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the-cat-chat · 1 year

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August 12, 2023

Bones and All (2022)

A young woman embarks on a 1000 mile odyssey through America where she meets a disenfranchised drifter. But all roads lead back to their terrifying pasts and to a final stand that will determine whether love can survive their otherness.

JayBell: Going into this, I knew it was a cannibalistic love story, so I made the conscious decision to have an absolutely open mind. Honestly, I don't know how anyone could possibly go into this movie without being at least a little mentally prepared.

So here's the thing. I actually do like the story. If you take away all the cannibal aspects, it's simply a coming-of-age love story. It's about a girl, on her own for the first time, trying to discover who she is and what she believes in without the influence of her parents' beliefs and expectations. And honestly, that's pretty relatable. As you grow, you are forced to decide things for yourself, the life you want to lead, what's right and wrong, and how much you should value the opinions of others.

But of course, the cannibalism is in the story, and I can't just ignore it. And trust me, I wanted to. I found this depiction of cannibalism more visually disgusting compared to the depiction of cannibalism in Fresh. I was more psychologically disgusted with Fresh because it presented cannibalism in a way that forced you to see the possibility of cannibalism in familiar foods that you've had before and enjoyed.

Don't get me wrong, in Bones and All, the sight of tearing flesh and the nasty sounds are gross, but the whole situation seemed a little too absurd and out of the realm of possibility that it almost made it all the way back around to comical. Like sure, maybe someone hides human flesh in a meatball and forces me to eat it. I can see that happening, and that idea is completely terrifying. But can I see myself chomping on some strange rando that I find at the grocery story? Thankfully, no.

If I remove any thoughts on cannibalism and just look at the coming-of-age story that's at its center, I can digest the narrative more easily (pun intended hehe). That said, there were a few grievances.

At one point, our main couple has this argument and they split up for a while. Not only did I not completely understand the root of this argument they had, the viewer doesn't get to hear their conversation when they reconnect. What made our main girl decide to come back? Does she apologize? Does he? Where has she been? Is he angry at all? Maybe this scene is more explained in the book, but I feel like it's an odd choice to not have it in the movie. Plus, the weirdo stalker cannibal following our main girl has a hair fetish or something, and I wish that was explained a bit more.

In the end, I enjoyed this movie more than I thought I would. So I consider that an accomplishment. But I also don't think I can ever see Timothee (Champala—)(Charlat—)(you-know-who) again in the same way.

Rating: 6.2/10 cats 🐈

Anzie: This movie. My gawd. I could probs write a whole book on this movie and the acting and the plot and how I literally haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since we watched it and did I mention OMYGAWD!!!

Soooo I tried reading the book knowing I had every intention of watching this movie. I couldn’t do it (now like 30% of me wishes I would’ve stuck it out a bit). And when I saw the movie on Amazon Prime when we were lost and destitute for a movie to watch- it was like the stars aligned. And I kneewww this would be weird and we’d suffer organ damage. But we did it. And I gotta say the least I’m kinda concerned.

Bc the more I think about the movie the more I think I kinda liked it. Barf 🤮 I knooowwww. What is wrong with me? Someone call the doctor I need a lobotomy!!! But yeah obviously half the time I was cringing and screaming internally and saying ewww and omigaaawd. But two things can obviously be true- and I have a love hate feeling towards this movie.

Like it was absolutely bizzaaaaare. Love that. It was so out of this world crazy and unlike anything I’ve ever seen that it was just transfixing. I wanted to know what the actual fluff was happening. And like why are they like this? And why’d her dad leave? Where’s her mom?? Sooo many questions. And like why are the cops after Lee? Where’s his dad? Was he an Eater too. Also Eater? Ew. Is that really the agreed upon name the team picked?

And the actors. Omigawd they were sooo good I loved Taylor Russell as Maren and obviously Timothée Chalamet as Lee. But let’s give the ickiest shout out to Mark Rylance as Sully. For the love of goooooodnesss. It balances on such a David Lynch Twin Peaks vibe which I love but in a horrifically unsettling way, and then maximizes to a total Forensic Files freak vibe of “someone pls get me outta here pllllssss.“ And by here I mean take me away from my brain and soul.

And the detailsssss. The way some characters have like bite marks??? Ummm okay?!? The sounds??? Barrrrrf. Like who said it was okay to unlock all my primal fear and ickiness. Bc it’s not I know I signed up for it but it’s not okay. And the fliesssss. And that poor old lady. - and she hasn’t died yet and it shows how cruel Sully is when he’s acting like he’s sooo kind. But like how when they eat her- gawd help me- And her pictures are all there in the room showing she had a life that connected her with others and she was probably someone’s granny and then all the creepy dolls bc that’s what old ladies do is collect dolls. Ahhhh!!!

I do have complaints obvi- I’m meee. Ummmm soo first thing we’re gonna glaze over is the mullet. And the weird KISS dancing scene. And then how people are cannibals. I know it’s a big one. And the weird hair rope Sully has. No. Just no. And I hate the ending- the ending’s a big no. Like a girl can’t just work in a bookshop and be a cannibal with her boyfriend. And Lee’s sister. 😢

Okay so I guess I kinda hated it. 😬 IDK anymore I actually feel a bit broken. But I think it is worth watching even tho it’s uncomfortable and weird bc it is bizarre and unusual and entertaining. It’s interesting too how there is meaning laid into the story so subtly bc you’re just like this is disturbing and gross why am I watching this weird stuff? Oh bc it’s actually about human connection and identity and how we all fit in together and just finding another person that understands and accepts without needing to change you? Ahhhhhhhh I can’t. Really. And that’s my essay- you can go back and forth that this is awful and oh this fit in the bigger picture like that so good, and I’ll be thinking about this movie at least once a week for the rest of my life. So yeah, question of the century, is it yay for trauma or genius!?! I haven’t a clue.

Rating: 6/10 Cats 🐈

#movie #movie review #timothée chalamet #taylor russell

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phoenixyfriend · 3 years

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The Family Tree is... a Disaster

Takes place in the TCW Leverage AU. It does contain a few deviations, namely that the narrative ended up shifting Plo's role in Ahsoka's life, and Ventress's role overall.

This is mostly just dialogue where I outline the fuckery that is the disaster lineage family tree, not actual fic. It stemmed from my incessant need to justify "25yo Obi-Wan somehow got custody of 9yo Anakin without Shmi dying."

Warnings for: canon character death (modernized), canon violence (modernized), and references to Nazis and white supremacists (Palpatine collects WWII weaponry as a parallel to his canon display of Sith artifacts in his office as chancellor, and Ahsoka thinks it's sketchy)

----

"Okay," Cody says, setting down a glass of whiskey as he drops into the seat across the table. "What the hell is your family tree like?"

Obi-Wan raises an eyebrow, and continues cleaning off the definitely-not-stolen crystal komodo dragon he'd won in today's job. "I beg your pardon?"

"You and Skywalker," Cody says, gesturing between Obi-Wan, who is just sitting there minding his own business, and Anakin, who is across the closed-for-tonight bar and doing something inadvisable on the pool table. "You've said he was your brother, and mentioned raising him, which, sure, I'm over twenty years older than my youngest brother, people take over parenting roles all the time. But you have different last names, have mentioned stepfamilies that the other doesn't have, reference things as 'your aunt, not mine,' and I am just getting... very confused. I figured it was personal and I could leave well enough alone, but considering your older brother almost shot us today--"

"Okay, Xanatos is not my brother," Obi-Wan immediately says. "Just. I just have to stop you right there. Xanatos was a student of my father's for a time, but I promise he's not family. Nobody except maybe Komari would consider him even close, and she doesn't count since she's in prison for life and the farthest thing from stable."

Cody gestures. "That, Obi-Wan. That's what I'm talking about. I don't even know who Komari is."

Obi-Wan purses his lips in a failed attempt to not smile. "Do you actually want the explanation? It's long and unnecessarily complicated."

"So's mine," Cody snorts. Obi-Wan waits, patient and pleasant, and is rewarded when Cody sighs. "Please."

"Of course, my dear. To answer your first question, though, Anakin is my half-brother." With a smile, Obi-Wan digs a piece of paper and a pen from his briefcase. "So, center of the chain: me, my father Qui-Gon, my grandfather Yan, and my great-grandfather Yoda. With me so far?"

"Easy enough. Do you have to go back that far?"

"Great-grandfather Yoda is still alive and regularly escaping the old folks' home to terrorize younger relatives, so yes," Obi-Wan says. "Given that you may just meet a tiny, meddling relative of mine when he's bored, we do in fact have to go back that far."

"...how old is he?"

"We don't know for sure. A hundred and eight-ish is the best guess." Obi-Wan shrugs. "It's not a huge deal, mostly he likes bothering Anakin these days. Anyway, grandfather. Yan Dooku. Inherited a minory duchy from his maternal grandfather decades back. Mostly hangs around there because he's on terrorist watchlists in the States."

"Oh, lovely."

Obi-Wan grins. "Trust me, it gets worse. Anyway, grandfather never actually married, but spent most of his time with his 'best friend' Sifo Dyas, who died about a decade back."

"Gay?"

"Well, we know that now, but they got together in the seventies, and this was back when they were both working government jobs, so, you know. It happens."

"Good to know," Cody says. "So, Yoda's kid is Yan, who inherited a title and land from a maternal relative, and had a life partner but never married. With you so far."

"All of Yan's kids were adopted," Obi-Wan continues, sketching out the first branch away from the Yan/Sifo partnership. "Rael was actually grandfather's cousin, maternally, and ended up in his custody after getting orphaned at five. These days, he does most of the stewardship duties at the Serenno Duchy. His daughter Nim is teaching military history at a university in Germany."

Cody nods. "Uncle number one is named Rael, technically your dad's cousin, has a daughter. Got it."

"About a decade after Rael, they adopted my father, Qui-Gon. He and grandfather fought, frequently, but they did care for each other. My father was a botanist, did bio-engineering. We'll get back to him later, because he's where things get complicated." Obi-Wan made sure to leave room around the name. "Just a few years older than me was--is--Komari Vosa. She is... serving a life sentence. I think she fought Jango once."

"She fought my father?"

"To the best of my knowledge, they both almost died, yes," Obi-Wan says. "She's in maximum security these days. She was an assassin. I'll get a call if she breaks out, and I'll let you know along with everyone else."

"Bad news auntie, got it."

"Last adoption, sort of, is Ventress," Obi-Wan finishes off. "A few years younger than me, is technically grandfather's personal assistant and does secretarial work and the like, but we all know he's planning to leave as much of the inheritance to her as he is to the rest of us. She's aggressive and unpleasant, but she takes care of him and hasn't actually threatened to kill any of us yet, so that's fine."

"How'd she join?" Cody asks.

"Ky Narec was a friend of Qui-Gon's; Ventress was his daughter. Ky died a few years after Qui-Gon did, and Ventress was a mess, after." Obi-Wan shrugs and scratches that connection into the little sketch of a family tree as well. "Grandfather offered her a job until she got herself back together, and then she just kind of... stuck around."

"Youngest aunt, more of a cousin." Cody summarizes. "Now we go back to your father?"

"Qui-Gon Jinn was a man of many skills," Obi-Wan says drily. "Adequate birth control was not one of them."

It's almost a pity that Cody wasn't drinking anything, because going by the way he chokes, Obi-Wan's pretty sure the spit take would have been spectacular.

"I'm sorry," Cody says. "Can you repeat that?"

"I was an accident," Obi-Wan says, not even bothering to hide his smile. "So was Anakin."

"So that sounds like... a story."

"It is," Obi-Wan confirms. "My biological mother has never been in the picture. They had a fling, she wasn't sure if she'd want to abort or give me up, just that she wasn't ready to be a parent, and Qui-Gon volunteered to take full custody so she could go back to her life after the birth. I've never met her, but I kept her family name. You can consider her irrelevant beyond that."

Cody nods.

"So, when I was about a year old, Qui-Gon reconnects with an old flame, they get married two years later. Step-mother number one is Tahl. Lovely woman, I absolutely adored her, and she had a daughter, my stepsister, Bant Eerin."

"I met her, right?" Cody asks.

"Yes, she was the doctor who patched up my bullet wound a few months ago," Obi-Wan says. "With the giant glasses that make her look a little fish-eyed."

"She was nice."

"She is," Obi-Wan agrees. "At any rate, that was our family for a while, and then Tahl died when I was fourteen. Bant wanted to go to a magnet school for medical studies, and Qui-Gon's grief was... not optimal for taking care of multiple teenagers, shall we say, so Bant moved in with her paternal uncle, Kit Fisto, and Kit's son Nahdar. He's a marine biologist, incredibly friendly, and has no idea of any of the rest of my side of the family's questionable activities. If you ever meet him, you will pretend that we are a legal firm with a team of security consultants."

Cody raises a brow. Obi-Wan despairs. "Best you could do?"

"We're not that likely to run into him." Obi-Wan draws out a new line. "So, Qui-Gon deals poorly with grief. This is also around the time that Xanatos came around to ruin our lives a little. He was a very rich and unpleasant man, but he's dead as of four hours ago, so you don't have to worry about him. Or his son."

"His son?"

"Anakin handled that," Obi-Wan says. "Thoroughly. Granta Omega is no longer an issue. He's not dead, but... well. Anakin has his ways. Er--I should probably mention Feemor; he was my father's assistant at the university for a long time. Anakin and I still call him our uncle."

"Also a person to avoid mentioning criminal activity to?" Cody prompts.

"Well... no, but only because I don't think he'd care. The man is, forgive me, more of a 'walking sweatervest' than I am. He's a very bland and unassuming man. He once described himself as the background character of the soap opera that is my family's existence."

"Sounds like a charmer."

"Oh, he's very kind and clever, and witty as well. I adore him, and he really is family. He's just also very, very normal. Not boring, but..." Obi-Wan trails off and shrugs helplessly. "He's an editor for an agricultural research journal. Also not someone I anticipate us running into."

"Noted."

"Right, so, Qui-Gon dealing poorly with his grief didn't involve much drinking, but there were a few months of him trying to... lose himself in the pleasures of the flesh?" Obi-Wan tries, and then deflates at the look on Cody's face. "He was slagging around. Shmi got pregnant with Anakin, who was born when I was sixteen. Shared custody at first, Qui-Gon got him weekends and every other holiday, that sort of thing, and then they got married because they actually did like each other well enough, and it was easier on the taxes."

"So Shmi is stepmother number two."

"Shmi is stepmother number two, yes." Obi-Wan sketches in Anakin and Shmi. "About nine and a half years after Anakin was born, Shmi and Qui-Gon were in a car accident with... well, it later turned out it wasn't an accident, there was a hitman called Maul involved, he's actually Ventress's second cousin or something, I don't know. Grandfather handled most of that problem. Qui-Gon died, Shmi was in intensive care, and I got custody of Anakin as his nearest adult relative. We weren't very close before that, because I was off at university by the time he was old enough to form memories, but that changed once he started living with me. I more or less raised him as a single parent from that point."

"This is why he jokes that you're like a father to him."

"Precisely," Obi-Wan says. "Shmi took about a year to recover enough to move again, and grandfather covered the costs. She still had to live with a dedicated carer and attend daily physical therapy. At that physical therapy, she met Cliegg Lars, whose son Owen was also a patient there. They hit it off, and three years later, they married. When Anakin refers to his stepfamily he's talking about the Lars out in Nevada."

"Nevada?"

"They have a farm. A very, very normal one. We don't drag them into our activities, unless we have an at-risk person who needs a safe house." Obi-Wan pauses, and then decides this really needs to be stressed. "This is important to me and Anakin, that we don't get them involved unless there's absolutely no other choice. Shmi's been through a lot, and the Lars are busy enough running the farm."

"Works for me," Cody says. "We've got enough safe houses that it shouldn't be an issue. I'm guessing this story doesn't end there, though."

Obi-Wan grimaces. "My own love life has been... a bit of a mess."

"I already know about Kryze, at least."

There's that. "I was temporarily engaged to a friend, Siri Tachi, shortly after high school. We were in a relationship, but this was mostly something done to appease a relative of hers that was getting overbearing to the point of absurdity, and she couldn't just cut them off. We broke off the engagement after the relative passed, and we're still friends."

He notes that down, then adds the other embarrassment of his early years. "First marriage was actually a drunken joke between myself and my best friend when we were in college. We got it annulled a few months later because we just didn't have time to drop by the courthouse before then, and he's actually engaged to Asajj now."

"Asajj?" Cody asks, watching in fascination as Obi-Wan tries to mark in both his own short marriage and the newer, long-term engagement without crossing any lines. He settles for just writing the name twice and including an asterisk with 'this is the same person.'

"Ventress," Obi-Wan clarifies. "Yeah, Quinlan's a fun guy. His little sister, Aayla, treats Anakin like a beloved younger cousin."

"Are they also off-limits for criminal activity?"

"No, Aayla's the one that taught Ahsoka how to vent-crawl," Obi-Wan says. "And I'm pretty sure Quinlan has contacts in every major government branch, criminal organization, and Fortune 500 company on the planet. I reach out to them regularly."

"Resources, then."

Obi-Wan nods. "Some time later, I married Satine. We had a son; you've met Korkie. We split due to incompatibility a year and change before Qui-Gon's death. Satine doesn't engage in criminal activity, but Bo-Katan is..."

"I've met Bo-Katan. I know what she's like, Obi. You don't have to explain."

"She works with Maul sometimes."

"...the man who killed your father?"

"Yes. It's all very stupid and convoluted." Obi-Wan still writes her in. "So, that's them. Korkie goes to boarding school, and I try not to involve him in anything. Anakin and Ahsoka like to teach him self-defense and the like, but Satine is adamant that he stay unaware of my less legal dealings until he's an adult."

Cody shrugs. "Makes sense. Is that every--wait, no, Skywalker's married."

Obi-Wan grins. "Yes, and Padme's got twins on the way."

"I was there when he told us," Cody says drily. "He was very loud about it. Okay, how does Ahsoka fit in?"

"Hold on, I forgot Beru," Obi-Wan mutters. "Owen's fiancee. Same rules as the Lars. Okay, you asked about Ahsoka. Right. So. Um."

He dithers. Cody waits for him, and then Obi-Wan just gives up. "Ahsoka, dear, would you like to explain how you joined the family, so to speak?"

Ahsoka looks up from whatever she and the boys are doing--there are multiple beer glasses and straws and duct tape involved, and Obi-Wan doesn't really want to know--and then flips off the table and over to Obi-Wan and Cody. She looks over the family tree chart, and then says, "Oooh, did you tell him about the cult?"

"You were in a cult?" Cody demands.

"No, Komari was. She was head priestess or something. I dunno, it's why she's in prison and stuff."

"I did not tell him about the cult," Obi-Wan mutters, already regretting this. "The Bando Gora aren't a problem anymore. I've already gotten to explaining how you and Anakin know each other."

Ahsoka rolls her eyes, steals his pen, and starts sketching in around Quinlan's name, over by Asajj since Obi-Wan's section is too crowded. "Okay, so, Quinlan's adopted. His dad is Tholme, and Tholme's dad is Plo Koon. Plo Koon is good friends with my Auntie, Shaak Ti, who raised me. They live next door to each other, out in the country, and I'd play in his yard a lot, because he had puppies, and he took me to visit his bees. Whenever Auntie needed a babysitter, she asked Quinlan or Aayla to do it since she knew and trusted them, and Aayla needed pocket money."

"This is so unnecessarily complicated," Cody mutters.

"It is!" Ahsoka chirps. Her grin is far too sharp. "So, this one time, Aayla was watching me when I was fourteen, and she was just helping me with my physics homework. BAM, the door slams open, and in stumbled Skyguy with his arm missing. I've never met him before, and my first introduction is him shortly after he's gotten an unplanned amputation."

Anakin, on the other side of the room, giggles. Obi-Wan just sighs. The Fett brothers appear to be in the land of 'horrified fascination.'

Ahsoka revels in it. "There's blood everywhere, I'm screaming, Aayla's panicking, Anakin's halfway to unconscious and insisting we can't call the hospital, and nobody can get Obi-Wan on the phone. Quinlan's in another country, and Auntie Shaak and Uncle Plo are at a movie, so they've both got their cellphones off. Tholme was faking his death at that point to get away from an incident with the Irish Mob, so we didn't even try him."

"What the actual fuck," Rex breathes.

Ahsoka continues with relish. "We get Bant to pick up, and she's there an hour later with Padme, because Padme knows how to drive the way Skyguy does, and the entire drive there is just Auntie Bant on speakerphone telling Aayla how to stop the bleeding and get him stabilized while Padme's screaming at traffic at the top of her lungs."

"I owe Aayla a fruit basket," Anakin muses aloud. "The anniversary of her saving my life is coming up, it's warranted."

"Five years, baby!" Ahsoka crows. She fist-pumps.

Obi-Wan just drops his head into his hands. "You're killing me, children."

Anakin shrugs, grinning. "You know, I think Fett Senior might have been involved in that fight."

"My shitty dad cut off your arm?" Rex demands.

"No, I think he was busy fighting the Interpol guy," Anakin says. "But he was definitely there. I think. Blood loss kinda got to me after a bit, but I'm pretty sure Jango Fett was there, and also Boba might've been hiding in the getaway car?"

"I need another glass," Cody mutters. He doesn't stand up, though.

"Wait," Rex says. "So who cut off your arm?"

Anakin shrugs with an unsure noise. "Someone tried to convince me it was Grandpa Yan, but he was in the middle of a court case in Italy for some kind of parole violation when it happened, so he had an alibi."

"...did he actually violate parole?" Cody asks, and Obi-Wan thinks he looks like he doesn't know if he actually wants an answer.

Ahsoka shrugs. So does Anakin. Obi-Wan carefully looks at a spot behind Cody, and doesn't explain anything about wine tastings used as covers for illicit arms deals.

"The arm?" Rex prompts, sounding a little desperate to get back to the question he likely thinks is the most important.

"I still say it was Skeevy Sheev," Ahsoka chimes in.

"It wasn't Palpatine," Anakin snaps.

"Your creepy older friend who took you to operas and gives you fancy gifts and knows way too much about swords who was conveniently there to talk to the police and cover for you so you didn't get arrested for getting in the middle of a gang war in the first place, yes," Ahsoka says, dropping into a chair and sighing dramatically. "The guy who definitely hasn't been trying to convince you for a year and change that your wife is cheating on you with your older brother."

"Ahsoka!"

"What? He is."

"Anakin," Rex says, "your life sounds like a trainwreck."

"I'm not going to assume a frail, elderly man cut my arm off!" Anakin protests. "Even if he wanted to, he doesn't exactly have the muscle for it!"

"Grandfather's older," Obi-Wan points out, even though he knows it won't help. "And he definitely still could."

"Ha!" Ahsoka shouts.

"He could have hired someone?" Cody suggests. "Doesn't need to do it himself, if he has enough money."

Obi-Wan has a sneaking suspicion that Cody is deliberately stirring the pot as revenge for Anakin sending him eighty-seven cat memes inside an hour during last night's dinner.

"You all suck," Anakin declares. "Also, what the hell do you mean 'knows way too much about swords,' Ahsoka? You know way too much about swords!"

"Yeah, but I'm like ninety-percent sure that his antiques are Prussian and mid-century German military officer dress uniform relics, and pairing that with the Nazi pistols he's got on display--"

"He's just a history buff! And his family's German, of course he prioritizes that region, it's not like he doesn't have Russian or French or English antiques in there too, it's all sides of the war and--"

"I'm just saying he's almost definitely sending me sketchy glances like he thinks I'm planning to steal the silver on the three occasions you've had me with you when you stop by, and I'm pretty sure it's got less to do with my criminal record and more to do with me being, you know, not white."

Anakin looks ready to blow, so Obi-Wan interrupts. "Ahsoka, you were explaining how Anakin passing out on Aayla and scaring us all half to death led to your friendship?"

Ahsoka blinks at him, and then sticks her tongue out at Anakin and turns back to the chart. "So basically, Skyguy had to recuperate in Uncle Plo's living room for a week or two, and I kept showing up to bother him because he was bored and nobody would give him a laptop for 'security reasons,' because he had to lay low and stuff. He made me help him sketch out designs for a prosthesis and do all the writing for the math he had to do for the 3D printer, and we got to chatting."

Ahsoka hops up and back onto a table, legs swinging below her. "I decided he was cool and started following him around while he was getting used to only having one hand, mostly because I was bored. He showed me how to hotwire a car, and explained the best places to put a bug if you were looking to make it sneaky, and he picked my pocket to show off so many times when he was walking around Uncle Plo's house that I made him teach me that, too. And, uh, then Aayla found out and they got into a shouting match about it and decided they both needed to teach me parkour so I could get out of any mess I got myself into, since I was obviously going to follow them into a life of crime."

"And you did," Anakin says, far too proudly. "You're the best thief in this half of the country."

"Only because Aayla moved out east."

Anakin rolls his eyes and pulls Ahsoka into his side, digging his knuckles into her skull. "Best thief! You are the best thief! Be proud of yourself!"

"Let go!"

"Never!"

Obi-Wan sighed heavily and rubbed at his forehead. "Children, please."

"You're not my dad," Ahsoka growls out at him. "Skyguy, I'm going to bite you!"

"Good luck, the only arm you can access is the one that's going to break your teeth."

Ahsoka shrieks in outrage and stomps on Anakin's instep.

It's almost funny, for all that Obi-Wan's seen it play out a million times before, but the really interesting part is seeing Rex's look of fond dismay.

Obi-Wan thinks he might be adding a branch out to the Fetts soon. He's not actually sure if Rex is interested in Anakin or Ahsoka, and he's smack dab between them in age, so that's not a help either, but... well. The expression is familiar enough.

"Please tell me you don't match-make," Cody mutters to him.

"No, I plan to let the pieces fall where they will," Obi-Wan responds, just as low, and far more amused. "I'm simply trying to predict where those landings are to be."

Cody looks at him, and then back at the roughhousing trio, and sighs heavily. "You know, I really didn't think that you technically being minor royalty was going to be the least convoluted thing in your story, Obi-Wan."

He laughs, because it's true. "I'm first in line to inherit the title, since Rael denounced his claim. Nim isn't interested, and Qui-Gon's dead, so... I'm next."

Cody makes a face. "Delightful. I'm guessing that's not a connection we can safely make use of."

"No more than the Kryze or Naberries, I'm afraid." Obi-Wan claps him on the shoulder. "Chin up, I've plenty others in the metaphorical rolodex, all far less legitimate and far more amenable to work with our little outfit."

"Rolodex, really?" Cody snorts. "You're not that old."

Obi-Wan smiles winningly. "You don't know how old I am, Cody. All my IDs are fake."

"Anakin's twenty-four, and you're sixteen years older than him, going by the story you just told me," Cody points out. "I do know how to do basic math, Obi-Wan."

"I had to try," Obi-Wan admits. "I threw a lot of information at you all at once; I'd hoped you missed some of the ages in there."

"I have eight brothers," Cody scoffs. "And literally dozens of cousins, plus niblings, uncles, aunts, and so on. I have experience on this."

"If I asked you to list of the age of every single relative you have, you'd be able to do it?"

"Do you want me to draw a chart? I can draw a chart."

Obi-Wan can't help but laugh. "I'd be delighted, my dear."

Cody rolls his eyes, but Obi-Wan thinks--it's hard to tell in the dimmed lights of the closed bar--that there's a hint of a blush on the man's face. Obi-Wan lets himself slouch to the side, drops his head to rest on one fist, indolent debauchery in every line of his body. Cody does his best to ignore him, but Obi-Wan knows how to smile lazily and blink slowly and draw a man in.

(The whole 'indolent debauchery in every line of his body' phrasing is Anakin's, from back when he was a teenager trying to read highbrow literature to impress a cute girl... and to come up with new insults for his older brother.)

"So," Cody says, with a cough meant to somehow distract Obi-Wan from whatever's showing on the man's face. "Why, uh, why is your grandfather on terrorist watchlists?"

"Well, he didn't initially do anything," Obi-Wan says. "He was just a gay man who didn't hide it quite well enough, and had too much money and too white a face for someone to just call the cops on a faulty report. The Red Scare was technically over by that point, I think, but if a few people made suggestions that he was more loyal to the country that gave him a noble title than to the United States... he received a few warnings, of course, and it could have all blown over..."

"But?"

"But my grandfather is not a man to do things by halves, and instead decided that if the government was to list him as a threat, then he would oblige and make himself a threat," Obi-Wan finishes. "Living up to their labels, rolling with the assumptions, whatever you'd like to call it. It all irked him, and so he made some incredibly questionable decisions to make the government's lives harder. Some weren't bad, like donating to anti-war foundations that were protesting the Gulf War and the interventions in Yugoslavia, that sort of thing, and some were... nobody really looks well on gunrunning, you know."

"For fuck's sake..."

"Indeed," Obi-Wan chuckles. "Ironically, he has minimal opinion on the optimal form of economics, for all that virulent xenophobia and the remnants of anti-communism were involved in the whole mess. He just wanted to create problems for the people that were causing him problems."

Cody shakes his head. "I want to judge that, but you've met my father."

"Jango Fett is, indeed, also not a man to do things by halves," Obi-Wan agrees, attempting to nod gravely but breaking into a smile at the end. "That man is absurd."

"At least he's not dragging Boba into it anymore," Cody mutters. He drags over the fresh sheet of paper and pen that Obi-Wan offers him. "Okay, right, let's start with Jaster..."

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dioptre-hertz · 4 years

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Pathologic 2 ending thoughts

i don’t really use tumblr much anymore, but i recently finished Pathologic 2 and i have thoughts on the ending, which i felt was somewhat incongruous with the rest of the game’s themes and ideas. and tumblr felt like the right place to put a long-form post about it. so, here i am, haha!

MAJOR spoilers for Pathologic 2 below, obviously. this post will probably only be interesting to you if you’ve already played the game, so if you haven’t, be warned! hehehe!

okay, so. i have a lot of thoughts about the ending stuff, but basically it boils down to: i think the ending as presented would have been a good ending for a different game.

quick summary: towards the end of the game, Artemy learns that the Polyhedron, a physics-defying tower and architectural wonder, is rooted into the ground with a long metal spike that pierces the Living Earth. destroying the Polyhedron would therefore open a gaping wound in the Earth, spilling rivers of blood that could be used to mass-produce a cure for the plague. however, doing so would not only destroy the Polyhedron, but also kill the Living Earth, and by extension the Kin. alternately, Artemy can choose to preserve the Polyhedron, which would prevent the Living Earth from bleeding out and dying; but it would come at the cost of the lives of everyone in the town, since the plague would then be unstoppable.

so, the ending choice is principally about this: you have to choose between preserving the magical wonders of the world, the Kin and the Polyhedron and the Living Earth, but at the expense of the actual living humans of the town; or, you save the town and all its mundanities and its ordinary people you've worked so hard to protect, but at the expense of your cultural heritage and all the magical, impossible things of the Steppe. do you choose a world that is dreamlike, enchanted and strange, even if there is no place for regular humans in that world; or do you choose an ordinary, realistic world, one in which there is life for common folk but not for magic and fairy tales?

here’s what irks me though: this dichotomy is not at all what the game is about. or, to be more precise, it never felt to me personally like this was what the narrative was setting up. the choice as presented is fine in a vacuum! there’s nothing wrong with telling a story that creates this kind of clash between magic and realism, and asks you to choose between them. but it doesn’t feel congruous with the rest of the game’s story. let me elaborate.

so, part of what’s going on here is that the game is asking you to make a sacrifice. as the game itself repeatedly tells you: “you can’t save everyone”. either the Kin, the magical steppe creatures, and the Polyhedron are destroyed; or, the ordinary humans of the town are destroyed. you can’t protect both. Pathologic 2 goes to great lengths to show you that you are not a magical fantasy RPG hero who can complete every quest, rescue every NPC, overcome any obstacle and get the Perfect Ending. that’s the whole point of the overly punishing hunger and exhaustion mechanics; that’s why you die so easily in combat, why you’re always running out of time, and why the game is perfectly willing to punish you for every single mistake you make. it’s not a game about being the chosen one, who has magic powers and is uniquely capable of saving the day. right?

except... it kind of is precisely that, if you think about it. Artemy’s story is very clearly a traditional “chosen one” narrative! he is the sole inheritor of his father’s legacy, he is the town’s only menkhu, and so much of the story revolves around his spiritual journey. over the course of the game, Artemy undergoes a coming-of-age of sorts, reconnecting with his heritage, unlocking the secrets of being a menkhu, brewing magical tinctures that slow down and ultimately cure the plague. multiple characters make it explicit that Artemy is important - Foreman Oyun, Aspity, Isidor, and various minor characters of the Kin (like Nara) all talk at length about how Artemy is special, and his role (should he embrace it) is to lead the Kin once he is ready. and the entire conflict with Rubin revolves around the fact that Rubin isn’t the “chosen one” the way Artemy is!

this whole plot thread reaches its climax when Artemy ventures into the Abattoir to seek answers. there, he undergoes a series of harrowing spiritual experiences. several really important things happen here, and i want to focus on two of them.

firstly: upon reaching the central chamber of the Abattoir, Artemy is tasked with performing “surgery” on three seemingly random objects: a candlestick, a fingernail coin, and a spindle of thread. he has a metaphysical conversation with the odongh he meets there and then “connects” these objects into a living, beating heart, and the heart speaks to him. this scene is either hallucinatory or supernatural (or both), but it doesn’t matter which; the point of the scene is that Artemy has finally learned to read the Lines, learned to see how seemingly disparate objects can be spiritually connected into a singular whole. he takes three items that appear to have nothing in common, and he forges a beating heart out of them, a living thing. as Artemy himself learns:

This system isn't symmetrical. It's not just "Nerves, Bones, Skin." Or "Nerves, Bones, Flesh." Or "Spirit, Hair, Blood." Any triad is correct.

Truth is not a set point, but an intersection and confluence of many small truths. Knowing this, I can match and connect anything.

furthermore, shortly after leaving the Abattoir, Artemy has a dream in which he returns there and speaks to the ghost of Isidor, his father. here, he learns a difficult truth: that Isidor intentionally brought the plague back to the town, believing - essentially - that it was necessary for the town’s growth. the decision seems monstrous. Isidor justifies it thus:

This town was… connected wrong. Its parts were tied with artificial seams—so different, so awkward. One could say that Simon, the Mistresses, and I held it all together by force.

So I tore it apart, so you can sew it all back, better than before. Because you're better, and smarter, than I am.

so here we have the high point of Artemy’s spiritual journey, the part of the story where he finally understands why things are the way they are, and what it is he must do.

and this is where things start going wrong, in my opinion.

because all of this, all of what we’ve seen, seems to point in one very clear direction: Artemy will find a way to connect the Kin, the Town, and the Polyhedron into a single coherent whole. it fits so perfectly! Artemy learns that there is a way to mass-produce a cure, but doing so would require him to destroy the Polyhedron and the Living Earth. it appears as though the Polyhedron, the Living Earth, and the Town cannot all coexist; something must be sacrificed. but this choice is presented right after we’re told that Artemy’s destiny is to “sew it all back, better than before”. it is presented once we’ve seen that Artemy can connect a coin, a candlestick, and a spindle of thread into a living, beating heart, no matter how impossible that may sound. knowing this, he can match and connect anything.

and yet, he... doesn’t. the game does not end with a solution that connects the Kin, the Polyhedron and the Town. ultimately, Artemy fails to sew it all back together - and it’s not just that he fails, it’s that the game itself seems utterly unconcerned with that possibility once it heads into its final act. the mere idea that there could be a solution that “connects things right“ goes unexplored. even if the game wanted to be pessimistic and suggest that it can’t be done after all, it should at least acknowledge the thought! the game does admittedly have a focus on the idea that “you can’t save everyone”; this is one of its core motifs. so, fair enough! but since it fails to address that cynicism, it feels less like a statement on the game’s part and more like a lack of awareness.

but that’s not all! there’s a second thing that really bugs me. see, there’s another major event that takes place in the Abattoir: Artemy finally has his fateful encounter with Nara, the Herb Bride who has haunted him throughout the game, insisting that their destinies are intertwined and that he will one day kill her. here, Artemy finally comes to understand what it all means. in the depths of the Abattoir, Nara is waiting for him; the other Herb Brides give Artemy a menkhu’s knife, and they task him with cutting open Nara’s body without killing her:

We know how to open things up. Our way. You know how to open things up. Your way. Do you want to know why the sand pest passes us by? Show yourself.

Cut a living sister in such a way that she stays living. You can do it, if you know the Lines.

Artemy follows through, and he converses with Nara even as he cuts into her flesh; they talk to each other right until the end, when Artemy retrieves a spindle of thread from her body, and she dies.

now, this scene is somewhat tricky to interpret; Artemy must show that he can “cut a living sister in such a way that she stays living”, but in the end, Nara does die. so was he successful or not? well, i would argue that he is; even though Nara dies, he proves that he is able to read the Lines with such precision that she can speak calmly with him until the very end.

more importantly, this scene is the high point of a recurring theme in the game: Artemy’s skill as surgeon.

on Day 1, the very first part of the game, Artemy is sent by his old friend Bad Grief to perform surgery on Piecework, one of the thugs in Bad Grief’s gang. Piecework has gotten in a fight and been stabbed in the gut with a lockpick; without Artemy’s intervention, he will die. you can choose to save him, flub the surgery and kill him, or ignore the sidequest altogether; in any case, this early quest introduces the player to the surgery mechanic and serves to establish Artemy’s unique skills as a surgeon.

on Day 11, the last day of proper gameplay, you have a repeat of this encounter. while pursuing the main quest for the day, you wind up in a pub, where a gang of local bandits have set up shop. they threaten you and order you to rescue one of their pals, who has been shot in the stomach and is about to die. here you again perform surgery to save a man’s life, but this time you don’t do it through the usual surgery minigame - it happens entirely through dialogue choices, and i’m actually not even sure if it’s possible to fail this interaction. in any case, you retrieve the bullet from the man’s stomach and inform his friends that he’ll live.

so what’s the point of all that then? well, the way i see it, the point of all this is to foreshadow a climactic conclusion: Artemy will remove the Polyhedron without killing the Living Earth.

the game spends a lot of time setting this up! on Day 1, Artemy saves a man by removing a long metal spike from his gut non-lethally; in the Abattoir, Artemy proves his spiritual growth by demonstrating that he can “cut a living sister in such a way that she stays living”; and on Day 11, the game throws yet another surgery vignette at you in a scene that frankly feels a bit out of place otherwise.

all of this feels, to me, like it's foreshadowing and setting up one very obvious result: Artemy, having mastered not only practical surgery but also the art of reading the Lines, of being a menkhu, is the one person who can remove the Polyhedron without killing the Living Earth! the game spends all this time explaining that in the Steppe culture, cutting open flesh, or the earth itself, is taboo: only a menkhu is allowed to do so, because a menkhu is someone who knows how to read the Lines, who knows how to cut in a way that will not harm the Living Earth. the culmination of the story, therefore, needs to be that Artemy puts this exact skill to use. that was the point of his character arc, right?

except... no, it isn’t. in the end, there is no way to surgically extract the metal spike from the Living Earth. the only two choices we are presented with are: botch the surgery, or leave it be.

...

in the end, i feel that the ending(s) of Pathologic 2 aren’t appropriate conclusions to the ideas, motifs, and overall narrative progression we’re shown throughout the earlier parts of the game. Pathologic 2 is in many ways brilliant, and i do not hesitate to call it a masterpiece, aforementioned criticisms notwithstanding - but that’s precisely why i cared enough to write all this down! it’s a story that gets into your head, really stays with you, and maybe that’s the reason why i have such strong feelings about the direction the story takes in its final act.

if you reached the end of this post: thank you so much for reading it! i hope you enjoyed my thoughts, and i hope you have a great day!

#pathologic #pathologic 2 #artemy burakh

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sonofsallyjackson · 4 years

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Heroes of Olympus should have been in first-person.

@jo-march-is-a-lesbian wrote a really wonderful post about how “Percy Jackson and the Olympians is better than Heroes of Olympus…because it understood simplicity and character development.” It highlights some reasons I also found HoO less rewarding namely that it was an overcomplicated story with limited character growth, lacked a common thesis, and was super jarring when it switched perspectives.

And with that my little brain went: I can fix this. Which frankly is ridiculous. I can’t come up with a compelling thesis like “The idea that we should place our hope in our loved ones, our friends and our family, and if we do that, we won’t be tempted to give up hope again.” But I can imagine a simple change that would have solved some of the issues and also played to Rick’s strengths as a writer: Each book should have been written in first person and narrated by a different character.

With so many people on the quest, I often felt like I was watching a bunch of one-dimensional characters fight for their right to be the main character. I didn’t know who to focus on but I was also dissatisfied. There were all these new wonderful characters in front of me who I wanted to love, but I didn’t feel like I actually knew them. I mean I don’t feel like I know the Stoll Brothers either, but I’m not concerned about that fact because they are side characters. When everyone is painted as the main character, I have certain expectations for growth, personality, and voice. The story would have been better served if the characters took turns narrating the action, allowing us to settle into their perspective, see their growth, and better understand their personality.

Plus Rick kills first-person. While I’m not particularly a fan of Trials of Apollo, it’s not because I don’t know the characters. Apollo is so very different than Percy. Their voices, even though they can both be jokesters at times, reflect their different life-experiences, thought processes and provide massive insight into their characters. If the Seven (and Nico and Reyna) got the same treatment, I would be absolutely giddy.

I recognize that rewriting the HoO series in first-person is something a talented fanfiction writer with a lot of time on their hands could actually do. But I am not talented like that and I certainly don’t have the discipline to actually write that much fic, especially if I was trying to keep the events vaguely the same just with different narration and pacing. So instead I’ve included who I think should have narrated each book below the cut. I’d love to hear any opinions people have regarding this idea, especially who they would have wanted to see to narrate each book.

In addition to picking the narrator, I’ve highlighted what should be the “quest” so to speak of each story. Personally, MoA, HoH and BoO are kind of a blur to me despite reading them all recently. It’s hard to distinguish what happens in each book because it’s all one massive quest with a whole bunch of mini-quests. While the different narrators would obviously make the books more distinctive, splitting the series into seven books would also help simplify each book’s individual goal. Eight books would have allowed for better integration of the plot to find the physician’s cure, but with the prophecy of seven, it seemed like seven books was the best option, if I was going to be doing something as blasphemous as splitting books.

As a note, I ran out of steam as I went so not all opinions are fully fleshed out.

Book 1: The Lost Hero The Quest: Rescue Hera/Juno Narrator: Jason

Why this would be cool:

He is literally Juno’s chosen sent on a quest to rescue her. It’s poetic enough to give him the book.

Jason’s journey is just as much about rediscovering himself as it is about saving Juno. Of the new characters, I feel like I understand Jason the least. Mainly because I felt like I was missing the entire first half of his story. Jason, like Percy and Annabeth, is a hero of the Titan War. I know some of his accomplishments, but I don’t have any bearing on what his life was like or how he felt about it. He doesn’t seem like the type to relish Praetor-ship since he doesn’t have the same intense need to get back to his camp as Percy. Was he just hoisted on his comrades’ shields after killing the Titan without any real choice in the matter? Give me Jason’s memories coming back slowly over the course of the quest (with potentially a fractured memory of a mistake he made in the Roman’s final Titan battle that makes him doubt their ability to both rescue Piper’s dad and save Hero but he makes the decision to anyway because he can’t just hurt his friend like that. Let me understand how Jason is the person he is today. Give me glances of the Roman Camp with emphasis on the heavy expectations that have always followed him as the son of Jupiter and foreshadow why he eventually chooses to design all the shrines for the minor gods so he can have his own place in the world as a figure between the two camps.

Let’s dive into those feelings of anger/guilt/resentment when people at camp are disappointed with him for not being Percy or in Chiron’s case are nervous about what his presence means.

I want to dig deeper regarding Jason’s feelings about reconnecting with Thalia. He knows that if the gods hadn’t been determined to keep the two camps completely separate, he could have grown up with his sister.

What does telling the narrative like this sacrifice:

We miss some of the internal turmoil regarding the fact that Piper’s Dad has been captured and she must betray her friends.

We also don’t feel the tensions of Piper’s relationship with Aphrodite. I don’t see Piper bringing up the conversation with her mom saying that her mist memories were so strong because she automatically sensed the potential of a romantic relationship with Jason.

We don’t have any of Leo’s conflicted feelings regarding rescuing Hera or his fear of being made an outcast for his fire abilities. Jason has to go with Leo to discover Bunker 9 and Festus.

Leo doesn’t actively save the day with the Cyclops.

We don’t know how Piper feels about her charm-speak or see her defeat Madea (as the boys are in their weird trance thing).

Knowledge about Gaea’s involvement in wrecking Leo’s life will come later.

Book 2: The Son of Neptune The Quest: Free Thantos Narrator: Hazel

Why this would be cool:

The stakes are so incredibly high. Hazel is literally risking her second chance at life by agreeing to go on this chance. She’s going to the place she died to fight the monster she created. She also has to deal with the trauma of knowing she may have bought the world time with her first sacrifice but it now means nothing if she can’t succeed again.

We get to see Camp Jupiter from the view of someone who loves it but doesn’t really fit in. Hazel joined Camp Jupiter just after the final battle. She enters a community that has learned to fight as a well-oiled machine but that has lost people. Dakota or the others may remark to her about how things were before or the people who are missing. Hazel sees a community that she’s not quite a part of both because she didn’t fight in the war and because she’s in the fifth cohort with a feared godly parent.

It would explore her relationship with Nico more (because I love their dynamic and I want more). She knows she can’t replace his real sister, but she feels comfortable and happy at the opportunity to have a brother, especially one who is out of time like she is.

What does telling the narrative like this sacrifice:

Frankly, the largest pushback would be from the fans who expected this to be Percy’s book since we just watched Jason rediscover who he is.

Percy’s phone call to his mom doesn’t have the same intensity.

Frank’s relationship with Mars and how desperate he was to be claimed but now he doesn’t think he can live up to his father’s expectations.

Frank and his grandmother. We aren’t in Frank’s head as he changes shape till later.

Book 3: Mark of Athena The Quest: Close the Divide Between The Two Camps by finding Athena’s statue and Rescue Nico Narrator(s): Annabeth and Leo

Why Annabeth:

So I can have all the emotions at the reunion with Percy.

Annabeth’s relationship with her Mom has never been great, but imagine beginning the book with Annabeth being given the Mark of Athena. They haven’t left for New Rome yet and her nerves are already all over the place. Then Athena/Minerva comes, gives her an impossible quest, and breaks her hat. Annabeth wants to prove to her mother that she’s worthy because despite everything she still values her mother’s opinions. Also her fatal flaw of hubris makes her believe she will succeed where everyone else failed.

Much of the book already follows her in third person limited so we just get things with a little extra emotion.

Why Leo:

Leo has to grapple with the fact he started this war by being the one to fire the cannon even if he didn’t have any control. He is motivated to fix it

If we’re going to include the Sammy plot, we need to do it now. Leo doesn’t like being the odd one out on the ship but he certainly doesn’t like the feeling of being notable because of his grandfather.

We still need to get into those feelings of abandonment and anger at Gaea for killing his mom.

Nemesis

Leo comes into his own with the discovery of the Archimedes sphere and the decision to value people over objects.

What does telling the narrative like this sacrifice:

The aquarium shenanigans

The fight between Jason and Percy in Kansas needs to happen differently so that the others are present and try to stop it.

Neither of them went ashore to meet Hercules.

I think we might need to move up the Calypso meeting to this book, but that also kills some of the suspense since Frank will have the fireproof coating prior to his adventures in Venice when he gains faith in his abilities. It also might mean Leo opens the fortune cookie from Nemesis unless for some odd reason he doesn’t have it. There’s a lot more narrative weight for it coming later, but in order to get in as many book events as we can in, it might need to come earlier.

Book 4: House of Hades Pt. 1

The Quest: Survive Tartarus Narrator(s): Annabeth and Percy

The first time I read House of Hades, I read it out of order (reading all the Percy and Annabeth chapters until they were on the elevator out of Tartarus before going back and reading the others), because I couldn’t handle the back and forth. I felt like the tension would build, I’d be invested in this plot and then we’d switch to the other plot. Plus I was very concerned for my children. So I feel fully justified in saying that there is more than enough material to give the two of them their own book.

I just feel like all the feelings would be magnified.

Percy’s commentary slowly losing its humor because he can’t anymore.

Annabeth’s guilt at having pulled him in being extra loud.

Downsides beyond adding an entire book: Just imagine all the outrage at two cliffhangers in a row, because you know the book would end with them in the elevator remembering Bob’s words about the stars.

Book 5: House of Hades Pt. 2

The Quest: Close the Doors of Death Narrator(s): Frank and Hazel

Frank and Hazel experience the most growth on the quest to close the doors so this book is all theirs. Hazel learns to control the mist. Frank experiments with his transformations. I want nothing but them growing into themselves and their abilities.

The good thing about turning the two warring storylines from House of Hades into separate books is that we lose very little plot.

Book 6: House of Hades Pt. 3/Blood of Olympus Pt 1 (Personally I would call this one Ambassador of Pluto)

The Quest: Unite the Gods’ Personalities. Narrator: Nico

To clarify what I mean by HoH 3, I just mean anything done with the intention of trying to cross paths with Reyna, including the adventure with Cupid, in addition to the existing Nico&Reyna plotline in BoO.

Nico dealing with all the emotions and his most recent near-death experience.

He kept the secret of the camps so the world wouldn’t end in chaos, but now that the world is in chaos he will be the one to fix it.

In the short time he’s on the Argo 2, Nico realizes that even though this wasn’t his quest; this is his family and he needs to protect them.

The reader has a pretty good idea Nico is gay, even if the word isn’t explicitly said from the descriptions (his guilty Percy thoughts - he let down the man he loves even if he won’t admit it.) This means that Cupid’s forceful outing is potentially less surprising so the reader can be properly outraged at Cupid.

Downside: Reyna definitely has adventures when Nico is passed out, especially the whole waking up with the Hunters, but I think it’s excusable for a whole book from Nico’s perspective.

Also, the battle between the camps and gifting of the statue needs to happen in this book, but we shouldn’t find out if the gods have regained control of their forms yet. We alleviate some tensions because Camp Half-blood is likely to be overrun with Octavian’s monsters instead of the Roman armies and Gaea could awaken any second, but there’s an odd moment of calm and an uneasy truce. (Octavian is potentially taken under custody to be held for trial only to escape in the next book.)

Book 7: Blood of Olympus Pt 2 (and the aftermath)

The Quest: Like The Last Olympian, the final book’s focus is entirely on defeating the series’ big bad, in this case, Gaea. Leo’s quest for the Physician’s cure parallels Percy’s River Styx visit.

Narrator(s): Leo and Piper

Leo has his death hanging over his head. He has decided that he will be the one to die not any of his friends. He got the cloth from Calypso so the “fire” portion of the prophecy applies to him and not Frank. (Yes I know you can’t control prophecies, but do you think that’s going to stop Leo.)

It’s the ultimate revenge for killing his mom. We can have memories of both the happy times with Esperanza and the fear he felt for thinking he caused the fire.

Piper’s perspective is necessary as we need to be with her during the fight with the giants.

This series began with Piper, Leo, and Jason. It ends that way too with the three of them killing Gaea and the two of them narrating.

Downsides:

The Percabeth I love you-the feud is over scene remains in Piper’s perspective.

Since we’re not following Reyna’s delivery of the statue concurrently we don’t know when to anticipate the healed gods appearing in the battle with the giants.

The book can still get away with not showing us Percy’s reunion with Sally or forcing Leo to tell the others he’s alive so they’re all grieving.

#pjo meta #pjo fandom #pjo/hoo #hoo #riordanverse #heroes of olympus #my meta #percy jackon and the olympians #the seven #jason grace #hazel levesque #leo valdez #piper mclean #percy jackson #annabeth chase #frank zhang #the fandom once again improving hoo

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killingeveperspectives · 4 years

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Perspective: Eve Polastri and the invisibility of women’s pain

“[A woman] has to know how to love

know how to suffer her love

and be all forgiveness”

These are the final verses of the poem “Sonnet of the ideal woman” written by the acclaimed Brazilian poet Vinicius de Moraes, same guy that brought you Girl from Ipanema®. (Don’t start hum… too late). I remember reading this sonnet only once, but its last verses became branded in my mind like a curse. Society’s view of ideal womanhood is perfectly encapsulated in these three haunting lines. That is women’s purpose, not only for men but for humanity, her suffering frivolous in the face of the redemption to be brought forth through her selflessness. Anything else is egoistical, evil, and dangerous… for everyone. From Pandora in ancient Greece, to biblical Eve, to Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, to 90% of all horror movies ever, women are constantly warned of the dangers of curiosity and desire, which lead to destruction and death. Her redemption is to be a vehicle of someone else’s redemption, just like Virgin Mary redeemed biblical Eve by being the vehicle of humankind’s salvation. This narrative is so ingrained in our collective unconscious that it requires an immense effort to not let it slip into its familiar nest within our minds.

The biblical story of Eve’s fall from grace is arguably the most pervasive patriarchal myth to shape our patriarchal society, but if we unwrap its millennia of projections of male anxieties, the myth holds a kernel of universal truth: The flesh is weak. We are dangerously inclined to act on desire over reason by force so strong it is symbolized by the Devil: it possesses the mind. These impulses are irrational, reckless, primal and compelling. While Freud constructed much of his theory on the fascination of unconscious drives, I believe no one has said it better than W.H. Auden: “We are lived by powers we pretend to understand”. Our lives and livelihood depend on striking a fine balance between restriction and satisfaction of impulse, and to those who have ever fell in passion with someone or something, passion can be one of the most disruptive experiences of a lifetime. Thus, Eve’s myth carries layers of meaning both as we understand our nature and also as to how we project these anxieties onto womanhood.

Eve Polastri is not just Eve, she is Eve, she is the proverbial woman. She is morbidly curious, tempted by desire, gives in, and destroys the world around her. But Killing Eve is no cautionary tale, Eve Polastri Is not committing a forbidden sin against a narrative moral code which commands an imposed narrative punishment. Thus, Eve Polastri embodies and transgresses the biblical myth: she is the woman exploring her own impulses in her own story and becoming authentic through it– which makes her a remarkable character in her own right. At the core, the character is also us, a regular person urging to become whole, that sees in the metaphorical abyss of Villanelle’s indulgence a reflection of what she yearns: liberation. There is a courage to Eve, and we watch her entranced, because, whether we want to admit or not, we all fantasize about playing with fire. However, there can be a tacit perverted satisfaction in this story: we want Eve to fall from grace but when she does, we want to punish her for it, thus sublimating and reprimanding our own impulse, and falling back in the old narratives about womanhood.

In Season 1, Eve seemed to have been taken as a surrogate for the audience quite unproblematically, nevertheless when desire starts to show its ugly face in Season 2, part of the audience started to feel alienated from the character, and even antagonistic. Which is unfortunate, because her face off with Villanelle in the finale was arguably the most victorious, honest and cathartic moment of the character so far. Season 3 opens with a recluse Eve licking her wounds, trying to pull herself together any way she can, after all she suffered and all she learned. She changed and change is painful – in an abstract sense, violent as well. Her initial isolation was self-imposed by the character but as the season progresses Eve becomes more and more distant, which creates a parallel to how women’s suffering is perceived in real life.

Ironically, when Eve is shutting down from the world around her in the beginning of the season, she is more open to us than she will ever be in the remainder of the episodes. We are allowed to exist with the character through her painfully dull, mundane day-to-day, as the extent of her suffering manifests in the blunt messiness of her exterior life and her valiant effort to keep it together with the help of a budding alcohol and cigarette addiction. Eve is not a strong woman; she is a woman that claimed herself at a great cost. This cost was depicted with frustrating realism, just like in real life, once the thrill of the battle is over, it’s time to tend to the wounded, drag the corpses and count the dead. It’s inglorious. No wonder Eve literally and metaphorically hid, she burned the bridges with the world around her. How could she possibly explain what she went through and how could an outsider possibly understand? A question that mirrors the feeling of many a person, especially women, that entangled themselves in violent dynamics: Alienation and loneliness.

Initially, the character continues the apophatic self-definition, Eve says no a lot, symbolizing her efforts to reassert control over her life. From Villanelle, to Carolyn, to her job, Eve is trying to play by her rules and her truth, she knows what she wants not, but the interesting question posed at the end of Season 2 is “Now that Eve reclaimed herself, what will she do of what she has become?” – Sartre style. However, there is a major shift in Eve’s character after her interactions with Villanelle in episodes 3 and 4. The character’s arc becomes centered towards admitting her feelings for Villanelle as the source of conflict, however one could argue that the main source of conflict is the existence of these feelings itself. Therefore, merely admitting them shouldn’t solve the main conflict, on the contrary, due to their inherent contradictory nature it should exacerbate it.

This sleight of hand not only impoverishes the character’s emotional landscape, motivations and general arc, but also echoes the verse: ”A woman must know how to suffer love”. Like countless women before, Eve’s story is subtly telling us that the misery comes from her rejection of a phagic “love” and the metaphorical self-annihilation intrinsic to the experience, instead of the authentic ambivalence and paradoxes of the character’s inner self. Eve’s conflict should be at its core about herself not about Villanelle – who serves as a symbolic element. In the end, good women are expected to erase themselves and to become vessels of God and of others. Coincidentally, Eve’s character becomes oddly redeemed when she becomes a vessel for Villanelle’s need to belong.

Here is where the writers quite painfully abandon an once intriguing and compelling character. Eve doesn’t find nothing new to say about herself, no new path nor synthesis of her desires, and identity – which could and should have given Eve agency in renegotiating her dynamic with Villanelle, especially if it was to bring them closer. Eve ceases to be defined by her own inner conflict and becomes defined by her attraction to Villanelle alone. As Eve obsessively seeks Villanelle, who is in turn occupied with a story of her own, at no point the audience is asked to care about Eve’s suffering nor does the writers bother to interrogate the character about it, let alone let the character process it. Eve is deprived from exploring herself and facing her own pain, almost as if Eve was so devoid of individuality that the character itself is alienated from the obvious pain and conflict it should be experiencing. But nor Eve, nor any other character and, most importantly, nor the audience is asked to care. In the emblematic scene where Eve jumps into a dumpster to literally look for scrapes of Villanelle’s supposed affection as a way of reconnecting with her, no effort is made to reframe it or question the length at which the character lost itself, because no one cares. When in the finale, Eve, who is oblivious to Villanelle’s change of heart, is interrogated with a relevant question “Did I ruin your life? Do you think I am a monster?”, the character straightforwardly reassures the anti-hero at the expense of the rich internal conflict that should have been derived and fleshed out from these points, because no one cares.

Eve believes in Villanelle unconditionally, despite all conceivable lines being crossed, despite the destruction and conflict this relationship has brought her, because Eve is doing precisely what her character is supposed to be doing: erasing her individuality, enduring her pain in the name of this love, forgiving no matter what they do to her so that they can be redeemed through her. “A woman has to know how to suffer her love and be all forgiveness”. Thus, Eve as a character becomes a device in Villanelle’s story arc occupying the same restricted space female characters were always allowed to inhabit. Villanelle goes on a somewhat muddled character growth arc, filled with redemption elements which traditionally involves the presence of a source of acceptance and love, generally in the form of a love interest, that will be granted to the hero at the end of the journey. Eve’s function in the story is not as a compelling protagonist with universal struggles, but as both enabler and trophy in Villanelle’s story. The narrative finds itself trapped in the old tales ingrained in our collective unconscious, in a jarring contrast with the previous seasons’ transgression and uniqueness.

Paradoxically, this precise abandonment gives the season the richest opportunity for the audience to interrogate the place of women’s pain. Eve’s abandonment mirrors the invisibility of the suffering of countless women, who painfully sacrifice their livelihoods in the name of their loved ones, be it Nicos, or Villanelles, or family, or friends, or their communities. Who, day in and out, are responsible for caring and supporting others through their struggles while left stranded with their own conflicts. After all, when so much depends on their self-sacrifice their pain is unimportant, even an expected part of this glorified martyrdom. Are we keen on looking at these women who inhabit these confined roles and acknowledge without judgement the enormous burden they carry? Are we ready to empathize with them when they rebel, when they fail and break, and even more so when they acquiesce? Having a queer twist on this narrative is not enough to claim it transgressive, as this cultural recipe perpetuates itself also into homoromantic relationships, as women often see themselves trapped in this dynamic with their female partners as well. Women are no less oppressed by patriarchal ideas of womanhood if these ideas are perpetuated through their relationships with other women.

Akin to Eve’s biblical story, the erasure of female pain is also layered, as we all crave unconditional love, and its redemption, so we can be at peace with ourselves – completely satisfied, accepted and safe – which is naturally symbolized by “The mother”. Therefore, it is easy to impose these fantasies in the ideal of womanhood, as easy as it is to relate to Villanelle and romanticize the role Eve plays in her development, her acceptance of Villanelle’s character being a powerful cathartic release for our own need and fantasies of belonging.

In this context, hidden in Season 3’s oblivious narrative, lays an interesting invitation to evaluate how we individually, and as a society, negotiate our urge to be nurtured and the necessity to nurture others and how these roles are culturally and socially informed by patriarchal ideas we collectively and individually carry about womanhood, and to what extent we are ready to challenge them.

#killing eve #killingeve #killing eve analysis #ke s3 #ke #Eve Polastri #eve polastri retcon #killingeveperspectives #killinge #eve polastri analysis

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stilitana · 4 years

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so i listened to this embarassingly quickly but let’s chalk that up to the self-isolation/working from home and leave it at that

wolf 359 reactions under the cut (spoilers):

firstly, that soundtrack was so good and i’ll be listening to those piano pieces forever

this show demonstrated the eternal power of the agatha christie principle: gather a ragtag cast of characters who’ve all got beef with each other, and trap them in a small space together. cue the instant tension and inevitable weighty revelations.

i adore that amid all the drama/action, there were so many moments when the writers let the narrative breathe a little and just allowed the characters to talk to each other, and play games with one another. the word games were delicious. these were often moments of levity and good character building, but they also all moved relationships forward or revealed something new, so don’t ever let anybody say that having chill little funny moments is useless narrative fluff. these were the best moments.

empty man cometh might be my favorite. am i alone now? and memoria were also just...so good. a lot of the mini-episodes were excellent as well, especially all the character ones. variations on a theme might be my favorite of the shorts.

normally i’m impatient and skip anything i perceive as extraneous to the central narrative, and come back to it later--im so glad i didn’t, the live episode was hilarious. ashamed that i even tried to skip change of mind because i was so impatient to see what was happening, but i felt too bad so not even five minutes into the next ep, i went back and listened to it, and that was the right move...it was so good.

every single character was fantastic. every single one. they were all complex--even the less central characters had at least a moment or two where they struck a different note, showed another side of themselves. kepler was the stand out on this front for me. i didn’t care at all about the si-5 crew when they first came in--i was actually annoyed and expected to hate them all, which is a risk you run when you introduce a bunch of new, influential characters so late in a story. they made it work so well. first i came around to maxwell, then jacobi, and finally (tbh it was his swan song) i was like, okay, kepler was a great character. they made him sympathetic without trying to retcon anything to force me to pity him or think he’d been good all along or anything. cutter and pryce were less human, so their redeeming qualities came more from being interesting. i think the voice acting plays a lot into this--cutter just on paper wouldn’t be half as fun

really impressed with how this same thing played out with lovelace--she went from this sort of mythic, predeceased character, to an antagonist, and finally to being such a central character to the crew that you could hardly imagine them without her. poor writing could have easily made her kind of character unlikable. i think characters like her often get short-changed and written as one-note action hero types who crash in and upend the narrative just to give the plot steam and provide friction. instead, she’s as fully fleshed out as the main characters, and seamlessly becomes one of them.

rip plant monster...i loved you :,(

so, the antagonists were multifaceted, and so were the protags. this could have also easily been sloppy. with eiffel especially, lazy writing would have made the reveal of his backstory super cheap, out of left field, and made you feel like you never knew him at all and leave you unable to reconnect. instead of going the route where the writer for some reason thinks they have to make their plucky protag gritty, the reveal of eiffel’s backstory doesn’t change him at all--and why should it? it’s his backstory--it already happened. instead, it only forces him and minkowski to have conversations they probably needed to have anyway, and fleshes out the reason he’s even there in the first place. on this note, it’s not ultimately his backstory that eiffel has to confront within the story as a major flaw--the backstory was a mistake in the past he’s been dealing with for years by the time we meet him. i love what they chose to do instead so much more: what he had to deal with was his current, present day behavior--how he effortlessly disrespects and belittles the people closest to him without even trying. the key there is, without trying--he has to make a decision to start. (”that’s the thing about you, eiffel--you try. you try really, really hard, and then--you stop trying” that was such a good interaction...god.) i could go on and on about how this was such a satisfying tack to take but i’m trying to cut it down. glib bastards like eiffel are so often a sort of male wish-fulfillment character where they get to say whatever the fuck they want without consequence, be lazy, be careless, and still come out on top, and still seem lovable, because hey, he’s funny. eiffel doesn’t get off that easily, and he’s a much better character for it, and so are all the others, for actually demanding better for themselves, because they know they deserve it, and because they all actually care about each other, so when they confront him, he doesn’t just shrug it off--he tries. (it takes him a minute. but he tries.)

hera broke my heart a million times i love her so much. she had so many complex inner conflicts that weren’t just boiled down to some dumbass bs like “boo hoo am i human.” her personhood is a given for the sorts of conflicts she has, as far as feeling inadequate, feeling unappreciated, like an imposter or a less-valued member of the crew. her and minkowski arguing was excellent and allowed them both a chance to be childish because hey, eiffel shouldn’t have the monopoly on that.

death was a serious thing. human life was highly valued, and its loss was never made light of. not even for antagonists (kepler, hilbert) or, in the most extreme case, pryce, who eiffel chose to make a sacrifice to defeat rather than just kill her, the one principle aside from doing as little work as possible he stood his ground on the entire story. team what’s wrong with handcuffs indeed...i just really loved that the main lead was a pacifist and that this line of thinking held sway in the narrative. it was really refreshing (i don’t think it should be--there’s just a lot of bad writing out there especially when things edge into the action genre) to see this stance on nonviolent conflict resolution wherever possible, because yeah, most people have a really hard time ending another person’s life...no shit. minkowski makes that call and deals with the fallout for the rest of the show--she’s not done dealing with it by the end, it’s going to be something she takes with her. sometimes eiffel’s passivity was depicted as a weakness, but he ultimately did diffuse a lot of situations and gave other characters the space to consider their options. i do think that sometimes the narrative’s insistence on eiffel’s dual pacifism/incompetence shifted the burden of action onto minkowski and lovelace and i’m not sure how i feel about that. i think where i’d have to look is comparing how pryce and cutter are dealt with--yeah, im willing to buy that minkowski wasn’t willing to trade all of her memories so that she wouldn’t have to kill cutter. but was she the one who had to have a body count as a conscious narrative choice, or were we just determined to maintain eiffel’s status as the sort of goofy, “innocent” one? or was that something minkowski was determined to preserve--because that’d be really sad and complicated and say way more about her than it would about him.

dear listeners. i loved everything about the dear listeners. it was everything i ever wanted from aliens trope-wise.

didn’t really get the total significance of surrogates or decima virus. those were the only two things that felt sort of hasty because the stakes suddenly went from “the lives on this space station” to “life on earth as we know it.” but apocalypse averted so whatever, the aliens just want music

i am conflicted about the fucking. amnesia. memory was SO important throughout, and questions of identity and personhood, and this is the only reason that amnesia ending didn’t enrage me. if i think about it more i’m sure there will be a lot to unpack with what’s being implied here

this has gotten REALLY long so im going to stop now and finish mindlessly entering data into excel. in short: i loved it

#wolf 359

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kolhearted-archived · 5 years

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FOUR YEAR ANNIVERSARY STUFF

This wouldn’t be me if it had some sort of fancy banner, so you’re just gonna get my wall of text, lol.

So when I decided to create a blog for Kol, I didn’t have any idea — ANY IDEA — what I was getting myself into. I was happily RPing in the Disney rpc with my Toy Story muse, and had amazing friends over there, lots of muse, and was really happy with where I was, RP-wise.

But I’d just gotten back into The Originals, and had seen Kol’s comeback, and his story began to click for me. I needed that extra backstory — of seeing him, narratively, from the storyteller role and not just as an antagonist — to be able to really understand the potential of his character. We had a character who was introduced as a dark force, unpredictable, who was willing to get his hands dirty to achieve his goals. Originals fleshed out what he looks like from the other side of the story: his motivations, his relationship with his family, and what he is ultimately searching for.

So I decided to make a Kol blog, but I was expecting it to be, like, not a big thing, you know? I was going to make him my “weekend blog” and I was going to have fun on him, but he wasn’t going to be my main muse. But as soon as I started digging into him, and realized how much room I had to grow and develop with a character who had SO MUCH untold story?? I fell really hard, and really fast. Soon, Kol was the only blog I was logging into. And faster than I realized it could happen, there were people who were responding to my version of him! I was being validated and galvanized to just keep going.

I found this weird middle ground where I wasn’t apologizing for the horrific things Kol had done, but I wasn’t focusing on them, either. I was worried about making this blog because I don’t write viciousness that well. I don’t want a character who is in CONSTANT fight mode. I didn’t want every single interaction to be Kol hunting someone, Kol hurting someone.

The last four years has been a series of ups and downs, character-wise. There have been things I’ve tried that have worked really well, and stayed with my portrayal of Kol! And there have been things that really needed to be brought back to the drawing board. Everything has been important and it’s definitely made me a stronger writer.

I want to say THANK YOU to everyone who’s stuck it out, through huge changes on my blog, through me backing away from Kol for times when my inspiration was low, through personal ups and downs which played with my strength as a writer. The opportunities I have are because I have people willing to try things out with me. I appreciate you all so much.

lots of thank you notes under the cut

@seesgood: I want to make this long but I’m going to try to make everyone’s short and sweet. Thank you for taking a chance on a really new blog and being down to figure out what a Caroline/Kol interaction should look like. Thank you for being my Grove sister and I wouldn’t be half the Kol I am without you.

@herstolenson: Thank you so much for finding a way to work Matty into Kol’s life so flawlessly, and thank you for giving our muses the time they needed to figure out what they wanted from this dynamic. Thank you for always being there when I’m having a rough day and just need to whine, and thank you for making Matty <3

@outlawiism: Thank you for always following me no matter where my muse takes me. Thank you for being there almost from the very beginning of my indie career, and thank you so much for the genuine support I’ve always felt whenever I talk to you! Thank you for being the Glitter Queen™ and giving so many people reasons to smile. I am always so humbled to be your friend.

@hauntedgilbert: Thank you for giving me the opportunity to explore the Kol/Jeremy dynamic the way I had so desperately wanted to! Thank you for talking me through Jeremy’s side of things so we could figure out what was happening in any situation. Thank you for always being down to make something crazy, just because it’d be fun. Thank you for all of the AUs and angst that you brought along the way!

@fiercerebekah: Thank you for being there from like the VERY beginning! Thank you for showing me what an “established” blog looks like, and the real fun that can come from sitting with a muse for an extended amount of time. Thank you for the shenanigans you’re always willing to offer up, and for always letting me know what Rebekah’s thoughts are about what Kol does.

@ladamedemartel: Thank you for bringing different aspects to a character who did not originally have that many layers. Thank you for introducing us all to Aurora and allowing us to interact with her! Thank you for always being so fun to talk to, to debate with, and to bounce ideas back and forth.

@hardcoreproved: Thank you for creating the bizarre and delightful ship that is Kol/Bubbles. Thanks for figuring out what that would look like with me, and the why and the how! Thank you for always being one of the single most patient partners, and always know that even when I’m elsewhere and just bobbin along, I see what you’re making with Bubbles and I’m just like “that’s my girl!!!”

@portectorisms: Thank you for bringing some consistency to my blog!! We’ve been following each other forever, and the times we interact are always so much FUN and honestly, I want to make it more of a thing. Whether we have one thread or one hundred, though: thank you so much for your constant encouragement and support.

@grawpiish: Thank you for being so encouraging, and for reminding me how long it’s been that we’ve been in each other’s orbit! Thank you for writing an amazing character, creating depth where there wasn’t any in his canon. Thank you for giving me chances to practice my graphics skills, and thank you for reaching out again so we could reconnect!

@hiddensteel: Thank you SO MUCH for the moments I see you popping in to interact with my posts, to offer advice or support or encouragement. Thank you for writing with my smaller muses, even though I neglect them for so, so long. Thank you for writing an amazing Sansa and giving her the love she so deserves.

@asundrop: Thank you for being one of the first people to really challenge how soft a character could be with Kol. Thank you for dealing with him with a more tender touch, for seeing the scars that are around him and what his potential really is. Thank you for being a rock and a pillar in my RP life, because you, Polli, are a constant for me.

@anditsxsorrows: Thank you for crreating such a wonderful portrayal of Nik, and sharing it with us. Thank you for the sheer amount of time we’ve been in each other’s orbits, and the ups and downs, character wise, we’ve seen each other’s blogs through. Thank you for sticking with Nik so long and providing such a wonderful pathos to his character. You are an inspiration!

@predictableisnotbad: No matter how much time has passed since we’ve last spoken, you’re always so ready to jump back in and have fun. Thank you for your dedication to Alice, and the depth you’ve brought out in her. Thank you even more for being a constant source of support for me, even and especially when I feel like I don’t deserve it. You are a special and kind light and I am so grateful that you are around.

@oliverqxeen: Thank you for your friendship, because it means way more to me than I can ever really say. Thank you for being a source of constancy and support when my anxiety gets bad, or when I back off because my nerves and my thoughts are telling me things that aren’t real. Thank you for always being funny, and for really giving so many people the permission to push against canon if it doesn’t make sense. Thank you for being such an amazing writer and a friend that I don’t deserve.

@yovrstruely: Thank you for always being there, in one form or another! Thank you for always showing how much fun it can be to RP, and for always being true to your muses. Thank you for dancing back into my life, and for offering advice whenever I ask for it. You make the dash feel a little less like I’m yelling into a void sometimes!

@prlman: Thank you for not taking the fact that I know virtually and literally nothing about your muse as a reason why we shouldn’t interact. Thank you so much for sitting down with me and figuring out a way for our muses to meet, for their universes to collide and crossover, and for making Elio one of the very first baby vamps in Kol’s new sire line. I’ve gotten to know Elio a bit better over time — though I still haven’t read or watched his source material, oops — but you’ve provided so many opportunities for us over the years and I so desperately appreciate it.

@relishingvampirism: Thank you for always supporting my blog. You like and comment on so many of my posts, and really make it feel like someone’s watching and gives a care. Honestly, I constantly feel like I don’t deserve it. You make me feel so seen and I appreciate it so damn much. I see it.

@crimscnmalice: Thank you for every moment I’ve run to you to ask for help and you’ve been there. Thank you even more for the times when I didn’t need something and we were able to just talk about life, about our geography, about our characters and what it’s like to find yourself and your creative well in a muse. Thank you for everything you do for the RPC, and a little more selfishly, everything you’ve done for me. You are an amazing person and I am so grateful when you turn your attention to me.

@zcldrizes: Thank you for your constant support, no matter what blog I’m on! Thank you for your enthusiastic encouragement with my portrayal, because getting that “stamp of approval” from a blog I admired so much felt like the sun was shining on me. Thank you for all you’ve done for the GOT RPC and the RPC in general. Every muse I’ve seen you pick up is done with such depth and care. Thank you for letting me be a small part of the world you’ve built for your muses.

@tocxmply / @killthebxy: Thank you so. damn. much. And I can’t even begin to count the reasons why. Thank you for showing me just how far a crossover could handle going while still being IC with the brotp that is Kol and Jon. Thank you for humoring me on Becky ( but I want to talk more about Kol rn ) and everything you do. But beyond all of that, thank you so much for always being someone so willing and ready to be a source of positivity in the RPC. Your cloak of protection is something I will always remember. Your messages to people are always thoughtful and personal and I feel so humbled being in a place with someone as light and good as you.

@atomiism: Thank you for giving me the opportunity to explore Kol as a sire. Thank you for your amazing Ray, and giving me even the littlest chance of writing with him, because as soon as we started plotting, I couldn’t contain my excitement. Thank you for the moments together that we’ve gotten, and please know that I cherish each and every reply we get done.

@fire-hoes: Tagging you over here, but honestly this counts for any blog. Thank you for your enthusiastic support and encouragement you’ve offered me over the years. You made me feel like I was a part of something real and really special and I always felt so honored and grateful whenever we talked. Thank you for your support that spans muses for both of us, and always being up to trying something new. You are one of my true constants around here, and I am so, so, so, so grateful for you.

@itsgclden: Thank you for all of the time you’ve put into Rapunzel, because every time I see your posts, I just get so excited and sit down and read. Thank you for being willing to find ways for Kol and Rapunzel to interact. Thank you for the light you spread on the dash. Thank you for caring so much about someone who is so special to me, because I always feel like they’re in good hands. Thank you for being a real-life Rapunzel and spreading light and happiness.

@livevl: Thank you for encouraging me no matter what blogs we’re currently on. Thank you for always being one of the first people to remind me that there’s someone in my corner always, and that you like what I’m dong here. Thank you for being that special kind of person who reaches out and says a kind word, because there aren’t a lot of people who think to do that, and it really matters. You make it feel less isolating on here. You are so damn good, so damn special, and so damn talented. I always feel a great pressure of gratitude when I think that I have the support of someone as amazing as you.

#i. ( ooc ) — blogaversary 2020

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littlemisssquiggles · 5 years

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Pinehead Headcanons: Oscar’s Longest Memory II: Living Like Oz

@miki-13 Hey Miki-chan. Funny story. I was actually writing up this new Pinehead headcanon in response to your last question about Ozpin being Oscar’s Pilot when I saw your new messages last night. So I decided to combine my answers to your questions in this one post since ironically, the ideas for these actually lined up perfectly with this headcanon I have so I hope you enjoy it.

miki-13 asked “What do you think of Ozpin= The Pilot from The Little Prince?”

Let’s start with my views on Oz being the Pilot in Oscar’s Little Prince story. From what I read up on the Pilot Character from the Little Prince, he was also the narrator of the story. He was essentially the character through which the reader learnt of the Prince’s journeys after leaving his home planet. It was through the Pilot that we learnt of the Prince’s story and the wisdom he imparted on the Pilot during their time together in the dessert.

I also remember you telling me that the Pilot was another character that the Prince shared a close relationship with other than his Rose and the Fox.

From what I read up on the Pilot, it seems like the lessons about responsibility that the Prince learnt from the Fox and embracing the things you loved as a child was what the Prince imparted onto the Pilot and was what he mostly remembered about him from their time together.

When I look at it from that perspective, I can see where Oz can play the Pilot in Oscar’s Little Prince story. It makes me think back to my Oscar’s Journey to Oz headcanon where Oscar deep dives into his mind to bring Ozpin back. Somehow I can imagine the reconciliation between the two souls paying homage to the Little Prince’s encounter with the Pilot with the two just meeting in a part of Oscar’s mind that takes the form of a place from either Oscar’s memories or perhaps Oz? And the two just sit there within this memory talking to one another about their lives, their experiences and more importantly of all, where they both go from where they currently stood, y’know what I mean?

It’s moments like this that makes me wish we had gotten just a few more seasons with Oscar and Oz growing closer before we got the inevitable separation in V6. It probably would’ve been twice as more impactful if Oscar and Oz shared a deeper connection than what we know them to have canonically.

From the moment Oscar met Oz, their relationship suffered a rocky start with Oscar’s whole apprehension of leaving home to go to Mistral on behalf of Oz and everything he told him regarding his sudden change in fate.

Even up to the moment where Oscar first meets Qrow, Oscar still harboured a snarky attitude towards Oz’s presence. Sure things started softening up between them during what little we saw of their interactions during V5, but in hindsight, it’s very evident that Oz and Oscar still have way to go before they can live in harmony with one another like the Wizards before them.

I will admit this though. I was pretty nice to hear Oscar acknowledge Oz as a part of him in V7CH7. It makes me wish we had gotten more moments like that with him just sitting around thinking about Ozpin and the potential of them reconnecting. I guess this is one of my gripes for this season in regards to Oscar’s side of things. Here we are yet again with the PLOT not taking the opportunity to further flesh out Oscar’s character and his relationship with Ozpin by presenting Oscar attempting to reconcile with Oz within his mind and bring him back while working together with Ironwood.

We don’t even really know how Oscar even feels about Ozpin coming back since the show focuses so little on him and how he’s been taking in everything and even when it does focus on Oscar, a lot of it seems to only hint at Oz without really addressing him.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy to see more examples of Oscar being his own person by having him express how he feels about certain topics rather than it be him trying to mimic Oz in some way. I like that a lot. However, at the same time, I feel like the show is having Oscar almost ignore Ozpin in a way. Despite implying that he’s a part of him, we don’t get to really see how much Ozpin’s absence has affected Oscar in the sense of how this has affected Oscar’s overall relationship with the old soul. We’ve gotten one or two glimpses of it here or there but nothing really grounding as yet, at least in my opinion.

Often at times, I can’t help but feel as if the PLOT avoids the characters talking about Ozpin and just writes around him, if that makes sense. Like it’s evident that his presence and the result of his actions are spearheading the events currently happening in the narrative at the moment. However at the same time, I feel like the characters are addressing Oz without really addressing Oz; y’know what I mean? Like they mention him in passing but they don’t really go in depth with how feel about learning of his past.

The closest thing we’ve received to that thus far is with Ruby confessing to Maria back in V6 that she’s still unsure of how she felt about Oz after the truth was revealed. This was later repeated again when Ruby voiced her concerns to Qrow that she might be mirroring Oz in her actions toward their trust in Ironwood---highlighting that what Oscar’s words to her at the start of CH3 did weigh on her ---only for Qrow to brush it off with an air of indifference. Qrow is another character with whom the PLOT has portrayed adamantly avoiding addressing his true feelings in relation to his affiliation with Oz.

I actually think Qrow’s stubbornness to talk about Oz is what’s irking me the most given their longstanding history together. At the least the show has highlighted how much Ironwood would like for Oz to return as well as Oscar’s willingness to accept Oz coming back should he chose to come back of his own accord.

But Qrow---Qrow I would say is a tough case since, even if V7 ends with Oz making a comeback with all of our young heroes wishing to give Oz a second chance and bury the hatchet, I’m not so sure about Qrow. I think Qrow might take a long time to get over his resentment towards Oz right now.

Seriously Qrow, Oz wasn’t just the man your sister once claimed you blindly followed for several years of your life. He was also your friend. Quit acting like he doesn’t exist to you anymore, for Pete’s sake.

It’s moments like these that made me wish we could’ve gotten at least one or two episodes of V7 where the main drivers of the chapter were Ironwood, Oscar and Qrow. With all the stuff going on with Watts and Tyrian, the politics surrounding Atlas and Mantle, Jacques and his wicked schemes in pursuit of power, the construction of Amity Arena and so forth---there’s just not enough time to focus on these three guys.

And that’s a feels bad moment right there since I honestly feel like this volume should’ve had Ironwood, Oscar and Qrow be the three focal characters of this season. I mean, in some ways they kind of are…but…not really? I mean it’s subtle if you squint your eyes but more definitely needs to be done for these three since they are the people closest to Oz right now.

Ruby’s part in all of this is important too since I believe she’ll be needed to convince the others as our titular spark of hope but, I dunno, I guess bottom line what I’m trying to say is that I could’ve used just a smidge more focus on the General, Oscar and Qrow talking about their true feelings in relation to their respective ties to Ozpin. But who knows? Maybe there’s still hope for me to get my wish a little bit. We do still have 5 more episodes left before this season ends so we’ll see.

In meantime, let’s go back to the Ozpin Pilot connection. So I’ve already shared my views on Oz being Oscar’s Pilot, however I’d like to present to you another consideration m’dear Miki-chan. Have you ever considered the thought of perhaps…Oscar could be the Pilot to Ozpin’s story?

Similar to how the Pilot’s encounter with the Prince changed his perspective on the world, you can say the same was done for Oscar since meeting Oz sparked his journey to becoming a huntsman. However that’s not the angle I’m really going for. As I mentioned earlier, it was the Pilot who relayed both the Prince’s story and his time with the Prince to the reader.

So imagine if we got a similar scenario in RWBY where we finally learned of Ozpin’s story ---the man who he used to be before he joined Ozma’s lineage and became the man we know as Professor Ozpin---through Oscar?

For the sake of my theory, I’m going to refer to original Oz by my fanon idea for his true name---Zoroaster Ozpin or simply ‘Zo’ for short.

What if…somehow, someway, Oscar is the one to reveal Zo’s past to us as the audience, highlighting his journey and struggles from the day he became a Wizard of Light to the moment he became the man we know as Professor Ozpin all concluding with the moment we never got to see---the moment Oz died and was eventually paired with Oscar.

One curious question that I have been pondering about for some time now was why was Oscar the one specifically chosen to be Oz’s successor? Everything I’ve gathered on Oscar right now seems to point to him being different than past Wizards.

Let’s start with the first clear indicator---Oscar’s age. Even after learning of the Lost Fable, Oscar is still clearly the youngest Wizard in Ozma’s lineage. For the most part, each of Ozma’s descendants has been adult men (possibly in their mid to late twenties or so) who all appeared no older than Ozma was when he died in his first life. I’d like to think that even Ambroise---the withering old man we saw depicted in Ozma’s line following Diggs’ death---was probably a young adult when Diggs soul was paired with him and what the Fable mainly portrayed was how the previous wizard lived with their successor up even in old age.

In my RWBY Musing #57 discussing the Ozma Cycle, my theory was that the age that all Wizards were chosen was 28 years old. I also mentioned the possibility that the Wizards were each reincarnated a consecutive amount of years apart. My hunch is that the Wizards were all reborn half a century apart so each time they return, it’s in a completely different time period in Remnant’s history from their predecessor. I strongly believe that Oscar is the first instance where a Wizard was resurrected ‘prematurely’ within the same era as the last one and my rationale behind this thought was due to the villains’ reaction to Oz being back so soon.

Not to mention how Oz stated back in V5 that he left specific instructions with his trusted lieutenants in the event of his death. If the way the Ozma Cycle worked was that the Wizards were reborn immediately then why the need to leave detailed instructions with trusted advisors? I don’t think Oz was supposed to be back. At least, probably not for another couple of decades buying his advisors enough time to live out the tasks Oz had entrusted him with before he returned down the line---probably when all of them were dead.

Although Oz didn’t seem to react at all to being reborn so soon despite his enemies reacting that way, it doesn’t denounce the fact that Oscar is somewhat of an anomaly within the cycle. Not only is he the youngest Wizard shown to record but the shortest rebirth with Oz being paired with him shortly after his death during the Fall of Beacon. Oscar is meant to be different than all the other Wizards. There is an air of intrigue surrounding him and his fate with the Merge and why I bring this up is because I have a hunch that Oscar might be curious as to why he was chosen to be a part of Ozma’s cycle.

It wouldn’t surprise me if Oscar may have questions surrounding his fate, particularly with what will happen to him one day with the Merge. Or rather, I wonder if there is a part of Oscar that wonders how Oz previously handled his inevitable fate before.

How did Oz---or rather Zo- take to learning that one day he was just going to disappear and become someone else that he might not recognize or might not even know that he’s changed into?

I bring this up because the show has subtly dropped some hints to Oz’s past as Zo and his experience with the Merge. It was teased through Ironwood with his apparent affiliation to Ozpin both during his lifetime as headmaster and formerly as Zo.

I can’t help but shake this feeling that the PLOT could potentially be leading us into learning more about the true nature of the Merge with Ozpin’s backstory.

I think there is a golden chance for both the audience and Oscar to learn more about Ozpin and I think a way this can potentially be done is if Oscar lived through Ozpin’s memories, both in his life as Zo and his life as the man we knew he became.

This is the section of this post where I’m going to go into my answer to your recent message from yesterday.

miki-13 asked:

“ So I just had an absolutely awful idea. You mentioned the possibility of Oscar and Ruby arguing and Ruby saying she doesn't trust Oz, and by extension Oscar, and how that's the final straw that pushes Oscar away from her. You also had the headcanon of Ruby having nightmares where Oscar uses the relic to reveal everything they did and what they learned in Volume 6. And Oscar brought the relic with them to the Schnee Manor in episode 8.

What if the argument happens at the manor and Ruby's emotions over everything finally boil over and she says something she regrets immediately? This could be the final straw that makes Oscar decide to tell Ironwood the truth and Ruby, in a fit of fear, grabs him to stop him. While they two struggle against each other, the lights go out and they hear screams. Tyrian has shown up and starts attacking people like at the rally.

In the dark as they try to get their footing and try to get the lights back on, Ruby hears Tyrian whisper in her ear, "An eye for an eye~" and raises his tail to attack her... only for Oscar to push her out of the way and take the blow for her. The lights come back on, Tyrian is gone and Ruby can only stare horrified at the bloody wound Oscar has suffered as he falls unconscious.”

What you call absolutely awful, I call brilliant since I had a similar thought, m’friend. In a nutshell, yes to everything that you wrote.

I like your idea of Oscar confronting Ruby and her accidentally saying something that she’ll regret later. I like it since I shared the same concept in my Oscar’s Longest Memory headcanon. It was even on my Bingo Card for CH8 but we both know how that went...Hurumph!

Basically, my version of this concept was that Ruby and Oscar would get into a fight over revealing the truth to Ironwood and during that fight, Ruby lets it slip that she doesn’t trust Ozpin.

Heck, I even have this imagined scenario where Ruby lets her emotions get the best of her like you said and she goes as far as to say that she HATES Ozpin.

Like it’s a moment where Ruby outright says she hates Ozpin because she blames him for everything---blames him for hiding the truth about Salem from everyone; making them fight a war he knew fully well that they couldn’t win.

Blames him for then leaving them behind in the dark on what to do next while saddling Ruby with that burden considering that since Ozpin left, she’s the one whose been forced to carry the full weight of everything on her shoulders with everyone looking to her for guidance.

It’s a moment of genuine frustration for Ruby that she just unloads on Oscar in the rawest of unapologetic anguish since she’s been doing her best to make up for all of Ozpin’s many, many mistakes so Oscar accusing her of being just like him hurts more than anything since from Ruby’s point of view, how can she be like Oz when she’s the one who’s actively been trying to fix the mess Oz made. It’s all on her now! Or y’know something like that.

I can see this being a really heated argument beween Ruby and Oscar---the most we’ve seen since Yang and Raven. Oscar calls out Ruby for her actions and Ruby in turn takes out her frustration on Oscar ultimately culminating in her saying that she hates Oz---a remark that this time, Oscar takes heavily to heart just as how Oz took Qrow’s remark from V6 and he makes the same perplexed, broken expression of utter shock.

After all, Oz is a part of Oscar and this is how Oscar sees him too. The PLOT even acknowledged that in V7CH7. So if Oscar sees Oz as a part of him then Oscar will take any animosity directed at Oz onto himself.

So if Ruby says she hates Ozpin then naturally Oscar would take that to mean that she hates him too by extension.

Then again, perhaps Ruby yelling that she hates Oz might be too harsh. On a slightly more light-hearted tone, let’s say...Ruby reveals that she doesn’t trust Oz since she blames him for everything. And since trusting in love or love and trust going hand in hand seems to be a theme for this season, let’s say Ruby implying that she doesn’t trust Oz is synonymous with her saying that she hates him in a way. At least, that’s how it’s treated through Oscar’s reaction.

So the thing Ruby ends up regretting later is her yelling in Oscar’s face that she doesn’t trust Oz with him taking it to mean that she doesn’t trust him either. After all, Ruby can’t trust only half of Oscar especially if the idea, by Oscar’s impressions, is that he is supposed to disappear one day while Oz takes his place.

If Ruby doesn’t trust Oz then she basically doesn’t trust Oscar too. And although we get a scene where Ruby might probably attempt to redact her statment, let’s say…Oscar retorts by asking Ruby if she trusted him wholeheartedly meaning all of him, not just the part of him that’s still himself.

It ends up being a question that Ruby is unable to answer since she’s conflicted on her trust in Oscar and her trust in Oz. However in the end, Ruby doesn’t need to answer since her hesitation was all Oscar needed to solidify the truth---if Ruby doesn’t trust Oz then she doesn’t trust him either.

So just like in your idea, the argument between the Rosebuds ends on a sour note. The scenario then worsens with Tyrian showing up after Ruby and Oscar fight and Oscar getting hurt afterwards. I even like your idea of Oscar pushing Ruby out of the way and taking the killing blow for Ruby.

See, it’s like adding salt to the wound. It hurts because it burns and in Ruby’s case, an idea like this could give her another reason to feel guilty afterwards for her actions.

As the lights turn back on, there is Ruby standing over Oscar with her hand hard pressed against bleeding chest where he had been punctured as Oscar struggles to breathe and say something to her.

Let’s say...Tyrian got Oscar straight through the chest---it’s a bad enough wound for it to be seen as life threatening but Oscar still survives through it in the end because let’s say Tyrian missed him Oscar’s heart by an inch. However it doesn’t stop the poison.

Ruby is there, hands shaking and tears falling from her face as she did her best to keep Oscar alive. She even yells for Jaune multiple times to help. Immediately Jaune is at Oscar’s side ready to pump aura into him to save him.

However it took a few minutes for Jaune to actually get Ruby to move away since she was so scared that Oscar could die before her eyes. It wasn’t until, Yang or maybe Weiss gently takes her away from Oscar when Jaune was allowed to do his thing to help Oscar long enough until the medics came. Or something like that.

Continuing off your idea, let’s say this leads to Oscar being hospitalized in a comatose state; warded at the same medical facility we saw Winter take Weiss in CH5.

From here, we can get the story building up the prospect of JNR_RWBY reconciling with Oz by having what happened to Oscar weighing heavily on all of everyone emotionally.

Ruby is especially devastated the most by this incident since the last thing, according our theories, the last thing she told Oscar before he got seriously hurt was that she basically doesn’t trust him.

In Ruby’s mind, Oscar could potentially die and the very last thing Ruby told him is the equivalent of saying I hate you after he risked his own life to save hers. Right after he tried to stop her from making a big mistake.

Let’s say...Ruby blames herself for what happened to Oscar and who knows? Perhaps this type of scenario could even lead into Penny helping Ruby.

Imagine if...it’s a scenario where Oscar is in the hospital but Ruby hasn’t been to visit him since the night he got attacked. She’s been avoiding seeing Oscar; instead choosing to distract herself with huntsmen duties since the loss of the heating in Mantle and the uproar of its citizens has been causing more and more Grimm activity which means all huntsmen on deck.

Let’s say...the others notice Ruby’s reluctance to see Oscar but it’s Penny who goes to speak to her. Ruby has always been very understanding of Penny and her emotions, offering her a listening ear whenever needed.

It’d be nice to see this reflected in Penny with her helping Ruby deal with her feelings and guilt over what happened to Oscar. Y’know have Penny help Ruby understand her emotions for a change, if you get what I mean while sticking another pin in the growth of the Nuts and Dolts friendship.

If something were to happen to Oscar again, I can see it sparking another chain reaction that affects the other members of the hero team leading into everyone potentially rethinking their actions and how they might've been treating each other (or other people they’re affiliated with) in the recent times (or even in the past) since they got to Atlas.

Let’s say…since Oscar’s coma causes Weiss to recall what her mother told her in regards to Whitley’s well-being leading to her rethinking her entire relationship with her baby brother; might even lead into some more Schnee Family discussions between Weiss and Winter, this time about Whitley.

Maybe it also sparks Ren finally coming clean to Nora about how he’s been feeling since his whole spiel this volume is his inability to express how he feels; apparently.

And from there, perhaps it can lead into Nora finally talking about herself and explaining why she’s been so hot and bothered over the affairs of the People of Mantle.

For Yang and Blake, perhaps we might receive another example of them talking about what transpired back in Argus surrounding Adam which could potentially lead into them discussing their relationship as a whole.

Not necessarily in a romantic sense but just in general since, as the PLOT keeps hammering in our faces for this season, these two have been through a lot together and haven’t really had a breather to talk to each other about it, y’know what I mean

I can see a subplot like this leading into some really solid character building for everyone. Particularly Oscar.

Why? Because other than the rest of the group, I can easily see this idea presenting an opportunity to peer into Oscar’s mind and learning more about him through his memories. It can even lead into us learning more about Oz and his life as Zo?

This brings me to the meat of my post.

What if…while in a comatose state, Oscar ends up living through Ozpin’s memories, experiencing them either as if he was an invisible spectator watching them play out in front of him or perhaps it’s a case where Oscar opens his eyes to find himself standing in Ozpin’s body.

In the memory, Oscar is Ozpin playing through his life as if he was Ozpin, making all the decisions that Oz once made in the past while going through all the emotions as Oz once experienced themas if they were his own.

Consciously Oscar is fully aware that he is still himself but since it’s Ozpin’s memories that he’s living through, he neither can help but feel the way Oz felt in those scenarios nor can he actively do stop the outcomes of certain choices Oz was forced to make in those moments even if he wanted to.

It is in this sense where Oscar can become Ozpin’s Pilot---steering us through Ozpin’s backstory as he learns it himself by living it.

Oscar even lives through the same Oz memory that Ironwood told him about in CH7---where he was the one who suggested that Atlas use the Relic of Creation to lift the kingdom into the sky. It was the day Oz first brough the Relic of Creation to Atlas.

Imagine if…through Ozpin’s memories, Oscar meets a different James Ironwood--- a past version of the man we know him to become.

Imagine if…this memory was Ozpin’s first time meeting with James and during this encounter, Oz was accompanied by a different Leonardo Lionheart who was there to assist Oz in recruiting Ironwood in a sense.

Oz did say back in V6 that our heroes didn’t know the man Lionheart used to be before Salem got to him and since we never got to see more of Leonardo, maybe Oz’s memories of him from the time he was still his trusted friend can be the PLOT’s chance to help shed a different perspective on Leo.

Not necessarily trying to redeem him of the cowardly man turned traitorous villain we knew he becomes but more so to highlight how Leo was from how Oz saw him and how Oz felt about him at the time.

We can even meet a younger Qrow Branwen, touching on the memory of when Oz first met Qrow---showing how Qrow used to be as a teenager training to become a huntsmen at Beacon while explaining why Qrow chose to believe in Oz for so long. It’s a chance to show the spark of Qrow and Oz’s relationshop, justifying why Qrow cherished it for so long while simultaneously rationalizing his resentment towards Oz now.

Who knows? Perhaps… we can even learn more details on Summer Rose and her disappearance through Ozpin’s memories of her?

In V7CH4, it was heavily implied by Qrow during his conversation with Ruby that Oz might’ve been keeping something on Summer as well.

“…Her last mission, was that another Oz secret?”

“ There were a lot of those back in our day, but this one was a Summer secret. When she didn’t come back, Ozpin seemed just as in the dark as myself and your father. Still, who knows what he may have hidden from us over the years…”

If there are more secrets to be learnt then the next key to uncovering them would be in Ozpin’s memories. Memory is the key.

Last time we learnt Ozma’s memories and his biggest kept secret via Jinn and the Relic of Knowledge.

Although we didn’t learn everything since we never got to see Ozpin’s side of the story and as Qrow told Ruby in V7CH4, there is more to be uncovered about Oz.

So yeah. Basically what I’m saying here in a nutshell is in the event of Oscar becoming another unfortunate victim of Tyrian at Schnee Manor, I can see it leading into us learning more about Oz by having Oscar live through all of Ozpin’s memories unveiling any more secrets he might’ve hidden over the years, including any info on what became of Summer Rose.

More than that, it’s a chance for Oscar to learn about Oz by literally being in his shoes and living through his life. Who knows? Perhaps we might even learn more about the night Oz died during the Fall of Beacon revealing how and why Oz ended up with Oscar of all people in the first place and why so soon.

And from this experience, not only will Oscar walk away understanding Oz more than he ever did before but maybe the audience will as well.

Maybe this experience could even lead into Oscar finding Oz deep within his mind.

Maybe by the time Oscar meets Oz again, he is so overwhelmed by all that he experienced through learning of his full life and all of his personal hardships that the most the young farm boy could so is just embrace Oz in solidarity. Because now he understood.

Now Oscar understood Oz.

Thus…this leads into the two souls finally being able to mend their relationship properly thus sparking a more collaborative path toward Oscar and Oz finally living together in harmony since now, Oscar knows Oz’s life because he’s lived it. Oz’s life and journey is now a part of Oscar.

And who knows…perhaps from this experience Oscar receives the answers that he’s been looking for in regards to the Merge. From living through Oz’s experience with Merge, he learns that he is going to be okay or at least he gains an understanding of Oz that he no longer feels apprehension of becoming a part of him in the end. Or something along those lines.

This type of story is a chance to really have Oscar and Oz come together in true camaraderie and be a real chance to flesh them both out.

I know most Pineheads are hyped for Oscar’s potential semblance reveal.

However for me, y’know my anticipation has mostly been directed towards learning more about Oscar as a person and/or seeing him and Ozpin reconcile while inside of Oscar’s mind.

I don’t know if we’ll ever get something like this in the canon at all. If I’m being completely honest, I kind of doubt it. However, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think this was a possibility given some of the breadcrumbs dropped as set up from the last few episodes.

But in the event that Tyrian doesn’t attack Schnee Manor and Oscar walks away fine and dandy, I do have a Plan B alternative to this theory where we can have Oscar unlock more on Oz through the Relic of Knowledge.

However, I’ll save that for it’s own separate post for the New Year since this post is already long as it is.

Overall, I hope you liked this post Miki-chan. If you’re able to shoot me a comment on what you think of this post, let me know. If not, that’s alright.

I hope you liked it either way and I hope it answers your questions at least. I know I wrote a lot XD

That being said, with this officially being my last Pinehead headcanon for 2019, gonna wish you and all my fellow Pineheads a Happy New Year and see you guys in 2020 for more Oscar- worthy theories from the squiggle meister!

More Squiggles’ RWBY Content

~LittleMissSquiggles (2019)

#miki-13 #squiggles answers: rwby #oscar pine #ruby rose #professor ozpin #rwby theories #rwby volume 7 theories #rwby volume 7 spoilers #pinehead headcanons #squiggles pinehead headcanons

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thehoodsweetheart · 5 years

Text

Twin Flames.

A/N: This is something that popped up in my mind. I was feeling a little uninspired lately but knew I wanted to get some type of content out. Tell me what you guys think. Should this be something I continue? I hope it’s not total crap.

Summary: Sometimes you can’t shake a person, no matter how much you try to let go. However, you hand can be forced. This is the case with Isis and Erik. (I don’t want to give up too many details).

Word Count: 2.1k

Warnings: ??? There are none. I write for Black audiences, Black women in particular. My main characters are Black and that’s that on that. Isis is and will remain a Black woman.

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Isis sat perched up in the middle of her oxblood colored crushed velvet couch legs folded beneath her as she diligently clicked away on her MacBook Pro. Isis was dressed in a black mesh panel Ivy Park crop top with the matching leggings. Her wash and go was on day 2, which was honestly her favorite due to how much volume the fizziness gave her hair. Isis’s fluffy coils created a large halo like fro around her head almost like a crown. It hadn’t even been an hour since she landed in Los Angeles from her 21-hour flight from Johannesburg and she was getting straight to work. The soft murmur of Martin re-runs played on the wall of her condo from a projector and providing most of the light in the room. The projector was Isis’s idea after debating with her best friend, who also happened to be her roommate, over an obnoxiously sized flat screen TV.

She glanced up from her work on your laptop to give a soft laugh at Martin & Gina sneaking into Tommy’s apartment attempting to find out if he was apart of the CIA. It reminded Isis of how nosy her own best friend could be when she felt like Isis was hiding something from her. It was no offense to their friendship. Isis was an only child and somewhat of an introvert. She grew up with the struggle of overly sharing or not sharing herself at all with ‘close friends’. She learned fast it was best to be picky with who and what she shared of herself. Isis was private in nature and her current job only added to it. Isis was awarded the once in a lifetime opportunity of being part of the visual director team and personal photographer to Beyoncé. Yes, the one and only Queen Bey.

It was 11:11 PM, which Isis considered peak working hours. She knew that she’d be awake editing pictures until well after 3 AM. Isis wanted sort through all her captured footage from her last trip and edit the best images. Seemed like a simple task but any artist will tell you it’s the most challenging part. What if a photo she absolutely hates is one that her client loved? Or Vice versa? The longer Isis looked at the image the more flaws she could find, but wasn’t that the beauty in art, photography in particular?

Isis played around with the gradient and shadows of the picture trying to highlight its depth using Adobe Lightroom. She was so fixated on editing that she didn’t even hear the front door open, but the sounds of giggling and the door slamming sure caught her attention. Her best friend Brea was home and she were not alone. Brea was accompanied by a large male figure that towered over her petite frame. Isis gave them a quick glance before returning her attention back to the work before her. Despite not getting a clear view of Brea’s male ‘friend’, Isis felt an odd sensation of familiarity. Isis knew Brea hadn’t even noticed she was there yet because she was too focused on her male companion who was actively kissing and groping her.

“Aye, who is that?” His gruff voice questioned. Brea shot him a confused look before turning on her heels to face the couch. She let a loud gasp followed by a squeal.

“OH MY GODDD ISIS!!! YOU’RE HOMEEE!” She ran over to Isis giving her a bear hug, completely disregarding the laptop on her lap. Isis let out a small chuckle, fumbling with her MacBook Pro so it wouldn’t crash onto the floor, yet still trying to reciprocate Brea’s embrace.

“I know…finally right?” Isis’s light voice followed. She spent two weeks in South Africa, and she had only been home for four days prior to that after a trip to New York. During those four days, Brea was away on a business trip for the NPO she worked for, so it was safe to say they hadn’t had a chance to see each other in a solid four weeks.

“Soooo, how long do I have the pleasure of having my bestie back?” She nudged my elbow.

“We never know. Until duty calls again I guess.” Isis shrugged.

“Well you have to tell me about South Africa! Any fine niggas?” Brea attempted to whisper the last question. Isis couldn’t help but let out a hearty laugh, which Brea soon joined in on. Leave it to Brea to be so bold in front of her male company.

Erik cleared his throat catching Isis and Brea’s attention silencing their laughter completely. Isis’s eyes locked with Erik’s. She finally zoned in on his face. This was Erik that Isis has heard Brea talk so much about in the past months, but nothing of substance. Brea just pretty much boasted on his good looks and sex drive but no concrete details of the ‘mystery man’. Not even a screenshot of a picture of the man had been offered from Brea. The three seconds that they held eye contact felt like nearly an eternity. Her heart began to pound in her chest so much so she could hear it in her ears. It was as if they could see through each other’s exterior and see straight to the core. Brea’s guest was indeed handsome…strikingly handsome yet familiar.

Erik’s face was one Isis would never forget. His face was etched in marble in her mind. Her mind worked like a camera, her favorite vice. Capturing faces in a moment, associating them with particular narratives. Every face held a different story; all worth discovering yet Isis wasn’t much of a storyteller. She was the observer obsessed with the details of stories in a calculating way. This one in particular was mysterious and how it intersected with Isis’s was less than complicated but not in the least bit simple.

*********

They met what seemed like a lifetime ago during one Isis’s summer visits to the Bay, on Isis’s father’s birthday. It was the summer before high school. She met Bria that same summer during Summer Bridge, a requirement for the private high school they attended. He was her favorite boy cousin’s best friend. Despite her introverted ways, Isis and Erik linked as if they knew each other their whole lives. It began as a platonic friendship. It soon became obvious that they had crushes on one another but they didn’t say anything about it in respect to her cousin. Then her cousin died and Erik moved away the same year causing them to lose contact. But before he moved he told her, “Don’t trip, I’ll find you one day. I feel like I’ll always find you. No matter what lifetime it is.”That was the summer before her senior year of high school. And find her is exactly what he did, multiple sporadic times.

It was actually puzzling to say they never kept consistent contact with one another. Like the summer after her first year of college when she landed an internship in New York at the Staley-Wise Gallery, and Erik casually sauntered through the crowd of the gallery on a busy afternoon. He was notably different. More mature in his looks and moved more guarded than the teenager Isis once new, nonetheless his magnetic pull drew her in almost immediately. It was that force that never allowed her to shy away when she was near him, even if she tried. Isis was uneasy with idea of being attached to Erik, because life had a way of showing her that her best bet was on herself. Despite this, he made her feel safe. He was there when the gallery closed. They chilled with each other like there was no time lost between the two. Any time she was free during his two week stay, Erik made sure he spent it with her sparking that old crush letting it fully ignite. When he asked her, “You saved yourself for me?” It wasn’t much of a question. He knew she did.

Years passed and after graduating from undergrad, Isis moved back to Los Angeles. Isis like every woman has experienced a fair share of cat calling and unwanted extra male attention. When she experienced it one particular night, the ‘I have a boyfriend’ and ‘your man don’t let you have friends’ debate was brought to an abrupt end with a ‘Nah’ from a male voice behind her. Isis wanted to roll her eyes because she knew she didn’t have a man but she didn’t necessarily want to entertain the new unknown voice because he played superhero. She was in luck to find it was Erik. Isis was stricken with awe. She was sure their last encounter would be the final one. Isis came to terms with that.

Erik and Isis practically bound. What else could explain their unexpected reconnections? Their most encounters recent were in Johannesburg. It seemed like a lifetime had passed since she’d seen or heard from him. She knew of him being in the navy and his plans for Wakanda. Part of her thought he was dead. When attending a museum on a much needed off day, pictures of South Africa’s neighboring country Wakanda acted as a friendly reminder of her old friend.

“What do you know about Wakanda? Almighty Isis.” The familiar predatory voice purred in her ear. Isis whipped around to see a vastly different appearance yet Erik in the flesh.

********

Isis raised an eyebrow as a sly smirk crept onto her face. The same smirk that Erik held, mirror-like with arrogance. She turned her attention to her best friend. Isis waited for what would be a proper introduction. After all, Brea was oblivious to Erik and Isis’s acquaintance. She had no clue that Isis and Erik’s once-in-a-blue moon meetings sparked a flame consuming the flesh and spread like wild fire only to be put out not long after it starts. Neither Erik nor Isis was accustomed to the immense connection they possessed, like a shared soul internalizing each other’s pain without explanation, knowing things about each other that never needed to be verbalized. Something about it always savoring the essence of its natural flow and it was still so foreign. Yet, Brea did not know that her Erik was Isis’s N’Jadaka.

“Sorry, I’m being rude! Ice, this is Erikkkk” Brea sang his name. Isis chewed her inner cheek to keep from cringing. She wasn’t sure if it was the way Brea said his name or the thought of Erik fucking her best friend.

“Wassup” Erik said with a nod. Isis coach herself mentally not to roll her eyes. Should she tell Brea? Would it even matter? Could she even be mad at Erik? They never had anything exclusive, ever.

“Hello.” Isis kept her response curt.

“Yo…You look hella familiar like I know you from somewhere.” Erik tilted his head dreads falling more into his face as his tongue ran over his gold fangs. If he wanted to be petty, Isis could match all energy.

“Doubt it…Probably Instagram.” Isis said with a shrug gaining an uneasy look from Brea. Brea was accustomed to Isis being more polite in general, after all she deemed Isis as the ‘nice’ friend.

If this situation couldn’t get anymore awkward, Isis phone began to ring illuminating with the name Aaron and a picture of her and a handsome chocolate man making goofy faces with the Snap Chat dog filter. Isis sucked in a deep breath breaking her gaze from her phone immediately locking eyes with Erik. She couldn’t believe the situation that was unfolding before her. Her secret on and off ‘fling’ was in her home with every intention on fucking her best friend, despite having a two-week long mind-blowing sexscapade with Isis in South Africa just days prior. Her best friend had no clue and her current situationship was hitting her up for the late night action.

“Don’t ignore my brother-in-law. You know the drill.” Brea laughed. It was too late. Isis missed the call. Isis could only let out a nervous chuckle while avoiding looking at Erik altogether.

“Whatever Bree. I’ll get out of you guys’ way.” Isis said fanning them off while quickly texting Aaron she was on her way.

She sat her laptop down to get ready to leave. Isis quickly gathered her tote, which was packed with her essentials since she had landed that night. It was no need for Aaron to leave the door unlocked she had a key. He was far more invested than she was but she did care for him.

“This picture is dope. These scars look so familiar.” Brea squinted as she studied Isis’s MacBook Pro.

“Ehhh, you know ritual practices…just something I saw in South Africa.” Isis said looking directly at Erik with a smirk. She took her laptop from Brea as she headed towards the door. “You two have fun!” Isis shot them a wink.

#erik killmonger x reader #erik killmonger x oc #erik killmonger imagine #erik killmonger x black!reader #erik killmonger #black panther rec #black panther imagine #black panther #erik killmonger rec #erik killmonger one shot

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izumisays · 5 years

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dear yuletide author

Thank you so much for reading this and taking part in this wonderful annual conspiracy!

First of all, I hope you have a lovely time! If any of the fandoms below pique your interest, I’m delighted already, and ready to hear all the stories you want to tell.

Fandoms: Nirvana in Fire, Spinning Silver, In Other Lands, Thunderbolt Fantasy, Grasshopper Jungle

As for reading preferences, I’m happy with a wide variety of tones and genres, of any rating, ranging anywhere from lighthearted antics to dramatic casefics. But the core of all the stories I love has always been character interaction and interplay of their competences.

How the characters play off each other and bring out their best/worst, how they’d react to a divergence of events, how true they’d stay to themselves in a different setting -- I love fanfiction for allowing us to reconnect with our favourite stories time and again by asking these questions. And there are so many ways to do it! To name a few favourites, I’m always game for POV hijinks, a missing scene, a casefic, canon expansion, backstories and what-ifs.

You may notice that quite a few of my requests lean towards shipfic – those, too, are welcome in a variety of tones – but I also tried to include openings for gen ideas if that’s your jam. Additionally, while it is not usually my top interest, I don’t have anything against AUs if there is something that you are itching to explore: I tend to enjoy them for a new aesthetic that fleshes out the favoured character dynamics in a new light, or a fusion that redefines the playing ground to allow the characters to exhibit their core competences in new and exciting ways.

I would be very grateful if you could avoid a/b/o and similar kinktropes, played-straight soulmate fic, and character interpretation that runs contrary to their core values. If in doubt, please reach out to me on anon - the askbox is open!

NIRVANA IN FIRE: Mei Changsu, Xiao Jingyan

Is this a complex, narratively inevitable historic tapestry strangling people with its treads, full of delicious politicking and identity porn? Yes, it is.

Is my burning – nay, primal – desire so simple as to smoosh two faces together and watch them kiss? Yes, it is :’)

I mean, I will obviously not say no if the kissing is giftwrapped in the said tapestry of beautiful, politicky plot, but the fever I can’t get out of my system is this: LET THEM KISS, GODDAMMIT. LET THEM BE HAPPY. I welcome canon divergences, alternative endings, fix-its, insert eps and codas where it looks like they would have kissed (erm, or at least confronted each other in a way that would inevitably end with them making out) if only Mei Changsu wasn’t so caught up in self-loathing and fluffy foxfur coats, and Jingyan didn’t talk too loudly about his so dead, so very dead beautiful ex to hear Mei Changsu weep stoically into his beautiful white furs.

I adore Prince Jing. He is 90% cheekbones and 20% heartbroken pouting over his so very dead friends, and all of it noble and awkward and stubborn and deserving of happiness. Mei Changsu is ridiculous, and capable, and twisted into pretzels of his own creation: not above gloating over his enemies while daintily dipping cookies into his tea, he gets too caught up in weaving the tapestry to notice he is a part of it. Pull him off his high horse, Jing! Render him helpless by being yourself! Do something about being hopelessly charmed with each other, through resentment, loss, bitter pining, and narrative inevitability! JUSTKISSALREADY.gif!!

SPINNING SILVER: Mirnatius

Spinning Silver is a beautiful story, a polyphony of voices that echo the key themes with poignance in individual tales coming together into a bigger picture: admirable female characters, complicated families, bargains and stakes and wordless bonds, all spun and woven together with so much care and craft! While I really liked the whole journey, it’s two characters in particular at whom I’d like to get a closer look.

Irina and Mirnatius: both shipfic and/or gen. Irina the ruler, with an iron will and unwavering hand: I would absolutely like to explore the court life under her rule, after the events of the book. In between running a country and cleaning up a demonic mess, does she find a thought to spare about Mirnatius? Does she harbour any resentment or sense of obligation, or indulgently tolerates him as part of the ornamental royal regalia? Is there a role she envisages him playing? Does she box him into that role, or allow herself to be surprised?

MIRNATIUS, hands-down my favourite POV in the book. How does he get on after demon loses his hold on him? What kind of person he is on his own? I’d like to think he doesn’t lose all his edges, and perhaps gets high-headed and displaced now that his mind is vacated off its demonic freeloader, and there is a quest for find his own place in the new reality, before he can be that dramatic artistic bisexual with no interest in statecraft that Irina gleamed in him.

How do the power dynamics between them change, and how much of that stays the same? Is there any genuine love to be found between them, eventually? (The answer doesn’t have to be yes – for all that they are the same species, I tend to think their circumstances are more complicated than Miryem and the Staryk’s, and less forgiving.)

IN OTHER LANDS: Luke Sunborn

Elliot is a spectacular narrator. Novel-shaped case in point: In Other Lands.

Having said that, what I really, really want to see is a story that makes Luke a narrator, or otherwise puts him at the center. I have it on good authority that he makes one fucking adorable narrator (novella-shaped case in point: Wings in the Morning), but why stop there, right?

Luke/Elliot, either post-canon or slightly amending canon, is always a delight. Luke crushing on Elliot for years in a resigned, semi-unaware (or aware!) manner - he gives Elliot Dale’s name only as a distraction, to get Elliot off his back, and watches with horrified eyes how every member of his family is suddenly out there to set him up with the wrong boy! Luke handling the thought of Elliot the boyfriend with awkwardness unbefitting a Trigon champion (granted, Elliot is kinda more prickly than an average glass ball). Luke having 110% confidence in Elliot and admiring him sass people into submission from the sidelines.

A look at Luke’s friendship with Serene - completely compatible with Luke forever crushing on Elliot, just saying ^^. I suspect lack of Elliot’s Serene goggles could do marvels to building nuance to her character: a little less emphasis on gender-reversed dudebro comedy, a little more of someone who is clever enough to balance multiple things, connect the dots, and learn, and stand by what she believes is right.

Competence kinkkk. Forever admiring the bookish people, refusing to stop trying to catch up, and zero time spent being conceited about own achievements while fully embracing his role of a champion and defender - that’s the Luke I love <3 Luke’s brand of leadership & charisma - an introverted champion, well-loved by people and easily tired of company of not his people.

Figuring out life after graduation! Casefic of them solving a mystery and preventing a war breakout! Getting assignments and storming the castles! Building cross-cultural competence by throwing Elliot at new people and watching him sign up new pen friends and treaties!

Sunborn family fic! A holiday get together? Drunken exchange of family stories? Another terrible competition that Elliot boycotts? Rachel reading Luke’s letters from year one and with great amusement observing the progression of his “THAT ELLIOT” feelings. (I would so die to read an epistolary fic that documents Luke’s Elliot problems) God I love the Sunborns, especially Rachel <3

I’m not particularly fond of Dale, on understanding that he got enough screentime already, so I’d be grateful if you didn’t center the fic around him. Obviously no objections to him as part of class ensemble, whose names Luke continuously fails to remember.

If you are writing a Luke/Elliot shipfic (which is a prospect I would whole-heartedly welcome!), just a note to say that I don’t get particular kicks out of wingfic poetics. I mean, I’m alright with that as part of the “golden and beautiful” package and acknowledgement that Elliot sure gets his kick out of them, but I personally find wings-as-harpy legacy and associated emotional baggage/pragmatism mix Luke feels on the subject more interesting to investigate. All the rest of their ship chemistry is very much welcome, in whatever proportion you enjoy doing it most.

THUNDERBOLT FANTASY: Rin Setsua; Sho Fukan

I LOVE THIS SELF INDULGENT WUXIA NONSENSE AND I CANNOT LIE!

If you had told me a year ago that I would commit a definitely not-insignifiant amounts of emotional investment into a Taiwanese puppet show written by Urobutcher, I’d have laughed in your face. I am so glad my lovely friends know me better than I do, and tied me to a chair long enough to show me the first few episodes, and smugly watched me breeze through two seasons and a movie of this tropey goodness.

Sanfan is a mixture UTTER GLEE and deep fondness for the genre staples, self-aware and masterful playthrough of all the wuxia tropes in the book, and one goddamn well-constructed story. It plays the tropes straight, calls them out with a knowing wink, walks the tightrope between the two with panache, and just as you are relaxed and enjoying this trapeze show, it grins cheekily at you, sets the discoball on fire and pulls a bunny out of a hat. It’s DELIGHTFUL and fun and lovingly crafted, just like a good passion project should be.

I want anything that capitalizes on the absolutely hilarious dynamics between Rin Setsua and Sho Fukan (and while personally I end up using the Japanese versions of their names more often, please feel free to go with the Chinese names if you prefer). Sho Fukan does not want any of those heroic quests, he’s the human equivalent of been there, done that mood, and he just wants to REST and hopefully dump a bunch of magical murderswords someplace safe. Rin Setsua is a Totally Respectable and Non-Villainous Member of Society, of which he will inform you firsthand in the most high spoken and verbose way possible, and maybe even produce paperwork that has definitely not been tampered with. He harbours no ulterior motives, ever, and does not trail behind Sho Fukan for any reason beyond the pleasure of his company, and his mission to personally victimize and cockblock every morally derelict villain in two countries, by no-one’s request.

Whether you go shipfic (yiss!) or canon levels teamup circus (also yiss!), don’t hold back your horses. Everything about this is Extra, and should continue to be so <3

GRASSHOPPER JUNGLE: Robby Brees

Do you ever, like, read an insanely cyclical, epic zombie apocalypse book that is probably narrated from the rubbles of the fallen fourth wall, and walk away softly clutching at your heart, whispering “Oh Robby”?

I sure did.

I mean, I definitely loved all the obsessive, crazy, cyclical shit the book did. It’s a trip and a half! Austin is a hilarious guide to the crazyland of zombie apocalypse and multiple identity crises, and I enjoyed him tremendously. If you want to dabble in recreating that, I’ll happily read it! But my heart longs to answer some important questions like, Will Robby Ever Get Appreciation He Deserves, Do They Get Laid, and most importantly, What The Fuck Happened That Night When They Got Drunk and Shit Got Transcendental. (I feel it in my heart of hearts that their dicks must have, or at least should have, touched.)

Play however you like with it -- coda, AU, fixit, crack (oh god, if there was a canon that was borderline crack itself), futurefic -- I’m gonna look forward to any and all permutations.

A note to say that I don’t harbor any ill feelings towards Shann! My primary urge is to coddle and adore Robby, and I leave it up to you to negotiate the hows and whys :)

FWIW, I have a copy of Exile from Eden on my hands, but haven’t cracked it open yet. It’s entirely up to you if you want to include whatever is in there: I’m going to be pleased with just GJ material as is! If I do read Exile anytime soon, and if it significantly changes my views on the subject, I’ll add a note to that effect.

#dear creator letter #yuletide #yuletide 2019

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abundantchewtoys · 5 years

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HS Epi: Meat p11 reaction

Is the resolution of the Masterpiece really going to fall in between pages about Jane & Jake's fake date?

Maybe not. Maybe we'll see something from John's perspective first, inside the house juju. Giving himself the retcon powers. Coming to terms about some things. But I suspect he won't be able to contact anyone. At least, it would surprise (and entice!) me if someone contacted him while he's hidden away so remotely in there... Speaking of contact, how did John intend to have read anything inside the juju without his glasses or contacts? You can only spend so much time squinting.

I also wonder what they'll do when they're let out. I mean, they haven't become any better at fighting, and LE has. John won't zap his friends, Vriska and Davepetasprite^2 away to confer in a more secure location, right? Assuming he still has his retcon powers by the end of his stay in the house juju.

---

"That’s that, you think. Your glasses are broken forever, and you totally fucked up and underestimated young Lord English. Rose should have known better than to trust this to you alone." Well, I guess having a mental breakdown is one way to pass the time. I'd rather he had some sort of breakthrough instead, though. As for the glasses... Maybe a non-final death will restore them? Or by ascending to his Ultimate Self god tier. Whatever that'd do to his personality...

"Rose, Rose... your smart, amazing friend Rose, you can almost hear her voice now.

> Listen closer, jackass." ... Ah, so Reload Rose and the others can still talk. Their jails neighbour each other after all - they represent the four blocks of the house - but I didn't think it'd be enough for them to confer. Though, I rather think they're limited in what they can do in here, right? Unless... Unless by being in the house juju, they can influence some things inside the plot, still put some things in place so some time loops are fulfilled and stuff is prepared for bringing down LE!

Pretty sure they're barred, narratively, from performing a jail break, though. :P

Ya know, I've talked about the sentiments behind the narrative prompts before, and I just now realized that the kind of intruisive, inflammable language they use are a throwback to Homestuck's narration, since now that we have this POV-type story, the language there in is more shaped towards the person in question.

"You’ve only realized right now that your cell has walls, because it’s awfully bright in here. It’s so white that nothing in the cell is casting a shadow. Looking around, you realize there is no apparent source to all this bright light, making it hard to tell where the floor ends and the walls begin." Oh, I figured it was dark for him, but yeah, the house is white. Maybe the jail cell looks to each as what their idea of being imprisoned in a house-shaped object should be like, and proportions of the space go to match that? Hence why John can't yet tell the floor from the walls, he's got only an inkling of an idea. :P

"JOHN: yeah, i’m here. ROSE: Oh, thank goodness. Everyone’s accounted for then." Hah, John spaced out while the others reconnected. Nice. I'm interested to see what ideas Rose will bring to the table.

So it all comes back to four kids, standing idly in separate rooms, huh. :P

"Are you okay? JOHN: what? ROSE: Are you OKAY?" Okay, either the walls muffle the sound of John is like "this situation does not warrant the use of the word 'okay', rose. 'okay' is definitely not how i would describe us being right now."

"JOHN: i think so. i can barely hear you though.

You can hear a thud from Rose’s corner, like someone slumping against the wall in relief. Well, that’s what you’re doing at least." That's pretty much all she needed to hear right now.

"DAVE: this is kinda dorky to say out loud but i dont DAVE: feel... time" ... They're cut off from all their aspects now, are they? That'd just make them ordinary people. :/ Or maybe it's in reference to time outside of the juju passing way faster, relatively.

"DAVE: thats not just me right you guys feel it too DAVE: or dont JADE: yeah JADE: i mean theres obviously space inside this box but i cant do ANYTHING JADE: its like im blind" ... Okay, so I'm left to wonder. Would the egg sword and Jade's First Guardian powers still be usable? I'm assuming Dave had it out, so even if their sylladexes are inaccessible they might be able to do something.

"The noise outside the juju grows. Something sharp and metallic splinters above and rains down on the top of the chest." That isn't something to do with the pirate party finding the chest in the dreambubbles... So then, what? Did the B2 kids do something with the chest after exiling (excorcising? ... INcorcising?) Caliborn into Lil Cal?

Blaperile has a good point. Do all the soul splices inside Lil Cal experience this in the same way? ... Do all the soul splices in LORD ENGLISH experience this in the same way?? In the sense that the mobster is just a prison they can't escape or influence?

"ROSE: What did my future self say it was we had to do? JOHN: erm... she never rea—" Oh this is going to be so embarrassing.

"The metallic noises rain down harder, drowning out Rose’s attempt at being loud." ... It's that the noises are metallic, otherwise I was almost beginning to think it was more like the white noise. And that would have made me think of the Scratch. That would sure be something though, if the B2 kids initiated a Scratch of Caliborn's session. Actually, what if that was how Alternate Calliope's timeline came to be...

"JOHN: NOW I CAN’T HEAR YOU! JADE: TRY USING LESS WORDS

The length of the silence coming from Rose’s corner communicates just how difficult a task that is for her." Pfffffffff. Incoming character development for Rose: being concise.

"JADE: WHAT????? JOHN: I KNOW IT’S ALL A BIT ABSTRACT, BUT... JADE: NO, I JUST CAN’T HEAR YOU! DAVE: JOHN YOU SUCK AT YELLING JOHN: UGH!" Pfffff, I thought John would be better at yelling coherently, being Karkat's counterpole. ... Blaperile points out the similarity with Karkat sucking at whispering. XD

"Now you understand defeating young Lord English was never supposed to happen. Not the way Adult Rose was implying it would. You surmise the other four teens remaining outside the juju were the ones meant to be tasked with his defeat." It just sucks that John has to come to these admittedly wrong decisions by himself and couldn't have been given more information to work with.

"And judging from the cacophony still emanating from beyond the walls of this house and its confining chest, they are taking the task seriously." Okay, so the B2 kids' fight is still going on. Still unsure what the metal sounds could be about though. Aside from Dirk hacking at the chest with his unbreakable katana.

"But what does this mean for the four of you?" John, don't lose hope, you said it yourself, you'll be unloaded... some time.

"You try to picture what’s going on in the battle outside, but it’s not easy.

> Use your imagination." Of course, the house juju's powers run on imagination! :P No, wait, he's just going to give us his idea of the proceedings of the rest of the Masterpiece. Sadly, he doesn't have any clay at hand. :P

"The coolness of the action in your mind’s eye is belied by the actual sound effects booming all around you, which you can only describe as vaguely stupid." Welp, guess the bar of wedgies is still being cleared only marginally.

"There’s a lot of hysterical screaming, which, if you’re not mistaken, is coming exclusively from the male combatants. ... Well, Dirk IS living and breathing anime. :P

"Almost as if an outrageous bubble of pure Hope were enveloping the stage, is how you would describe it if you didn’t mind sounding ridiculous." Hah, John still doesn't believe in the application of Hope.

"Then you hear... it can’t be. Horses?? No, not simple horses of flesh and bone. These horses are metal, if we’re to believe they’re horses at all." Oh! Right, Arquiusprite summoned those Metalhoofs. Well, that's what I picture they were, Caliborn represented them with metal horse figures... But perhaps he even created robo-centaur butlers and the like. *shivers*

"You figure no one will ever truly know what’s happening out there. You doubt anyone would even be able to handle how incredible the raw, unfiltered account of this teen brawl actually was, so it’s probably for the best." Welp, and we were doing so well just now. :P Eh, it seems the battle unfolded pretty much exactly as foretold, only with some of the more stupid details removed, curtousy of Caliborn's impatience with stupidity. Which in this case might not have been entirely bad. :P

"you overhear Dave from one of the rooms below you, raising his voice to speak to either you or someone else." Right, they are not all on the same level, since it's a house-shaped prison. Uh, but wasn't Dave supposed to be in the part of the house with the extra window? It's been too long, I probably misremember. Oh, wait, yeah, they went through the fourth wall via one of the bottom panes, and it stood for Dave. Never mind.

"Once more you ruefully reflect on these teen versions of your friends, and all the questions they must have for you. For each other. What would you even say to them?" The responsibilities of an adult, John never expected they'd be this hard. He must be growing more appreciative of what his Dad went through with him without even knowing it.

"You’re not even sure you could handle it, if you were Teen John. You’d have too many follow-up questions, which Adult John is in no way prepared to answer." Still, I wouldn't mind a little one-on-one between Johns. A John-on-John, I suppose. In a serious way, nothing from the animes.

"Would you tell them about Terezi..." Oooh, does he suddenly get an idea, thinking of Terezi? Can't say I think they can do anything to contact her from inside here. Hmm, but earlier, Blaperile thought about what the B2 kids could do with the juju chest, whether they might try to get the others out. That's assuming Caliborn didn't captchalogue the thing, though. Still, it would be something if they could defy what's been foretold and unload the house early, maybe load it with a real surprise for LE.

"For some reason her name feels like nails in your heart. Makes sense, you guess, cause there’s a lot of sharp letters in it. She had sharp teeth too, and sharp elbows. Sharp words." Ahhhh, so we get to see what black romance feels like to John. Looking pretty sharp, apparently. Still, her sharp intellect could've come in handy here. It's a good thing chances are good they'll meet again, I'm sure post-victory Terezi has an important role to play yet.

"Terezi Pyrope was a sharp girl, and maybe what these sharp feelings are trying to tell you is you miss her more than you realized." Well, John has already acknowledged his feelings about Roxy, guess it's time for the other side of the two-headed coin now.

"She wouldn’t have let you neglect relationships with certain friends for so long that you missed whole chapters of their lives. She wouldn’t have put up with you moping around with the salamanders for so long. She would have kicked your ass for being such a loser about everything. She would have poked you in the forehead and called you insufferably lame and told you to pick up the damn phone. You would have called her a weirdo and pretended you hated it, and maybe you would even have believed you hated it. But now, sitting here in this little white cubicle, contemplating your regrets, you don’t think you’d have hated it much at all.

Would you tell the teens that?" Oooh. Very good point, actually. Even if John really only knows that version of Terezi from talking to her on two separate days separate by three years, she had a real impact on him. Granted, they also kept contact on WhatsApp as well in Universe C, but during the session was when their interactions bloomed. It'd probably be a stretch for Meat to end with John retconning the post-victory timeline to include Terezi on Earth, with him, right? After they defeat Lord English first, of course. Oh, right, she was there for two years before leaving... somehow. I kind of forgot. Still, five years would've made a difference in where John ended up by the start of the epilogues.

"JOHN: am i... depressed??" ... Well. Well, as far as growing self-awareness goes, this might be a very big development! Yes, it does seem that John has become listless on Earth C. Mostly it seemed to have to do with the absence of his Dad. But maybe he'll have other ideas about that, like his misfortune in matters romantic.

"as it turns out, you are really fucking depressed. You’re just a giant, wet meat sack of self-involved misery, and all that big, wet, meaty ooze drips out your mouth every time you open it. All the time and space in the world isn’t making it better. It’s something you should have been doing for yourself, instead of waiting around for things to get better." Wow, John. I suppose things will get a little harder for him, now that he's realized this about himself, but I hope he'll find a way soon out of this mess. And so, that's what he's been doing on Earth C, just waiting for things to get better. And no-one picked up on it, not even the other people close to him that bordered on depression before? Like Jade? He really alienated himself...

"Well, screw waiting! It’s boring as hell! You are JOHN EGBERT, after all, immortal CREATOR OF WORLDS, the one and only man ever to completely transcend the partitions of CANON ITSELF. You’ve got these powers, remember?" Well THAT's a sudden surge of RESOLVE if I've ever seen one!

"You hold up your hands and form a rectangle with your fingers and reach outside yourself, outside canon, to the place your retcon powers come from. You focus. You strain. You contemplate with all your might a place you can zap to, any place but here." There's no place like home, there's no place like home! :p Kind of wondering if he'll succeed though. He might be cut off from his powers. But if not, canon is his oyster.

"You wait. And wait. And wait and...

Nothing happens.

You slump back down against the wall" Welp! He tried.

"JOHN: THE ONLY WAY OUT OF HERE... JOHN: IS FOR US TO WAIT FOR SOMEONE TO LET US OUT. JOHN: SORRY GUYS. ROSE: OH." Anyone up for a game of "I see I see what you can't see"?

"JOHN: ALSO... JOHN: I THINK I MIGHT HAVE DEPRESSION?" Well, at least they won't have a lack of stuff to be talking, sorry, yelling about. Rose might be partially delighted to pick at the brains of an adult John, in fact.

#homestuck #upd8 #homestuck epilogues #homestuck liveblog #reaction #spoiler alert #john egbert

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cavalier-of-the-ninth · 2 years

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PSA To Moonchild

(Who Has a Keen Interest (Obsession) In Trying To Get Into My Tumblr Feed With Penis/Hot Dog/Het things - and who clearly has zero feelings about me at all. Which seriously is FINE by Me.)

1. If you love him so much but were doing the love narrative/lost love/nostalgia/I love you/I hate you thing with me, and the flirting thing and the sexual suggesting thing and all the usual shit you do behind the backs of your partners - which has never fully stopped for longer than a few months for like 9/10 months since I cut things off - yeah, I'm thinking this latest isn't love either. Sounds like there are multiple folks actually...anyway, hopefully everyone knows about everybody else in like an honest, stick to the facts kind of way. I think they call it transparency.

2. If you're aiming for poly, you missed it. That requires Honesty, Transparency, Trust. (That is earned and maintained), and Respect.

(Re: Respect - you don't actually respect anyone. You will devalue the next and the next after when the cycle starts again. Anyway, I remember how you used to stare down my ex for having the audacity to be upset with you for betraying her and stealing her gf until you got her. I remember what you'd when I'd be at your place discussing it all - because it has always bothered me and because it was absolutely wrong - and you'd say, "oh, we'll, she never really liked me". You called her "shady" if I recall correctly. Remember how I'd remind you that it was actually NORMAL for her to have feelings about these things and that we'd deserved way worse from her at the time? She never so much as knocked on your door to complain. I already knew you had an empathy deficit.. That's why I'd indirectly teach you cognitive empathy by saying things like, "well, how do you you think you'd feel if XY person betrayed you by doing A, B and C?* I had to do that because it doesn't compute reflexively. A lot of that switch is missing. That's why you believe you're justified in emotionally tormenting people who were your friends, lover, confidanr - you used to say you adored me (before you had me on lock) and you were still saying I was.your "Favorite" not long before you disappeared.

Now by this I'm calling us both out and it's not just about the ways we betrayed them in March and in June (in your case, much much longer than that). I'm calling the manifestation of your illness and the manifestation of MINE. I kept believing you, I kept being so concerned about your suffering and neglectedmy own. I betrayed myself, putting up with the vicious tantrums online when you'd decide that you had gotten what you needed from me.

I own all of the things that are mine in this situation. I intend to own them better and for the good.

At the end of the day, I connected to someone this unhealthy because of all the abuse I experienced as a child and young adult. I kept reconnecting bcs of all the love on earth that exists - it's the kind that is inconsistent , unreliable, and touched by chaos and anxiety that feels the most at home to me.

Thank you for showing me that I still had serious work to do. I still do. Things went as far as they did these last few weeks because of where I'm at with all of that. Healthy people don't call this love.

2. I have an incredible amount of cognitive dissonance. How does a person square the person they held, nurtured and protected with the reality of the person they loved? How do I square the laughter over video games with this? How do I square the long talks over wine - how do I square those nights bound up in your flesh, heart stripped bare and soul vulnerable, skin to skin? How do I square thad you never told me anything, didn't even say goodbye? (And lied about everything that was happening.)

More than anything, how do I square that I believed you were my friend - no matter what?

I can even square the beauty of the things that I know to be true - the magical quality of that girl dancing on the ice in the purest joy, like art - with this person? People have different sides ( I should know) but this, I don't have any precedent in my life for this. It's a knot I keep trying to untangle - fully knowing that it's not going to get untangled but trying to do it anyway. Because that girl I glimpsed was real. I know that's not the only time I saw her either.

It's hard to make sense of it. Sometimes it's hard to believe it happened, until I see you next door.

Anyway. I think you know I'll block any blog I know you're using to trigger and hurt me. I will see if I can turn off Tumblr's suggestions feature and see if I can make it impossible to get into my feed by bombarding my favorite tags with new blogs I haven't blocked yet and didn't know about.

I wish you'd stop. It isn't going anywhere.

Also, I think it's best if you don't follow my blog with fake ones meant to either set me off or terrify me. The revenge fantasies in the one from today with all of the cutting, raw bleeding meat, blades, stabbing and other stuff I didn't bother perusing is a bit beyond a run-of-the-mill Villanelle fantasy.

And the crap with you having people film me for revenge (like when I wanted to talk to you that one time) - I mean, I know now why I felt like a few folks were looking at me weird. Has anyone asked you why you've been suddenky hanging out on the bench that's in full view of my door every day, multiple times a day, all of a sudden? Your building block is huge and you always liked other places better. Besides, eeryone who has witnessed this play out since March 2021 knows you like to watch me from windows or places where you can watch but not easily be seen. (Plenty of witnesses to that from when we were neighbors at the last place.)

Anyway, I don't trust thad you won't try to damage my life or even put it in peril by playing the 'little white damsel in distress" card in front of the police and pretending that I've been stalking you. I come from 3 generations of female domestic abuse survivors (myself included). My only flaw there is an unfortunate tendency to want to protect women being abused. You know well that not being able to protect my mother as a child literally informed a lot of who I am; it's also how you started to rope me in back when we were friends and you were with your ex. (I'm absolutely certain she bailed now or you'd be more secretive about it than this.)

It sucks that we couldn't have a quick, classy and normal conversation about everything, and then go our separate ways. It didn't occur to me thad anyone would actually want any of this and do their level best to prolong the conflict. You scare me, Moonchild. My friends have been afraid for me - I don't think I took that stuff seriously enough until now. Now I'd only talk to you in public with witnesses so you couldn't set me up. I know it's unlikely that you are just suddenly going to stop but I'm hoping that you will. I'm done with it.

I don't want to be your toy to play with nor do I want to be your friend anymore. I'm not into you (there's seriously nothing to be nostalgic about at this point) and I certainly don't want to be with you. Please leave me alone. I mean it.

#personal diary #diary #this has been a psa #im done #my life #spilled journal #spilled truth #spilled thoughts

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thebakedbeans · 7 years

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Mass Effect Narrative Review

And here’s the second narrative review I promised. This time I’m going to talk about Mass Effect, the trilogy not Andromeda. I also realize that these are more of rambling thoughts than reviews. So eventually I’ll need to call them something different.

I’d like to not talk about the ending though. There’s tons of articles and videos out there already talking about it and anything I have to say wouldn’t be anything new. Instead I’d like to talk about some stuff the trilogy did right. Let’s just jump right in and start with the first aspect that comes to mind: Shepherd’s party.

You get a lot of different party members in a lot of different games. But Mass Effect is one of the first games where the members really mattered to me. They all come with really well defined personalities as opposed to the standard tropes of what makes up a party (except for Kaiden, that dude is cookie cutter boring). Granted there are SOME tropes but I think the game for the most part does a good job of fleshing out organic characters with actual personalities as opposed to the routine values and responses you could expect.

One way it does this is by allowing you to talk to them as people with different attitudes and beliefs. They have different aspects to them that make them seem more human. For example, Ashley seems like the typical soldier. Comes from a long line of them, values family and unity. But then as the games progress you get to see that she believes in a higher power, support humanity’s self reliance, and that the army discriminates against her family b/c her grandfather was the first general to surrender to alien forces; so she works twice as hard as anyone else to improve. Those last two traits might be connected as she wants humanity to be only beholden to itself as her ancestor’s experience with aliens has been a negative one. Now I’m not saying these are well defined traits, but they’re enough to make her seem like an actual person. Someone with memories, thoughts, feelings. She seems like more than just the typical trope of a tough as nails soldier who follows orders and had a gruff exterior. Ashley might have those traits, but they’re not all that she is. That’s what makes personifies her and fleshes her out.

I’ll cite another example, Mordin Solus. At a quick glance, he seems like the typical run of the mill smart talking scientist. The type of person that then they speak, everyone else gets lost and asks them to repeat what they said. But after talking to Mordin and learning about him Shepherd learns more. Mordin is a great singer, and the type of guy to focus on the ends more than the means; but is also a deeply regretful man. Mordin has taken some real fucked up things in his past. Though he understands his actions were necessary, however still mourns the fact that it happened at all. Eventually he starts a clinic to heal the plagued, but still retains his do what is necessary outlook; dude kills some local gang members and leaves their bodies outside his clinic as a message. Shepard can even ask him about killing to which Mordin will reply something along the lines of healing people and killing people can both be helpful. It all fleshes out his character and changes him from the “scientist” into just another member of the crew with their own unique disposition.

The reason I bring all this up is because losing these companions is one hell of a blow to both the player and Shepherd. When I mention mechanics supporting narrative this is what I mean.

In the 3rd game, Mordin is going to die. It is preventable, but for the most players Mordin dies. Depending on what you said to him earlier, he might even sing a song that he sang for Shepherd in the previous game. That shit destroyed me. But it’s great to know that the pain that was felt by me as a player was echoed by Shepherd the character. After the mission people will all give their condolences and Shepherd will respond accordingly, but it was a poignant moment where I felt like I was fully synced up to what Shepherd was saying and feeling...utter devastation at the lost of my friend.

It happens again with Thane. The ill, dying assassin Shepard meets in the 2nd game. I helped that man reconnect with his son. Then in the third game that same son is with his father in the hospital donating blood so that his father can live. Seeing him there makes Thane feel all the more real as there were actual consequences and outcomes that occur from previous actions. Many games have characters go through arcs, but even if they learn in that arc they don’t really grow after it’s over. Thane does, he becomes loyal to Shepard. Which I choose to understand as him fighting that much harder and with more unity than otherwise because of the respect that Shepard earned from him.

And of course come the 3rd game Thane died on me. In this game his illness has progressed to the point where he needs to be hospitalized. But his last act is a heroic one, and I’d still like to think it was out of loyalty to Shepard (assuming you earned it in the previous game). As he lays on his deathbed his son reads a prayer. Thane was always a religious man so it befits him. Turns out though that the prayer was not intended for Thane, but for Shepard. There’s a line in the prayer that reads “and he/she will be a companion to you as he/she was to me”; and I remember putting Thane is my party all those times, levelling him up, using his skills. He was a companion to me indeed. That was the first time a game made me tear up. I was going to miss my companion. To me it was more than losing just a video game character, it was losing a friend.

You might think that I’m reading too much into the game or giving it too much weight. But I think Mass Effect gave the characters enough personality and vibrance to make their loss have actual meaning behind it. Other mediums do this all the time, and I see no reason why games would be any different. The narrative of the game has just as much an effect on me as any other story. The exception is that I am way more involved in Mass Effect’s story than many others as I have direct involvement in the lives of the characters. So to lose one, means I took an action that led to their death; in a way you could say that I played a large role in all my companion’s deaths. That weight is great though, like a compelling tragedy, the emotional pain makes the narrative that much sweeter.

Now I’d really like to emphasize how much effort Bioware put into the characters in Shepard’s crew. For almost every single person, I can answer the question “What do they do when they’re not on the job?”. Because for a lot of other character for a lot of other games that question remains unanswered. I literally have no idea what Fawkes from Fallout 3 does when he’s not following me. However I do know that James Vega works out and cooks food when he’s not on mission. Tali helps the helps run the ship’s systems on the Engineering deck. Samara does her weird biotic meditation. The fact that I can answer this question means there’s enough internal logic behind the people to make their actions and by extension themselves seem real. Their world does not revolve around Shepard’s, just like how my friends and family’s lives don’t revolve around me. Therefore I would treat them like I would treat any other person. And the more I treat them like real people the better my interactions with them become, then I’ll actually end up liking most companions; Shepard’s team feels like a real team to me because I know these people so well and what they can/can’t do.

The second point I wanted to bring up was the continuous narrative between games. Yes, there’s a lot of gripe about how the endings didn’t take into consideration your past actions. But there is still a fair amount of content that depends on previous events. Even if it equates to a mere war score number, playing the first game all over again really does make me ponder some more choices.

For an example, at the end of the first game Shepard has to make a major decision regarding the fate of the Citadel Council. Whether to spend resources to save them and the ship they’re on, or save those resources and let them die. If you haven’t played the sequels then the choice seems pretty black and white. You pick the option that agrees with your paragon/renegade status. But I went back and played all 3 games again. This time thinking “if I were Shepard, what would be the best decision?”. The answer I arrived at is that the best decision is the one that helps to stop the reaper invasion. So even if I’m paragon, maybe it’s better to let the council die so that the resources that would’ve been used to save them can be used to stop the actual reaper invasion once it happens. Turns out that that’s true in the third game if you played as I did, and I was able to use those resources in the final battle instead of wasting them in the first game.

That’s a real consequence for your action. Some may say that a war score number is a shallow way of conveying that action; but remember way back when I said that I enjoy games where the gameplay mechanics support the narrative? Well now it’s time to discuss that in more detail.

Overall I don’t think war score is a bad mechanic. In the end everything Shepard does is to stop the Reapers. A war score number is a metric to see what his past actions have done towards this goal. A short term and impulsive Shepard will have a very low war score as they should, and a Shepard that has thought through each choice will have a higher score. It ties a tangible mechanic to the narrative path that the player chose. So all the narrative that follows is because of the mechanics that created that outcome; and those mechanics themselves were created because of the previous narrative events that happened before. It’s like a cycle that runs on the player’s choices.

Not the most elegant method for sure, but it does the trick. The gameplay ends up reflecting what the player is doing. Which is really a huge part in what I look for in a strong narrative. Games like Fallout 3 or Fable don’t really change the way they play based off the narrative. In those games some people might like you and others won’t due to your morality. There’s never a point where the player doesn’t get to experience a huge chunk of content or entire groups of significant people might not be there because of what the player did (yes you can argue Metaton won’t be there if you blow it up, but there’s about 2 significant characters in the whole town and one of them still survives). Few games can match that level of narrative exclusivity.

It also makes each player’s experience unique. One player’s army may not be the exact same as another player’s. Sure there might be some strong similarities, but depending on previous actions there can be huge differences too. Saving Wrex means that the Krogan won’t be complete assholes, and killing him/letting him die means that the galaxy is real hesitant and untrusting of the Krogan. That’s a massive dichotomy that rests on a scene that spans less than 5 minutes. Again, serving as a reminder that what you do in each game affects the others down the road. It’s the whole butterfly flapping its wings type of thing. The galaxy’s attitude towards the Krogan depends on that one part in the first game, so fucking that part up can ruin the Krogan as a whole.

This type of storytelling lends a sort of permanence to the overall narrative and game feel. Mass Effect does have an edge though in that it was created with multiple games in mind so it can stretch the end results over a longer period; But I think the result is still strong, even with the ending controversy. The realness of the characters couples with the responsibility behind each move you take means that the trilogy really does have mechanical support for the story and emotional weight rivaling any other story from games, movies, books, etc. Hell I’d go so far as to say it’s pioneering better stories for games. Think about how many games now have decisions carry over from previous titles. Not saying Mass Effect was the first to do this, but it certainly is one of the most famous; and if we have more games that can do this or similar stuff, then I think we’re going in a great direction.

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