#the fact that these parallels exist is just bonkers

[yourelosingains]

insanity

[noneorother]

All the music you didn’t hear: The Good Omens soundtrack is lying to you. *Part 1*

The Bonkers Meta Series part 2: Electric Boogaloo.

I so rarely get a chance to misuse my experience in classical music, but here we are. When I realized on my most recent watch-through of the series that the David Arnold score was brilliant, but also really wonky in some parts and I couldn’t put my finger on why, @embracing-the-ineffable suggested I listen to the album soundtrack to compare.

And when I tell you what I found hidden in there, you’re going to need Eccles cakes...

1) The Song is the Clue

So right up top we have this banger. The 12th track on the album is the orchestral backdrop to the scene in the Job minisode where Aziraphale reveals Crowley’s crow/goats. The duration is 2:22 (the only track with multiples on the album), and if you look at the track by itself it doesn’t mean much. But the song just before it is actually from this fucking scene:

You know, the one where there’s a song that’s a clue to a mystery. Except Clue is capitalised, and Aziraphale pronounces it. I’ve seen guesses that this is a reference to the movie Clue, but I would put a lot of money on the fact that we are supposed to read the title of the song currently playing at that moment in the show *as a Clue*, which is super convenient, because the word Clue is capitalized in the track listing. 

Seems like the overlords of Good Omens have a message for us : The song is the Clue. It’s what God wants. Cool cool cool. WHAT SONG?

2) Symmetry in all things 

Before I straight up tell you, we have to go back and look at season 1.

Now I’m far from the first to notice tons of parallels between the story, details and even lines in both seasons. It got me thinking that maybe there are some fun synch-up parallels between the two season’s soundtracks, seeing as they are both 6 episodes long. Here’s the end of S1 and then S2

Oh that’s a bummer, I thought to myself. 

They don’t even add up to the same number, or playtime, and neither of them is exactly 60 tracks. But do you want to hear a secret? S2 is actually missing 3 tracks on the album. And because there are 2 discs in S2 (cute), the numbers of the tracks start over again from 1. Remember how much God likes sevens? Check out where all the weirdness is happening in disc 2 (I’ve added the missing track listings in red to add context):

After checking each track with the show and listening side by side (for reasons that will become clear in another post) I can definitively say that there is something *very weird* going on at the end of episode 4. 

First is track 7, Zombie dressing room, which seems to actually reach over two distinct scenes of the photo evidence in the dressing room and then Shax in hell even though it only has one title.

But *between* these two scenes we get an eerily silent wine date with Aziraphale & Crowley.

There’s really no music or even sound here besides the dialogue and room tone (until after the cheers), and it seems like a very intentionally silent version of a ritz date from season 1.

My best guess is that we are supposed to divide that track into two tracks of 7, before and after the date to get a second track 7. Or maybe the silent one is missing music? The third track number 7 is the weirdest one. It’s this scene here, when Nina parks her bike, and Aziraphale parks the car at the end of S2E4.

If you take a close listen to the music, it’s a jaunty little piece, with an oom-pah base in 3 ⁄ 4 time. The thing is, this music does not exist in any Good Omens album. Please feel free to correct me, but I’ve tried to find any part of any song that this could even be a reprise of, and I Shazammed it to be sure it wasn’t anything else. This song does not exist anywhere except in this scene. (It quickly morphs into a reprise of the original theme once Nina leaves Aziraphale). It’s an invisible song.

So we have 3 tracks at the end of S2E4: a long one, a silent one and an invisible one. Only one of which is numbered 7, but that all fit into that place in the track listing.

Which, when we add the two extras to the original total of fifty-nine we get... sixty-one! Hey wait a minute.

How are we going to get to 62?

3) The real missing track. 

So the real reason we had to go back to the S1 album was because it contains the missing track that God is talking about. Let’s compare the last tracks on each album.

I’ve highlighted the mismatch between the in-show music and the album in S2, which means I had to add A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square back into the S2 album because guess what, it’s not in the S2 album. Even though it plays in the show. 

You want to know how not in the album it is? Amazon had to track it in the show as a season 1 song. They had to give Tori Amos credit for her song on Good Omens in the X-ray bonus features because that’s how not in the album this song is.

So my fellow beings, if the song is the Clue, then It’s what God Wants.

And if God wants a happily ever after with Aziraphale and Crowley on their own side, then by Job, I think Neil is going to give it to her.

-----------

And there's more where that came from! Part 2 coming shortly.

[comradekatara]

with another atla revival on its way (I hate Netflix) I’m starting to see “shipping wars” again and I’m hating/fighting for my life with all these z*tara shippers. I guess, for me, people who ship them together fundamentally don’t understand or even like Katara and yet they will hail themselves as the only people who get her (in what universe…) and claim that Zuko would have treated her infinitely better than Aang (I can’t with people). I’ve had a look on your page and FAQ and I think we share the same thoughts on the ship with the whole coloniser x colonised aspect (this is not to say I don’t like Zuko, but still). I guess what I’m asking is do you think these people get her as a character? ALSO finding out that the comic book writer shipped them and broke up Mai and Zuko made me feel some type of way.

i like how you said “on its way” only 22 hours ago (as of 2/29) despite the fact that natla fully came out a week ago. that said, i still haven’t seen it, so in my mind it also doesn’t exist (at least until i do actually watch it tomorrow). also, for what it’s worth, i do think that breaking up zuko and mai is the right call, it’s just that the execution was fucking awful, because gene yang cannot write for shit and doesn’t understand these characters. but it’s also really funny that he apparently ships zvtara (like, that tracks) but also their only prominent one-on-one interaction in the comics is when he physically restrains her…. lol. lmfao even.

as for the way zvtara shippers talk about katara and aang it truly is bonkers insane the lengths they’ll go and the reaches they’ll make to justify why their personal preference is, in fact, morally correct. i mean, intellectually correct is one thing, because i believe in making a persuasive argument and citing your sources, but morally correct??? they’ll act like aang is some awful toxic misogynist (yes, i know) and that zuko is in fact a paragon of support and respect for women. when we’ve all seen firsthand how he behaves as mai’s boyfriend (sidenote: the fact that they’ll claim that MAI is the one who is “abusive” to ZUKO is crazy. people hate women so fucking much it’s unreal).

in terms of how they discuss katara, it’s not so much the fact that the ship is literally colonizer/colonized (although it is), but the way that shippers deliberately play into these colonial biases and dynamics when portraying them. i actually think had zvtara shippers not been egregiously racist about it for so long, i wouldn’t really mind the ship itself. like, they are very obvious narrative foils who parallel each other in many ways and their arcs are inextricably bound up in each other and incredibly meaningful to both of them. i can understand why people read katara touching his scar in the catacombs or zuko jumping in front of lightning to save her as romantic. not my personal cup of tea, but like. it’s not NOT there. i don’t even object to people calling them soulmates tbh, because like. yeah. they are???

however. the complete lack of understanding as to what colonialism is or how it functions (ive literally seen ppl say that zuko isn’t a colonizer bc he never personally occupies territory, as if he didn’t BURN DOWN SUKI’S VILLAGE, and that the swt was colonized by the fn because they don’t explicitly occupy land like they do in the ek) really pervades the (romantic) interpretation of this dynamic as i’ve observed it over the years. a lot of katara in fire nation reds, as “fire lady,” abandoning her culture for zuko’s sake (despite this apparently being egregiously problematic when katara does this for aang’s sake). one time i came across a literal pocahontas au?!?!?? like. it’s SO dire.

and beyond the very obvious racism, the way they paint shipping zvtara as feminist and progressive is insane because, as you say, they do hate katara. i don’t know how to explain to these people that sanding down all her flaws and turning her into this angelic maternal endless well of compassion and emotional labor means you don’t actually like her character as it is presented in canon. acting as if katara lacks flaws (she is, in fact, deeply flawed) or so much more mature than the rest of her friends and must suffer that burden every day (hint: she’s not and she doesn’t) until the noble zuko comes along and is so gracious towards her and her alone (he’s literally the most immature of the lot, screams and whines at her, and at everyone) is just. a really impressive amount of editorializing. and they turn aang and sokka into these whiny, idiotic babies to justify that decision, as if aang and sokka are not highly intelligent, wise, capable, and responsible in their own right.

katara and zuko are in fact flawed in similar ways. they’re both impulsive, self-righteous, stubborn, myopic, callous, and filled with an unquenchable, blinding rage. it’s clear that when they are aligned in that rage, their dysfunction feeds into each other and they block the rest of the world out to satisfy their impulses. katara is able to pull back at the last moment in “the southern raiders” in a beautiful culmination of her internal character arc, but the entire build-up to this moment sort of showcases the ways in which they might not be great for each other as a couple. but people will do some incredible mental gymnastics to explain why they are nonetheless always right about everything, and why aang and sokka are always wrong and don’t understand katara at all. also, fwiw, reducing “the southern raiders” to who is right vs who is wrong when it’s actually about how various characters approach and process their grief in a deliberately subjective way is just. god. exhausting. i’m exhausted.

the thing about atla is that it is a well-written show, especially as far as its main characters are concerned. katara is so dear and special to me specifically because she is allowed to be so flawed and three dimensional and realistically human. and ignoring zuko’s myriad flaws means ignoring the depth that apparently makes him the most interesting character to 90% of atla fans. there really isn’t a need to editorialize and reduce canon to fit a neat little narrative, when the narrative that already exists is just. already really solid. and the thing is, i don’t even think you should have to change canon all that much to justify this ship, because it’s one of the central dynamics of the entire show. and yet, people still do. they really do. so i think that’s telling, don’t you?

[coquelicoq]

Hi! Do you mind mentioning how many 19th century french writers have you read? (And maybe what did you enjoy best about reading each of them?) Sorry if the question is too nosey! 🐰💛

hmm well so far the big ones are alexandre dumas père, victor hugo, and jules verne!

i like dumas's plots, all the intrigue, the balls-to-the-wall shit he gets away with because he makes it so fun. also eugénie danglars is one of the characters of all time, so congrats to him for creating her. and he can be really, really funny. i know i've brought this specific example up so many times you must all be sick of it by now, but i found this bitingly ironic and yet incredibly affectionate passage about albert de morcerf's inability to impress women so endearing and hilarious that i memorized it and now just say it to myself as i'm walking down the street. that shit has stood the test of time, sir. good on ya.

i love victor hugo's earnestness about social issues and i often find his sentences very beautiful. the fact that he also wrote poetry really comes across in the cadence of his prose; he's very good at establishing/reinforcing the tone of a passage just by varying sentence length and clause placement. even the 760-word louis-philippe sentence in les mis is indicative of this: in the context of the rest of the book, such a long sentence with such an extreme degree of repetitive parallel structure (which bores you) against the backdrop of the cognitive load created by holding the subject of the sentence until the very end (thereby heightening syntactic tension and forcing you to pay attention) is a fascinating and canny device. the content of the sentence (which, again, there's a lot of content in this sentence. 760 words of it) almost communicates less than the structure of the sentence does! and in tandem they imply so much that he cannot say outright (and the fact that he has to imply them rather than say them outright tells us even more things). absurdly long and painfully boring, it's a very successful example (imo) of what george saunders calls a "non-normative event", an "excess" that hugo deftly "converts [...] to [a] virtue".

my favorite thing about jules verne's writing is it is just so much easier to read for me as a non-native speaker lol. but also, i love his imagination! he says stuff all the time where i'm like, "that doesn't sound right but i don't know enough about plate tectonics (or whatever) to dispute it" but it doesn't even matter because whatever it is he will take it to its farthest possible conclusion and he will have fun doing it. i also love this character archetype he has of the supercompetent assistant who is just totally unfazed by whatever semi-mad science shit his employer is getting up to. his love for scientific inquiry and the natural world (except sperm whales, he HATES those guys) comes across on every page and it's beautiful to see.

i think what they all have in common is just complete and total commitment to the bit. none of them agree on what the bit is - for dumas it's bonkers plot, for hugo it's social commentary, for verne it's listing every single type of marine life that exists in any body of saltwater anywhere on the planet - but they sure are committed to it. you gotta respect that.

[asterroses]

no i totally get it. like on the one hand i do expect every origin character pairing to have some fans due to the fact that they all have like. unique romances with each other and all that. but man. the relative popularity of gale and astarion with each other would baffle me if i were unable to see fandom patterns. like. in a cast full of rich characters with interesting dynamics and banter and honestly backstories and arcs that parallel each other a ton, those two are some of the least connected to me. which again, it makes sense for the pairing to exist but i think i've seen more of those two together than any other origin pairing besides lae'zel and shadowheart who have a strong dynamic even when you're not playing as either of them and whose arcs have very strong parallels. and the wyll of it all! he and astarion have way more good banter together. it really just feels like pairing up the white guys for no real reason other than they're attractive white guys.

YEAH SAME HERE ! ! ! like i can see them being relatively friendly to one another but in the aspects of romantics i just cant see them connecting like that . half the time i go into a bg tag i will see more of those two than lae'zel/shadowheart or shadowheart/karlach . which is so unfortunate because their arcs [especially shadowheart and lae'zel] are so Complex and interesting and intriguing especially when youre playing as one of them but a majority of ppl r seeing two white guys and go bonkers over the idea of them kissing . genuinely speaking i think wyll/asta makes a ton more sense in my head . like sure they are opposites but theres the dialogue of them both being attracted to one another , and yet its not as popular as the two white guys who arent really connected to one another [a big aspect of that is the fandom racism] . their banters together are really good , and also them being really opposite people but meshing so well together is something so intriguing . if that makes sense ? i dunno i just feel like gale/asta is something that makes sense for it to be popular within fandom patterns but also something that should be thought about more , like why they are being paired together . like its cool to like it but i mean . theres a lot more to pairings ! i hope that makes sense . i just keep seeing blood/weave every where and i just cannot get into it because its not connecting in my head

[kitkatpancakestack]

How to write the most iconic slowburn romance of all time:

Have your couple-to-be complete an enemies to best friends speedrun in the course of half an episode

Have a panicked realization that things are moving too fast and prolong the best friends to lovers arc for 3+ seasons

Painstakingly parallel each of them to the other's respective love interest

ONLY give them romantic storylines that are directly complementary to each other

And while we're at it, only give one a love interest if the other has one, too

Frame them as an exclusive family unit by co-parenting a kid together

Give them complementary traumas

Subtly hint that outsiders fully believe they have been married for years

Actually, don't even subtly hint this, just scream it from the rooftops

Craft an entire season where they are mostly separated to really drive home the fact that they are hopeless without each other

I mean heavily imply they simply cannot exist correctly without the other person

Finally bring them together again only to make them face their own mortality and their feelings

Just go completely off the rails fucking bonkers and make one of them de facto legal guardian to the other's kid

Give up subtlety entirely and outright state that there is no plausible future where these two aren't together

And there you have it! The most iconic slowburn ever! Can't believe this hasn't been done before—

[the-starlight-papers]

Please feel free to go into a full on Legend of Zelda rant because I don't know much about it but also it has always seemed extremely cool to me and would love to hear you info dump about it (from the tags on this post)

Alright >cracks knuckles<

Legend of Zelda is slightly bonkers, probably because it started out without a ton of planned lore and has been running for 35 years. Because of this, a lot of generalizations have the “all except this game” note with them.

Let’s start off with Link, the main guy, who usually wears green and has a weird hat. Fun fact: they’re not all the same person. For I while I thought that Link was just some really traumatized person, but nope, turns out there’s just a lot of really traumatized people named Link.

Ok, so there’s different Links. So do they know each other?

Nope!

They’re all thousands of years apart in the timeline, so the previous Links are nothing but legend by the time the next Link shows up.

And speaking of the timeline.

Do you see this spaghetti. This is not a timeline. This is a time fork.

Everything starts out with Skyward Sword, where Link gets a magic talking sword that eventually becomes the Master Sword that he uses to fight the god of evil to save his girlfriend Zelda who is also a god.

After Skyward Sword, a couple hundred years pass and then we get Minsh Cap, where a different Link uses a magic talking hat that lets him shrink to power up a different sword called the Four Sword, which then gets used in Four Swords to defeat the bad guy when he gets resurrected again.

So it all seems pretty normal so far right?

But then we get Ocarina of Time. In Ocarina of Time, Link is vibing, being a normal child being raised in the woods by the fae, when he starts getting visions of Ganondorf taking over. So he goes and finds the Master Sword, and when he tries to pull it, it goes “wtf you’re 9” and seals him in the sacred realm for 7 years. He wakes up as an adult, and Hyrule is in ruins because Ganondorf managed to get all 3 pieces of the Triforce (basically the Infinity Stones of the Zelda series). Link rescues all of the sages, Ganondorf gets sealed in the sacred realm, and Zelda sends Link back in time to be a child again.

Link then presumably defeats Ganondorf again as a child before he has time to rise to power, and then goes and ends up in a parallel world called Termina, where he uses a 3 day time loop and masks containing the spirits of dead people to stop everyone from getting crushed by the moon.

Then he presumably is done, hypothetically spends some time playing smash and fighting in the non-canonical Hyrule Warriors time war before dying at some point in the couple hundered years between Majora’s Mask and Twilight Princess.

In Twilight Princess, Link gets turned into a wolf by twilight magic, and teams up with the queen of the Twilight Realm, to defeat Ganon(dorf?) and also some other guy who works for him.

So that’s one part of the timeline. But how do we get to the rest of the nonsense?

Well, if you remember at the end of Ocarina of Time, Link gets sent back to be a kid. But the timeline he gets sent back from continues to exist. After a few hundred years, Ganondorf escapes the sacred realm and since there’s no Link around, the Goddesses flood Hyrule in order to stop him.

So a couple hundred years after THAT, this kid, who just so HAPPENS to be named Link, sees his sister get kidnapped by a giant bird who works for Ganondorf and then goes on a journey with the aid of a talking boat and also some pirates to rescue her and kills Ganondorf.

Anyway then Phantom Hourglass happens and then Link and Tetra go and found new Hyrule. And then a few hundred years later we get a new Link who is railway engineer and a new Zelda who’s a ghost and some other bad guy who’s not Ganon(dorf) this time because Windwaker Link stabbed Ganondorf in the head so he’s very dead in this timeline.

So that takes care of two timelines. But there’s still a third one. The third one is the downfall timeline, and it’s the timeline where Ocarina of Time Link FAILS. So Ganon has free reign over Hyrule and and also the sacred real which I think becomes the dark realm, and everything kinda sucks until A Link to the Past happens, where Link manages to seal Ganon back away.

Then after that Link goes on a nice boat ride and it wrecks and he ends up on a beautiful island except it all ended up being a dream. Cue angst.

Then we have Oracle of Ages and Oracle of Seasons where Link gets a flute and a stick respectively that allow him to control time and the weather.

Anyway, Hyrule is pretty stable now. Ganon has been gone for a while, we got the triforce to help look over the land, everything is nice. So nice in fact that the mirror dimension of Hyrule, called Lorule (not to be confused with the Dark World from ALttP or the Twilight Realm from TP) takes notice and tries to steal Hyrule’s Triforce because they destroyed theirs long ago because people kept fighting over it. So the royal hit man turns Link into a painting but he’s able to escape because of a bracelet given to him by his Lorule doppleganger, which also allows him to travel between the two worlds (hence the title, A Link Between Worlds). Anyway, several dungeons later, they get the Triforce back, and Link and Zelda wish for Lorule’s Triforce to be restored.

Then we get the original Legend of Zelda, where Hyrule has fallen into decline, so Zelda splits the Triforce of Wisdom into 8 pieces and then hides them so Link immediately has to go retrieve them to keep Ganon from being resurrected.

Then immediately after that, the Hyrule royal family is like “uh we actually lost another Triforce a little while back can you go find that too,” which is The Adventure of Link

And so that’s almost everything. There’s just one game left.

Breath of the Wild.

Link has to go exorcise some magic robots before going to fight Calamity Ganon, who apparently is different from normal Ganon? I think it’s cause he’s a gas this time?

But where does Breath of the Wild go? Adult timeline? Child Timeline? Downfall timeline?

Well. It goes in all 3. It’s got elements from all 3 timelines, and takes place unreasonably long after the rest of the games in the series that we have no idea what happened to join the 3 timelines together.

So yeah. Zelda is unreasonably weird and I now know so much information about it.

[gotham]

Give us your review of The Batman please 🙏

spoilers under cut:

i really loved this movie. i was that loser grinning at the screen simply bc i was having such a good time. for a film that leaned so heavily into the grimness of gotham and the darkness of these characters, it didn't feel pessimistic or bleak in fact it was funny as hell at times. i'm so glad reeves was given the time and freedom to really perfect what he wanted bc you can see the time and care put into this film on every level and the results speak for themselves. gotham as a place seemed so present and fully formed, and reeves rly used it to its full advantage. god, that first "batman" scene of the criminals seeing the shadows and alleys where batman might be THAT'S GOTHAM BABY!!

what struck me most was how unashamed of the source material it was; this was a noir detective comic book film and it loved that it was. bruce's narration was both right out of a panel and from those old hollywood and 70's detective stories. it could so easily have felt like a parody but it did it so /well/ that it never did. having it almost completely be from bruce's perspective was great too, bc it not only added to that comic book feel, but you had this voyeuristic view point of the whole thing, which fitted in with the batman/riddler character parallels (LOVED that you initially didn't know whose POV the first shot was bc it could so easily be batman or riddler, as batman has a similar shot later on).

speaking of detective stories; FINALLY WE HAVE A BATMAN BEING A DETECTIVE!! i said in my wants for this film post that this was rly important to me and they nailed it NAILED IT! i was so invested in the riddler's case and the riddles he was leaving, i tell u i wanted to know who the rat was more than i wanted my next breath i love that shit. we really saw him using the full range of his detective skills, seeing and picking up on things that others wouldn't, and i loved how he worked w/ gordon. and it wasn't just a case, it was deeply tied to bruce as a character and his personal journey of realising actually my parents were just people and holding them on this pedestal that paralyses me is probably not a good thing.

riddler was everything, paul dano can do no wrong in my eyes and his "pathetic little slim boy wanting treats but instead gets beat" deal is my jam and worked so well here. when there's a character who is straight up bonkers, it's hard to find proper grounding without just seeming cringe/ tryhard but he really made this character seem like someone who could exist but you really hope doesn't (omg his "thanks to all my followers like and subscribe for more riddle content" bit at the end had me in stitches). you know i'm always down for a deluded villain who thinks he and the hero are bffs and has a full meltdown when proven otherwise. again, i'm just really pleased with how he was used to tie in w/ bruce's character, acting as a mirror to show bruce what he doesn't want to be (but so easily could be).

catwoman was great zoe killed it she really knew when to camp up the sexy and when to play it straight. i was pleasantly surprised that her "i'm playing her bi" comment wasn't just hollow bait but was literally in the film. idk how else you could take her calling her ""roomate"" baby all the time. her and bruce's little romance was cute and though it's not really what i'm interested it, i did like both of them letting the other in just a little (bruce leaning into her at the end 🥺)

ok this is getting long so some little things:

- my sweet cockney alfred 💗 i'm sorry u got letter bombed and when u woke up ur boss son was immediately berating u but at least you got him to hold ur hand, that was a big step for him.

-my sweet baby bruce, my awful socially incompetent boy. he was all i wanted him to be. what else can i do but sigh dreamily at his greasy too long hair, bloodshot eyes and hunched shoulders?

- penguin was so funny farrell was insanely good i was not expecting to i enjoy him this much. crazy how one film had two actors schooling jared leto how it's done for two different roles of his, but this is how u use prosthetics to aid a character. the interrogation scene with batman and gordon? him mocking their spanish then waddling like a penguin bc they left his feet tie? magic

- the only thing i aggressively DISLIKED in this film was that god damn wretched joker, i'm sorry, Unseen Arkham Inmate, scene. it was embarrassing, completely took me out the film, and i hope we never see him again. yes, i'm judging the performance on that small snippet but it was bad; the performance was bad, the lines were bad, his hair was bad, and i dont like that creepy kid playing him. riddler's already done the best "cat and mouse, look how we compliment each other we're the same u and i" plot in this verse, you can't do better than that. batman's only got the most iconic rogues gallery of all time, pick literally anyone else.

- the camera contact lenses were cool

[camgirlkaminari]

so ive been thinking for a while now how bonkers it is that ochako has a floatation quirk and an almost identical hairstyle to inko midoriya, and now that we're closing in on deku mastering all 7 ofa quirks, I can't stop thinking that nana, a woman who has been textually compared to inko midoriya, ALSO had a floatation quirk. i wanna ramble about it a little bit:

inko's first introduction to the comic is her telling us that she can float small objects toward herself:

she's an older generation, so her quirk isn't all that powerful compared to the kids' quirks. this is apparent when ochako comes into play and can float much larger objects, but with less control over their trajectory. i think we're not ever meant to compare the two characters' quirks, since ochako is more powerful, and can also float herself. even further, inko doesn't seem to suffer any consequences for using her floatation quirk, but since we are only shown her using it once, there's no way to know.

(i find inko to be such a strange character. she spends so much time crying and being deku's mom that we forget that she is her own person. she's married. she has a quirk. what's her job? how does she pay the bills? how did she meet her fire breathing husband? does she have parents of her own? we know so much more about everyone else's parents than we even know about the main character's mom! this feels so deliberate, even beyond the fact that we are all wondering if deku's dad is somehow ~a villain~. like I don't care about deku's dad! what's up with his fucking mom!!)

so now we're so focused on ochako's journey to mastering her quirk and learning how to float herself in addition to huge objects that we almost forget how similar to inko she started out: her hair, her face, her kindness, her strength.

spoilers ahead: 

now, like 150 chapters later, we learn about nana shimura's quirk: float. deku knows what's coming, so he asks his friend ochako, who can float, for pointers on floating. this is excellent strategy, deku! good call! you don't know anyone else who can float themselves so you learn from ochako!

meanwhile, absolutely NO MENTION of how 'hey, my mom can float stuff too! weird coincidence!' despite him remembering all might's comparison of nana to his mother.

all of this leads me to have a few theories about the nature of afo & ofa, the relationship between ochako, nana, inko, and deku, and the major themes of legacy in bnha.

theory one: Gramps For All

there's a massive theme in bnha of grandchildren of importance. first, we learn that tomura shiguraki is the grandson of nana shimura, a pro hero, one of the three factions warring for a place in post-quirk society. then we learn Eri is an instance of this: she's the granddaughter of an equally influential player. The comatose boss of the yakuza, one of the three factions warring for a place in post-quirk society.

there's all kinds of legacies in bnha: shouto, the son of the number 1 hero, a direct victim of hero society. iida, the younger brother of a hero who was victimized by a villain hell-bent on changing hero society. hawks, the son of a serial killer, a victim who perpetuates the cycle of victimization in the name of upholding hero society. all these legacies, but we don't know anything about their extended families. what are endeavor's parents like? were iida's grandparents pro heroes too? does hawks really have no other family?

and where are deku's grandparents? did they ever watch him while his single mom was working?

my theory is that afo is not dad for one, but actually gramps for one. he had children, more than one, and they each had their own children. inko is one of them, and izuku is the resulting child.

deku, grandson of all for one, one of the three factions warring for a place in post-quirk society. eri, shiguraki, and deku, each representing the groups most affected by post-quirk society: yakuza, "villains," and "heroes."

theory two: ochako & deku are cousins

why the hell does ochako look so much like inko midoriya and NOT her parents?

(in the anime, they look a lot like her, but in the manga...)

gramps for one had children, more than one, and they each had their own children.

i think that ochako may be adopted, or one of her parents is, or perhaps even inko was, so ochako's connection to biological relations is distant or non existent. she may not even know. we've seen that horikoshi doesn't make character design mistakes, and he's gotta realize that every time he draws deku & ochako in the same scene that he's drawn the same face twice.

so either he's trying to throw us off, or he's making a grander statement about who they are. he's a fan of star wars- he's already done a reverse of "I am your father" with touya & endeavor, so I think it would be interesting if he's set up this ochako/deku thing as a fun homage to luke/leia, too. but they're cousins, not twins.

(that's just deku times two, babey!)

inko, unconnected to her family as she seems, may never know if she had siblings or half-siblings. ochako's parents may never have known about ochako's biological relations.

this is a much weaker theory, but i think quirk singularity theory can make some sense of it. we have the original float quirk user, nana shimura. I don't think she is related in any way to inko or ochako, but her quirk helps demonstrate the generational growth of power. she was a hero before all might, meaning she's an earlier generation and had an arguably weaker quirk. but since she was a hero, she honed her quirk so that it comes across as incredibly strong, however she seems to have only been able to float herself, not objects or people.

float quirk user number two, inko midoriya, who can float small objects toward herself. she's the next generation after nana, so her quirk is still kind of weak, and in fact looks incredibly weak compared to nana's and ochako's quirks. inko is a nobody, not a hero, just deku's mom. she had no reason to hone her quirk. who knows? maybe if she'd gone on to be a hero, she could float entire buildings if she wanted to.

float quirk user three, ochako uraraka. ochako can float objects AND herself. she's a hero and a strategist, and incredibly strong despite being 16. she can float pieces of buildings and people and herself all at once. she's a hero. she's powerful. she's thoughtful & kind, yet willful and strong. she's the ultimate culmination of the other floatation quirks as well as inko & nana's personalities. but since we were introduced to these three float quirks all out of order, it's difficult to see the exponential power growth that happens each successive generation.

I don't think that ochako's ever going to be a major player in the end of all for one, or even the plot overall, but i think the THEME of ochako being the ultimate floatation hero in the series is a major player in the final story. ochako REPRESENTS the singularity. the generation after ochako will be so strong, perhaps her descendants would be able to negate all gravity in the vicinity, maybe on the planet. who knows! even if ochako isn't related to deku, let's say dechako happens, they have babies. that's a lot of float quirk in one couple! their kids are gonna have no bones! no muscle development because they never have to fight gravity! ochako's existence represents such a huge, yet nearly invisible thematic element of bnha.

tldr: ochako looks exactly like inko and has a cumulative float quirk reminiscent of both inko & nana, and i suspect the parallels between the three is deliberate for some reason. i just think that's neat.

[nazuna-tunnel-vision]

ok i just read the english lyrics for little romance and jfc it really is the love song to top all love songs

did leo write that one?? how the fuck did he do that?

frfr!!! it is so soft and full of unconditional love and devotion like???? i never knew a song could convey this much love.

i don't think little romance is mentioned in-universe anywhere, unlike mystic fragrance, so it may not actually exist in-universe? but leo's a genius of course he could do this <3

also did you know that little romance is written as a prequel to silent oath. silent oath already drives me bonkers with the silent pining and hopelessness, but when you contrast it with the determination, optimism and hope in little romance... lies on the floor. i like to imagine that castle of my heart is the 3rd part to the song series and that gives me another round of feels.

there's also another layer of little romance that drives me bonkers, which is its relevance to the canon storyline. it's the song for thr ritsu-centre !! event, euthanasia. i rambled about the parallels a little here. little romance is ritsu's love song to knights and the people he loves in general. and the fact that little romance is so soft and full of devotion... god. ritsu is so. ghghghghgh.

you probably haven't read euthanasia yet since it's an !! story, but when you do i hope you can come back to that post! when i made those connections it felt like i got the wind knocked out of me and i fell in love with little romance even more than i already had.

[norahastuff]

ok but feeling that destiel is fully textually canon and reciprocated. know we never got dean’s response and i don’t know if you were ever into doctor who. but it draws parallels to other canon ships in that universe. twelve and clara were never made textual romantically but everything about their relationship showed that. ntm writers like moffat dubbing it as a traditional love story and other cast members saying something similar. i’m always gonna be pissed about 20 but we’ve been given so much more than some other het canon ships which blows my mind just thinking about it

I’ve only seen the Eccleston and Tennant seasons of Dr Who (and a few eps of Jodie Whittaker) but I’ll take your word for it, and yes I completely agree. I’ve always seen them as following the Ugly Betty model when it comes to how they addressed Dean and Cas’ relationship (see here and here) but it turns out the show went further than I was ever expecting them to. 

Look despite everything, this is unprecedented. Can you name me another series that 

a) Was ostensibly an action show about two bros road tripping around America hunting monsters.

b) Had a hypermasculine, seen by much of the general viewing audience as a so called “ladies’ man” (even though when talking about Scoobynatural Jensen described Dean as “ever trying to be the ladies’ man that he’s not”) protagonist.

c)  Introduced another badass tough character who was an Angel of the Lord no less and who eventually became a main character.

d) Had the two of these guys grow closer and closer and added romantic trope after trope to their relationship and not in a jokey “Cas get out of my ass!” kind of way but in a “these two characters feel so deeply for each other that we have to craft their narratives around that” way. I’ll use the mixtape as an example. While that was an objectively bonkers choice to make - you don’t make someone give someone a mixtape on the screen if you’re trying to convey a platonic relationship - it also didn’t exist in a vacuum.  It was in an episode (and season) where the way Dean and Cas felt about each other, how differently Dean felt for him than Sam did, and how Dean understood and saw Cas in a way no one else did, was consistently highlighted. The mixtape wasn’t just a random addition, it was a part of the larger narrative. Also, there was no other point to it, there’s no haha “ I was never in your -” punchline. It was just about their feelings.

e) Had the only long term romantically coded relationship on this show be between these two male main characters. Sure you can say it wasn’t explicit, but that element has always been there and the show has addressed it multiple times.

e) Crafted their storyline in the final season around their relationship issues. That wasn’t just a subplot. It wasn’t just a “5 mins at the end of an episode oh yeah sure let’s mention it” kind of thing. Sam had his “I don’t know what’s real” “we are” moment with Eileen. Dean? He had his with Cas. 

f) Had one of those two main characters explicitly and unambiguously confess to being in love with the other. 

Look I’m sorry but that is unprecedented. This is a genre show that started in 2005 when the very idea of a male protagonist who wasn’t 100% straight would be unthinkable. Let alone one whose identity didn’t revolve around that and who wasn’t a stereotype. I think there have been occasions where female characters were allowed to be “flexible” and float around on the Kinsey scale, but male characters have never been afforded that same luxury. And even then that’s been tricky. If I recall correctly, Whedon wanted to make Willow bi but the network wasn’t on board with that. 

Even today. People talk about representation and how other shows are doing it better and how much Spn sucks at it, and look I don’t disagree. But of those other shows, how many have queer male characters that weren’t explicitly stated to be queer from the beginning? I’m having a tough time thinking of any. Lucifer? His penchant for “devil’s threesomes” was there from the first couple of episodes. John Constantine? He’s a canonically bi character in the comics and his sexuality was erased from his own show for...reasons. We all know what they were. Also as soon as he made his first appearance on Legends of Tomorrow, he hit on a guy and hooked up with a girl so his being bi was made very clear from the start of his story on that show. 

If you look at Dean and Cas, we’ve been watching these characters for 15 and 12 seasons respectively. After all that time, for their final love interests to be each other...well that’s not nothing.

Look we can still be unhappy about the ending but also acknowledge the significance of what people like Misha, Bobo, Meredith, and many others (Yockey, Edlund, and Thompson get honorary mentions) managed to create here. Like you said the only thing that blocks people from seeing Dean and Cas as being in love with each other is the fact that they’re guys. The show and the narrative told us that they were and it’s perfectly valid if you’re frustrated that it wasn’t explicit enough (though honestly, I don’t know how Cas could have possibly been more explicit) but the story was there. 

Dean and Cas were in love.

[semper-legens]

8. Space Opera, by Catherynne M Valente

Owned: Yes Page count: 289 My summary: Planet Earth has a problem. First contact with alien life has been made, and they’ve issued an ultimatum. Prove that humanity is a sentient species worthy of existing, or perish. They have been entered into the Galactic Grand Prix; not a battle, but a contest. Bring the best of what Earth’s musicians have to offer - glitz and glitter and sparkles and kitsch, and hope it makes Earth worth saving. Decibel Jones and the Absolute Zeros must sing for the life of all of Earth. Just remember - in space, everyone can hear you sing. My rating: 3.5/5 My commentary:

So, Eurovision. It’s one piece of European culture that is apparently baffling to Americans. I don’t really watch it myself, but I can appreciate it from afar - who doesn’t love a bit of camp and glitter and everyone dunking on your country for being terrible? This is essentially Eurovision IN SPACE, with a healthy dollop of Douglas Adams. Like if Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy had more singing.

And this whole novel is very much Adams-esque, knowingly so. The style of writing, that kind of baffling and joke-heavy exposition or utterly ridiculous background plot elements that burst through to full prominence when you least expect it, is in full swing here, and honestly, it works well. Valente’s making no attempts to hide the fact that she’s aping Adams here, and so it becomes a beautiful homage to his work and ideas.

(Valente also does an excellent job constructing English culture here. She’s American, but I literally kept forgetting that midway through, thinking that something this precise had to be written by an English person, so kudos there.)

Alien Eurovision is, of course, a wonderful concept, and with it comes a host of incredibly inventive alien species, from the roadrunners to the Ursulas to the gamers to sentient code. Valente paints a rich tapestry of cultures and practices between the aliens, all of them ridiculous and exaggerated to some degree or another, and it makes for some very entertaining reading, especially when discussing what each culture has for music. They’re all so far beyond what Earth has to offer that it lends a lot of tension in the early part of the novel, wondering how the hell two guys and some instruments are gonna live up to choirs of entire family lines. They’re also all just bonkers conceptually, it’s like Doctor Who of the 70s did coke with the Teletubbies or something.

The main human characters are Decibel Jones and the Absolute Zeros, consisting of Decibel Jones, birth name Danesh Jalo, boyfrack and man-of-all-instruments Oort St Ultraviolet, birth name Omar Calişkan, and girlfraud Mira Wonderful Star, now deceased. Decibel and Oort are played alternatively seriously and for laughs, with that great Arthur Dent-style characterisation that manages a lot of pathos in between the gags. They’re also just great characters. Decibel is a hot mess, and Oort the eternal straight man - yet we see their struggles and their sorrows, their grief over Mira and their rocky relationship now that they’re no longer stars. Decibel’s whole persona owes a lot, I think, to Freddie Mercury or David Bowie, and every one of his outfits described is a Look And A Half. I want to be him.

But Decibel and Oort serve important thematic roles, too. I mentioned their birth names above to highlight something important - both are the children of immigrants to the UK, and both represent different attitudes to the idea of integration. Decibel wants nothing more than to stand out, whereas Oort was raised to be an average English guy, becoming what he describes as Englishblokeman. Another writer might glorify a band from England being chosen to represent the country as a whole - Valente examines both men’s relationships to the country that they were born in, but have been hurt by in many different ways over the years. There’s a parallel there, between the treatment of immigrants to the UK by white Britons, and the callous treatment humans get at the hands of the aliens, who mock and belittle and dehumanise them routinely as a matter of course. It’s meaningful and interesting, and makes for a solid core of themes under the glitter and camp.

There is one thing I’d criticise in this novel, and it’s that it can sometimes get a bit confusing. There’s a lot of moving parts to keep track of, and it’s hard sometimes to tell if something’s just a gag, or if it’s a major plot element that I need to remember. A lot of alien races with weird names are introduced, and remembering each of their quirks wasn’t easy. It did hamper my enjoyment a bit, but I gotta say, I prefer something that’s this earnest and written with this amount of passion and also a bit sprawling and confusing, to something more formulaic and heartless. Valente pours a lot of love into her work, and it sings from every page. I can’t help but appreciate it.

That’s all for this one, I think - join me next time, as I dive right back into the world of fairytale.

[tfw-no-tennis]

mtmte liveblog issue 35

ooooh baby functionist universe time

the cover with the neon ‘everything is fine’ sign is rlly good but also the pile of dead data stick bots makes me so sad omg noooo they're so cute leave them alone :( 

minimus and rewind...! its so cool seeing them interact

also I just love the crowd shot, and you can immediately see that there are a ton of data stick bots like rewind around - which isn't what we’re used to at all

also some good ole totalitarian govt stuff like the ‘you are our eyes’ sign (which, in retrospect, is fucking evil damnnnn)

also I'm so [eyezoom] on this functionist universe stuff bc like, this is basically the only time we ever see dominus be a character (rather than hearing abt him thru other characters), and even so he remains pretty ambiguous 

like, minimus clearly isn't thrilled that dominus didn't show up to see him at the space airport or w/e when they've been apart for two million years - and even tho we later see why he didn't show up, it still shows that there's some tension there

the amount of crowd shots in this issue is insane 

oooof, the fact that they sold luna 2 - and to the black box consortia, who we just heard about last chapter when they previously got into a space battle w/the galactic council and the djd

fu!minimus being part of the primal vanguard is interesting, I wanna see more about that. what was he doing w/them for 2 million years?

rewind just casually saying this completely fucked stuff, like that the govt ‘outlawed the intellectual class’ and ‘deported the knock-offs’ (which I'm assuming is cold constructed bots?)

I really like the sense we get thru minimus and rewind’s convo that all of this fucked up stuff has happened slowly enough that its become almost normal - like, they talk about it casually, even though its clear they don't necessarily agree with any of it 

plus the sense of ‘even if things get really bad ill be okay’ that both rewind and minimus seem to adhere to - rewind having been upgraded from being in the disposable class due to his connection w/dominus, and minimus saying ‘I like to think that obsolescence is something that happens to other people’ 

I love all the fucked up signage this issue. ‘take pride in being a means to an end,’ yikes

god and the fact that there isn't MORE data sticks, there's just LESS of other alt modes bc of how many alt modes the govt has wiped out completely...

oof, and continuing the whole ‘slow change’ thing - minimus saying that ‘the council never touches the astro class,’ and maybe that used to be true, but the govt will keep pushing that line, clearly...

and we get to see minimus’s alt mode! altho we the readers know that this isn't minimus’s true form...

‘amazing, the lengths some people will go to cross class boundaries,’ minimus says, as if he isn't doing exactly what rewinds describing, but even moreso as a loadbearer wearing an entire suit of armor

and then the casual public execution of the last lunabot...oof.

love the ‘cybertron. the present day’ text overlay...I was so confused about this when I first read it lmao. I figured it had to be some sort of au/quantum nonsense but STILL

back on the lost light, chromedome is going full kool-aid man on rewinds door

mannnnn I absolutely love the plotline of rewind 2 and chromedome 1...im so glad the story acknowledges that they ARE different, they did experience different stuff on their own lost lights, and rewind 2 being a quantum duplicate doesn't mean he had the same experiences as rewind 1...

and I love so much that chromedome just Doesn't Get It, bc of course he wouldn't - he’s too relieved that rewind is back to even consider that its not quite the same, that the rewind he was forced to blow up is still dead (which is a fucked up thought, so of course chromedome, the master of pushing the past away and moving right along, would want to avoid thinking about that in favor of continuing his relationship w/rewind 2)

it also makes a lot of sense that rewind, who records everything and puts a huge emphasis on history/the past, would be hyperaware of all the differences between him and rewind 1, and his chromedome and this chromedome

AUGHHHH and chromedome referring to an offer he made to rewind that was pretty clearly ‘if your memories of the djd slaughter are too much, I can remove them for you’ ooooof...I love these two so much, like...their absolute opposite approaches to trauma is fascinating

oooh mannnnn and then rewind starts ‘remembering’ stuff from the functionist universe...the plot thickens...!

I really like how one of the main ‘things’ in a lot of tf universes is energon/energy shortages, its interesting when the angle is kinda like, ‘energon is a finite resource and the methods to obtain more often involve destroying other planets,’ that's a pretty unique, alien problem for the tfs to have

it also makes sense that the functionists would form partially in response to that (perceived) shortage, and any sort of scarcity would push them further into their extremist views

I like how expressive the characters with visors are...its cute...

poor rewind has to go thru So Much

WHY can just anyone go into the morgue and touch the dead bodies. I mean I guess megatron being one of the captains explains why he’s in there, but that still shouldn't be allowed 

‘megatron mountain’ vhbjdkshfbjskfbhhk that's so fucking funnyyyyy I love rodimus....I quote that line a lot, especially when watching g1 lmao

the fact that swerve diluting his engex bc he’s a cheapskate saved everyone's s lives is amazing lmao

also like...damn brainstorm sure tried to murder Literally Everyone huh. like I guess the logic would be that if he succeeded in changing the past it wouldn't matter that they had died there cause the timeline wouldn't exist, but STILL. I guess that shows how confident brainstorm was in his plan

it makes so much sense somehow that rung doesn't drink. and we’ve seen firsthand why magnus doesn't lol

mannnn that panel of brainstorm shooting magnus with some wacky beam and causing the magnus armor to fall off in vehicle mode...Super Cool, just peak mad scientist vibes there

ok but if minimus switches to alt mode when ultra magnus does - as we see here, where minesweeper-minimus is inside big-ole-car-magnus - does that mean that inside the minesweeper is turbofox-minimus?? I want to seeeee

ghsdufjkbvksadfbhjs the panels of rodimus telling megatron that brainstorm time travelled are so fucking funny

and megatrons rant about how absolutely bonkers the lost light is....hvbhjdskfbasjh that's so funny oh my god. like yeah dude you're right and you gotta roll w/it sorry 

'on this ship, a minor breakdown is practically a rite of passage’ vbjdsnfbkasdfn its true and I love it

goddddddd it kills me how at this point in the story its So Obvious to everyone that brainstorm travelled back in time to do evil decepticon double agent stuff - and we as the reader can even buy that bc brainstorm has been so sketchy until now, and nothing he’s done contradicts what rodimus suggests - but it turns out in the end, it was all just for love. AUGHHHHHHHH its about the LOVE!!!! that's why I love this arc so much.

back in the functionist universe - god I cant believe rewind waited until Now to reveal to minimus that dominus has a tv face...like I get that that's a difficult topic to bring up in conversation but like, a little sooner might've been good hbvhjkdhnfbjaksl

oh man it hurts...rewind saying that they're in a ‘blind spot...’ oh man :(

rebel rewind, tho!! I love it sm

oh man and rewind never even broke the news about dominus to minimus oof. that's a tough reveal 

MANNN I really like the whole ‘flathead’ thing, its so awful and brutal. its such a logical extension of empurata, and as dominus says, once people get used to seeing empurata’d bots, it loses its punch...and the flatheads thing is even more invasive 

and writing wise, both empurata and the tv-heads are such good devices to show evil govt bs. I talk abt it a lot but I like all the ways jro gets creative with the ‘alien robots’ thing; a lot of these concepts wouldn't work at all with humans or other organic aliens

GODDD and dominus’s chilling speech being interrupted by the functionist propaganda....fucking horrifying I love it

also seeing dominus here is fascinating - clearly the council managed to pin him down enough to turn him into a flathead, but they never discovered his true alt mode...same with minimus, actually 

the cog is so fucking ominous. just floating there...

and the council is scary too! their names, and the fact that they all look the same...seems about right for an evil alien governing body

mannnnnnn and then the reveal that the data slug alt-modes will be ‘recalled’ next...rewind noooooo...and the one council guy even admitted that they still served some purpose in society, BUT that their ability to mass store data made them dangerous to the goverment...evil!!

meanwhile, rodimus doesn't know enough about science to be appropriately frightened about their timeline being wiped from existence, so he’s having a grand ole time

‘no one’s nodding, perceptor’ bvhjdbfasdfhbk their expressions....the lost light command crew are all clearly team ‘leave the science to the scientists’ lmao

I do love the paradox stuff, and brainstorm’s way around it all 

‘so I'm not allowed to take an interest in magic?’ hvbjhsdkfbjhkdf ily sm rodimus

but also like....rodimus suggests a parallel universe could've formed and perceptor is like ‘no way, that's not scientifically possible,’ as if brainstorm didn't basically defy science by time travelling at all...and more to the point, functionist cybertron DID get created, so rodimus was actually RIGHT this time

love that we’re already seeing perceptor’s admiration for brainstorm and his invention even here....sapiosexual mfer

a time travel chase....so beautiful...I love sci-fi so much

seriously time travel is one of my favorite tropes ever, this arc was inevitably gonna be my fav 

‘he’s going to kill orion pax.’ DUN DUN DUNNNNNNNN

meanwhile, on functionist cybertron...aw, is that bulkhead? great cameo! oh wait what's going on with all the data sticks...? uh oh!

the fact that their heads just EXPLODE....soooo fucked!! 

god and then the council picks up their dead bodies, for...probably something evil, I’d assume

god and then dominus got even more fucked....

‘there are certain words you cant afford to lose’ ;_; REWIND....GODDD IM SAD 

GOD GOD GOD the reveal that minimus has CAMERAS in his EYES GODDDDDDDDDDDD that's so FUCKED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and rewinds reaction...ME TOO BITCH TF!!!!!!

all the ‘you are our eyes’ messages are even worse now huh!!

they did it while minimus was asleep...that's so fuckedddd

FUCKKKK and then rewind’s impassioned rebel speech, which I adore.....rewind ily sm...he’s such a good revolutionary, I wish we could've seen him leading an anti-funtionist rebellion....BUT THEN ‘oh? what about the back up?’ and its just like HHHHHHHH AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH and then his head starts smoking and we see another billboard, but this time it says ‘WE are your eyes’ - is the implication that everyone is now a surveilling spy, whether they like it or now, so now it’s ‘we?’ like, we’re all in it together, spying on each other! ooooof

also. this is like the third time rewind has died on-screen in this series lmao (well, if you count the fake-out death where he thought he’d be cancelled out during slaughterhouse)...he ALMOST died in issue 12 too....poor rewind

‘the custom-made now’ is such a great title. jro always killin it w/the titles

plus ‘elegant chaos’ is such a cool arc name. fucking epic 

M A N NNNNNNNN THIS ISSUE WAS BALLER...this ARC is baller....I talked a lot hvbhdjkhfndsak lmao but there's so much to talk abt!!! I love the look into the functionist universe, I love seeing alternate versions of characters and settings so much, and I love time travel, so this issue is basically made for me

plus I fuckign love alien robot politics and seeing the absolute control the govt has over cybertronian society in the functionist universe is fascinating - plus from a storytelling standpoint, I think it was brilliant to show the ‘other side,’ aka what things would've been like without the war...which is something ill talk about later when its more directly addressed in the story but man do I enjoy that 

basically I love this arccccc I cant wait to read more hhhhhhh

[tanadrin]

hey *whispers* hey. hey. i saw your post in the wow tag. i would read THE SHIT out of your interpretation of wow lore. i have homework right now but i think i might just read through your blog a bit. the characters have always been such a high point for me (listen. i know knaak did a lot of shit. but you can pry Krasus from my cold dead hands he was EVERYTHING to middle school me) and i feel so conflicted over what theyve done to the characters - sylvanas, anduin, everyone. would love ur take

You might be a little disappointed, most of my blog isn’t about WoW (it postdates my WotLK raiding/RP guild phase, and I’ve only just recently got back into it with Classic). Lots of opinions on WoW characters below the cut.

I actually don’t hate Krasus as a character. He’s fine, he’s not a Designated Idiot Ball Carrier like some of the others are. In re: the dragons generally, I don’t like the simplistic thing WoW lore does a lot where one faction leader going bonkers turns the whole faction into baddies for no apparent reason, because all political entities are monoliths except when they’re not. I’m also not a huge fan of how crowded the, erm, metahuman bureaucracy on Azeroth has become in the lore–like, the Keepers and the Dragon Aspects serve similar roles, and the lore could have done fine with one or the other, and the dragons were here first (and Ysera and Alexstrasza are BAMFs), and so should get to stay.

Sylvanas is bae, obviously, and Sylvanas as Warchief was a terrific move plotwise. I think it’s a pity they had to kill Vol’jin to do it (because I am also very here for Warchief Vol’jin), but she is obviously the more interesting choice. Speaking of Warchiefs:

Thrall doesn’t have the Green Jesus Marty Stu quite as bad as some people think, but he does kinda have it, and I don’t see them grappling quite with the fact that he done fucked up. Like, not only did he install a Warchief who should have had all smart members of the Horde tugging at their collars nervously when he started his rule, Garrosh turned into a Sha-summoning Old God-corrupted, casual-atrocity-perpetrating maniac, not to mention all the bullshit on Old Draenor I do my best to forget about lest my blood pressure spike. We don’t really get a satisfying mea culpa from Thrall for that, and then his response is to fuck off to fiddle around with the Earthen Ring for a bit, before retiring to a farm in Nagrand. Keep in mind, one of the whole reasons the Horde came together in its current shape in the first place is because of the charismatic, hopeful figure of Thrall. It ran the very real risk of splintering under Garrosh for good (ESPECIALLY after the murder of Cairne, RIP Cairne Bloodhoof, you were too good for this world), and even the most unifying successor (which I think Vol’jin was) didn’t have Thrall’s inclusive, unifying vision. Sylvanas doesn’t, either, and even more, is sort of low-key hated by everybody else, so while I don’t think she’s a maniac like Garrosh who would recklessly divide the Horde, she’s also not, I am forced to admit, necessarily the ideal Warchief from a political standpoint.

Even if he didn’t return to the post of Warchief, Thrall had a moral obligation after the Garrosh debacle to try to help hold the Horde together and heal the divisions his negligence caused. At least to throw his support behind Garrosh’s successors, and not to pretend that Deathwing’s death meant everything was OK forever, job done. And if he wasn’t going to do that (and he has excellent motivations for not wanting to do that!), I think the consequences of that have to be explored. I think some people would blame him, and be justified in doing so. I think somebody like Varok Saurfang, who has had decades of experience with the damage bad leaders could do, would rightly be a little pissed, even as he sought Thrall out for help, that Thrall had let the Horde he built languish under subpar leadership. Thrall has been selfish–and that’s great, because he desperately needed some character flaws more significant than “cares too much” and “believes in people a lot.”

Anduin: better than Varian, still a little bland? Varian was a Professional Idiot Ball Handler, who seemed to do stuff not out of a coherent conception of his character, but just because the plot required a Generic Human King to do it. Plus there was all that stuff with the cloning and the kidnapping that never really made any sense. I like Anduin’s optimism; I like that he feels like a thoughtful, reasonable guy, who’s doing his best in often-impossible circumstances. I feel like they could show him being a little more frustrated sometimes, though, and a little pissed at people like Jaina who obstinately refuse to do the strategically correct thing even if it means setting aside their resentments for a bit. Disclaimer: I play almost exclusively Horde toons, they may address this better in the Alliance quests in WoW.

But oh man, besides the Draenei, I hate most what they did to Jaina. Jaina was that rare jewel, an optimist in a world whose setting demands perpetual chaos. Yes, yes, Theramore and the mana bomb, I’m not suggesting she should be made of stone, but it breaks her character to have her suddenly go from someone trying to forge a lasting peace between the Horde and Alliance in WC3–to the point where she would see her own father dead–to someone who now blames the whole Horde as one no exceptions for what happened at Theramore. Should she struggle with grief and pain and anger? Absolutely. But she should deal with them in more complex ways than “now I am become the mirror image of Daelin.” Nevermind that even if she did that she should at least regret not listening to him back in WC3. (Do they address that in BFA with the introduction of Kul Tiras? Idk, I haven’t played BFA at all yet.) It seems like Jaina’s role now is to be the Person Who Hates The Horde, and honestly, that’s a tired trope. It’s just not interesting, it has no nuance, it has no interesting outcomes. You could maybe get away with it with the generation of leaders from the Second War like Daelin and Genn who knew the Orcs only as the fel-corrupted servants of the Burning Legion, but it’s obvious to anyone with two brain cells to rub together than the current Horde is a very different animal politically and strategically, so even if you hate the Orcs with a burning passion, that is not going to transfer to the Tauren, nevermind onetime allies like the Blood Elves.

Gul’dan: oh my god the time travel plot was so stupid. Did the whole universe get duplicated in the alternate timeline? Since travel between the universes is cheap and easy that means there’s a whole nother Burning Legion with a whole nother Sargeras out there that’s still a huge fricking threat! Not to mention a whole nother Azeroth! Did just Draenor get duplicated? That doesn’t seem to match up with the fact a lot of the Burning Legion characters in WoD seem to be parallel universe versions of Burning Legion villains we already know, but it’s not directly confirmed or disconfirmed. Is it some sort of weird Bronze Dragonflight timey-wimey thing that doesn’t have its own independent reality? Ok, fine, but obviously this alternate Draenor has enough of an independent existence for us to visit it again and see what it’s like decades later, not to mention bring some of the people there back. Gul’dan was a fine, if one-dimensional villain but bringing him back from the dead was dumb, dumb, dumb, in a setting where death often feels meaningless and seems to be reversible at random. And the general incoherence of magic in the setting combined with the perennial incoherence of time travel plots (Gollum voice: *we hates them!*) really just reduced WoD to a quivering mess of plot holes, like febrile fan speculation made manifest.

Tirion Fordring: good example of a purely heroic character done well, which WoW has few of. I think because he actually has challenges to overcome, and he doesn’t feel like an idiot.

Bolvar Fordragon: Literally did not know or care who this guy was until the Wrathgate cinematic, but what they did after that with his character was terrific, 10/10.

Malfurion, Tyrande, Illidan: These characters all bore me to tears. My WotLK main was a druid, and I’m a big fan of the druid lore, so I wanna like Malfurion, I really do, but he’s just so dull. Partly because it doesn’t feel like he has any real limitations on his power, just whatever the plot demands he be able to do or not do at any given moment, partly because he just feels like a stiff-necked scold. Tyrande is even more one-dimensional. Illidan is pure 3edgy5me, and the demon hunters in general feel like they get to be too cool to actually traffic in any of the pathos of what should be their emotional equivalents like the Death Knights and the Forsaken. It’s like, “oh man, my life is so tormented, I have these bitchin’ horns and tattoos, and I’m, like, totally immortal, here, hold my rad sword thingies for a second.” At least with the Death Knights you get the feeling that being a Death Knight is a genuinely miserable experience, so there’s some genuine conflict at the heart of the class: sure, you play as a hero, but not the kind of hero you’d necessarily want to be. Demon hunters are just pissed they don’t get to sit at the cool kids’ lunch table, and Illidan genuinely acts like a giant asshole and then gets self-righteous and whiny when his friends and family are like “Dude! Stop being such an asshole!” There’s room for a prickly character, who’s a dick, but who’s our dick, and maybe that’s what they were going for, but Illidan is just the worst.

Azshara, Lady Vashj: The Naga were a giant fucking mistake. A symptom of the inability to let backstory stay backstory, to have to resurrect and retread the same events over and over again that plagues serials when lesser writers without original ideas get let loose on them. Settings like WoW (like Star Wars, like Star Trek, like Dune) are whole universes. You should be expanding the borders, making them feel bigger, more fine-grained, more alive, not beating the same major characters to death over and over again. The ancient Kaldorei are way more interesting as a lost past and a lesson in hubris than fish-snake-people who live under the sea.

Also, water levels are dumb and I hate them. This applies to coral-and-shellfish themed zones regardless of whether swimming is involved.

Cho’gall: I loved the “insane nihilist death cult” reincarnation of the Twilight’s Hammer Clan in World of Warcraft, and Cho’gall as the many-eyed crazed ogre mage with two heads was great. Would much rather have more Cho’gall than Guldan 2.0.

While I’m on Cataclysm: one thing you don’t often feel in worlds like WoW is the possibility of real defeat, because for extradiegetic reasons, it’s impossible to truly lose in any long-lasting way (or, in quests like Battle for the Undercity in WotLK, they just… don’t let you, which feels dumb as heck). I’ve always been fascinated by the idea of a post-apocalyptic fantasy world, a world where the bad guys won, and all the worst things the good guys feared came to pass. I think this is one reason I loved the original interpretation of the Draenei so much, because we saw in Draenor what that really looked like. It was bleak, and it was poignant, and even though it was set within a silly melodrama, it actually moved me. Cataclysm did something similar with the postapocalyptic time-travel instance (time travel being used well for once in WoW!), where you saw that Deathwing’s victory wasn’t just an abstract possibility, but a thing that could actually happen. It made the possibility of defeat feel more real, and it gave you a taste of that same bleak, poignant feeling: this, it said (just for a moment!) is what failure looks like, an Azeroth without life, without hope, in which everything you ever struggled for was utterly in vain. And that motivated you to work even harder to prevent it.

Alleria, Turalyon: “You last saw us in WC2, and since then we’ve been fighting a thousand years (subjective) of endless war against the Burning Legion and been irrevocably changed by the experience” is actually pretty great! But if I were going to rewrite WoW lore, I would make that a thousand objective years and set the final victory over the Burning Legion in the future, at a time when the Alliance and Horde have made a durable peace, and Azeroth has moved on from decades of endless war. I think there’s a real problem with trying to make the player one of the heroes that brings down Sargeras for good because it’s *such* an epic battle, but it’s a massively multiplayer game. Making every player the grand master of their class order was bad enough, but when you are obviously playing out entirely different diegesis from everyone around you, even if you didn’t have problems like sharding and a glut of phasing and cross-server activities and instant teleportation to dungeons, it really feels like a single-player RPG with a chat function. I mean, conflicting diegeses is always going to be a problem with questing-based MMOs, but suspension of disbelief worked when you were plainly one person embedded in a larger effort, like in vanilla, BC, and WotLK. But “you are one of thousands of people who is the Best Warrior Ever and sole Leader of the Warriors, and who has the Only Artifact Weapon that somehow also has thousands of copies”… yeah, that just doesn’t work for me. I feel like I’m being pandered to, and not in a fun way, like with the Pandaren.

Sargeras: I like that they retconned Sargeras to have a better motivation than “demons made me nihilistic.” The idea of a void-corrupted titan being something so terrible a member of the Pantheon would shatter worlds to prevent it is interesting. But the Void gods still feel… kinda non-threatening? We don’t see them actively working to threaten anything we really care about, the Void is mostly a pretty passive abstract force like the Light, and in general I feel like the setting isn’t really dualistic, but er… trialistic? Is that a word? In that there’s a three-way opposition between the Void, the Light, and the Nether/Arcane, from the perspective of which each is the opponent of both of the others, but that’s never laid out explicitly anywhere.

[cookiefonster666]

Thoughts on the Homestuck Epilogues (Tumblr Edition)

I predicted the future!

Might as well adapt this Blogspot post I made about a week ago into Tumblr form, why not. With a few minor changes. I don’t like using Tumblr but I figure it’s a good additional platform to share my surprisingly positive views on the Homestuck Epilogues.

The epilogues have a lot of controversial content, most of which I avoid talking about here.

BRIEF SUMMARY

4/20, read through Meat: epilogues pretty good

4/20, started Candy: what the fuck

4/21, stopped: aaaaaaaaughhhhh bluh i hate everything

4/24-ish, continued Candy: epilogues alright i guess also i am sad now

4/27-ish, finished: I LOVE HOMESTUCK

BRIEF-ISH SUMMARY

Meat was a wild ride that started as cool plot stuff and things that make you go "OH FUCK", continued as basically chapters 7-9 of Detective Pony (which I naturally enjoyed a lot), and ended as a mess of sheer chaos and destruction. My thought process ended as, "oh duh, this is the bad ending, candy must be the good ending". I was in for quite the nasty surprise.

I quit reading Candy just a few pages in. It didn't take long for it to suddenly become the weirdest fanfiction ever. Frustrated, I started skipping and searching through later parts and got rather salty when it turned out both sides were the "bad ending". I saw firsthand what vfromhomestuck meant by "clear your whole week": this is not something most people can just read in one sitting. Then I recovered a few days and read Candy in earnest, in a somewhat anachronous order and with many parts read multiple times. Slowly, I started to hope that the epilogues would be followed up with a true happy ending for real this time. I may or may not have written a snippet of some form of fanfiction paving the way for a happy ending.

Once I finally accomplished the equivalent of reading Candy as intended, I got hit HARD with feels. I accepted that the epilogues have many issues but as a whole (not just the sum of parts) are an absolute masterwork, sometimes because of those issues. It didn't take me long to realize the brilliant duality either. Meat is a side-splitting metafictional farce that (for me at least) is impossible to treat as anything resembling a story of people doing things. Candy is a tale of FEELS, and I don't use the word FEELS lightly. FEELS means I almost cried, like I did when I watched the Futurama episode Luck of the Fryrish.

DETECTIVE PONY AND METAFICTION

Before I move on and talk about the CHARACTERS, I'm going to discuss the meat epilogue's resemblance to sonnetstuck's Detective Pony. I love everything about Detective Pony, more than almost anything else in existence. My abnormal love for that godlike fanwork probably skewed my perception of Meat a bit. Starting from page 17, Dirk takes over the narration then fights over it with god tier Calliope; both do rather questionable deeds and Dirk was hit hard by fans as a result. Seeing other fans react towards that character with such hostility gave me a very distinct feeling of "what, am I missing something?" Dirk's takeover felt like a lengthy work of comedy to me; a story that never strips away from the fact that it's fiction, in a vein near identical to that of Detective Pony. I like to think I am in the right for perceiving that arc this way, because I think everyone who has read Homestuck should read Detective Pony. One of the epilogue authors read Detective Pony after writing the epilogues and was struck by it; I take this accidental mirroring of (post-)canon as proof that sonnetstuck understands Hussie's ways through and through. I like to think I have a solid understanding of Hussie's ways by now, but this guy is on a whole new level.

That said, the meat epilogue gets a bit carried away with metafiction to the point of making me think, "god when will things go back to normal". Towards the end of Detective Pony, Dirk goes through an existential crisis followed by a powerful revelation, and then resolves to do whatever it takes to erase his abominable creation. But the meat epilogue ends with (both figurative and literal) crashing and burning; no ultimate redemption for our poor Strider. Homestuck doesn't usually have much of a problem with getting carried away with stupid nonsense; maybe a few rare occasions in cases like Hussie's self-insert scenes. But getting carried away is a major criticism I have with cool and new web comic. I love that comic to death, but the parts that take a long time to dwell on the cool and new characters being creepy or weird are a chore to go through. o (the author of CaNWC) seems to have improved in that regard; the cool and new trolls' arc is much more to-the-point with such nonsense.

Meat getting carried away with metafiction is a major cause of my initial burnout shortly after starting Candy. I was sick of this mass dump of metafiction and expected Candy to be a refreshing change of pace. Haha, if only. My fault for reading Meat first. At night I sometimes ponder in envy of the parallel universe me that started with Candy. Actually I don't do that, I just thought it was a funny thing to say. Though I have on more than a few occasions sat in bed fantasizing about how awesome my life probably is in some parallel universe. What point was I making again? Oh whatever, it doesn't matter. I guess I should write a similar overview of Candy's narrative nature. Here goes:

LUCK OF THE FRYRISH AND SADSTUCK

Sad things are sad.

^ There, that's my candy overview. How hard was that?

With the two summaries out of the way, I figure the best way to dump out my residual thoughts on the epilogues is going character by character. I won't do every character, mostly just the ones who played large roles and were already characters in Homestuck proper. I'm sorting these characters in tiers of how well I think the epilogues handle them, mostly from worst to best.

N-TIER

N is not the lowest tier; it's the tier that cannot be ranked. N stands for two things here: "Not Applicable" and "Narrators". Naturally enough, two characters fit into that tier.

Dirk Strider: I've already talked about this guy quite a bit. I have a fondness for Dirk's character and I think his dialogue and narration in meat do a good job portraying some ascended, ultimate version of his character without straying from his voice, the tone that makes him Dirk. That said, I'm a bit peeved that "normal Dirk", the one iteration of Dirk Strider that isn't total bonkers and just wants his friends to be happy, doesn't exist in this story. In Candy, Rose suddenly loses the memories of her alternate selves, but for some reason Dirk keeps those memories and soon after commits suicide; he's left out of the picture until Candy's postscript, which I guess is a reasonable balance considering his indulgence throughout Meat. But why is only one of the succulently verbose Strilondes let off the hook? Some readers imagine Dave as the comic's protagonist and Dirk as the antagonist; I've toyed with that idea myself and can see it symbolized, but it just feels so wrong to me. Maybe the authors did too good a job writing Dirk for me to be complacent with such a shift in role. His conversations with Rose were just as delightful as I had hoped and they aren't weighed down too much in light of his shift in role, at least not for me.

Alt Calliope: The narrative rival to Dirk, as I mentioned previously. I'm not totally sure what to say about her, other than that one could see her as a counterpart to let's say Anna Harley; a necessary piece in the Detective Pony analogy. Alt Calliope's narrative arguments with Dirk were hilarious and that's all there is to say on the matter.

G-TIER

I'm lucky Gamzee's name starts with a G, because this means I can give him a tier of his own worse than F. As an individual arc that is; he'd get a much higher rating when taken as part of a whole.

Gamzee Makara: Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. I despised reading every word that came out of this guy's mouth as soon as his """redemption arc""" started. But I can clearly tell that was the point and that the suffering that is reading his words has a much greater purpose. Before you deem me a masochist or the kind that insists everything is "bad on purpose", know that I am neither of those things but really do mean what I say here. Gamzee's role in Candy draws tension between individuality and the whole. Reading this guy's hogwash is suffering in and of itself, but ultimately it serves a role of showing us how fucked up the world of Candy is and helps the reader experience John's existential crisis with him.

F-TIER

As before, these tiers are strictly about character arcs in isolation and not the big picture. This tier is home to none other than the legendary...

Jane Crocker: Boy did I predict the future on that one. A bit like Dirk, I would've liked it more if in only one epilogue did sweet innocent little Jane become such a monster. No way in hell am I going to run through the asshole things she does; it's a load of sensitive topics I'm not comfortable discussing in any capacity. Instead, I'll say that if I had to choose only one epilogue where Jane ran through her crazy presidential campaign it would be Candy; as with Gamzee's arc, this campaign serves well as a part of John's existential crisis. What's weird here is that in Candy she originally cancelled all this, but later ended up basically doing it anyway with Dirk gone. I can imagine Jane going back to normal in Meat, maybe? Or in the hypothetical "true ending" I discussed prior.

D-TIER

Better known as "meh" tier. Mostly the characters that don't do much and I wished did more.

Meenah Peixes: Needed more screen time, god damn it. She survives the Furthest Ring apocalypse, nabs the Ring of Life, then makes her way to Candy Earth and joins Karkat in the rebellion. Maybe it makes sense that her and Karkat teaming up in war is relegated to the background, to show how far the shouty guy has come in comparison to everyone else. I'll come back to this point when I talked about Karkat.

Roxy Lalonde: Doesn't do too much in either side, but does go through some touchy topics I'm not sure what to think about; I'm most certainly not ready to talk about those topics now. And regardless, Roxy's role in the epilogues is better discussed when I talk about John and Terezi a few tiers up.

Calliope: Doesn't do all that much either, full circle to being the exposition alien with mysterious morality. I'm actually pretty OK with that. Certainly beats out the slog of endless "ur pretty" conversations. Calliope pretty much fades into the background on both sides, which is sad but fitting.

(About pronouns: I'll keep referring to Roxy and Calliope as "she" unless I find reason to talk about the little those two do in Meat. I just avoided using pronouns in those paragraphs above.)

C-TIER

Better known as "meh" tier, but with a more positive "meh" than before. It's the "meh" that indicates lukewarm satisfaction rather than annoyance at mediocrity.

Jade Harley: Really should be on a lower tier, because she did dick squat other than being horny and painfully oblivious to all the nonsense going on. But I'm a sucker for Jade being "Jade" and was happy to see even a trace of that early in Meat. As before, I'll avoid the controversial topics surrounding Jade in the epilogues, aside from pointing out that this post reads very different now.

Karkat Vantas: This guy's a bit of an odd spot. His leadership role is addressed in the absolute last way I expected. Could've gotten more attention from the story I suppose, but damn if his character arc didn't get the most triumphant return imaginable.

Kanaya Maryam: I touched upon Rose and Kanaya's relationship when I discussed the "buddy system" in my first epilogues post and I still stand by what I said there. Her strong attachment to Rose is integrated well into Meat without seeming like fluff or defining her entire character, because she actually does other things there too. In Candy they remain a stable happy relationship and I guess I'm cool with that.

Aradia Megido: Role is the same as ever and I'm fine with that. Death fangirl who works for predestination and has ambiguous morality. Her arc with alt Calliope ends with a cliffhanger that is easily the biggest reason to hope for a follow-up to the epilogues; if such a follow-up were to happen, I really look forward to hearing more from Aradia.

Sollux Captor: Sollux is by nature the other guy, that's an immutable fact of life. He doesn't do much other than snarking at whoever's nearby and I can't imagine it any other way.

Jake English: If not for a scene near the end of Candy, I'd put Jake at D-tier. Through all of Meat and most of Candy, Jake's role is one of the oddest spots of all and it's pretty hard to pinpoint what the authors were going for, lest I dabble in controversial topics some more. But Jake's scene with John near the end of Candy is uniquely touching and makes the most out of his role as a second John. He moves in with John, bringing his son Tavros with him, and encourages John to reconcile with his former wife and make amends of sorts, ultimately giving a small portion of the cast a pseudo-happy ending. That whole part of Candy made me tear up.

Talking about the really GOOD parts is a perfect point for me to move on to...

B-TIER

Stuff that didn't make it into A-Tier, which I've reserved for what struck me HARD.

Dave Strider: In both epilogues, Dave's behavior generally seems based on how he acted in Act 6 Act 6 Intermission 5, which is actually a LOT better than it sounds and hell if I know why that is. Dave's rants about politics and sexuality now have a charm I can't quite describe. His absurd fixation specifically on the economy matches shockingly well with the nature of Homestuck. The three-way romance between him, Karkat, and Jade goes in very different directions on either side, which I'll discuss a bit later. The epilogues even made Dave x Karkat an actually decent ship, how crazy is that??? The writers deserve a big badge of honor for doing that. Not sure what to say about specific things, but Dave was really well-written in an unexpected way.

Rose Lalonde: Again not sure what to say about anything in specific. Just really enjoyed reading Rose on both sides of the story. Shoutout to the heartwarming moment with John near the end.

A-TIER

Oh boy. Oh boy. Time for the big guns.

Vriska Serket: My mind hurts to process just how good Vriska's appearance in Candy was, after leaving the Furthest Ring and landing on Earth. First she talks with John rather aggravated, then she brutally murders Gamzee, then she sits down and has an honest talk with her ectobiological clone raised by Rose and Kanaya, and in the end gets in touch with Terezi which leads to a cliffhanger. The story somehow created the PERFECT balance of sincere reflections and typical Vriska flavor, which was deeply lacking in A6A6I5 with its horrific polar opposite versions of Vriska. Two Vriskas converse once again late in Candy and this time it's incredibly endearing and almost feels like an apology for the controversial Vriska/Vriska encounter back then. I accept the apology with open arms. Why is everything always so wonderful?

John Egbert: <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3. WHY IS EVERYTHING ALWAYS SO WONDERFUL? John gets a deep meaningful existential crisis arc in both epilogues; both cases I easily latched onto and found a bit of myself in. I absolutely loved seeing him and Terezi interact as a duo of people with some perception of canonicity; I'll get back to that point soon enough. John's marriage to Roxy not working out is a testament to both his issues with canon and Roxy's issues dealing with harsh situations. Roxy latches onto John and their son as a huge carefree pushover and he doesn't like that at all. And that's actually cool with me because John x Terezi is better in every way, as the epilogues made me realize. If that wasn't enough, the end of Candy spoils our little hearts by having John reconcile with Roxy anyway and give hope for a better future. Though a part of me does want to see a true happy ending where John and Roxy date with their delightful dynamic from their first interactions, I'm beyond pleased with the epilogues' handling of John either way. Swaying deep into some rather sad territory while remaining 100% faithful to his character that I've always loved so much.

Terezi Pyrope: FUCK YES FUCK YES FUCK YES FUCK YES FUCK YES. Every scene with Terezi in the epilogues was so goddamn awesome. Her interactions with John were such a blast to read, with exactly the mix of humor and touching aspects that make both of the big John/girl ships what they are. How did the authors pull it off, making deeply emotional scenes without ever sacrificing that goofy Terezi flavor???

S-TIER

S in rating systems these days is way misused in my eyes. Normally A is meant to be the highest rating and S is used for the very rare absolutely exceptional case A doesn't do justice. But now you see shit like SS, SSS, SSSS everywhere like one S isn't the ultimate badge of honor? S is a rating I'd gladly give Detective Pony and may or may not give cool and new web comic. Same goes for my very favorite Futurama episodes. I'd give a few of Neil Cicierega's works that rating if I'm feeling up to it. In this post, I've reserved the S rating for:

Barack Obama: THE BEST PART OF THE EPILOGUES, HANDS DOWN. His conversation with Dave near the end of Candy is perfect in every way, it really transcends words. Humor, emotional touching, plot revelations, and straight up "Homestuck feel" are blended into the most delicious melting pot imaginable. When Dave confesses that he might be gay and explains troubles in his three-way romance, Obama responds with a truly inspiring speech about identity that raises an excellent point about the differences between the epilogues involving aspects of people that may seem immutable to some. I think Obama's speech leaves a powerful message I never expected Homestuck of all things to convey so well. I hope readers take that speech's message into account, though I know many will probably be a bit naive about it.

If you refuse to read the epilogues at all costs, then I implore you to read Dave and Obama's conversation anyway. You won't be disappointed.

CONCLUSION

epilogues good

that’s all there is to say on the matter

though if you don’t like them that’s also fine

[nautilusopus]

Serious non-troll: What if you like the cop-outs and the scrambled bullshit plots and the nonsense towers of half-constructed ideas? I agree that for example Nomura is a goddamn crazy person but I find his convulsions fascinating and want to see more of them.

i mean, you’re entirely within your rights to do that. it’s just frustrating that there’s visibly no effort put into any of it, and he’s just writing for the sake of what makes the trailer look good, and that’s been 100% to the detriment of the story ever since he’s started doing it

i’m not even inherently opposed to ridiculous convoluted bullshit. i’m one of those pretentious fuckheads that unironically likes End of Evangelion and thinks it made perfect sense, obviously, duh, with all its absolute nonsense of adam and lilith and rei being a god-analogue from absorbing both the white and black seeds and allowing shinji to dictate the ultimate outcome of third impact in the culmination of a couple of really fucking long and extremely obtuse character arcs. i mean, hell, i’m 38 chapters into a fic that is running off nothing but weird high-concept ideas of how reality and parallel universes work and abstract metaphor andsleep deprivation. in any other circumstances, i’m fine with convoluted batshit nonsense.

i think the best way to explain the heart of the issue is to look at what happened to the matrix trilogy. or actually wait this is tumblr, everyone’s in high school and would’ve been foetuses or something when Revolutions came out. homestuck, then. we’ll look at homestuck. 

okay so homestuck. remember when that was as big as it was? initially, the big stumbling block was the slow pace of act 1 where john just kind of fucks around throwing glass at clown dolls for a while and if you weren’t into that kind of humour that was where the comic immediately lost you, but what ultimately got the ball rolling was [S] WV: Ascend. the general metric back then was if you weren’t hooked by that one, you wouldn’t like homestuck at all, and for many people that was the point of no return. the reason WV: Ascend was as big of a deal as it was is that we’ve been seeing a bunch of disconnected nonsense happening all over the place, and this is the first time we see our first major time loop actually closed, with the promise of a few more being set up. all that supposed joke nonsense we’d been watching the whole time? it actually mattered, surprise! from there, the narrative spends a lot of time introducing a lot of new concepts – we have captchaloguing and paradox slime, and time travel, and doomed timelines, and exiles and future versions of planets from a parallel universe the metanarrative being perpetuated by the author being diagetic and fuck knows what other things i’m forgetting about. and then, to throw you for a loop twelve whole other characters show up on top of that. so then the narrative needs to spend time establishing who these people are and what their relevance to the story is – which it does, by having them be active participants in the first arc as things go on. this ultimately culminates in [S] Cascade, where we see all these different concepts eventually tie into one another because they were deliberately set up to, and it’s at that point that you figure, well shit we’ve hit a point where all the time travel stuff has finally come to a head. and with it, you’d expect it to also bring all the character stuff to a head too, but instead hussie has an entire extra act to go so we can’t have that resolve yet. 

so in the meantime, here are 20-ish whole other characters doing some other things. but we don’t have time to establish what’s effectively the silmarillion by now, so we have to speed past it, meaning we aren’t given a chance to care about these new people. but we can’t have a chance to care about them either, because we still have to tie all this into 5 whole previous acts that are meant to feed into this. at this point, homestuck is visibly collapsing under its own weight. character arcs are forced to fart around in circles because the status quo can’t change because we still need to make it to endgame with these character dynamics more or less intact. but that’s boring to read so we’ll do this entire “what if” thing and then retcon it all out of existence, and then have the fact that you can retcon things suddenly become vital to the resolution of the coming in place of anything we’ve already established previously – not the time travel, not the parallel universe with the trolls, not even the whole thing with the Scratch leading to the alpha kids being here in the first place – when the mechanic was only introduced in the first place to sloppily patch a story together that had long since devolved into infodumps that served to paint hussie further and further into a corner as he was forced to define his lore to get the plot to keep moving forward despite the fact that the narrative wasn’t focusing properly on the people that could make that happen anymore because the story had since switched focus from those people almost entirely. 

and in the meantime the damn thing got eaten up by filler, and suddenly characters from that filler are showing up like they were totally relevant to the main story the whole time even though literally nothing they did in their own subplot had any direct bearing on the story at large, unlike the initial 12 trolls. why yes, Alternate Universe Calliope was a completely necessary addition to the story! didn’t you see our important sidestory thing where they do Stuff, and then her showing up in the climax to resolve some other things that are sorta disconnected from the main plot anyway?

not to mention the shipping. nothing ruins a story faster than throwing in a love triangle or eight, and then immediately invalidating all the character growth that happened on top of that anyway by having it literally never happen. not that it would’ve mattered anyway, because remember, we never actually got to have any of this really developed to begin with. 

by the time we hit end of act 6, there’s been so many new concepts haphazardly stapled onto the story and so many threads brought up and discarded entirely when we already established back with [S] Cascade that the story works best when they actually do this and it is doable, that it stops being merely complicated and off the wall, and starts being spread too thin, incomprehensible, and ultimately no longer part of a whole narrative deliberately comprised of interlocking storylines. shit’s just kinda happening at you, and rather than getting to see parts of a text interacting as a result of them coming from somewhere for the express purpose of then going to somewhere, you’re just being asked to accept that, yup, that’s a thing that’s going on right now. neato. sure is some stuff happening and whatnot. and in the end, for all that posturing, it didn’t even do anything. in pre-cascade homestuck that wouldn’t have even been a full flash. a bunch of nonsense happens, and then They Fightan Good, and then it’s over and there’s not a single time paradox or meta-interaction to be found. none of the stuff they built up to over all these years mattered, and neither did any of the stuff they just threw in, either. 

i’m sure you see what i’m getting at with this. 

(also he treats the women in his stories like shit and quite frankly i’m sick of it and even more sick that people keep giving him a pass for it because it’s practically reached parody levels at this point , so there’s that)

i have no problem with convoluted twisty bullshit in and of itself. but it has to accomplish something aside from just existing, and nomura doesn’t do that. by his own admission, kingdom hearts wasn’t planned, and it shows really badly. characters and entire story mechanics and plot lines are introduced solely for the sake of introducing them. they don’t go anywhere or build to anything, because they can’t, because fuck we have to stall for kh3 shhhh just keep adding more soras and hopefully no one will notice. i think the last time any of this actually mattered was kh2, and even that had a lot of the issues i’ve mentioned here. as a result of all of this, the character arcs suffer a lot, and you’re left with nothing but a big ball of plot twists that goes nowhere, and a bunch of characters that only somewhat have anything to do with any of it. 

i don’t feel like it’s overly nitpicky to find this kinda gross and seriously insulting of the audience’s intelligence. it’s just lazy time-stalling. i get that people sometimes really don’t care about stuff like narrative and character development and are just here to see riku punching mike wazowski in the teeth or whatever, but i think it’s disingenuous to pretend that these aren’t nonetheless important parts of a game’s construction – especially a studio that used to openly pride itself on selling games with a focus on story. 

and the genuinely frustrating part is, no one cares. people are gushing all over everything square puts out because it’s square, so they know they don’t have to put effort into their stories. i’m well aware i’m in the minority for saying that these games are bad. but i also thought we were done with treating, “it’s just a video game, bro! why do you care so much about the story having quality as a narrative? this isn’t an english class!” as a valid rebuttal. 

maybe i should’ve used the matrix trilogy instead. most people hate movies 2 and 3 for the weird “YOU’VE ALREADY MADE THE CHOICE/EVERYTHING THAT HAS A BEGINNING HAS AN END NEO” shit and the bonkers christ-allegory ending. i hate it because neo is about as interesting as the rock that cracked goofy’s skull open.