everything up to chapter 6 is online. Thanks for reading!

Chapter 3: The Dragons Birthday

Lucy’s POV

788

She always thought he looked the best while asleep. Mind caught up in a dream, unfocused to the world around him. The way his bare chest shuddered on every exhale. The stark white of the scars littered over his tan skin. There was never a time he looked more relaxed, his sharp facial features losing their regular heated mark. He was in every aspect, simply beautiful. Once her blurry vision had focused on him, she'd been utterly captivated. And now, with him laying so nonchalant atop her blue pleated comforter she took the time to soak him in. It was rare for a moment of peace to present itself in their chaotic lives. Sometimes she felt stuck in a constant state of running. And tiring as it was, she had never felt such happiness. It was almost funny, she thought. How she had been humored by Lissana's words the day she had met her. All her preaching about how she owed this man her entire life. And to think now, she felt almost the same. She really did owe him the world, for he was the one to actually give her one.Three years had passed since Natsu had rescued her from the forest and brought her to Fairy Tail. Taken her hand and led her step by step through his exciting life. Teaching her the unspoken rules of the enchanted world. The guild really was a dream, giving her a place to live and grow in exchange for work. Everybody had a simple job they worked while at home. Natsu for instance, worked the front guard line, scouting the edge of their safety enchantments for trespassers and unwanted visitors. When he wasn't out scouting, he stood watch in one of the three stone lookout towers. It made sense, given he had uncanny senses and tracking abilities. Lucy found herself taking shifts in the constantly busy infirmary alongside Lissana and her sister Mirajane. It was pleasant work, a good distraction from day to day life. But it was when they left the guild that the real adventure began. Fairy Tail (along with other guilds in the network) took job and quest submissions from trusted or other magic folks. They ranged from simple things such as retrieval of objects or escorting people during their travels, all the way to clearing out dark guilds and the slaying of demons. Natsu had been gracious enough to form a team with her, working alongside her to complete jobs. They truly had become an inseparable force over the last few years.Lucy set the plate she had been carrying on the side table by her bed before moving to lean against the end of her mattress. Natsu twitched slightly in his sleep but didn't wake, instead rubbing the underside of his nose against the back of his wrist. She snickered lightly, brushing golden locks from her view. She still found it hard to believe the man in front of her, sleeping so silent, was actually an unmatched powerhouse of magical energy. A dragon slayer, so he was called. An extremely rare form of magic, bestowed by the dragons themselves to aid the humans in their war against the 'white witch' hundreds of years prior. The rarity stemmed from the fact that these commanding creatures no longer existed, wiped out by the very magic they had gifted the humans. Thus earning the 'slayer' term. In the current day, dragon-slaying magic was passed down through bloodlines, slowly dwindling downwards to nothing. Natsu claimed he remembered nothing of his parents, choosing to never speak about them or anything else regarding his past. This sat just fine with Lucy, considering her home life wasn't much more uplifting. An abusive father, drunk with power. So consumed in his self-preservation he elected to wipe out a quarter of the population in fear of them uprising. Jealous of the power swimming through their veins. Even going as far as to execute his beloved Queen and daughter for their enchanted blood.Her mother had always whispered of the beauty that came with their magic. The glow of the gods she called it. And translated directly, it sort of was. Celestial magic rumoured to have been created directly by the gods for a historical gracious Queen. The only enchantment to possess such a warm golden hue, literal stardust drifting from fingertips. Natsu had gone out of his way train with her while she learned her capabilities. Even (much to his distaste) spending hours upon hours scanning over ancient books and text, looking for answers to explain her mysterious powers. There was extremely little known about celestial magic. Its rather small royal bloodline being the only people able to wield the starlight. After three years of constant work, Lucy believed she was rather proficient in its use, though she could never be completely sure. As special as it was, being enchanted with such abilities it was also rather frightening, to say the least. With rarity came obsession. Many stories existing of the pursuit of celestial mages, desire for their uncapped power. The story goes that besides their own magical abilities, celestial mages can greatly increase magical energy with a single drop of their blood. Their blood is said to taste like pure ecstasy. Mages go insane after a single drop, drunk on the taste. Natsu had told her. The thought always made her stomach turn.Lucy huffed, shaking her head to dismiss her thoughts. Today was supposed to be a happy day, she couldn't let her self get caught up over nothing. Sliding the light grey flats off her stocking covered feet, she pulled herself completely up on the mattress. It was a pleasant Tuesday morning, the sun soaking through the aged glass of the windowpane. Her room taking on a rosy hue as the light bent with the lace of her pink curtains. Her room was small (as were most of the dorms in Fairy Tail were) but she loved it just the same. Her bed was pressed against the far right corner, mirroring a birch desk placed at the conjunction of the other. It, currently serving as the sleeping place for a bizarre blue cat, napping happily, wound up in scaled white fabric. She had a small overstuffed closet at the foot of her bed and an ensuite adjacent to the grand door leading to the hallway of other rooms. It was her safe place, a real home to relax and be herself in. The old walls speaking for previous guild members long passed. The only thing was, that she more often than not had to share with an intruding pyromaniac. Whether that was a negative or bonus she never could decide. She crawled towards the unsuspecting male, strung out over the bedding in his sleeping state. Taking perch beside his head, she pulled her knees to her chest. Her wrist flicking outwards slightly as she moved to wake him. It almost felt criminal, pulling him from his peaceful slumber, but she was too excited, not wanting to wait any longer. She dusted her fingers over his forehead, moving the displaced pink tendrils from his closed eyes. The light touch was enough to sway him from his dreams, grimacing as he squinted one eye open."Good Morning birthday boy." Lucy smiled sweetly, running her fingers through his fringe once again before pulling back. She wrapped her arms around her folded knees, watching as the tired man before rubbed his eyes. "Bout time you joined the land of the living.""Birthday boy?" Natsu questioned, his voice raspy, rugged with sleep. "Lucy, you know I don't know when my birthday is." He shoved his elbow under himself clumsily, sliding his body to more of a sitting position against the headboard. An exaggerated yawn flashing his pointed canines."I know." The words a sweet hum over her lips. "And every year I tell you, everyone deserves a birthday, and that you should just pick a day to celebrate."Natsu was smirking now, his expression slowly coming together as he woke. "And every year I tell you it's not important, and that you're crazy.""You celebrate my birthday every year, what's the difference?" She questioned playfully."I dunno, just different cause it's you."Lucy tried to ignore the heat that was surely blooming over her pale cheeks, tossing her bangs to the side with a sway of her neck. "Stop being so modest you stupid dragon, you're just as important as anyone else and deserve a day dedicated to you just the same." Natsu rolled his eyes at her, earning a swat to his shoulder. "Since you never pick a day, I've taken the initiative of picking for you.""And today made the cut?" He joked, fingers twisting upwards to toy with a strand of her golden hair."It's the first day of summer." She rushed out with slight embarrassment. "I thought it was fitting considering your name."Natsu snorted, mumbling something along the lines of 'cute' before pushing himself upright into a complete sitting position. He glanced to the side, noticing the small plate Lucy had put down earlier. He spun his head back towards her, eyebrow raised curiously. "Did you really bake me a cake?" She had, in fact, baked him a cake. Lucy nodded sheepishly, feeling the heat in her cheeks expand down her chest. It was nothing special, a miniature loaf that resembled more of an oversized muffin than an actual cake. To be fair, it had only been her second attempt at baking. She had considered asking Mira to make one for him, but she was away on work with her younger brother Elfman and her husband Laxus. Leaving Lucy to her own devices. Her first attempt had left the guilds mess hall a smoky mess and resulted in something unedible. Her second attempt had actually tasted pretty good despite its appearance. She had iced it in fluffy yellow icing, a baby blue branding of '22' crowning the top."You think I'm twenty-two?" He questioned again, his voice more steady than his earlier playfulness. His fingers continuing to loop over her flaxen strands."Well nobody knows your actual age, so I had to make an educated guess." She huffed in response.Natsu chuckled slightly, wrapping his arm around the blonde and pulling her into his bare chest roughly. "You're probably right, as per usual." Lucy tried to scramble against him but was held firm between his rippling arms. He slid one upwards, wrapping it around her neck pulling her into him further His chin nestled in her flaxen tendrils "Thanks, Luce, you really are the best." His lips brushing just slightly over her temple as he spoke. The touch so light she wasn't sure if there was really any contact or if she was reacting to his unusually hot breath against her fair skin.She loved moments like this. When the loud-mouthed, cocky, and rather brash man spoke in gentle tones. It was such a contrast to his typical over-excited nature. It may be selfish on her part, but she loved that this side of him was private, only sneaking up when the boy felt truly comfortable. It wasn't that he was typically exhausting, in fact, he had matured greatly over the years. But she had yet to witness him speak so calmly to another, the constant rigidness in his shoulders lacking in moments like this. It made her feel special, like she really was important to somebody. Not that she could ever deserve somebody as special as him. Somebody who lived their life completely for those surrounding him."We should hurry up and head down to the hall, Lissana's been cooking breakfast for us all morning." Natsu nodded in response, sliding himself off the cotton sheets with another exaggerated yawn. He flung his arms above his head, stretching out his previously coiled limbs. Lucy watched absentmindedly as his taut muscles strained under the spance of his tan skin, moving in sync with his smooth rhythm. He slipped a black hoodie over his head, sliding it painfully slow over his ridged abdomen. Sometimes Lucy liked to believe he showed off on purpose, maybe hoping to get her flustered for his own entertainment. He side-stepped into the ensuite, rummaging around in cabinets before his head popped back out of the doorframe. He looked slightly dishevelled, toothbrush hanging from his perfectly placed teeth. Lucy couldn't help but giggle at his curious expression, already knowing what he was about to ask before he even started speaking."I think Lissana tried to make all your favorites." Natsu nodded excitedly, darting back through the frame to continue cleaning up for the day. She swore there was nothing in this world that got him more excited than food tended too.The walk to the mess hall was pleasant, small talk mixing with their echoed footsteps on stone. Fairy Tail had taken residence in a long-abandoned castle on the outskirts of the supposedly haunted forest. Encased in hills of sprawling green, plenty of room for its members to train and spend their leisure time. A safe and beautiful space hidden so casually within the modern world, at least, thanks to the protective charms cast over the vicinity. The castle and grounds were un-seeable by the normal eye, only appearing if you knew what to look for. Most common folk would have their mind altered slightly on approach, causing them to reroute their current path. But on occasion, people have still managed to slip in, mostly lost children who's pure hearts wanted only a family or somewhere safe to rest. But there had been cases of well-skilled mages slipping through. One's like their friend Erza who possessed an enchantment cancelling eye. That's where Natsu and the other's on watch and guard duty came into place, silently protecting the livelihoods of so many. Their Headmaster was always very adamant in the safety of his 'children', so he called them. Always making sure the proper steps were taken. This was something Lucy very much appreciated, almost considering the man to be her replacement father figure."Hey wait, let's step outside quick." Natsu mumbled, grasping the side of her arm and guiding her over to one of the numerous balconies. He pushed the enormous oak doors open with ease, practically leaping out to bask in the sun rays."You really are like a salamander sometimes," Lucy scoffed playfully, commenting on his community dubbed nickname. Mages were generally very secretive about their identities, even with mages of other guilds. Understandably wanting to avoid attention from the crown. But Natsu seemed to have a knack for attention, or rather, for destruction which typically caused a lot of notice from townsfolk. The population of Fiore deciding on the name 'Salamander' for their rampant arsonist. Natsu snorted, retaliating by ruffling her hair aggressively. He then spun the other way, practically flopping against the wall with an exhale. He reached behind his gold decorated ear to remove a cigarette from its resting place. Lighting the tip of his finger with a hypnotizing flame. "I really wish you would drop that awful habit." Lucy nagged, crossing her arms slowly. "You're going to cause your own early death."As per usual Natsu looked at her like she was crazy. "You do realize I breathe fire right? Smoke it practically oxygen for me."Lucy simply shook her head, not wanting to get into their usual child-like argument about the safety of smoking. "You know Mira would agree with me." She teased."I know Mira isn't my mother, so does it really matter?" He smirked, pulling a long drag and blowing the stream into the blonde's face. She swatted at the smoke angrily, muttering under her breath about her immaculate ability to deal with morons. She turned and stepped out slowly to the edge of the castle balcony, draping her arms over the stone railing. The weather was spectacular today, the sky clear and the air surrounding them was warm and comforting. The clouds silently wishing them well with their day."I was thinking," The blonde hummed, turning back to face her pink-headed partner "We could take a job request today. Birthday boy gets to pick? Maybe Happy would even want to tag along."Natsu beamed at her, exhaling a grey cloud. "Sounds like a plan Blondie."Eventually, Natsu finished hacking away at his cigarette, giving his body a final long stretch under the sun before motioning for them to return indoors. Thankfully he seemed to be the only man Lucy had ever met that never reeked of the poison smoke. (or she liked to call it) His typical earthy scent mixed with a hint of mint and cinnamon seemed to repel all foreign smells. The remaining walk to the mess hall was quiet, the two simply comfortable in the silence of the other. At least it started that way, interrupted only by Natsu's sharp inhale as he broke out in short fits of laughter. Lucy turned to him, gawking slightly at his strange behavior while she waited for him to catch his breath. They were only about a floor away from the hall, the castle being as obnoxious as it was, took a while to navigate through."A surprise party? You really pulled all the stops hey?" Natsu mused, turning his shit-eating grin to face her. She looked absolutely baffled, her pace coming to a complete stop. This only caused Natsu to laugh harder, clutching his sides with amusement. "Did you forget about my incredibly awesome superhuman senses?" He bragged playfully. "I can hear everybody down there running amuck trying to get everything together." Lucy's expression faltered slightly. Really, who could blame her for forgetting one of his hundreds of bizarre quirks. A pout started to work its way to her plump lips. Instantly Natsu cut off his laughter, moving to stand right in front of her. "Aweh come on Luce, it's not ruined yet, promise." She scoffed slightly, swatting at his arm. "I'll even pretend to be surprised, since you worked so hard n' all." Lucy only grabbed his hand, shaking her head slightly. Of course he would react that way, selflessly cheering her up at the slightest bit of disappointment. Even on his own birthday.When they arrived at the doorway, the hall echoed with its silence. Clearly, the other guild members had found an adequate hiding place. Natsu cast her his infamous smirk before pushing the doors open, and (rather skillfully she might add) gave off his best-surprised reaction to the other members jumping out, cheering his name. It didn't take much to rile up the other members, they were always ready for any sort of celebration. The mere mention of alcohol sparking the interest in most of them. Besides that, there seemed to be a collective amount of appreciation for Natsu among them. Either a family-style bond or respect collected over the years. Even in some cases, complete loving adoration. The latter of which currently on display as Lissana latched herself onto the man, wrapping him into a soft embrace."Happy birthday Natsu-san." She cooed into his ear, gripping the man tighter. Natsu returned the compassion with ease, thanking her for all her work in the kitchen this morning. They looked fitting together, at least in Lucy's opinion. Although, that didn't mean she was very fond of watching them. In fact, she found it rather stomach-turning. Watching as Lissana openly strung herself all over him to no avail. It wasn't that she hated Lissana either, the girl being exceptionally kind-hearted and sweet. A genuine soul. Not to mention she was one of the prettiest women Lucy had ever seen, possibly rivaled only by that of her older sister. She wasn't sure exactly what it was, the feeling in her gut when she watched them together. The glorious smile that Natsu always wore around her gave nothing but an uneasy feeling. This, of course, had nothing to do with the maddening crush she had on the man. No, it most certainly didn't."You're staring." A whisper fell over her shoulder, startling her. She tossed her head quickly, scanning her peripheral for the intruder. Levy McGarden. An extremely petite and slender woman. Her eyes playful while she teased. The blue strands of her hair tied back by a golden ribbon strapped across the top of her skull in its usual fashion. It just so happened that this literature-loving book worm was Lucy's best friend (besides Natsu, of course). "If it bothers you so much, why don't you just tell him?"The blonde stared at her friend with wide eyes, progressively more startled than before. "It's not like that! We're just friends!" She defended breathlessly. "How many times do I need to repeat myself? You and Mira are going to give me a stroke." She slumped over the counter of the bar she was currently seated at with a huff.Levy lifted her brow in a mocking manner, chuckling before taking a seat at the bar beside Lucy. "Whatever you say Lu." She teased further before letting her expression fall back to normal. "This party really is nice though, you outdid yourself this time for sure." Lucy nodded slowly, spinning on her stool to take in the atmosphere. The morning was still fairly young for a typical party in her opinion, but she had really wanted to spend the evening working on a job request with the birthday boy. After some convincing, she had managed to get the rest of the members to agree with the morning time frame. The hall was decorated in a beach style theme (this being the only way to incorporate burning tiki torches, a strange favorite of the pink-haired male). Strings of flowers spiraled the stone columns in a variety of color. All the members seemed to match, flower wreaths hung around their throats in the same manner. The overly grand hall taking on a more cozy interior. Even the enormous stained windows had banners plastered to their panes. Celebration wishes printed on the fabric. Everybody had woken up super early to pitch in, getting everything set up without a hitch. Smiles and laughter mixed together creating a pleasant feeling. Kinship and happiness coated over the walls. Even Gray, the ever stoic had cracked a smile. Bickering with Natsu while holding on to his prized possession Juvia. Though he had yet to admit it, his feelings for the blue-haired, eclectic water woman were growing to become glaringly obvious."It really is nice." Lucy hummed softly. "It's a shame nobody ever thought to celebrate his birthday before. Hasn't he been a member for a long while now?"Levy nodded happily. "I think Gildarts found him when he was about twelve or thirteen, I mean if he really is twenty-two like you guessed."Lucy let out another breathy hum, turning away from the crowd to face her friend once again. "Does anybody really know about his life before Gildarts found him? He never talks about his past.""I suppose that makes sense." Levy folded her arms casually, balancing her chin in her palm. "As rambunctious as he is, I think Natu's a little more reserved about his life on purpose. He really never talks about his opinions or feelings even, unless it's regarding a fight." She giggled lightly. "I think if he were to open up to anybody, it would probably be you Lu."Lucy turned her head back towards the crowd, scanning over the bodies in search of him once again. A gentle maybe falling from her lips, her mind more focused on its hunt. She locked eyes with him from across the hall and couldn't help but smile brightly when he started making his was towards her."Happy birthday Natsu." Levy chimed on his approach. He beamed at her, letting a string of smoke leak between his teeth while he thanked her. "Didn't Lucy outdo herself with this party?" She smirked, nudging her blonde best friend who rolled her eyes and groaned internally."She really did." Natsu agreed eagerly, wrapping his arm around Lucy's shoulder to pull her into half a hug. "Aren't I spoiled?""Maybe a little." Levy jested, poking his chest playfully. Lucy wasn't really sure how the rest of the conversation played out, instead focusing on the radiant cake Lissana was currently wheeling out from the kitchen. Not that she would ever mention it, but when comparing this to the strangled looking muffin she had presented to him earlier, she was slightly offended for her own creation."Time to make a wish Natsu-san!" Lissana called softly, pushing the platter in front of him. Natsu closed his eyes in thought before leaning forward to blow out the red candles splattered over the layers, and Lucy couldn't help but smile with the rest of the group. It was just so nice, seeing the boy that always made sure everyone else was doing okay, actually have a moment for himself. Taking a second out of his hectic life to celebrate his very existence. Smiling and cheerful surrounded by his makeshift family. A moment of true happiness. If the remaining day's of her life were at least half as good, Lucy thought she could consider herself lucky.The morning had begun to drift away slowly, the party winding down accordingly. Everybody needing to get to work and begin their day to day routine. The hall progressively becoming more silent. Lucy was busy clearing empty bottles and glasses from a table when she regarded a comforting heat creep over her shoulder. "Did you pick a job yet?" She cooed at her partner, noting his presence without a need to visually see him."Of course." Lucy fluttered her lashed quickly when a flyer was held in front of her sightline, his arm stretching over the top of her head. She squinted slightly, reading the print of the request carefully. The job was nothing out of the ordinary, a group of bandits disturbing the peace of a small town a short train ride away. They only needed to find their base, possibly ruffle them up a little and get them to vacate the premises. "Did you catch that reward?" He presses, stepping around her to face her. She grabbed the flyer from his extended palm, narrowing down on the fine print. The cash reward was rather minimal compared to the requests they usually accepted. She raised a brow at him over the edge of the page and he smirked, telling her to keep reading. Her irises flashed back over the text, blowing wide when she read the final sentence. One first edition copy of Queen Anna Heartfilia's uncensored oral history on celestial magic. "She's probably your great grandmother or something hey? Natsu asked cheerfully, studying her reaction. "I figure we might find something new the other books missed." She could feel the beat of her heart quicken with excitement. Information on celestial magic was insanely hard to find, and to find something created by one of her ancestors was completely unheard of. A once in a lifetime opportunity."Is this really the job you want to take? Today's about you, we don't need to take this for me.""Consider it a thank you for everything you did for me today." Natsu beamed at her, and she couldn't help but return the smile back at him. How lucky was she that this selfless man just so happened to be her best friend. She let out a breathy okay, wrapping the fire-breather in a tight hug. He chuckled at her, grasping her shoulders and holding her a step back to meet her gaze. "I have one more favor though," She nodded slowly, smirking back at the man. "You gotta share this with me before we head out." He reached behind him, grasping a plate he must have placed down earlier. The miserable excuse of a cake she had made for him presented before her.She almost broke out in a fit of laughter, needing to take a moment to catch her breath and calm herself. "You don't need to eat that, Lissana made you a much better one.""Ya, but you made this one." He deadpanned, looking at her curiously. Her cheeks were definitely inflamed, the heat brushing its way down her throat and over her collar bones. If it was possible, her heart rate doubled over its already quickened pace. "Plus," he continued while taking a large bite, "It tastes so fucking good." He laughed warmly, offering a bite in her direction. She joined him with her own fit of giggles, perching herself on one of the hall's benches to share the rest of the desert with him.They ate quickly, sharing their excitement over the new job. Lucy practically gushing over the fact that a book of that stature even existed. No matter her effort, she couldn't contain the smile cemented over her lips."What are you two up to for the rest of the day?" Lissana's cheerful tone carried over, pulling them out of their fixated trance. She had cleaned herself up after the party, draping herself in a summer yellow fitted sundress. It ruffled out over her hips, only accentuating her perfect curves more so. Her white locks pulled back with a pearled clip. Lucy was almost annoyed at her for simply looking like herself, completely void of any flaws."Just heading out for a job," Natsu responded, sliding over to let her take a seat beside him."Oh, that sounds like such fun! I haven't been out in ages." She wined graciously. "I was going to wait for Mira and Elman to return, but it's been almost a month, I'm not sure when they'll be back." She folded her slender fingertips over the edge of the table, leaning in slightly as she spoke. "Would either of you mind if I tagged along? I've been working on this new spell and I'm just dying to try it out!"Natsu glanced towards Lucy, trying to gauge her reaction. The blonde just shrugging at him, leaning back against the bench. She was silently hoping he turned her away, the selfish side of her wanting to spend the next few days with just each other. And happy (Natsu's royally annoying blue flying cat), of course. "Ah sure Lissana," Natsu sputtered, still trying to read the blonde. "The more the merrier I suppose."The fairy-like woman practically sprung out of her seat. Perfect dazzling teeth on show as she glanced back at them over her shoulder. "Oh, fantastic! I can't wait!" She mused, heading off towards the hall exit in a hurry. "I'll just head up and pack real quick!"Natsu flashed an awkward smile back at Lucy, shifting to lean over the table towards her. "Cheer up Luce, this could be fun if you let it. Next job will just be us, sound good?" She nodded back at him, groaning internally before heading up to her own room to gather her things together. It was strange, adding her to the equation. It was always just her and Natsu that went on jobs. Even Gray dropped in from time to time. But it was never Lissana. She knew that it shouldn't matter all that much. Lissana was an amazing person and a fairly good mage in her own right. As much as she didn't want to admit it, she knew jealousy was the only thing she had against the girl. To her knowledge, Natsu had never reciprocated the girl's advances and constant pining. He was also his own person, his decisions didn't need to compensate for her own muddled feelings. All she knew, was that this was going to be a really long trip.

Again, check out the full story here! ↓↓↓↓

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13289933/3/Silence-and-Cigarette-Smoke

[soveryanon]

Reviewing time for MAG173!

- … It was absolutely terrible, horrible, upsetting, and I loved it – it was indeed answering that little question about the children, the answer was still absolutely horrifying even given the circumstances, and I needed to hear that level of discomfort&upset from Jon and Martin themselves about victims in general. (Though I’m a bit “it took CHILDREN for you to truly react with horror?!” x”))

I really like how this episode already felt like something that was… not a conclusion (really not; not yet), but something that couldn’t have happened right at the start of the season. It demonstrated explicitly why the “smiting” is not a viable option; it returned to the foreground what the actual problem is (the Fear-system, not the individual avatars having a small or large benefit in it); and it allowed for Jon and Martin to let their points come across a bit more explicitly in a way that didn’t feel like a full blown-up conflict either. They argue, they have conflicting views, but they’re also getting better at understanding the other’s mindset and limitations (the journey is not only through the domains; it’s also a journey of navigating with someone else who operates differently from you, and has other ways to cope, and learning how to push forwards carrying your differences).

- The “statements” of the children were heartbreaking ;_; Poem for The Stranger, formal report for The End, botanic manual for The Flesh, theatrical play for The Web… and now a children’s book for The Dark.

Stylistically, the use of repetitions and more simplistic words, constructions and reasoning, in Jack and Caitlin’s stories, really made me feel that it was about children, for children, in the mind of children? I love that their fears felt extremely logical: there is an absolute certainty in their fears, in what the monsters are, what they would do to them. The monsters and their tortures (what they want to do to the kids) are simple, but also very concrete and straightforward (and so is the name “Night Street” for the territory! It tells what it is). The kids’ beliefs are ruthlessly clinical. There’s no need to be fancy; it works as is. Even the adults’ rules sound concrete – but arbitrary and cruel, becoming neglect, leaving the kids at the mercy of monsters. And it’s interesting that we don’t see the monsters actually catching any of the kids: the apocalypse is mostly an extension of their fears removing anything that could appease or protect them (there is no light, no day after the night, nobody comes when they scream and the “adults” are unresponsive and useless; the kids are on their own).

On that note, pretty sure that the adults mentioned were not actually there (“Dad’s dead. Mum’s here but she lost it a while back. So now it’s just me.”, “Some grown-ups are not in bed, but they do not want to help Jack. They want to be alone. They don’t want any children around at all. They tell Jack it is after his bedtime, and put him in another dark room where he cannot run…! So no grown-ups told Jack to run into the dark.”, “Her mother is downstairs, but she is part of the sofa now. She won’t stop staring at the television and laughing. Laughing and laughing. She doesn’t like it, when Caitlin is awake. She doesn’t hear it, if she screams.”), mostly convictions in the kids’ mind to reinforce their hopelessness. But aouch: it seems like the domains, while showing some aspects of other fears (the kids are constantly hunted, what the monsters could do to them is close to Flesh-territory, etc.), are not really functioning as “collaborative” projects. If they were, pretty sure that some parents could be ensnared by Desolation or Beholding, for example, forced to watch their children getting tortured but unable to help and save them ;;

How the fear worked was also very on point for children’s psyche:

(MAG173) ARCHIVIST: “Callum smiles and says he’s found a brand new monster! Jack doesn’t want to hear about it. He knows that when Callum tells him what it is, then it will start to chase him. He won’t see it, of course, because it’s just too dark! But he will know it’s there.”

Callum literally creates the fears of the monsters, which creates the monsters themselves. The conviction makes them true. And it really works that way when you’re a kid! Something that has been told to you, or that you saw/read somewhere (“Caitlin read a picture book once, full of horrible spiky fish with big eyes and crooked teeth. She would see them every time she went to bed for weeks. That was what the monsters looked like, she was sure of it. They would grip her, with their nasty cold fins, and bite her head clean off.”), is too powerful to be contained in pages and becomes a tangible threat that you’re sure is personally coming after you.

- … I live for the Dark vs. Eye animosity and:

(MAG173) ARCHIVIST: Childish fears are… simplistic. MARTIN: [LONG EXHALE] ARCHIVIST: Direct. [SHAKINGLY] The Eye prefers the more complex neuroses and disquiets of a fully developed mind…! So the children are allowed to age… MARTIN: [DEEP INTAKES OF BREATH] ARCHIVIST: And they are placed in domains where their fears can… mature. Domains like this one. MARTIN: Christ, that’s… that’s messed up! ARCHIVIST: … Yes.

… The Eye throwing the kids at The Dark, because they’re not that satisfying on their own, so The Dark can have them. Beholding, please.

é_è Regarding the kids’ fears “maturing”, we get glimpses of that with Jack and Caitlin – there are very clear Hunt-vibes (being constantly pursued), but also some Lonely (nobody is coming for them), some Flesh and Slaughter (getting mutilated, consumed, being meat for the monsters), and I could very well see some Spiral sneaking in (not being confident in their sense of reality)…

The most upsetting part is how this domain and its function… felt thought through? That sort of grooming requires organisation to engineer a fear-machine. It’s not only instinct and impulse: it’s planned, organised towards a goal because current things are not good enough as is. It was stated time and time again (by Leitner, by Gertrude, by Gerry) that the Fears were mostly impulse, not really “thinking”, but this domain feels so… calculated, demonstrating a form of sentience behind it? I think that was the most upsetting reveal this episode – of course children wouldn’t have been safe, but to learn that they’re “allowed to age” only for their fears to develop and get more satisfying for The Eye? That’s truly horrifying.

(- I’m also a bit relieved to know what is happening to them, because there could have been “worse”: this episode could have talked about people who were pregnant when the Change happened, or about very very young infants. Though I can’t help but wonder about the babies and how they can grow up without adults to mirror, without forms of communication with their peers. Right now, the only hypothesis I have would be that they… could become “Inheritors” as described in MAG134, if left on their own and only raised with and around the Fears?)

- … I really wasn’t expecting Callum to come back, after the Church Of The Divine Host chapter seemed to have closed with Manuela. Well – I had trouble leaving behind the faint possibility that “Rayner” had somehow managed to hop into a new host, but I wasn’t expecting Callum to come back for himself.

(MAG073) ARCHIVIST: You said it started with a kidnapping case? BASIRA: Yeah. Callum Brodie. Twelve… twelve years old. Disappeared from his home in Dalston three weeks ago. Sitter was asleep when the mother came home, the front door was open, there was no sign of him. There was no forced entry so it started out as a missing persons case, but they got a witness claiming he’d seen three unknown figures entering the Brodies’ home that night, so it was kicked up to Serious Crime. There was some back and forth with Kidnap Squad since no ransom demand had been made, but not much progress in terms of finding the kid. […] The briefing was pretty short. We were told that Callum Brodie had been found and it was suspected he was being held by a man named Maxwell Rayner, with an unknown number of accomplices. There were suspicions that there might be cult involvement. That’s when I phoned you. […] Next to him was an old chair that looked like it could have come from a dinner table. The wood was stained, covered in dark mould, and tied to it with thin metal wire was Callum Brodie. The kid's eyes were blank, though not clouded like the old man’s, and his face was locked in a silent scream. Rayner was facing him, thin, bony hands raised to his face. Something was… something was flowing out of his mouth. It looked like ink, but it flowed more like a heavy fog than any sort of liquid. It drips down his forearms and onto the floor, where it… it rolled towards Callum, climbing up the chair and oozing across the boy’s body towards his face. It was moving slowly, and had just reached his chest. The roaring sound seemed to come as it convulsed out of the old man’s mouth. […] The kid seemed fine. I mean, I’m sure he’ll need a lot of counselling, but he didn’t seem physically any worse for wear.

(MAG140) ARCHIVIST: So Edmond Halley was… Rayner. Or, at least… whatever was inside him. You said he was dead, though. BASIRA: I thought he was. We shot him to hell before he could, uh… “pour himself” into that kid.

(MAG143) MANUELA: But I could see in his eyes that Maxwell was so very tired. And all the words fell to nothing. Instead, we began the search for his successor, a new host for his… continuation. He would regain his strength, and we would plan our next move. It was difficult, though. The approaching culmination had meant Maxwell had not prepared another host, and the search for another vessel was… long and involved. Finally, about eighteen months ago, we found one: a child, whose father had, by coincidence, been directly marked by The Dark. It was a desperate plan, but we were desperate, a shadow of what we had been. Maxwell left me here, to guard the Black Sun, and everyone else left to help in his rebirth. [INHALE] But it didn’t work, did it? I can only assume we were too weak to hide from you, and you struck when Maxwell was vulnerable.

+ Manuela’s words kinda confirming the hypothesis that he was the son of MAG052’s statement-giver, Phillip Brown, the awful cop who had reported on Robert Montauk’s death (MAG052: “Martin hasn’t had much luck tracking down Mr Brown himself. According to Caroline Brodie, his ex-wife, she left him in 2004, after his dismissal from the prison service pushed him further into alcoholism, and he became abusive. She said she got a single letter from him in 2009, asking for reconciliation, but she never replied. Martin says the letter was postmarked from Waterford in Ireland. But he’s been unable to track Mr Brown any further.”)

… I immediately went with the same reasoning/hope as Martin when listening to this episode, that it wasn’t actually Callum himself but Rayner/a dark cultist possessing him ;; And nope ;;

(MAG173) MARTIN: That’s the avatar for this place? ARCHIVIST: Callum Brodie, thirteen years old. He guides the children through their fears of The Dark. MARTIN: This is that kid Basira went after last year, right? The one the darkness cult took. So, so that’s not even a kid, that’s whatever was inside Maxwell Rayner, it’s just wearing his body! ARCHIVIST: [CALLING] Callum? [FOOTSTEPS APPROACHING] CALLUM: Yeah, what? ARCHIVIST: You remember when those people kidnapped you. What happened? CALLUM: Mm, it was fun! I just hid and the cops came and got me. [SCREAMS IN THE DISTANCE] ARCHIVIST: Tell the truth. [STATIC RISES] CALLUM: Augh…! I, I–I was, I was scared, alright? I was really, really… scared. [STATIC FADES] And it was dead dark, and… I couldn’t see anyone and, I didn’t know where I was and… And there–there was something on my face, and it was cold, and, and slimy, and it didn’t like me. Then there was a bang, and it was gone…! And… the police were there. [SCREAMS IN THE DISTANCE] ARCHIVIST: And what happened to the thing that tried to take you over? CALLUM: Dunno, it… went away. ARCHIVIST: It died in the light. CALLUM: Whatever! ARCHIVIST: And it was after that you started shoving smaller kids into cupboards, right? CALLUM: Yeah. Give them a taste of it. Make them afraid of the dark. [SCREAMS IN THE DISTANCE] ARCHIVIST: But you’ve always pushed around smaller children, haven’t you? CALLUM: They made me feel sick. I hate them! ARCHIVIST: And now? CALLUM: Now everyone’s afraid of me!

That was another thing which hurt a lot in this episode: the fact that, so far, Callum’s story felt “simple” in its horribleness: a kid, who got kidnapped by a cult, who almost got possessed by an evil Dark-something, who was rescued, who was probably traumatised but still physically saved. Basira had offhandedly mentioned that he would need help to process what had happened to him, but as far as we could tell, he was just a blameless victim who went home and that was it. And he still is on that front! … And he also turns out to be, and already was before the kidnapping case, a bully. And he’s only thirteen – you can’t judge and evaluate a kid’s actions as you do adults’! But what can you do, then?

It stings that Callum took on that role, because his father was an awful man and Caroline Brodie had apparently left him while pregnant or when Callum was a few weeks old, so Callum never really knew him, and the show has stated time and time again that blood doesn’t condition you to become someone or something, but Callum became a bully too even without his father (whether it’s independently or because the consequences of Philip’s actions were felt in other ways than his presence). It stings that Callum turns out to be both a victim and a bully, not caused but still nurtured by his own trauma: trying to reclaim some control by putting younger children through experiences similar to his own, and by trying to lie about how traumatising the kidnapping had been to him. And it’s still made clear that… the trauma led him to this. Brushing with the powers led him to this. And it’s still a thirteen-year-old kid that was probably let down and not cared after enough after his traumatic kidnapping (and was not provided with the necessary redressing before that, when he was a regular bully).

- Re: Jon compelling Callum to tell the truth:

* So Jon can still do that! I was wondering, since Oliver had pointed out Jon’s passiveness in his new role and Jon had not displayed the ability again since the Change, so far.

* I have various “!!” feelings about Jon not taking kids’ bullshit at face value and having the ability to make them tell the truth very matter-of-factly. That was… almost domestic. (And yeah, feeding the “Jon&Martin AU where they adopt twenty kids”)

* There has been a HUGE constant amongst avatars to picture their path towards their patron as logical and wanted, when we had had hints that it wasn’t that simple (Mike Crew comes to mind, in MAG091: “There are echoes of resignation, I think, almost desperation. That can’t be right, though. What reason would I have had not to jump? Not to become as I am now. Perhaps I just didn’t know the true joy of vertigo. It doesn’t matter.”). We got a vivid example with Callum, who tried to pretend that the kidnapping had been on his terms when he was actually terrified. Again and again, I can’t help but think about Jonah: if Jon were to compel him, to rip the truth from his struggling tongue, would we get a quite different biography from what he had sent to Jon in MAG160, which had been on his terms?

- ;; It was horrible and made a lot of sense that Jon… plainly accepted that the “ruling” avatar was a kid, but that Martin had more trouble understanding it. Jon had direct experience with children’s cruelty and intra-violence (his bully was 18 when he was 8); Martin’s own traumas, as far as we know, came from the adults that surrounded him (his father leaving, his grandfather dying, his mother falling apart).

Jon already knew very sharply that children can hurt children in “normal” circumstances, and had read enough about the Powers touching children or shaping their lives:

(MAG009, Julia Montauk) “Whatever I had seen my father doing in there, its effects had long since vanished. I don’t know why my father did what he did, and I doubt I ever will, but the more I go over these events in my head, the more sure I am that he had his reasons.” (MAG109) JULIA: I tried to live a normal life. I really did. I took jobs working in the backroom of offices where I wouldn’t need to meet anyone. I had boyfriends who promised they didn’t care. I burned through half a dozen counsellors. None of it worked. You see, my father’s always remained one of the darlings of the true crime community.

(MAG067, Jack Barnabas) “We sat on a bench as the sun went down, watching the sky redden, and Agnes asked me a question. It was the first time she’d said anything more than a few words since we left my flat. [STATIC] She asked me if I had a destiny.” (MAG139, Eugene Vanderstock) “And on top of that, sleeping peacefully among the fire… a baby. Untouched, unharmed, and to our eyes, alight with a burning divinity. We baptised her with the boiling water of Asag and named her… “Agnes”, as had been her mother’s final request. But… raising a messiah, as it turns out, is a lot more challenging than creating one.” (MAG145) ARTHUR: You might be right. But Agnes did. That’s the thing about an… “incarnation”, isn’t it? She was a child and… person as much as she was a god. And we messed that right up…! … I still remember when Diego brought us a book on childcare. [CHUCKLING] Roger’s body was still in her room, blackened and smoking from… when he tried to feed her. I thought for a moment he’d brought another one of his damn Leitners, but no! It was just a… regular ol’ book on looking after children…! But I was an idiot. Saw it as… attacking my leadership.

(MAG081) ARCHIVIST: There were supernatural things in the world, but they were rare – isolated and exaggerated, vastly outnumbered by wild tales and drunken imaginings. The one name I held in my mind as a true source of evil was Jurgen Leitner, and I knew him as the worst of it, for it was his name that had marked the encounter that scarred my youth. […] I do not know how many of them there are, or precisely how they separate, but I do know that the Eye – Beholding – was not the first that I encountered in my life. The first was the Spider. The Web. And I have no idea what that might mean. I was eight years old when my grandmother gave me the book.

(MAG101) MICHAEL: When he was in school, [Michael Shelley] lost a friend to something like me. His friend was named Ryan, but those in power simply called him schizophrenic. I don’t know if he was, but it doesn’t matter. He was so dreadfully afraid his world wasn’t real that to make it so was almost nothing. Michael was there when he was taken; he never got over what he saw. Or didn’t see. After much searching and despair, it drove him into the waiting arms of the Institute, where he met Gertrude Robinson.

(MAG111) GERRY: The things out there weren’t like taming fire, they couldn’t be contained or used for light or warmth. The best you could hope for from them, would be that they don’t spot you, and instead my mum chased after them, obsessed with others who had tried to stare at them without being blinded: y’know, Flamsteed, Smirke, Leitner. Idiots who destroyed themselves chasing a secret that wasn’t worth knowing. And the worst thing was, she marked me as a part of that, without my understanding. Or consent.

So no surprise that Jon had all the background knowledge to be already ready for this situation… and that Martin required more time and was more explicitly hurt and shocked by the concept.

There were two big layers of horror in that domain: how it operates on the kids, and how Martin&Jon were seemingly powerless, unable to put a stop to it, while the situation was indeed intolerable:

(MAG173) MARTIN: Wh–what about the avatar? Alright, I know you said it didn’t change anything, that the domain would still exist, but at this point I don’t care, alright? Anyone who’s chosen to spend their apocalypse tormenting children– God, you–you need to end them. Now. ARCHIVIST: … It’s not that simple! MARTIN: Seriously? Seriously? ARCHIVIST: [LONG SIGH] … Fine. […] You see? MARTIN: See what, Jon, what am I supposed to see? That you don’t want to kill a… thirteen-year-old kid, big revelation! ARCHIVIST: I don’t know what you want me to do! MARTIN: I want you to use your power, I want you to help them, I want you to make things better! ARCHIVIST: There – is – no – “better” anymore. MARTIN: You keep saying that, and I hate it! ARCHIVIST: I keep saying it because it keeps being true, you know that! [SCREAMS IN THE DISTANCE] MARTIN: What I know is that leaving children here is… i–i–it’s inexcusable, i–it’s monstrous! ARCHIVIST: Martin, tell me what you want me to do, and I will do it! [SCREAMS IN THE DISTANCE] MARTIN: … [SLIGHTLY MUFFLED] Tell me about this place. … I need to know. […] The sooner we get back to the Archives, the sooner we can put a stop to this. All of this. They just… [INHALE] They’ll just need to hang on a little longer. ARCHIVIST: … Right. [EXHALE] Right.

* Outside of the supernatural, it’s a very concrete situation: what can you do, as an (unequipped) adult, if you’re witnessing a child torturing children in a community in which you don’t belong? What is the thing that needs to be done to improve the situation?

* Added with the supernatural, as was mentioned: the torture would keep going anyway if Callum was removed. And Callum is a kid, who was clearly traumatised himself and is fighting for survival – how could he deserve death for it? Yet, he’s enjoying the pain he inflicts; yet, he’s not the problem. (The problem is, as Martin pointed out again, the apocalypse itself. The problem is the Fear-machine, the system the Fears put in place.)

* … Ethical concerns about the “goodness” of smiting a thirteen-year-old to lower the pain of other kids aside, “smiting” Callum probably would have made things worse for the other kids: it would have given them an example that… monsters can kill even the most powerful of you. That your “friend” (who is also a bully) can be taken down, that you can disappear, that you can die. Concretely, it would probably have caused more fears for the kids.

- Overall: I’m glad that this episode demonstrated that no, the “smiting” is absolutely not viable nor reliable. It’s petty revenge. It doesn’t do anything good (and is probably feeding The Eye, so contributing to the awful system), it doesn’t free people nor does it decrease their sufferings. Yet: is it okay to let people enjoy the chaos be and keep benefitting from it? There is not clear answer about what Jon and Martin “have to” do, but I perfectly understand their frustrations…

- I’m still laughing so so hard that Jonah… is never relevant. Avatars can immediately identify Jon as all-powerful or even the apocalypse-bringer:

(MAG164) HELEN: What would I have to gloat about? Much as I am delighted by this brave new world in which we find ourselves, I can take no credit for it. This was all… you!

(MAG165) NOT!SASHA: Well, of course you want to wallow in my shame like your voyeur master!

(MAG166) HELEN: We’re all here, Martin. The Stranger; The Buried; The Desolation; all of us. But The Eye still rules. All this fear is being performed for its benefit. And so, there are now exactly two roles available in this new world of ours: the watcher, and the watched. Subject, and object. Those who are feared, and those who are afraid. And Jon, well… he is part of The Eye; a very important part.

(MAG168) ARCHIVIST: “This report is being sent to: The Great Eye, that watches all who linger in terror, and gorges itself on the sufferings of those under its unrelenting, stuporous gaze! And its Archive, which draws knowledge of this suffering unto itself. […] Perhaps once it might have horrified me, or given me some sense of pursuing the ultimate release of the world that you have damned.”

(MAG169) JUDE: Fancy seeing you both here. To what, exactly, do I owe the pleasure, the honour, of being graced by the great and powerful Archivist, harbinger of this new world, and his, uh… valet…? […] Just messing around~! Wouldn’t want to keep you from your oh-so-special business, Your Holiness.

(MAG171) JARED: Mm. … So, is there any way this doesn’t end in me dead? I’m guessing that’s on the docket if you’re here. Unless you’re just here to smell the flowers.

(MAG172) ARCHIVIST: “THE SPIDER: Oh, Francis… It’s such a shame, but I couldn’t do such a thing even if I wanted to! The man in the audience saw to that!”

(MAG173) CALLUM: … You’re the Eye guy, right? ARCHIVIST: That’s right. CALLUM: So you’re like… real important. ARCHIVIST: [HUFF] I suppose I am!

But Jonah? Jonah “I am to be a king of a ruined world, and I shall never die.” Magnus? Never heard of ‘em.

(But aouch, the identification of Jon as connected to The Eye and/or being responsible for the apocalypse is not helping him… He was feeling guilty about it even before leaving the cabin. I wonder how much time before someone points out and reminds him that Jonah framed him and planned and pushed for the apocalypse to happen? Martin had clearly identified Jonah as the one responsible, but it’s been a while since he was last mentioned…)

- Back to “what are the tape recorders DOING” because mmmm…

(Season 5 trailer) MARTIN: Are you still… [SIGH] “feeling it”? Seeing everything? ARCHIVIST: Yes, I, I’m trying not to, but… all of the fear, th–the anguish, i–it just… [INHALE] It keeps coming at me in waves, rolling over me, filling my head with such… awful sights. MARTIN: … I’m sorry. That sounds… [SMALL EXHALE] That sounds horrible. ARCHIVIST: … I wish it was, Martin. I really wish it was. … But it feels… right. [MIRTHLESS HUFF]

(MAG162) MARTIN: What happened? The tapes, were you– […] Look, Jon, I… I, I know it hurts, but you’ve just got to… ARCHIVIST: No, no, lo–look… I, I–I was listening, and I–I was filled with this… hatred. This anger; I–I wanted to leave, and hunt down Elias, a–and…! MARTIN: W–wow, okay… ARCHIVIST: But, when I thought it… the–there was… [WOODEN CREAKING SOUND] There was something else. Th–this place, it… it didn’t want me, it… [WOODEN CREAKING SOUND] didn’t want us to go. MARTIN: … What do you mean? ARCHIVIST: This cabin. [WOODEN CREAKING SOUND] It’s not right. And, when I thought that, I–I felt… It, it all poured out of me down… into the tape. MARTIN: [SIGH] ARCHIVIST: A–a–an–and it… felt good. It–it felt… right. MARTIN: Okay. [BREATHES IN] So you’re recording again? ARCHIVIST: I might need to. If we’re going to make it…!

(MAG163) ARCHIVIST: They won’t hear you, Martin, they’re all… too busy waiting to die. MARTIN: Jon… ARCHIVIST: They sit here – [STATIC RISES] the image of everyone they hold dear locked in their mind, knowing they’ll never see them again. Waiting for the order; dreading the bullet or the drone or the barbed wire that will tear them to shreds and leave them nothing but a bloody– [STATIC REACHING A PEAK] MARTIN: J–Jon, enough! Enough! [STATIC FADES] … Please don’t tell me these things. ARCHIVIST: I… I’m sorry, I– There’s just so much! There’s so much, Martin, and I know all of it, I can see all of it, and I– It’s filling me up, I need to let it out! MARTIN: I’m sorry, but tough. Okay? Tha–that’s not what I’m here for. [VOICE IN THE DISTANCE: “No… No!”] MARTIN: I can’t be that for you, I–I just can’t. ARCHIVIST: [QUIET] I… I know. [SILENCE] I–I’ll use the tape recorder…! [PLASTIC OF A TAPE] I just… [INHALE] You probably want to wait outside.

(MAG164) ARCHIVIST: We’re fine. MARTIN: A–are we? I mean, that place is– … I don’t, I don’t feel fine, okay, and you were there a long time doing your… y–you–your guidebook, which, you know, I get it, but that place is…

(MAG165) MARTIN: Yeeaah, good call. Hum, in that case, do you want to… do your thing now then, before we start moving? But, are we close enough? [ROARING IN THE DISTANCE] ARCHIVIST: … Yes… Yes, I–I think so. Good idea. MARTIN: Thanks! ARCHIVIST: You, uh… [SHUFFLING] You might want to take a bit of a walk. This… feels like a strange one…

(MAG166) ARCHIVIST: I… It’s hard to put into words. Loo–l… [SIGH] Look, we can talk about it later, we’re– coming to a… “domain of The Buried”, and [STATIC RISES] I would really rather… […] [INHALE] [WHIMPERING] Ah… [GRUNT] MARTIN: Jon? Are you… ARCHIVIST: We’ve been… close for too long, I need to, uh… [INHALE] You might want to take a walk. MARTIN: Hm.

(MAG168) ARCHIVIST: [INHALE] [LONG EXHALE] [CREAKING SOUND] Oookay. Time you went for a walk. [FOOTSTEPS] MARTIN: Y–yeah, about that… [CREAKING SOUND] You sure you’ll be okay on your own? […] You… [INHALE] You vomit your horrors. [SIGH] ARCHIVIST: [REVULSED SOUND] Uh! I’m… not sure I like that metaphor…! MARTIN: “Puke your terrors”? ARCHIVIST: … Just go. MARTIN: Alright. Fine, I’m going.

(MAG171) JARED: You still do that talk-y thing? You know? Drink up all the fear and spit it back out? ARCHIVIST: Sort of, yes. JARED: Alright. Well, I’d like to hear about my garden. [SILENCE] ARCHIVIST: … Okay! MARTIN: Look, if this is some kind of trick– ARCHIVIST: It isn’t. […] MARTIN: Jon, are you… alright? ARCHIVIST: Yeah, hum… Sorry. MARTIN: No, it, it’s alright. JARED: Is it really that bad? Seeing what I’ve done here? Or… uh! Is it maybe that deep down, you think it’s as beautiful as I do?

(MAG172) ARCHIVIST: Ah… Hold up, I–I need to, uh… [RUSTLING OF CLOTHES] MARTIN: Now, seriously? We’re almost out of here. ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] I’m sorry…! Not really up to me…! MARTIN: Fine. [SIGH]

(MAG173) MARTIN: Slow down, I can barely see a thing! ARCHIVIST: … Sorry. […] Look, I would just really like to get through here, as quickly as possible. MARTIN: How come? This one seems like the quietest place we’ve been in a while! It’s just… rows and rows of quiet houses. I mean, I know some people don’t like that sort of thing, [CHUCKLING] but I’m actually finding it kind of relaxing s– ARCHIVIST: [AGITATED BREATHING] Martin…! Please. [LOUD BREATHING] MARTIN: … Jon…? Where are we? ARCHIVIST: I–it’s complicated. MARTIN: That’s… not an answer! ARCHIVIST: Can we please just move on? […] Do you really want to know that? Really? MARTIN: [FRUSTRATED BREATHS] ARCHIVIST: I’ve been trying very hard to keep this one bottled up…!

Jon had also mentioned that they could have gone another way in MAG169; the statement in MAG171 was prompted by Jared, who wanted to hear about it; and MAG170 was even given by Martin. Jon had almost left the Web’s domain without giving one, and tried to “keep this one bottled up” in MAG172, and only gave it when prompted by Martin. Is Jon displaying a bit more control over his need to “pour out” the domains’ statements?

Once again: there are very two different things at play. On the one hand, the fact that Jon and Martin have to “experience” the domains by going through them, and the fact that Jon sometimes feel saturated to the point he has to “pour out” into the tapes to be able to function again. The two do not feel connected or necessary to each other: the tape recorder clicked on in MAG167 and recorded something that wasn’t a domain’s statement (but one about the previous Team Archive), and Jon didn’t give the house’s statement in MAG170 – that was Martin. What are the tape recorders, and is this feeding them somehow…?

- Sob about Martin trying to lighten the mood at the beginning of the episode, because it just created a rift right away – Jon already knowing the horror of the situation, and Martin thinking/hoping that the situation around there was okay-ish, allowing for light jokes:

(MAG173) MARTIN: Slow down, I can barely see a thing! ARCHIVIST: … Sorry. MARTIN: No prizes for guessing who’s in charge here, eh? ARCHIVIST: Mm, I–I suppose not…! MARTIN: You know… I really miss the days when I could blame broken streetlights on the council. A strongly-worded letter just doesn’t feel as forceful when it’s addressed to “whichever Dread Power it may concern”. ARCHIVIST: [INHALE] [SIGH] Hm.

Please, Martin, send many strongly-worded letters to Jonah to hiss about the current problems.

Also, SOB ABOUT THIS BIT:

(MAG173) MARTIN: This one seems like the quietest place we’ve been in a while! It’s just… rows and rows of quiet houses. I mean, I know some people don’t like that sort of thing, [CHUCKLING] but I’m actually finding it kind of relaxing s–

Because ahahahahahaha: lonely!Martin liked the “quiet” in season 4, and “rows and rows of quiet houses” puts me in mind of MAG150’s statement with the Lonely suburb ;;

- The fear that The Web could be messing with Martin is still fresh in Jon’s mind, uh?

(MAG173) ARCHIVIST: Martin, tell me what you want me to do, and I will do it! [SCREAMS IN THE DISTANCE] MARTIN: … [SLIGHTLY MUFFLED] Tell me about this place. … I need to know. ARCHIVIST: I thought you hated listen– … [INHALE] Are you… sure that’s what you want? MARTIN: Of course it’s not…! [BAG JOSTLING] But I need to hear it.

;; Jon trying to check if Martin wasn’t mindcontrolled, since it sounded out-of-character…

(But: it made sense for Martin, and it’s also one more thing that couldn’t really have happened at the beginning of the season. Martin didn’t want to hear about Jon “vomiting” his horrors – it’s not that he was living in denial about them happening, he knew very well about them. But as was mentioned, “knowing” and “understanding” are two different things: Martin could hear that the children were terrified and preyed upon, the statement “only” provided details and the way the domain was operating. It brought no catharsis, no clue about how to make it stop and help the kids. It just made Martin another voyeur, aware of the situation… and unable to do anything short-term to solve it.)

- It’s sad and I’m glad that Jon and Martin’s differences are shining and conflicting a bit more obviously nowadays. At the core of it: Jon knows how to navigate through this new world, knows how it works, what is happening around them. He already knew about the children getting tortured, why they were there, that they were being groomed to become more satisfying for The Eye. Martin… doesn’t, and Jon tends to forget that: while Jon has to bear the knowledge, it also makes some of his actions hard to follow (Martin didn’t understand why Jon was walking so fast), and Martin’s hypotheses and hopes ruled out before he even voiced them (Jon already knew that Callum was in charge and that “smiting” this domain’s avatar wasn’t a comfortable option). But it doesn’t feel to me like they’re heading towards full-blown conflict, quite the contrary: there are tensions, there are mutual frustrations over the other’s behaviour, but they don’t forget that the apocalypse is responsible for it, and are getting better at wording what they’re feeling. Martin had pointed out that Jon wasn’t very open about his feelings, and it’s true; and it’s also true that Martin seems to be misunderstanding Jon’s level of control over their situation, to the point that… they’re both occasionally hurting each other.

(- Re: the slapping reference, I thiiiink it was Jon’s attempt at a sardonic joke like he had done in MAG154, and it just didn’t land because it sounded accusatory with a tint of cruel edge instead:

(MAG154) ARCHIVIST: I–I’ve been trying to a–avoid, being, hum… Sticking to old statements? Thank you, for your little “intervention”, by the way. MARTIN: Look, I wouldn’t have had to if you hadn’t– ARCHIVIST: Yes, no, I know, I’m sorry, uh– that didn’t… come out right. Honestly: thank you. [EXHALE] It’s been hell, but… I–I did need to hear it.

(MAG173) ARCHIVIST: [LOUD, LONG EXHALE] [STATIC FADES] Is that enough for you? Do you need to hear more? MARTIN: … I… ARCHIVIST: [INHALE] [STATIC INCREASES] “See Luka. See Luka sleep–” [RUSTLING OF CLOTHES] MARTIN: No, no! No, that’s enough, that’s… enough. [STATIC FADES] [FOOTSTEPS] ARCHIVIST: … Thank you for not hitting me this time. [SILENCE, PUNCTUATED BY SCREAMS] Was that what you wanted? What you needed? MARTIN: … No. [SLIGHTLY MUFFLED] No, it didn’t help at all. ARCHIVIST: I’m sorry. MARTIN: … Let’s get out of here.

Martin hasn’t slapped Jon three times for the fun of it or for his own benefit: he had previously tried to shake him awake (MAG160) and to talk him out of it (MAG169, MAG172) when Jon was supernaturally ensnared. But, also: Jon is perfectly entitled to be bitter about it.

I wonder if Martin will try to find another way next time, though (MAKE OUT WITH HIM, HE WON’T BE ABLE TO TALK, MARTIN.))

- Sob over the fact that Martin “wanting” something reminded me of his outburst at Tim…

(MAG079) TIM: Alright, fine. Fine. What do you want? What’s your light at the end of these spooky damn tunnels – and don’t say “everyone happy forever”, because that’s not happening. … Well? MARTIN: I don’t know. I don’t know!! I want to find out what’s going on; I want to save Jon; I want everyone to be fine, and you know what? If we were all happy that wouldn’t actually be the end of the world!

(MAG173) ARCHIVIST: I don’t know what you want me to do! MARTIN: I want you to use your power, I want you to help them, I want you to make things better! ARCHIVIST: There – is – no – “better” anymore. MARTIN: You keep saying that, and I hate it! ARCHIVIST: I keep saying it because it keeps being true, you know that!

And Jon is really reminiscent of Tim right now? Convinced that they’re stuck in this situation forever, almost reproaching Martin for daring to hope? While Martin’s hope indeed feels too idealistic and unreachable, despite technically being… the bare minimum.

- Jon… hasn’t always been this fatalistic about the current situation in season 5. He began the season with hopelessness, but then was the one to offer hope, before… apparently reverting back to despair:

(Season 5 trailer) ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] … What? What do you want? … The world is…! It’s over. You’ve won. What can you possibly still need to hear? […] MARTIN: “How are you feeling in general”, then? ARCHIVIST: … Unchanged. [PAUSE] I don’t know if it’ll ever change again…! […] MARTIN: Maybe I should, uh… pop down the village? See if they have any coffee instead? ARCHIVIST: It’s gone, Martin, and the people are…! MARTIN: Yes, I know, Jon, I’m not ignorant, I’m just… I’m just not ready for complete despair yet. ARCHIVIST: “Like me”. MARTIN: … I didn’t say that. ARCHIVIST: You didn’t have to.

(MAG161) MARTIN: Jon, it’s not your fault… ARCHIVIST: Martin, can we not do this again. MARTIN: Sorry. ARCHIVIST: I’m just… I’m mourning a world I killed…! MARTIN: I know… ARCHIVIST: And we’re all trapped in its rotting corpse…! […] MARTIN: Jon, I… This isn’t healthy. ARCHIVIST: Healthy? I am an avatar of voyeuristic terror, whose unquestioned craving for knowledge has condemned the entire world… to an eternity of torment, “healthy” i–isn’t, i–it’s not…! […] No, it’s not, I’m, I’m sorry, I just… [RUSTLING OF CLOTHES] [INHALE, EXHALE] It hurts. MARTIN: I know. ARCHIVIST: … I need time. MARTIN: I know. But we can’t stay in this cabin forever…! [DISTANT HOWL] ARCHIVIST: Why not? It, it’s quiet here, an–and I have you…! […] MARTIN: Well, that as may be, we can’t just stay here forever. ARCHIVIST: What could possibly be out there that you want to see? MARTIN: A way to stop this, a way to turn the world back! ARCHIVIST: [HINT OF A DISHEARTENED SMILE] … Do you really think there is one? [WOODEN CREAKING SOUND] MARTIN: Well, if there is, it’s not in here, is it? ARCHIVIST: It’s so… It’s so loud, out there? The agony, the–the terror, I can see it all so much more clearly…! MARTIN: I’m sorry. ARCHIVIST: No, it’s– [SIGH] I love you, I just… I need more time. [SILENCE] MARTIN: It’s alright. [RUSTLING OF CLOTHES] [CREAKING SOUND] ARCHIVIST: [SOFT EXHALE] MARTIN: It’s alright, I’m good at waiting.

(MAG162) ARCHIVIST: “This place wishes to be our tomb. But The Eye does not wish that. No. [STATIC INCREASES] The Eye wishes instead that it be my chrysalis. It is time that I emerge…” [STATIC REACHING A PEAK] […] MARTIN: So you’re recording again? ARCHIVIST: I might need to. If we’re going to make it…! [WOODEN CREAKING SOUND] MARTIN: Back to the Archives? ARCHIVIST: Seems the best place to start. [RUMBLE OF THUNDER] MARTIN: Uh… Y–eah, alright! [WOODEN CREAKING SOUND] ARCHIVIST: Martin… It’s going to be a hard journey. […] MARTIN: Do you think it’ll do anything? Confronting Elias? ARCHIVIST: [INHALE] I… [SIGH] Maybe? MARTIN: No, I’m serious. Do we… [PAUSE IN THE PACKING SOUNDS] Is there a chance that we can undo this? ARCHIVIST: [LONG INHALE] Gertrude didn’t think so. [WOODEN CREAKING SOUND] MARTIN: … Right. ARCHIVIST: [SOFT] But she’s dead. [FIRMER] Let’s find out for ourselves. […] Besides, there’s… far worse out there. Better to try and avoid it, I think. MARTIN: We’re not even gonna try? We, we’ve got your lighter, maybe we could just– ARCHIVIST: We can’t fight the world, Martin. MARTIN: [AMUSED DEFIANT HUFF] Says you.

(MAG163) ARCHIVIST: It means the journey will be the journey, regardless of how we choose to make it. […] You could see that tower from anywhere on Earth. And it can see you. And if you walk towards it, eventually you’ll get there. But you have to go through everything in-between. […] MARTIN: What’re you doing here? [PLASTIC RATTLING] It’s dangerous. Could… get yourself blown up, like all these poor… [PLASTIC RATTLING] Who d’you think they were? Really don’t see why they can’t just… go round, picked a better place to… [STEPS THROUGH LIQUID] [SIGH] I guess there… aren’t really any “better” places anymore, are there? [STEPS THROUGH LIQUID] It’s all this. Or worse, or… or different.

(MAG164) MARTIN: How much further do we still need to go? [STATIC INCREASES] ARCHIVIST: A long way. Through many dark and awful places… […] MARTIN: Can we turn the world back? [STATIC RISES, STRONG] ARCHIVIST: Wow! Hum… I–if the Fears are removed, yes; but they–they can’t be destroyed while there are still… people to fear them; th–then they can’t be banished back to the space where they came from, it’s not… there anymore, I… Oh! Uh… MARTIN: J–J–Jon, what’s wrong? ARCHIVIST: Uh, it’s, uh… I’m sorry, trying to know things about them directly, i–i–it’s like… [STATIC DECREASES] [EXHALE] God, it’s like looking into the Sun…! MARTIN: Okay, okay – okay, alright, that’s alright.

(MAG167) ARCHIVIST: Help us with what? MARTIN: ‘xcuse me? ARCHIVIST: Annabelle, help us with “what”? Our–our, our journey, killing Elias, vanishing the Entities – what? […] Wi–without… trust, without a, a reason… Gertrude needed both the purpose her mission gave her, and the control her position allowed. To be here, like us, without a, [INHALE] a reason, without someone to ground her, she… She’d have power but… no control. No real… purpose. Perhaps she’d dedicate herself to a, a doomed quest like us, but– … [QUIET] No… I think this would have broken her. And she’d have resigned herself to… ruling her domain. […] MARTIN: [INHALE] [SNORT] Ssso. If you say Gertrude wouldn’t have been able to go on without a reason… ARCHIVIST: Yes, Martin, you are my reason. MARTIN: Just wanted to make you say it…! ARCHIVIST: [INHALE] MARTIN: Cool.

(MAG168) ARCHIVIST: I feel badly for those that exist in his domain, o–of course, I do, but… At least, their suffering will be over, eventually.

(MAG170) ARCHIVIST: M–Martin, if you… did; i–if you wanted to forget… a–all of it, stay here and just… escape. I… I would understand. MARTIN: … N–no…! It’s comforting here, leaving all those… painful memories behind, but… It’s not a good comfort, it’s… I–it’s the kind that makes you fade, makes you… dim and… distant.

(MAG171) MARTIN: Jon. We are… doing good, right? Making things better? ARCHIVIST: … I don’t know if that was… ever an option.

(MAG173) ARCHIVIST: I don’t know what you want me to do! MARTIN: I want you to use your power, I want you to help them, I want you to make things better! ARCHIVIST: There – is – no – “better” anymore. MARTIN: You keep saying that, and I hate it! ARCHIVIST: I keep saying it because it keeps being true, you know that! […] MARTIN: [INHALE] [CLEARER] The sooner we get back to the Archives, the sooner we can put a stop to this. All of this. They just… [INHALE] They’ll just need to hang on a little longer. ARCHIVIST: … Right. [EXHALE] Right. MARTIN: Come on.

After the surge of hope towards the end of MAG162, Jon has made more and more small comments implying that he doesn’t think that there is a “better” solution (theirs is a “doomed quest”, Oliver’s victims will ~at least~ die, Martin staying in his domain would have been a way to “escape”, etc.) I wonder what is happening in Jon’s mind: is it the journey starting to take its toll on him, things feeling hopeless because he has to face the concreteness of this new world, which feels all-powerful, too complicated, too big, impossible to undo? Or did he “know” something that he hasn’t told Martin, back in MAG164, or did he drew from there the conclusion that it was impossible to get rid of the Fears? In any case: it’s good that Martin is still pushing for hope and for a solution. What would be the alternative? Just stopping and getting a domain to rule over? Keeping on with the journey through the horrors forever ~since at least they’re together uwu~?

- Re: Jon apparently not daring to hope (anymore) vs. Martin accidentally sounding very bossy and ignorant by wanting Jon to save things… at the core of it, I think that there is a misunderstanding between them regarding Jon’s powers, which makes sense for both of them.

For Jon: his powers can’t do much good. Growing as an Archivist came with taking live-statements and condemning people to his nightmare zoo, where he could only watch and not intervene (with mentions that he used to try). Saving Melanie and Daisy, annihilating the Dark Sun, was accompanied by new victims, constantly tortured, leaving them a wreck. He never “saved the world”: The Unknowing would have failed on its own with no intervention necessary, and Melanie was right to point out that them trying to do good… had invariably caused bad things all around. Saving Martin meant getting his last mark, setting him up for Jonah’s apocalypse.

But for Martin: Jon saved him from The Lonely twice. Martin’s own “powers” (disappearing in front of Georgie, his Lonely training) never came at the cost of sacrificing innocents – only himself. And Jon was able to stop hurting innocents when monitored, after Martin took Jess Tyrell’s complaint: bad people, bad avatars, would keep hurting people. But it seems that in Martin’s mind, there are still “good” ways to use one’s powers (saving people, smiting avatars) without negative consequences – which… isn’t really the case. The powers are granted by the Fears to provide more fear for the Fears.

(- Amongst the sad things regarding Martin’s horror at being a passive witness to the children’s suffering: technically, it was long-due as a horror, since the very beginning of the show. They knew, as Team Archive, that the things happening out there were hurting actual people, real people. That some of them were still alive. Jon began season 4 lightly apologising about their passivity, in the Web’s web-development statement. Martin is horrified at their passivity now, but technically… they’ve never really tried to help people for the sake of helping people — the worst cases being Jon’s own victims.)

(- I shouldn’t hoooooope but ;; The fact that Jon seems to be reaching rock-bottom re:hope and being unable to do anything good, to make things “better”… still makes me wonder if he might not manage to get Daisy back for a short while.

Alternatively: that would be the rock-bottom. To have to smite her, or to help Basira in killing her as promised… because there is no other option.)

- Right now, Jon and Martin indeed feel powerless, but there are various elements contributing to this. First: at the beginning of the journey, reaching the Panopticon was supposed to be the start to trying to undo the apocalypse, not the final objective; right now, as they go through domain after the domain and the horrors are more concrete, it’s easy to forget that the journey wasn’t supposed to be their answer and solution.

Jon is also getting his powers from Beholding, who has never been a passive agent when it comes to knowledge – Jon had noted how hard it had been to listen to MAG154’s tape (containing a way to… cut one’s connection to The Eye), and had even expressed his difficulty with burning Gerry’s page because of the knowledge it could still provide. When Jon had tried to know how to get rid of the fears in MAG164, he had noted that knowing about the Powers was more intense – and had to quickly stop. Why would The Eye nurture the hope of undoing the apocalypse making it all-powerful?

Meanwhile, Martin has noticed that he was “always following, never leading”, doesn’t have a clear understanding of the domains, doesn’t have powers, which… seems to limit his options. He’s also proved to be able to think outside-of-the-box when it came to providing plans, in the past, and had sometimes displayed a more “intuitive” feel of the powers (with Peter and Simon), so that could come in handy – just… not in the current environment.

Overall: Martin and Jon are limited right now, having trouble understanding themselves and conveying it to the other (but are still trying!), and clearly in need of other perspectives… So here’s to hoping that Melanie&Georgie, Basira (… and potentially Daisy but I don’t wanna hope TT_TT) could help. I doubt that the entirety of season 5 would be a hopeless exploration of this apocalyptical world in which everyone suffers almost-forever and then dies?

… The other option right now is Annabelle, who had told Martin that she was calling “to help”: given that Jon&Martin are lacking options… Martin could be a bit more open this time if she tries to reach him again – or at least, listen to what she has to say, even if it’s only venom.

  New organisation for season 5, as announced everywhere!

I see absolutely no downside to this as a listener: I’m glad that RQ are allowing themselves more time to work on the show safely and remotely (operating safely during the pandemic means that the logistics of almost everything has changed, you can’t expect people to keep up), I’m glad that the series is lasting longer time-wise (yay!), I’m glad that I’ll have two 6-weeks-break to breathe a bit /o/ And honestly, if they end up needing more time and have to space out episodes/hiatuses for even a bit longer, full support, I hope that they won’t hesitate if it’s deemed necessary (or even healthy!).

Curious about the fragmentation in three acts – that’s another structure of tragedy, it… could mean that we’re technically in the “prologue” to the core of the season? Well, the segmentation in three is also interesting for events: we’re currently in the journey towards the domain, there are only Vast, Hunt and Spiral remaining, which could mean that MAG176 is the last zone before the Panopticon, and then… And then. Act I being the journey, Act II and Act III regarding the Panopticon (research into the Archives) and Hill Top Road? Eye-arc and Web-arc? (I’m still a bit “MMMM” about a few words said during one of the Q&A, which could imply time/timelines shenanigans at some point…)

MAG174’s title is… well, my adjective for it would be the title itself, damnit. I… It… it could be the perfect title for a Vast domain (Simon, where are you.) AND for monster!Daisy barging in into that domain, WorriedForDaisy.jpg

[sol1056]

hey! i noticed that you’ve written a lot about how voltron fails as a mecha series, and it got me curious about what a GOOD mecha series looks like. do you have any recs for someone whose only experience with the genre, quite literally, is voltron?

note: that is NOT where I wanted the cut. who knows what the devs are doing over there at tumblr hq.

-----

Welp, there’s more than one kind of mecha. There’s super robots -- where (in general) the robots are ultra-powered and relatively indestructible. Then there’s real robots, which will break down and/or run out of ammunition at the most dramatically critical moments. And then there’s a category that at best might be nearly-sentient robots, which have minds and motivations of their own -- but I wouldn’t say that’s a true category (in terms of the genre) so much as a distinction I've noted.

I’ve never been big into the super robot series (with a few exceptions), and I mostly find the combining robot genre to be frustrating. Former mechanic and engineer who currently works with AI, so a lot of the hand-wavey aspects are frustrating for me, especially in super robots where things mysteriously repair themselves and there’s never a struggle to upgrade/repair. (And don’t even get me started on the idea of controlling a bipedal reactive machine with only two foot pedals and a damn joystick.)

Which is all to say, I suppose I should recommend that you watch the classics, except I’m not really sure what they are because I’ve forgotten most of them. And frankly a lot of them are really shoddy animation by today’s standards, and life is too short to waste time on that. I’ll need to refer you along to other mecha fans to add their recommendations, instead.

Well, I can at least recommend Gundam and Macross, but that’s kind of like saying I recommend Doc Martens and Aididas -- that barely narrows it down, since there’s so many options within each brand. Everyone’s got their favorites in each, as do I, but any mecha series that’s stayed with me is one that found a way to either twist the core trope, or explored implications that other series glossed over.

Note: I’ve never seen any version of Eva, and never felt the urge to, either. Sorry. Ask someone else for input on that. Plus there’s also ones I’ll leave off here ‘cause they’re veering over into AI/robots/tech and less what would usually be called mecha, but they’re still worthwhile: Battle Fairy Yukikaze, Ghost in the Shell: Standalone Complex, Broken Blade, Last Exile, and Voices of a Distant Star all come to mind.

Gundam

For me, I adore the technical geeky touches in Gundam F91, but the story is total spaghetti, so you might want to skip that until you’re more familiar with the gundam tropes. (It was meant to be a series, iirc, got shut down, and they took the pieces and made a movie from it, so it’s... kind of compressed, to put it mildly). 

Gundam Wing and Gundam 00 are considerably less geeky on the technical (though they do satisfy the mechanic itch, with a bit more real robot, at least on the technicalities). I like the international core cast, and the way each series explores geopolitical dynamics. (That said, skip the second season of Gundam 00. It just goes totally off the rails into some really wild and wacky directions.)

A long-running concept like Gundam is recognizable across the series thanks to core concepts, and in Gundam’s case it’s the conflicts between imperialism and colonialism, war versus justified rebellion, and pacifism versus a first-strike as self-defense. What I liked with Wing and 00, in particular, was its central pilots felt more tied to (and aware of) the political ramifications of their actions.

I did watch about half of Iron-Blooded Orphans, which struck out in a new direction by having Mars as the colony instead of the lagrange points, but didn’t bother finishing. From what I hear, watch it with a box of tissues, as it’s a return to the classic kill-em-all perspective of the original Gundam series.

Macross

I’m sure someone else will tell you to watch the original Macross (the american version being Robotech, albeit highly edited). I know lots of people adore the first Macross series, but it’s just too late-80s for me. (The hair, my god, the hair.)

Personally, I prefer Macross Frontier -- the amination is much improved, though the fact is I also adore the voices of Yuuichi Nakamura and Aya Endō. Macross has some politics, but it’s mostly internal -- that is, the opponents aren’t human, so whatever debate there is about who’s right or wrong is mostly one-sided, since we only ever see humans doing the talking.

I tried to watch Macross Delta but it just didn’t do it for me -- and therein lies some of the issues (for me) with both Gundam and Macross. Because both have some core elements that they tackle in every series, it can start to feel a bit repetitive.

For Macross it’s always music, Valkyries (the mecha type for Macross), and a love triangle -- which sometimes isn’t even resolved. (I’ve read all kinds of debates about whether Alto ends up with Sheryl or with Ranka, but the series leaves it open.)

A good writer can explore these themes over and over, but between the two, I personally think Gundam has done a bit better of pivoting to take a new angle with each series. But at the same time, Gundam is pretty consistent about not building on a previous series -- with a few notable exceptions, most of its series are alternate-universe stories to each other. In Macross, they’re all continuations of the previous -- so if you’re not into its setup about aliens and weird diseases and whatnot, you’re only going to get more of the same in the next series.

Everything else

So here’s the series I like, but I’m not sure all of these would be counted as ‘true’ mecha by other fans (a debate I mostly ignore, so I’ll leave it to others to argue about that).

Escaflowne -- one of the rare breed of fantasy-styled mecha (Broken Blade being another one that comes to mind). The animation is strongly 80s, but the voice acting is superb, the story (originally meant to be longer, then budget cuts forced a much longer story to squeeze into half the episodes it really deserved).

[It’s also a series I’d call a harbinger, similar to tripping over little-known movies from twenty years ago and realizing every single actor including walk-on parts went on to be massive names. Escaflowne’s got that, but that also extends to its animation team, its director, its composer, on and on. All of them went onto work on some of the greatest hits of anime. That makes Escaflowne immensely (if quietly and somewhat subtly) influential, both for the genre and animation overall.]

Eureka Seven -- another not-on-Earth story. At first the mecha movement -- almost like surfing in the sky -- was odd, but they took some interesting physics concepts and made them not just worldbuilding, but integral parts of the story. Okay, I’m not keen on how the female lead gets successively down-graded as the hero ramps up, but there are some emotional implications of Massive Destructive Machines where Eureka Seven lingers that a lot of other series gloss over.

Fafner in the Azure -- another aliens-against-humans, but first off, I’m gonna say it: you either love Hisashi Hirai‘s character designs or you want to torch them with total prejudice. If you can get past that, Fafner is brutal to its characters well beyond most other series, excepting the earliest Gundams. Although (of course) the pilots are all kids, there are in-story reasons, and there are still adults running the show. And there are consequences, small and large.

Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion -- because what would life be if we didn’t have at least one mecha series with character designs from CLAMP. (Which, admittedly, I loathe, but somehow it worked here.) Can’t speak for the second season, but the first season played up something a lot of mecha bypass for just plain banging on each other, which is strategy. It caught me at the time, at least.

Full Metal Panic -- watch this after watching Gundam Wing and/or Gundam 00, to get the tropes they’re playing on with Sousuke Sagara (the ostensible protagonist who just cannot seem to relate to real human beings). I saw one description of him as “about as well-adjusted as a feral child” and that kinda fits. It’s more real robots, and of course parts require some hardcore suspension of disbelief (the commanding officer who looks 14, sounds like she’s 12, and has boobs that never occur in nature on a frame that teeny). But all told, a lot of fun and plenty of explosions.

RahXephon -- this is another oddball one, because the mecha aren’t mecha, they’re golems (as in, creatures made from clay). For all that, there’s a lot of significant mecha influence and tropes at work. It’s held up pretty well, animation-wise, considering its age (from 2002). and while it’s the same ‘strange aliens attack earth’ plotline, it spins all that off in a completely different direction.

Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann (aka Gurren Lagann) -- don’t watch this one until you’ve seen plenty of others, though, because it’s a fondly affectionate send-up of nearly every possible trope from combining to super to real robots. Cranked up to eleven.

Knights of Sidonia -- of all the ones on this list, KoS is possibly my most favorite. It was an early all-CGI series, and a lot of people were turned off by that, but once you get used to it, the story can carry you along. Like Macross Frontier, it takes place in deep space, where a colony of humans fight for survival with an incomprehensible (and nearly unstoppable) alien foe. But KoS is true science fiction, with a lot of solid science driving its dramatic points. Also--unlike most of the others series--although the characters are technically human, they’ve also evolved as a result of their time in space. For one, they have three genders, for another, they don’t eat; they photosynthesize.

[panharmonium]

just some thinky thoughts about fandom platforms and community that i didn’t know what to do with, so i wrote them down.

[tl;dr - tumblr is weird, pan misses (certain aspects of) Ye Olde Days]

tumblr is such a weird platform.

like.  i love my blog as a personal repository of stuff i enjoy, and i’m definitely thrilled to have met the people i’ve met on here - some of them have even become my friends outside the internet, and that’s been absolutely lovely.  but in terms of actual functionality when it comes to trying to engage in a fandom...it’s still weird.

i know people will probably get tired of all the “BACK IN MY DAY” fandom analysis posts that float around on this website, but even having been here for years now, it is still really hard for me to adjust to a place that makes it so impossible to find any kind of actual fandom community spaces.

for me, i didn’t even start using tumblr until i was in my mid-twenties, and that was only because tumblr was where most people from LJ had migrated.  i’d been Doing Fandom for over a decade prior to that, on other platforms (fandom specific sites/archives and then LJ), so i ended up here kind of out of necessity - the great fandom migration was already mostly complete, by the time i moved.  

so i got here, and i got settled, but fandom on tumblr has been so different from fandom as i experienced it anywhere else, and that’s not the fault of any of its users; it’s just an inevitable function of the way this site is structured.

it is SO HARD for us to connect with people on here!

just, as an example from my own more recent life - i’ve been doing a lot of merlin stuff lately, right?  that’s where my head is at and that’s what i’m having the most fun with and i would love to be more interactive with people about it, like - to have folks to geek out with about it, you know, to do the things that fandom is for - and if i were on, say, livejournal, back in the day, i would know where to go to do those things.  there would be specific spaces built for just that purpose.  LJ comms were places where everybody who was interested in a particular thing could go for the express purpose of posting and discussing and interacting about that thing!  people still maintained their own personal blogs, but they also belonged to whichever LJ communities reflected their interests.  LJ comms and fandom-specific sites were fandom hubs - it was so easy to find what you were looking for.

this functionality doesn’t exist in any meaningful way on tumblr.  big, moderated groups/communities aren’t a thing tumblr truly supports.  there’s no way for me to go join the “merlin” comm and just be in community with a large group of people who just wanna talk about merlin.  the limited “group blog” functionality on tumblr is so non-conducive to actual usage that community spaces like those just don’t really exist, not like Back In The Day.

fandom on tumblr is so very decentralized.  the way things are set up here forces all of us to just make posts on our individual blogs, which then might get picked up and put on other people’s individual blogs, maybe.  you can’t like...make something (X) Fandom related and drop it in the (X) Fandom LJ Comm like “hey look, something fun to talk about!”  you could put it in “The Tag,” but anyone who’s been here for any length of time knows how useful doing that actually is.  and you could post it on your individual blog, but it won’t necessarily reach anybody who might want to geek out with you, not if you’re not already followed by someone in that fandom.  

and the only other option is to invite yourself onto someone else’s individual blog, which is a) inefficient, when you’re looking for wider community, and b) not something a Painfully Reserved Person is wont to do.

the analogy that works best for me is this: pre-tumblr, fandom hangouts were community spaces.  they were cafés with a sign hanging out front saying “star wars here!” or “kanan/hera here!” or “X here!”  if you wanted to geek out about a particular thing, you would go to the café and meet a bunch of other people there.

nowadays, if you want to geek out about a particular thing, you have to barge into a stranger’s house.  and not everyone is comfortable with that.

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the lack of real, threaded comments is also just...i don’t know how to express how detrimental this is to communication and community.  i mean, i understand that tumblr’s entire “reblog” system doesn’t really allow it to be a thing, but tumblr’s entire mechanic as a fandom platform has to be questioned, in that case.

how impossible is it to have a conversation on here, the way tumblr is set up right now?  i mean - let’s say you make a post, right?  one person reblogs it and adds their own text to it; another person reblogs the original version, but says something different in the tags.  a third person doesn’t reblog it at all, but hits “reply” on your original post.  a fourth person “replies” also, but to the second person’s reblog, in response to the additional content.  

NONE OF YOU ARE HAVING THE SAME CONVERSATION.  none of you are even aware that the other conversations are happening.  the idea of trying to build an actual cohesive fandom community like that is just...impossible.  it can’t happen.

when i reblog posts on tumblr, i feel like i’m a dragon collecting a little hoard of shiny things she likes, only i never actually see another person, because i live in a cave.

everybody here lives in a cave.

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and like...this is just philosophical, i guess, but.  tumblr’s focus on “follower count” and notes is also a thing i don’t really know how to handle.  

having people “follow” me makes me feel weird. seeing that people are “following” this blog exerts a bizarre external pressure, as if my little house here could ever be for anybody who isn’t me.  it prompts a tiny 'but should you?’ in the back of my head when i post about something that isn’t what all those people came here for, which is ridiculous, because this was never supposed to be a blog for any fandom in particular; it was just a blog for me.  i was the only one here when i started, and i literally never did anything to try and get people to come here and join me.  it happened accidentally, because bigger blogs than me picked up some star wars stuff i made and passed it around.

but of course, on tumblr, making connections gets conflated with follower/note count, and understandably so, because besides having a higher follower count (aka wider distribution), how are people ever going to reach the other people who are into the same thing they are?  

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for instance.  let’s say you’re brand new to tumblr.  you want to get involved in X fandom.  there’s no community space here where a new blog with no followers can go and share their stuff with the right audience and meet all the other people who are also sharing their own work.  unless you start messaging strangers, your tumblr time is pretty isolated.

whereas - i remember on lj comms, back when people would post as a newcomer, it would be like, ‘hey i’m so-and-so and i love xyz and here’s a picture i drew of x character!!!!’ - and people would actually respond to that.  people responded to everything!  like.  tiny 400 word fics would have 30 comments, and all those people were talking with each other, not past each other, on the same page. 

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just for fun, while i was typing this up, i went through a month’s worth of posts on an old lj comm i used to frequent.  not a single one of those posts was comment-less.  every single post, even the tiniest, most insignificant one-line musing, had some amount of discussion attached to it.  

whereas now - i don’t know if this is just confined to tumblr, or if it’s a general cultural shift, because even on AO3, i sometimes see people who have written massive sprawling epics and the comment field is just a desert.  i once saw the exact same fic posted on ff.net, where it had 20 comments - and then on AO3, where it had zero. 

and like, say what you will about ff.net (there’s...plenty to be said, certainly XD ) but commenting patterns were observably different there.  and that’s all part and parcel of a bigger discussion, which isn’t really within the scope of these notes, except to say that it’s probably the source of my forever grudge match with AO3′s kudos button, which i realize is an absurdly silly thing to say and i’m smiling at myself even as i type this, but - i gotta be honest - i hate that thing!  i can’t stand it!  XD  

i say that in the most good-natured way possible, obviously; this is fandom, after all, and it’s all for fun, and i love AO3 in every other way, so this is more a minor annoyance which makes me laugh at myself than anything else - but i say again - in the most fun-loving, self-deprecating way possible - that little button is my archnemesis.  XD  

i totally get why other people love it!  it’s a completely reasonable way to feel!  but for me, personally, coming out of an environment where the reward at the end of making something was getting to gush with somebody else, make a connection, talk about the thing that gave us So Many FEELS - the kudos button is so.  sterile.  and.  empty.  it doesn’t fulfill my urge to connect with people or share fannish enthusiasm in any way.  i’d almost rather not even see kudos on my account, honestly, because it makes me feel more disappointed than anything else - like, “oh, man.  look at all these missed fandom conversations we could have had.”

and obviously, this is in no way meant as disparaging to people who use the kudos button liberally.  it is ALWAYS lovely to show appreciation for someone who wrote something you liked, however which way you are able, if and only if you are so inclined.  nobody is obligated to leave feedback - lurkers are a perfectly accepted and long-celebrated fandom tradition; i belonged to that tradition myself, for most of my fandom life - so showing appreciation in any form is already going above and beyond.  nobody needs to be harangued with “YOU SHOULD’VE COMMENTED” or “YOU SHOULD’VE REBLOGGED” - none of that stuff is required to participate in fandom; nobody owes comments or reblogs, and creators have to be okay with that.  we can discuss and/or lament the structural factors that encourage or discourage participation, by all means, but ultimately we have to recognize that nobody is actually required to respond to things we make.  it’s fandom.  we’re all here by choice, and people’s participation levels are their own business. 

and anyway, i know that lots of authors actually love getting kudos on their work, so my experience isn’t universal, by any means.  it’s just a function of my own personal background, and the communities i used to run in - i speak for no one but myself and my own fannish life.

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and besides, the entire debate about kudos/comments and like/reblog disparities doesn’t come anywhere near the underlying issues.  it’s sometimes framed as “people not participating in fandom appropriately” (and that’s completely unfair; there’s no wrong way to do fandom when you’re not hurting anybody) as opposed to “what is it about our platforms that encourages or discourages participatory fan culture.”  like - the only reason we even need to talk about the importance of reblogs vs. likes is because tumblr makes it so darn hard for a person’s stuff to be seen by the “right” people!  reblogs are the only way for someone’s work to spread, and even then it’s kind of like throwing a handful of darts at a board and praying one of them will land in a well-connected spot.  if a platform like tumblr were set up differently, we wouldn’t even need to have this conversation - there would be places to post your work where people would be specifically looking for content like what you were making.  you could make those fannish connections more easily.

*** important to note, too - it’s always worthwhile to remember when reading these “back in the old days” nostalgia posts that pre-tumblr spaces had drawbacks of their own.  livejournal was not some fannish utopia, by any means.  there were, however, a few structural things from that era that i think were helpful influences on fan culture, and their absence here makes me miss them.

but anyways.  those are just some thoughts.  and now i’m going back to my regularly scheduled posting, because i DO enjoy this place, even if the platform can be somewhat lacking sometimes - we still have to find a way to have fun, right?  that’s the entire point of being in fandom in the first place.

[auto4333]

Easy Steps: How to Find Good Used Cars and Avoid The Lemon

As i work in the auto industry and a question i am asked over and over by friends and family is: "Whats the best way to attempt finding good used cars? " Many of us chose to buy used cars. It can make a lot of sense. You know new cars can lose up to 30% of their value in the first 2 years. If you end up needing to distribute that new car too soon you will have wasted all that money. The only problem is that buying used vehicles can be a mine field of errors. You need to know your stuff. You also need sharp wits and to understand your pitfalls. The truth is that we are not all mechanics and we don't all have the eye for knowing a bad from the good used car. Today I will share some steps and tricks that will improve the chances of people making a sound choice. There is a lot to know about used cars, but with the following ideas, you will be properly on your way. Why Buy Good Used Cars? Take advantage of the depreciation. When you buy a used car, that is a few years old, you've got saved yourself the 20%-30% value loss on that car. Someone else has paid that for you. You've got reduced the risk of burring yourself in that car financially. If for some reason you need to sell the car again more rapidly then planned, you will be in a far better position. Take your pick! When you buy used, there are many different things that may well effect price. You will have way more options in terms of model, brand, age, mileage. You have the option of buying a car that you really normally could not afford if it was brand new off the car lot. You can really set any budget and even shop with in that budget. You could literally spend $2, 000 or $200, 000 on a used car. Just about every city is ripe with a vast selection of used cars in good condition. Something new in the used car unit each day. The used car market is always changing. It means that there are always different cars to find and choose from. The majority Victoria dealers will have fresh inventory each month. Often you can find the new inventory right at home with your computer. There are also tonnes of private sales listed each day. Should You Buy Used Cars Privately Or From A Dealer? There are strengths in choosing to work with a dealer, as well as a private owner. Private sale used car advantages: You can sometimes see great deals in the private sale listing. With some patience and time, online you can find the good deals. Several sellers online are doing it because they are under the gun and need the cash fast. Often , private owners may not be as aggressive when it comes to talking about numbers and the process. Private owners will allow you to take things at your own speed. Most car salesmen will try and move you to make a choice as soon as they can. This unneeded pressure can be shunned by finding a reliable salesmen or staying in the private market. Dealer Advantages: You can save a ton of time period if you go to a Used Car Dealer. They will have way more selection in one place. As much as we don't like the gross sales process, one thing it does is save time. The key is finding a reliable sales person. One who actually cares approximately you. Talking to someone about what kind of car you need, then driving, and then talking about numbers all in one morning means you can rule a car in or out with in a few hours. Used car dealer in many aspects must declare auto Dec's. They will have documents such as a Car Proof or Car Fax and protection inspections on hand. These are valuable documents that many private sellers overlook. They are hard proof of a vehicles historical past. Private Used Car Disadvantage Most people sell a car in private so they can get as much for it as possible. If they don't care about getting the most they could then they would have sold it to a dealer. Most people will shop privately as they feel they can get a better deal then if they went to a dealer. In most cases, private car shoppers not to mention private car sellers, are further apart on price then car dealers and car shoppers. Quite often private sellers are far more emotionally attached to their car then dealer is and have a inflated knowledge of its value. Dealer Disadvantage Very often dealers will have extra costs attached to the sale of a used car. They are going to also want you to purchase extra warranties and products. Many of these products may not suit your life or must have. Be mindful of what you are signing for. Don't be afraid to ask early what the extra fees will be and also what they are for. Many of the products are of use in curtain situations. Once you have listened to and understood precisely what the extras are, make a rational choice as to whether you need them or not. How to pick the correct car. Car Proof or Car Fax! Do not buy a used ca, private or at a dealer, until you have read the Car Proof/Car Fax. The Car Proof, is a history report that will tell you if the car may be repaired due to collisions. It will also let you know if it was an x-rental, x-lease or has been registered out of the state. It will also give an overview of some of the major maintenance work and were it was done. This document can be a must for buying used vehicles. Most dealers will have one available. If you are shopping privately and the user does not have one. Tell the owner that you won't buy unless a car proof is provided. Look under the vehicle. Get down and a little dirty. Check under the vehicle for rust. Rust is a killer. Look at the shock, and in the engine compartment as well. Open up the hood. Most used car dealers will have cleaned the algorithm very well. There are still signs you can find. Look for leeks, rust, and wear and tear. Start the car with the hood open. In the event the engine is cold it will reveal the most. Get out again and look at the engine while it is running. You should listen for squeaks, whines, ticking and other odd sounds. Inspect the inside well. Use your nose. Sniff plus sniff some more. Often strong perfumes, and fresheners will be used if the car had mold, dogs, as well as smokers. Lift the floor mats and check for moisture. Also check the spare tire compartment. Again, try to look for rust and moisture in these spots. Take it for a drive. Before you get going to fast, put your car in neutral and give it some gas. Keep an eye on the mirrors and what comes out the back. You don't wish to see big plumes of smoke. The drive should cover different roads. Highways, back roads, a few bumps as well. When its safe, let go of the wheel on a straight road. See if the steering is usually aligned. Over bumps, listen for squeaking and other noises. When you get back, park over a clean section of all the lot/driveway. Then turn the car off. This is when you will look over some of the paper work. After about quarter-hour go back to the car and look under the engine. See if there are any wet marks on the driveway or great deal. After the car has been running any leaks will start to drip. If they do. Don't buy the car. At this point you ought to know if the car is in the running or not. Most reputable Car Dealers will have done an check up of the car. You should have access to the report. Look over it and see if everything checks out. If it's a private sale and you like the car, now would be a good time to schedule a third party inspection. One final take note, TRUST YOUR GUT!. If you have done the steps listed you should have a solid idea weather the car you are looking at is good running shape. Don't be afraid to drag a friend along. Someone you know will be very objective regarding the whole thing. They can give some feed back and their opinion. Let them know that all you want is their own impression of the car, not whether you should buy it or not. There are tonnes of other steps, tips and tricks that I did not cover. If you have any ideas to add, please do in the comment section. Any thing you may add so save someone from buying the dreaded lemon will help. I hope this instill your confidence to obtain out there and start looking for that good used car.

[crystalelemental]

Character Analysis - Micaiah

Apparently, even in 2019, I’m still never going to escape the whole “Micaiah is such a Mary Sue argument.”  Foolish to think that would completely die off ever, I suppose.  I’ve never really agreed with it, personally.  I think Micaiah’s great.  In fact, she’s my favorite character in Fire Emblem.  This is in part to express why I like Micaiah, and also a desperate attempt to showcase that no, all the unique benefits she has in the story do not inherently make her a poorly written “Mary Sue” character.  Will I succeed?  Probably not!  But I want to write a thing emphasizing the positives of my favorite, so that’s what I’m doing.

Micaiah as a character

Let’s talk about what Micaiah is like first, because I like Micaiah and am attempting to sell you on her character.  Prior to the events of this game, she basically kept to herself.  Sothe was about the only person she interacted with at all.  As a Branded - someone with a mix of beorc and laguz blood - she’s an outcast in both societies, and keeps to herself all her life.  It isn’t until after Daein’s loss in the Mad King’s War that she starts to interact.  Despite her desire to be left alone, she witnesses how the communities within Daein banded together after the loss to help rebuild.  These people she’s been distrustful of are working together and building each other up in times of difficulty.  She comes to appreciate that aspect of the people of the kingdom, and so begins to use her abilities to benefit them.  With Begnion’s occupation, she builds the Dawn Brigade as a resistance force, and applies her future sight and healing abilities to kepe them ahead of their enemies.

This brings us to point 1 about Micaiah: she’s driven by personal attachments, and her thinking extends well beyond her own desires.  Left to her own devices, Micaiah wants nothing more than to live quietly.  But she’s come to love the people of Daein, and resolves to work in their favor, even if it means she has to take the spotlight to do it.  She becomes something of a local celebrity, something she never wanted, because she felt that there was something only she could do, and it absolutely needed doing.

But, this isn’t her favorite thing to do, and when word gets out that Ashnard had a son, and a true inheritor to the throne, Micaiah is all too willing to pass off leadership.  Almost without hesitation, she’s willing to accept Pelleas as a good leader and the one they should follow, even in spite of Sothe’s very reasonable apprehension.  Pelleas presents as kind and forthright, and so Micaiah believes he is someone worth following, even when all evidence points to the contrary.

Which is point 2 for Micaiah: she’s pretty naive.  She’s led her life completely separated from society, and kinda functions like someone who’s smart, but has no discernment ability at all.  Pelleas acts nice so he is nice, and nice people should be in charge.  Pelleas later says we have to fight the Laguz Alliance and help Begnion, and Micaiah, despite hating the idea of fighting a pointless war, believes unquestioningly that Pelleas must have a good reason.  She is someone who is swayed heavily by the good in others, and even when that good is misguided or not what’s primarily in play, she’s willing to believe in it, much to her own detriment.

Specifically, this all comes back to bite her pretty much immediately.  Pelleas is crowned the next king, and almost immediately signs off all sovereignty to Begnion with the blood contract.  Dude is very clearly a putz that was put in charge as a puppet, so they could be more easily controlled after believing they won something.  Sothe sees right past this, but Micaiah doesn’t.  She’s too wrapped up in the idea that Pelleas is a good person, and that he wouldn’t let bad things happen, but it doesn’t exactly occur to her that his good intentions may not be what’s guiding the course of events.

Which leads to their involvement in the war and point 3 for Micaiah: she is ruthless.  When given the choice between protecting her country by fighting an unjust war, or letting her people suffer for the right cause, she chooses her people and is willing to get her hands dirty.  Really dirty.  She initiates a sneak attack as the laguz cross the river in retreat.  She’s willing to use boulders to crush enemies at the bottom of a ravine, and is even willing to use oil and fire to commit a massacre to gain the advantage.  When it comes to furthering her own cause, Micaiah goes harder than any lord, up untli Edelgard arrives, and even then I’d argue they’re pretty even in their extremes.

And these are just major points for her character.  On smaller notes, she’s incredibly sassy (”Father of Sothe’s children” indeed), selfless (constantly doing things for her people even when she wants to be left alone), empathetic (understands Pelleas’ plight even when everyone else has given up on the doofus), and strong-willed.

All of this creates, what I feel, is a very unique and compelling lord character.  She’s someone who, like most lords, wants to do what’s right, and is driven primarily by that sense of protecting others.  But at the same time, it’s mixed with qualities and circumstances that push her to her limits, and give us a main character who, functionally, is distinct from nearly every other lord in the series.

Micaiah’s Abilities Let’s face it, Micaiah got a lot of unique abilities.  However, I don’t think Micaiah’s powers inherently make her poorly written or a “Mary Sue” at all.  Yes, a lot of these on their own are pretty “child of destiny” heavy, but that’s...kinda how the series is?  All the time?  Fire Emblem loves that shit.  So what is it about her that gets her this label while others don’t?  First, let’s talk her abilities and gifts. Within Radiant Dawn, Micaiah gets:

The ability to see the future.  It’s a bit more short-term, but shows up a lot, especially in Part 1.

Secret inheritance as the true apostle, and all the abilities that come with, including:

Hearing the voice of the goddess

Knowing the Galdr of Release that can free the dark god within the medallion

Later, after the revival of the goddesses, she becomes the direct vessel for Yune, the goddess of chaos.

Potent healing abilities, allowing her to heal any injury no matter how life threatening, at a personal, physical cost.

As a spread, it’s pretty extensive for one character, which is probably a main reason she gets this label.  But on a point by point basis, it’s not like any of these abilities are unique.

Future Sight happens for several characters, not all of them even being main lords.  Julia performs such a divination, and Sophia is apparently just as capable, as was Archsage Athos.  Future Sight is absolutely a thing in the series, and tends to be associated with magical characters with an edge of mystery to them.  Which is what Micaiah is.  We’re meant to have no idea what her deal is, and having these kinds of abilities is meant to raise the question of what exactly she is.  I think this one gets more shit because it’s considered a form of plot armor, especially in Part 1.  But as I’ll get to later, its applications later in the game are far more compelling, and the reliance on it in part 1 sets up the later conflicts really well.

Abilities such as the galdr and the direct link with the goddess are part and parcel to being the inheritor of the apostle’s line.  Which is really just an offshoot of the whole “Child of destiny” thing that most lords get.  Alm gets it, Seliph gets it, it’s a pretty common trope.  Its application to Micaiah is nothing new, but it is used in a unique and interesting way, which I’ll get to later.  I’d also argue that none of the apostle abilities do much of anything aside from set up the mystery surrounding her history, and the reveal that she is the apostle.  The galdr is important, sure, but hearing the voice of the goddess is pretty useless.  They’re just quirks of her class.

As for the healing abilities...okay, yeah, that’s purely hers.  It’s just a unique quirk of Micaiah.  Arguably, this is no different from any other “only this person can wield the sacred blade,” which...I don’t think I need to explain how often that happens in the series.  We’d be here all day.  Suffice to say, it’s literally all the time, and even within the same game, Ike gets that treatment with Ragnell.

Basically, nothing Micaiah has in her toolkit is unique in the series.  She gets a particularly high amount of unique abilities and effects, but that alone does not a case against her make.  Largely because of how they’re utilized.

Application of her talents Talents on their own are a big deal, but their application can make all the difference.  For instance, if seeing the future was always in play and always solved every problem, that’s boring.  But having a character who can see the future, but having something complicate things, either a demonstration that the future isn’t set in stone or some other outcome to throw them off their game, can make such a character compelling.  Application is key, and I think the application of Micaiah’s abilities makes all the difference.

Her healing ability similarly plays very little role.  It exists initially to set up her gameplay mechanic with the Sacrifice command, but otherwise that’s it. That’s all it does.  It’s really little more than a story setup to the gameplay mechanic.  There’s really nothing else to say here.

Her secretly being the apostle has a lot more story impact.  When you get down to it, Micaiah has the right to lead Begnion after the war.  She hears the voice of the goddess, is the missing eldest child of the previous apostle, can sing the galdr of release, has all of these talents that were meant for the empress to display.  It’s so obvious, Sanaki offers her the job outright.  Micaiah refuses.  Again, Micaiah is not someone who lives for fame and leadership.  She took up arms for Daein, solely because she came to love the people.  She rose up because she had to, not because she wanted to.  Which I think makes her very unique among lords.

Plenty of lords are given their rise to prominence out of necessity as well, typically through a foreign invasion.  That’s not uncommon.  What is uncommon is that, for most lords, they’re all in with this role.  They take to leadership and rise up willingly.  Micaiah...never wanted that, and at every opportunity, is presented with something she could have but doesn’t want in the slightest.  Sometimes, this comes back to bite her, like with Pelleas.  She’s someone who is given that call of destiny, that sense of “This is absolutely what you’re supposed to do,” and goes “absolutely not.”  I love that.  Like, imagine if Alm had decided to return to Ram village after beating Duma after all.  Imagine if Seliph had decided to let Julia inherit the throne instead, and just fucked off back to Isaach, or Roy refusing to lead the Lycian League and leaving it to Lilina.  That’s what Micaiah does.  She has all these makings of being destined for greatness and prominence and her only thought is “Fuck that.”  She does wind up leading Daein, but I’d argue that’s more in line with her character.  She leads out of obligation and compassion for those she cares directly about, and Daein is the home she’s attached to.  More than anywhere else, this is where she was the most of human kindness, and has strengthened her bonds.  They need a leader, and despite not wanting to lead, she’ll accept that mantle.  But the idea of accepting the higher calling of assuming leadership of Begnion is not anywhere near her interests, and so she rejects destiny’s call.  Which, I think, is really interesting.

Then there’s the future sight.  Micaiah’s ability to see the future could be considered the worst offender.  It comes into play a lot in Part 1, and it seems like that’s what’s carrying Micaiah.  Soren even echoes the player’s thoughts, commenting that he thinks her abilities are a fabrication and that she’s not nearly as talented as others believe.  But in Part 3, the chaos of war is engulfing the continent, and suddenly her future sight turns off.  She states outright she can’t see the future anymore, and has no sense for what’s to come.  She had one serious advantage in Part 1, and now it’s gone.  She’s on her own, and facing a stronger threat than before, as a throw-away piece under Begnion’s control, fighting for a cause she doesn’t believe in.  She should be completely outclassed here.

But she’s not.  When push comes to shove, Micaiah’s willing to use every dirty trick in the book to gain any possible advantage, and she plays her cards well.  Her opening strike is when their guard is down during a retreat.  Her next fight is guarding a small pass along the water.  Her major fights the player controls involve her taking very sensible positions over her opponents; at the top of the cliffside, and defending a heavily-guarded fortress.  Despite weaker numbers, weaker morale, and honestly weaker fighters overall, Micaiah pulls out everything she can to pull of what resistance she can.  She winds up losing most battles, and continuously gets pushed back because of how severely out-gunned they are, but the fight she puts up is impressive.  Her future vision, I feel like, helps set the stage for this.  It presents itself initially as the main thing protecting her; it’s the reason she wins.  But then, she’s able to prove that even without it, she’s capable of figuring out her way through these battles.  And keep in mind, in this battle of strategy and wits, her opponent is Soren.  She’s keeping up with that guy.  That’s no small feat.  Micaiah’s clever in her own right, able to turn clear losses into...well, less clear losses, with surprising reliability.  The removal of her primary tool should set players to believe this will be a curbstomp, and instead it’s when Micaiah gets to shine in ways that extend beyond just her natural talents.

Her talents are many, but their applications are stellar, and the course of events for her make sense.  She’s never treated as if she’s untouchable or always in the right, or even immune to consequences of dumb decisions, like handing leadership to Pelleas.  When the rug’s pulled out from under her and she’s faced with being trapped in a losing situation, we get to see a character who’s willing to make harsh decisions and respond in ways that most lords wouldn’t.  She’s a great demonstration of a well-meaning character who’s placed in the wrong, and until Edelgard, was frankly one of a kind for a lord.

Conclusions Micaiah’s fantastic.  I don’t really have anything else to say on the point, she’s just great.  Everything about her character is simultaneously familiar and distinct, offering a lot of traits and qualities similar to most lords in the series, but presented with circumstances that paint her as far more complex than just the desire to do good and the capacity to carry through.  She’s someone who has to push through awful circumstances and make the best choices she can, and is someone who puts the higher needs of her people and her desires above what may be the “moral” choice.

I can only hope that, if you’ve read this far, it comes with a greater appreciation for Micaiah as a character.  I honestly think she’s one of the most compelling protagonists the series has.