#there was a ten year old kid in the audience he talked to multiple times

[navree]

you know, the one big thing that some of these time jumps really messed up is that, if you think about it for more than five seconds, aemond has the restraint of a saint for not being on the constant edge of murder. 

aemond, at the age of, at maximum, ten, gets set upon by four other people who are angry at him for no reason (“aemond stole vhagar!” the fuck he did, the only reason you should have to actually think that is if you too are a grieving eight year old, anyone else on the planet knows that vhagar chose aemond we literally saw her do it be serious). he doesn’t start this conflict or is the first to escalate it to violence, despite getting a bit too harsh verbally, and after defending himself and getting pissed off, loses an eye. a full eye. in a pseudo medieval society where we have to see him get stitched up with zero anesthetic at all, and where the entire meeting to talk about the fact that he lost a full eye devolves into how the real crime here was a throwaway insult, while he’s standing here without an eye and the only person who seems to care is just his mom (let’s not even touch on the fact that a thirty year old woman starts demanding the ten year old be “questioned sharply” which is basically westerosi euphemism for tortured or at least threatened to be tortured after having lost an eye as if no one else was able to decipher the magic of big b little b)

that’s what we have in canon. and it’s really not that hard to deduce that in the near decade after that, life got really, really hard for aemond. for one, this is a pseudo medieval society where the king has basically been publicly dying a death by a thousand badly treated cuts for multiple years, that cut took a long time to heal and it didn’t do so painlessly, and the fact that aemond didn’t get any infection and die or turn into a mini viserys is a miracle, but also a had to be a very long process. for two, aemond now has to deal with getting his ability to fucking see slashed in half, and likely having to relearn a lot of the way he was just living life in order to function. that’s something that would be hard to do nowadays, if you were dealt with partial blindness or lost vision in an eye in an accident, given that this is a pseudo medieval society, aemond had to do all of that in much more difficult circumstances. how much of life was spent with this kid in pain, frustrated, scared, resentful? for how long did this child have to struggle before he found some semblance of normalcy, at least physically if not mentally, before trying to make up for this sudden shortcoming? 

and having this time jump where the first time we see him after having lost a full eye is him being badass and cool and calm and snide (and weirdly horny for daemon but that’s a story for another time) means that a lot of audience members are going to miss that it is perfectly natural for aemond to be seething with bitterness about what happened, about the injuries and the difficulties that followed and the toll it must have taken on him and the way he was treated throughout the immediate aftermath. of course aemond flew into a rage and nearly hacked out lucerys’s eye himself, if you were bottling up that much pain and anger about having been dealt a lifelong disability for no reason, wouldn’t you be too? of course aemond decided he wanted to scare lucerys and make him feel small and afraid, how many nights did aemond spend terrified that he’d get some sort of blood poisoning or infection and die, or even just scared about the quality of life he’d have in a society that’s already just kinda shitty even if you’re able bodied? 

wanting to do all of their twenty years of set up in a ten episode season screwed this show in a lot of ways, most notably in how the frequent time jumps prevented us from spending any time getting to know a characters who weren’t rhaenyra, alicent, daemon, and viserys (like, i’ve said this a lot, but name me three character traits of lucerys that aren’t “momma’s boy”, how am i meant to care about vhagar full on eating him when the writers haven’t been able to put any effort in making me care about him as a person before that point). but it feels a wee bit galling when it prevents us from understanding the nuances of a character that are kind of important to fully understand the choices he makes that are going to have huge repercussions on everyone in the story. 

[johnmulaneyscreen]

hello fans of john. i have returned from the void to say that this less gorgeous kid did in fact see “from scratch” yesterday.

and holy shit.

anyways very full circle and all that. cheers.

[itoldsunset]

semi-translating/summarizing some things p’boss said on the hardest brief podcast. putting it under the cut because it ended up being wayyy longer than expected. also, my thai knowledge is that of a little kid who left her country very young so i probably missed some words/references, sorry!

(i got lazy and skipped the last part where they talked about the props and the colors (red = oh-aew, blue = teh, purple = tarn) but i feel like enough folks on here have done the color/visual analysis so we should be good):

he had this story he wanted to tell about two childhood friends and also knew he wanted to cast pp and billkin, but to make it work they had to pull from pp and billkin’s personalities to make sure that the characters they ended up creating would mesh with who pp and billkin are as performers; in writing the script, they sometimes asked pp and billkin to talk about their experiences as teenagers and adapted it to the series, so for example the storyline where teh and oh-aew meet each other again at afterschool chinese class and start out not liking each other, comes from pp and billkin’s real life when they first met and didn’t like each other

the interviewer asked p’boss to talk about how the itsay team has balanced representation in terms of gender and sexual orientation, and p’boss said it was important to have a team that understands the human experience and can draw from life experiences from multiple perspectives, which led to diversity in gender, sexual orientation, and age

when asked whether itsay is a Y series (BL), p’boss said his intention is to tell a story about the relationship between two boys, so it depends on how you define what counts as BL, LGBTQ, etc.

the interviewer and p’boss had this conversation about what characterizes something as BL, and the interviewer said after asking around it seemed like BL is about relationships between boys but more from a fantasy lens and tends to be different from gay couples in real life, and focuses on scenes between the two male leads, scenes that make you “pinch your pillow” (op: like scenes that make you squeal), but not so much on other moments outside of that; p’boss’s response (approximate translation): “i’m not sure myself, but from what i know, BL series seem to be about relationships between boys, but from the perspectives of girls, since that tends to be the target audience. so it tends to be what makes girls happy, what entertains them, that ends up being the content of BL.”

p’boss on lgbtq series: “i think it looks deeply at the real lives of people who are lgbt, it might be more realistic. it might be like, this is a real thing, but when you tell it in a series it becomes dark, but it’s real. in terms of itsay, in the beginning i didn’t know how to classify it, but when a lot of people started calling it lgbt, i thought, okay. [...] it’s just the story i wanted to tell, and i wanted to tell it with as much humanity as possible. i don’t want to limit viewers, i want as many people to see this as possible, so we can call it whatever they want as long as they watch it and it makes them happy.”

this is his first series focusing on lgbtq characters, but in hormones he wrote goi and dao’s characters (op: i didn’t know this?!)

with itsay, p’boss said it was important to him to have slower pacing to explore the intricacies of the emotions in each scene (different types of anger, different ways of sulking, different types of happy, different types of crying), making it somewhat different from my ambulance where things had to move more quickly to keep up with the speed of a tv drama

the interviewer asked “how does having two male leads change how you work?” and p’boss said there’s nothing different in the way you build chemistry between the two characters because you would just pull from their personalities, but the difference is in the conflict of the story which involves confusion and questioning about sexual orientation which a straight couple wouldn’t go through

p’boss: “when we think about how teh is the kind of person who doesn’t say what he’s thinking, or how oh-aew is the kind of person who’s upfront, anyone can play those roles--women, men, gay people, trans people can all have these roles.”

the interviewer said “itsay seems to be expanding the scope of lgbtq narratives by presenting it as easier for the characters to come out and say they love someone of the same sex. for example, especially compared to love of siam where the kiss scene between mario and pchy was considered something shocking, or in hormones, with the relationship between march and tou (phu and thee) where the characters spent a lot of time fighting with themselves about who they were attracted to. but in itsay, oh-aew was totally straightforward in saying he liked bas. do you think that’s because it’s easier and more open today?” p’boss: “i think the content changes depending on the generations, and oh-aew is really of today’s generation. it’s not that there are no longer kids who are confused about their sexual orientation or afraid to come out, even if ten or twenty years pass there will probably still be some kids who experience that. but there are people who are open and happy about how they live their lives. oh-aew is the type of lgbtq character that’s like, ‘i’m gay, and i’m proud to be who i am.’ [...] and it’s very positive that he sees himself as equal to straight people, because when we’re born, we can love anyone. if you’re a man, you can love another man and that’s a normal thing. that’s oh-aew’s attitude: i’m lgbtq, i’m gay, i’m proud, my parents accept me, and i can tell anyone confidently who i can love. i think a lot of people in this generation already see this as something normal, and we really need to make it something that’s equal. oh-aew represents that equality.”

p’boss on teh: “teh is a character who seems to come from older societal expectations where he’s a man, and he has to love women. but there are people who do still think this way. for teh, it’s hard for him to accept that he might like boys, but when he finds out oh-aew likes boys, he’s totally fine with it and sees it as normal. i feel like society needs to progress to this point, and beyond it, because it all has to be seen as normal. a lot of people when they talk about gay people they say there has to be a top and a bottom, but in reality anything can work, love can happen however. one day i could date someone who’s a trans woman, that’s possible, because it’s about feelings. or a woman who has always loved men could one day date a woman, that’s possible too. there’s a lot of freedom, and i want the characters to show that.”

they talked about how in the scene where teh pretends to hit on oh-aew in front of all their friends, the friends are shocked not that teh is attracted to guys, but they’re shocked that teh likes someone in the friend group. and that goes to show that it’s normal for someone to like someone of the same sex, whereas 20 years ago maybe the characters would have reacted in confusion or shock.

p’boss talking about what was challenging about making this series: “in terms of writing the script, we had to think about how to tell the story in a way that shows the characters’ emotions at all times. for example in episode 2, we explored the restlessness that teh feels when he’s confused about he feels jealous or possessive of his friend. when we say it like that, it’s relatable to people who know what it’s like to feel possessive of their best friend, but how to execute that on the screen is a different matter.”

why phuket? p’boss: “when i decided to tell a story about two boys, i wanted the atmosphere to be romantic. even if the story isn’t romantic, like two boys who are best friends eating together, but i wanted the visuals to be romantic that it looks like it could be a romance film. it intrigues the viewers and adds a certain sweetness to it. i wanted a good environment, so i searched in a lot of different provinces. at first i went to ayutthaya, mae hong son, chiang mai, chiang rai, songkhla. but when i talked to the team, one person wanted to go to the mountains, another wanted to go to the cape, another wanted to go to the beach. even if there’s a beach there has to be a city. we wanted everything, and phuket has it all. old town has a city feel, but there’s also the beach and mountains, so we decided to go to down to phuket while we were writing the script, to confirm whether it would actually work. i’m from hatyai, so i’m from the south, but i rarely ever went to phuket so i wasn’t sure if it would work.”

p’boss said filming the underwater kiss was difficult because there needed to be sunlight in order to capture everything in the way they wanted, but when they got to the island, there was no sun and it was about to rain. so they looked up the color of luck/success for that day and it was purple (op: i don’t have context for this so i can’t explain further lol), so they told everyone to wear a purple shirt. the day they went to film the scene, they all wore purple shirts, but when they got to the site it looked like it was about to rain, so p’yong took off his shirt and hung it on the boat, and as they were filming, every time they said “action” the sun would come out and every time they said “cut” the sun would go away, and p’boss said it was magical and that’s how it came out to be the scene we saw.

[girlactionfigure]

The British Schindler

He saved 669 children.

Nicholas Winton was a young British stockbroker who rescued 669 Czech Jewish children from being sent to Nazi death camps. He never told anybody of his heroism, and the story only came out 50 years later after his wife found an old briefcase in the attic containing lists of children he’d saved.

Nicholas was a 29 year old clerk at the London stock exchange getting ready for a ski trip to Switzerland when he received an urgent call from his friend Martin Blake. Known to be passionately opposed to Nazism, Martin urged Nicholas to cancel his vacation and come to Prague immediately. He told Nicolas, “I have a most interesting assignment and I need your help. Don’t bother bringing your skis.”

It is a testament to Nicolas’ sterling character and strong moral compass that he didn’t waver for a moment. It was an easy decision to sacrifice his fun and relaxing ski trip and instead travel to a dangerous place on a mysterious mission.

Two months earlier, in October 1938, Nazi Germany had annexed the Sudetenland It was clear that the Nazis would soon occupy all of Czechoslovakia. When he reached Prague, Nicholas was shocked by the huge influx of refugees fleeing from the Nazis. In early November, the Kristallnacht pogrom occurred in Germany and Austria. Jews were killed in the street and hundreds of synagogues burned down, as well as Jewish-owned businesses. This horrifying event shocked the Jewish community in eastern Europe, and thousands were now desperate to flee.

Born to Jewish parents, Nicholas was actually Jewish himself. However, his parents changed their name from Wertheim and converted to Christianity before he was born. Nicholas was baptized and raised as a Christian, and he didn’t consider himself Jewish (although was doubtless aware that Hitler would.)

In Prague, organizations were springing up to help sick and elderly refugees, but Nicholas noticed that nobody was trying to help the children. In his words, “I found out that the children of refugees and other groups of people who were enemies of Hitler weren’t being looked after. I decided to try to get permits to Britain for them. I found out that the conditions which were laid down for bringing in a child were chiefly that you had a family that was willing and able to look after the child, and fifty pounds, which was quite a large sum of money in those days, that was to be deposited at the Home Office. The situation was heartbreaking. Many of the refugees hadn’t the price of a meal. Some of the mothers tried desperately to get money to buy food for themselves and their children. The parents desperately wanted at least to get their children to safety when they couldn’t manage to get visas for the whole family. I began to realize what suffering there is when armies start to march.”

Nicholas knew something had to be done, and he decided to be the one to do it. He later remembered, “Everybody in Prague said, ‘Look, there is no organization in Prague to deal with refugee children, nobody will let the children go on their own, but if you want to have a go, have a go.’ And I think there is nothing that can’t be done if it is fundamentally reasonable.”

Nicholas decided to find homes for the children in the UK, where they would be safe. He set up a command center in his hotel room in Wenceslas Square and his first step was to contact the refugee offices of different national governments and see how many children they could accept. Only two countries agreed to take any Jewish children: Sweden and Great Britain, which pledged to accept all children under age 18 as long as they had homes and fifty pounds to pay for their trip home.

With this green light from Great Britain, Nicholas did everything possible to find homes for the children. He returned to London and did much of the planning from there, which enabled him to continue working at the Stock Exchange and soliciting funds from other bankers to pay for his work with the refugees. Winton needed a large amount of money to pay for transportation costs, foster homes, and many other necessities such as food and medicine.

Nicholas placed ads in newspapers large and small all over Great Britain, as well as in hundreds of church and synagogue newsletters. Knowing he had to play on people’s emotions to convince them to open their home to young strangers who didn’t even speak English, Nicholas printed flyers with pictures of children seeking refuge. He was tireless in his efforts and persuaded an incredible number of heroic Brits to welcome the traumatized young refugees into their homes and hearts.

The office in Wenceslas Square was manned by fellow Brit Trevor Chadwick. Every day terrified parents came in and begged him to find temporary homes for their children. Despite Nicholas’ success in finding places for the kids to stay, British and German government bureaucrats made things difficult, demanding multiple forms and documents. Nicholas said, “Officials at the Home Office worked very slowly with the entry visas. We went to them urgently asking for permits, only to be told languidly, ‘Why rush, old boy? Nothing will happen in Europe.’ This was a few months before the war broke out. So we forged the Home Office entry permits.”

The first transport of children boarded airplanes in Prague which took them to Britain. Nicholas organized an amazing seven more transports, all of them by train, and then boat across the English Channel. The children met their foster families at the train station and Winton took great care in making the matches between children and foster parents.

The children’s transport organized by Nicholas Winton was similar to the later, larger Kindertransport operation, but specifically for Czech Jewish children. Nicholas saved an astounding 669 children on eight transports. Tragically, the largest transport of all was scheduled for September 1, 1939 – but on that day, Hitler invaded Poland and all borders were closed by Germany. Winton was haunted for decades by the remembrance of the 250 children he last saw boarding the train. “Within hours of the announcement, the train disappeared. None of the 250 children aboard was seen again. We had 250 families waiting at Liverpool Street that day in vain. If the train had been a day earlier, it would have come through. Not a single one of those children was heard of again, which is an awful feeling.”

Nicholas joined the British military and spent the rest of the war serving as a pilot in the Royal Air Force, attaining the rank of Flight Lieutenant. After the war, Nicholas worked for the International Refugee Organization in Paris, where he met and married Grete Gjelstrup, a Danish secretary. They moved to Maidenhead, in Great Britain, and had three children. Their youngest child, Robin, had Down Syndrome, and at that time children with the condition were usually sent to institutions. However Nicholas and Grete wouldn’t consider it and instead kept their son at home with the family. Tragically, Robin died of meningitis the day before his sixth birthday. Nicholas was devastated by the loss, and became an active volunteer with Mencap, a charity to help people with Down Syndrome and other developmental delays. He remained involved in Mencap for over fifty years.

Humble – and perhaps traumatized by the children on the train he wasn’t able to save – Nicholas rarely talked about his wartime heroism and his own family didn’t know the details. It was only in 1988 that Nicholas Winton became widely known. His wife found an old notebook of his containing lists of the children he saved. Working with a Holocaust researcher, she tracked down some of the children and located eighty of them still living in Britain. These grown children, some with grandchildren, found out for the first time who had saved them.

The BBC television show called That’s Life! invited Nicholas to the filming an episode that became one of the most emotional clips in TV history. With Nicholas in the audience, the host told his story, including photos and details about some of the children he’d saved. Then the told Nicholas that one of those children was the woman in the seat next to him! They embraced, teary eyed, and the host announced there were more grown children in the audience as well. She asked everybody who owed their life to Nicholas Winton to stand up. The entire audience stood up, as Nicholas sat stunned, wiping away the tears.

After that, Nicholas was showered with honors, including a knighthood for services to humanity. Known as the British Schindler, he met the Queen multiple times and received the Pride of Britain Award for Lifetime Achievement, both for saving refugee children and working with Mencap to improve the lives of people with cognitive differences. There are multiple statues of him in Prague and the UK, and his story was the subject of three films.

Nicholas Winton died in Britain in July 2015, at age 106. Today there are tens of thousands of people who owe their lives to Nicholas Winton.

For saving hundreds of Jewish children, we honor Nicholas Winton as this week’s Thursday Hero.

Accidental Talmudist

[365days365movies]

May 9, 2021: A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001) (Recap: Part One)

Welcome to the future.

At this point, we’ve mostly looked at the past, present, or the near-future (as in, the next ten years, if that). Additionally, we’ve looked either at nonexistent technology in a contemporary setting, or an extension of existing technology taken to a logical next step. But no more. No more realism, no more real-world rules, and nothing that we’re even close to in this reality.

Well...mostly.

That’s genuinely impressive, not gonna lie. Anyway, yeah, from here forwards (for a bit), we’ll be looking at the future and futuristic technology. Now, there are a couple of ways in which these films tend to go. The first big way that we tend to represent the future in film is the same way we always have: flying cars, futuristic technology, smart houses, and robots.

Now, there are countless examples of this future, and it always changes a bit depending on the present. Which, yeah, makes sense. After all, what I’m doing right now, at this moment, would’ve been seen by many people as a massive technological achievement, even around the time that I was born. Which, yes, I’m old, deal with it (because I can’t). Anyway, the way that this begins is with the first major filmed view of a seemingly idyllic future: Fritz Lang’s 1927 film Metropolis.

The overly mechanized (and politically dystopic) society seen in this film, as well as the visuals and technology, would inform our ideas of the future throughout the next century. Multiple themes and common objects reoccur throughout futuristic fiction. You know the stuff I’m talking about. Flying cars, automatic food machines, robotic assistants, video watches, holograms, jetpacks, so on and so forth.

But here’s the thing about the future. It’s always ahead of us, and eventually...well, we’ve gotten to most of those things to some degree. Either they already exist...

...or is currently being developed.

Well, one of them we’re still working on. And the development of more advanced AI is something we have yet to perfect, or even fully develop. However, the development of A.I. (and the consequences of that technology) are ALL OVER science fiction. Sometimes, they’re merely used for flavor to help establish the futuristic setting.

Sometimes, they’re characters with their own agency and conflicts, which may or may not define the plot. In these cases, they’re often simply there to back up the main human characters, and help with their development, and sometimes their own. You know, manic pixie dream robots.

And then, possibly most often, they’re the abject villains of the piece. they can be mysterious alien technology, like in The Day the Earth Stood Still, or a man-made danger that turns on the race that created and/or abused it.

But then, on occasion, an A.I. is given the chance to develop as a character, without being used to define the development of a human character. Sometimes, the question of what life truly means is raised through these characters, and we become attached to them outside of any other character. This isn’t nearly as common as the others, but it’s definitely not unheard of.

And for the record...things don’t often go well for those AIs. But still, some of those characters have quite a lasting impact. So, there’s quite a lot of potential for this type of character, from a dramatic standpoint. And that potential leads us to the guy who made this.

I WILL MAKE A JURASSIC PARK REFERENCE AS OFTEN AS POSSIBLE

Steven Spielberg gives us today’s entry, and this director of a classic science fiction story about science gone awry teamed up with the director of a science fiction film where an artificial intelligence went awry. You know, this thing.

I didn’t forget about HAL. And I won’t forget about him later, either.

Director Stanley Kubrick is pretty well-know for his mind-bending films, especially The Shining and 2001: A Space Odyssey. But he also worked with Spielberg on this film before his death in 1999, as this was one of his dream projects for many years, and the two directors were well-known friends.

And so, eventually, Spielberg was given the reins from Kubrick, and results were...mixed. It’s funny, because I’ve never actually seen this movie, but I remember it through its surprisingly widespread ad campaign. I used to go to NYC as a kid a lot, and there was a massive building-side plastered with the iconic logo of this movie. So, I’ve been hovering around this movie for a long time. Enough navel-gazing!

SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

Recap (Part One)

It is, unsurprisingly, the future. A marrator informs us that climate change has caused the ice caps to melt, and global flooding drowns several countries. You could say that it’s a...Waterworld.

I genuinely considered watching that movie at some point, and then I decided I liked myself to much to watch 2 hours of Kevin Costner’s emotionless acting. Granted, it’s not much better now, listening to the emotionless acting of...

Professor Allen Hobby (William Hurt) is a straight-up sociopath. OK, technically, he’s a robotics engineer, but dude’s making a speech, right? He talks about how far robots have come, dissing my boi Deep Blue in the process, and notes that pain-memory response can also be demonstrated by robots. He proves this by stabbing a woman in his audience, like RIGHT through the hand. Jesus, man! Why the hell would you do that?

Oh. Holy shit, I got fooled. Advanced technology indeed. But OK, so Sheila’s a robot, and a very advanced one...to us. But Hobby wants more, and proposes to his workers to make a robot that can really TRULY love. And through love may come a true subconscious, which means making a robot that can dream. And what better robot to make than a robot child? After all, all child conception requires a license in this futuristic world, so many childless couples are yearning for a child.

Which is why, twenty months later, the first robot child is offered to Henry and Monica Swinton (Sam Robards and Frances O’Connor), a couple...with a child. Um. Guys. You JUST SAID that there are legit childless couples who need a child, and those people would be best suited to love that robot child back (a VERY GOOD question raised by one of Hobby’s subordinates). So why give it to a couple whose son is still alive? Yeah, he’s got a rare disease that they don’t have a cure for yet, and is currently in cryostasis, BUT THEY HAVE A KID! Surely, that’s going to be a potential emotional conflict! And what if the kid wakes up or some shit? This is a TERRIBLE goddamn idea. Think this shit through, guys.

And yet...

This is David (Haley Joel Osment), Cybertronics’ first child robot, brought home by Henry to essentially replace their son. Which is AMAZINGLY FUCKING TONE-DEAF AND INSANE, GODDAMN. That’s extraordinarily messed up. And, for the record, I totally get what Spielberg’s going for, but Jesus Christ, man. This was a terrible way to go about this. And it gets fucking WORSE.

See, Henry (who actually works for Cybertronics) tells Monica that, once they sign the papers and complete the updates, David will imprint on them and see him as their true parents, loving them unconditionally. Which...yeah, fuck, that’s an entire DUMP TRUCK of ethics issues right there. And, while we’re at it, David is...creepy as shit. I mean it, dude, Haley Joel Osment is a VERY good child actor, but he’s laying on the creepy robot child thing THICK. And yeah, this is BEFORE he imprints on them. Jesus fuck, man, there’s a scene where the still uncomfortable Monica is outside of a glass door, and he looks back at her THROUGH THE DOOR like a goddamn SERIAL KILLER.

And I gotta tell ya, dude does not lay off that creepy-ass dial one iota. And for that matter, the music by John Williams ISN’T FUCKING HELPING. LISTEN to this shit, and imagine a robot child that you don’t know wandering around your house. It’s amazingly fucking creepy.

AND IT JUST. KEEPS. GETTING. WORSE. There’s a scene where they’re all at dinner, right, and David’s just staring at them as they eat, mimicking their actions. After all, he’s a robot, he can’t actually eat or drink anything because of his internal working. And then, out of FUCKING NOWHERE, he starts laughing like the FUCKING JOKER, and it scares the EVER-LOVING SHIT OUT OF ME. And somehow, they laugh alongside him, in the never-ending Stockholm syndrome that is this movie! And as soon as its over, he just STOPS laughing, spontaneously. Fuck me, man, I’m tempted to stop watching here and now, and I’m only TWENTY MINUTES IN! I need a fucking break.

And after that...OF COURSE she decides to activate his imprinting protocols to make him, let me remind you, LOVE HIM FOREVER! She reads out a series of words, and after “FREIGHT CAR”, he knows his mission is to kill the Prime Minister of Sokovia. But first, he’ll settle down and love Monica unconditionally (again, FOREVER), calling her Mommy and making me shit my pants in fear. IT WASN’T ME, IT WAS FUCKING DAVID

Oh, and by the way, isn’t it kinda shitty to do that without Henry being involved AT ALL? Like, cool, he has unconditional maternal love, but Henry wasn’t a part of that conditioning at all! And he still refers to him as “Henry” instead of Dad! However, Henry definitely doesn’t care about that, because he still sees David as only a robot. Hey, guys, maybe using these two as your first experiment with a robot child WAS A TERRIBLE FUCKING IDEA, YOU IDIOTS! No wonder William Hurt was cast as Thunderbolt Ross in the MCU. Already shown he can play a character with shitty ideas before.

Anyway, after this terrible series of events, David prevents the parents from leaving one night due to his childlike antics. When Monica goes to comfort him, he asks how long she’ll live, and tells her that he hope she never dies, a COMPLETELY NORMAL THING TO SAY. Look, I get that he’s a robot, but only a goddamn emotionless sociopath would program emotional responses like this into a robot. Which, given what we’ve seen of Hobby, makes sense.

In response, she gives him Teddy (Jack Angel), a technologically advanced teddy bear with sentience, a personality, and the voice of Astrotrain from The Transformers TV series. Because, yes, I am THAT MUCH of a goddamn nerd.

Soon after, the house gets a phone call, which David receives...literally. He takes the phone and allows it to speak through him. It turns out that, shock beyond shocks, THEIR SON IS CURED! Yeah, fuck. Maybe giving David to a family with a STILL LIVING SON is a fucking ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLE IDEA, for about a thousand reasons.

And, fucking understandably, Martin Swinton (Jake Thomas) is a little upset to find out that he’s essentially been replaced by a robot kid. Although, to be fair, he’s also kind of a dick to David, holding his humanity over him and treating him as a toy that he attempts to manipulate and bully. My Lord, this is a massively stupid idea. And Martin immediately shows his dickishness by asking his mother to read Carlo Collodi’s The Adventures of Pinocchio to them. Which is meant to be a punishment for Pinocchio. However, of course, David loves it.

Still, however, there’s trouble in paradise for David, as he tries to compete with Martin for being a real boy, and eats spinach at dinner one evening. Despite Teddy’s mildly ominous warning to him (”YOU WILL BREAK”), he keeps eating until he basically has a stroke and breaks, forcing him to be repaired by some of Cybertronics’ technicians. Monica has a bit of a break down as a result, which Martin notices. This causes Martin to go pure supervillain, manipulating David to do creepy things in order to insert doubt into Monica about David. Jesus, Martin’s a creepy kid, too. No wonder Monica grew to be cool with David, her actual son is a FUCKING SOCIOPATHIC MONSTER! Are there ANY truly normal people in this world? IS THIS WHAT THE FUTURE IS?

Martin convinces David to cut a lock of Monica’s hair while she’s sleeping. And lemme tell ya, a little boy holding scissors over someone while they sleep is not exactly comforting. Henry agrees, and after stopping him, believes that they need to return him. Monica disagrees, knowing that they’ll destroy him if brought back. But David, ever the semi-sociopath himself, ignores any signs of humanity in David and dismisses Monica's feelings for him entirely. He also says this thing about “IF HE CAN BE PROGRAMMED TO LOVE, CAN NOT HE BE PROGRAMM-ED TO HATE?”, which...no. No, he cannot. He didn’t learn to love, he was programmed to. And, again, that’s ethically FUCKED, but taking that into account...no. HE WASN’T PROGRAMMED TO HATE, HENRY. Goddamn, buddy, use your head here.

It’s Martin’s birthday, and his friends at the pool party expose David to the fun world of anti-robot (or Mecha) racism, and test to see if he has Damage Avoidance Systems by threatening him with a knife. And he does. Buuut, when those systems kick in, he goes to the nearest point of safety to keep himself safe. That point is, unfortunately, Martin, whom he gets behind...and accidentally drags into the pool.

Thing is, because of Martin’s recent illness, he can’t exactly swim, meaning that David almost drowns him. When Henry and other partygoers go to save him, they abandon David in the pool completely. And now, David’s fucked. Because although this situation isn’t even a little bit his fault, he also just nearly killed Martin. And so, after seeing notes that he’s been writing to her, Monica offers to take for a “ride in the country”. Which definitely means something good. In reality, she’s planning on taking him back to Cybertronics. But once in the car, there’s a change in plans. And hear me out...it’s arguably far more horrifying.

She decides to abandon him in the woods completely, despite how hard it is for her to leave him. She’s sparing him from death, sure, but also throwing him into a world he doesn’t understand, and for reasons that he doesn’t understand. It’s genuinely terrible. And then...yeah, she leaves him forever, to an uncertain future.

End Act One.

I think this is a good place to stop. It’s early, and I need more coffee to handle this shit. See you in Part Two. Of Three. Yup. It’s a long one.

[chiseler]

Tales of the Unexpected:  SANTA CLAUS

Most of my life I’d been haunted by an image—five seconds from a film I could not name: Santa, in someone’s living room on Christmas Eve, fires a toy cannon at a demon’s ass. That’s all, but it stuck with me for decades. The only thing I was sure about was that it came from a film my father had taken me to see when I was four or five. There was snow in the theater parking lot.

It clearly wasn’t a typical holiday film, so as the years progressed I decided it must have been Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (co-starring Jamie Farr and Pia Zadora as martians), but I was mistaken. There are no demons in that movie. I asked my dad, but he had no idea what the hell I was talking about. Then, as the universe would have it, when I was well into middle age the film was placed in my hands by someone  who had no idea I’d spent much of my life looking for it. Seeing the film in its entirety for the first time in 40 years, I finally understood why things might have turned out the way they did.

When the conversation rolls around to bad Christmas movies, there’s of course a broad spectrum from which to choose. Given that nearly every Christmas movie ever made is insufferable to some degree, it’s generally easier, I’ve found,  to break things down into categories that stretch from the simply godawful (Jingle All the Way) to the agonizingly painful (A Very Brady Christmas or that Marlo Thomas remake of It’s a Wonderful Life) to the merely baffling (An Ewoks Christmas). Of course there are some people who think they can bring the conversation to an abrupt end by pulling out Santa Claus Conquers the Martians as the last word on holiday cinema. There’s simply nothing more to say.

Oh, but that’s far too simple. There’s another level out there. Something that reaches far beyond banal categorizations like “good” and “bad” and even “weird,” deep into the almost unfathomable territory of “brain damaging” and “utterly terrifying,” and a number of adjectives that have yet to be discovered. Films that cannot and should not be called “bad” no matter how easy it would make thinking for the smug hipsters in the Mystery Science Theater crowd. These are films that come from another plane, another universe, another way of thinking, and for that they remain fascinating, and cannot be so easily dismissed.

In the 1950s and ‘60s, K. Gordon Murray was an American film producer and distributor who made a decent living for himself by picking up the rights to foreign genre pictures (mostly from Mexico), dubbing them into English, and renting them to U.S. theaters. English-speaking audiences can thank Murray for The Brainiac and Robot vs.The Aztec Mummy.

In 1956 he bought the rights to a children’s holiday picture directed by René Cardona, a man better known for horror and exploitation pictures like Survive! and Night of the Bloody Apes. Instead of widespread distribution, Murray limited the film to short (two or three day) runs around the holidays, when the film would only be shown as a children’s matinee. In retrospect I have to wonder if he limited viewings that way because he knew what kind of effect the film would have on people.

Santa Claus sounds about as innocuous as they come. Who would even pay attention to a title like that?  It’s only when you note the shrill, almost frantic tone of some of the taglines attached to the film that you begin to get some sense that there’s something else going on here—that this isn’t another Rankin/Bass production:

Bursting upon our BIG SCREEN in all the colors of the rainbow… a prize-winning blue ribbon treat for old and young alike! Here’s something for the whole family to see together!

Another tagline makes it sound even more ominous:

See All the Weird and Wonderful Characters of Make-Believe! The Fantastic Crystal Work-Room of the Happy Elves! The Fabulous Realm of the Candy-Stick Palaces!

Those families who weren’t scared away by those dire warnings were never the same again.

René Cardona

In  Cardona’s vision, Santa (José Elías Moreno)  lives in a cloud kingdom in space, positioned in a stationary orbit above the North Pole. Instead of elves, Santa has collected groups of children from all corners of the world—North and South America, Europe, Asia, Africa. It’s unclear who these children belong to or if they’re in space willingly, but they open the film with a long recital of traditional songs from each nation.

Ten minutes later we cut to Hell. Although this happens in most Christmas movies, few do it so literally. There amid the flames, Satan informs a minor and bumbling demon named Pitch (José Luis Aguirre ‘Trotsky’) that he is to turn all of the children on Earth evil in order to anger “that old goat Santa Claus” and show the people of the world “who their true master is.”

We are then introduced to three storylines: a lonely rich boy whose parents neglect him, a poor girl whose single mother can barely support them both, and three young thugs. Behind each story, we hear Santa’s echoed laughter. Santa laughs through the entire film, often at scenes of misery and despair. It’s unclear why.

Finally and centrally, we see the core of Santa’s orbiting kingdom—an observatory equipped with a collection of surveillance devices that would put the NSA to shame. As the narrator (Murray himself) describes it:

This is Santa’s Magic Observatory. What wonderful instruments! The Ear Scope! The Teletalker, that knows everything! The Cosmic Telescope! The Master Eye! Nothing that happens on Earth is unknown to Santa Claus!

He’s not kidding, either. Santa can see anyone he chooses merely by thinking of them, listen to what they’re saying, even watch their dreams, and these are powers he abuses freely.

There is no reason to attempt to describe the plot any further. It’s not an issue. Visually, however, the film is a thing of deranged  wonder, reminiscent of Japanese films that would be made ten or fifteen years later. It’s a world of remarkable and sometimes frightening imagination. The telescope features a large, roving eyeball instead of a lens. Santa’s sleigh is actually a giant wind-up toy, the living reindeer replaced with carousel reindeer made of white plastic. The color palate throughout the film (if you can find a decent print) is intense. And the film’s multiple dream sequences are, well, pretty jaw-dropping.

It’s also a remarkably subversive film—which intertwined both with the visuals as well as the director’s background, may be no surprise at all. Along with the kidnapped children he’s using as slave labor, the cannon he fires at the demon’s ass, and  Santa’s often inappropriate laughter, which snakes throughout much of the soundtrack, there’s Merlin, another of Santa’s employees. Merlin runs a drug lab, and on Christmas Eve has just developed a “magic powder” that will “give people a sound sleep and fill them with wonderful thoughts and good intentions.”

Santa is perfectly willing to deliver babies to children who request little brothers or sisters, and one good little boy is set to receive “an atomic lab and a machine gun.” And then of course there’s the role of the demons here, in a world in which Santa and his toys have replaced Christianity.

It’s a film that’s often mocked by fools for its cheap sets and bad acting, without pausing to think about what’s really going on here—the kind of twisted, alien imagination at work, or the ideas that Cardona is sneaking in under their smug noses. It’s a deeply strange and disturbing work, a visionary work on a minuscule budget, and one that says more about the holidays than we may care to think about.

Maybe that’s why my dad has blocked it out of his memory, and why I spent a lifetime trying to track it down.

by Jim Knipfel

[introvertguide]

Goodfellas (1990); AFI #92

The current film up for review is Scorsese’s famous crime drama, Goodfellas (1990). It is the story of Henry Hill and how he lived through the psychotic and neurotic life of a mafia member. The film was nominated for six academy awards including Best Picture and Best Director, but only took one trophy home for Best Supporting Actor (Joe Pesci). I watched the movie 3 times over the last 2 weeks and my opinion changed from one opinion to another as I watched each time and I want to discuss why. First of all, however, we need to do summarize the plot with a standard warning...

SPOILER ALERT!!!!! I HAVE ALREADY GIVEN AWAY THE PLOT IN PREVIOUS POSTS AND I AM ABOUT TO DO IT AGAIN EVEN MORE SO!!!! CHECK OUT THE MOVIE FOR YOURSELF IF YOU HAVEN’T ALREADY!!!

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The movie begins with three men checking the trunk of their car and finding that the body in the trunk was actually alive. Tommy (Joe Pesci) stabs the man multiple times and then Jimmy (Robert DeNiro) shoots him multiple times. Henry (Ray Liotta) looks on and explains his life in voice over and how the men all got to this position. 

In 1955, a young man named Henry Hill becomes enamored with the criminal life and Mafia presence in his working class Italian-American neighborhood in Brooklyn. He gets a job working for local mob boss Paul "Paulie" Cicero (Paul Sorvino) and is introduced to the entire family. Most important were associates James "Jimmy" Conway, an Irish truck hijacker, and Tommy DeVito, a fellow juvenile delinquent. Henry begins as an errand boy for Jimmy, gradually working his way up to more serious crimes. The three associates spend most of their nights in the 1960s at the Copacabana nightclub where they can impress women. Henry starts dating Karen Friedman (Lorraine Bracco), a Jewish woman who is friends with Tommy’s current date. She is initially troubled by Henry's criminal activities but is eventually seduced by his glamorous lifestyle. She marries him, despite her parents' disapproval.

We follow Henry and his rise in the mafia along with Jimmy and his growing paranoia and Tommy with his constant chip on the shoulder. In 1970, Billy Batts, a made man in the Gambino crew who was recently released from prison, repeatedly insults Tommy at a nightclub owned by Henry; Tommy and Jimmy then beat, stab and shoot him to death. The unsanctioned murder of a made man invites retribution; realizing this, Jimmy, Henry, and Tommy cover up the murder by burying the body in Upstate New York. Six months later, however, Jimmy learns that the burial site is slated for development, prompting them to exhume and relocate the decomposing corpse. At this time, Jimmy begins watching his back, Tommy feels invincible, and Henry takes on girlfriend while Karen stays at home with the kids.

Fast forward to 1974, Karen finds out about the infidelity and harasses Henry's mistress Janice and holds Henry at gunpoint. Henry moves in with Janice, but Paulie insists that he should return to Karen after collecting a debt from a gambler in Tampa with Jimmy. The mafia is all about family and there is no divorce and appearances must be kept. Things don’t go as planned because, upon returning, Jimmy and Henry are arrested after being turned in by the gambler's sister, an FBI typist, and they receive ten-year prison sentences. In order to support his family on the outside, Henry has drugs smuggled in by Karen and sells them to a fellow inmate from Pittsburgh. In 1978, Henry is paroled and expands this cocaine business against Paulie's orders, soon involving Jimmy and Tommy.

In 1979, Jimmy organizes a crew to raid the Lufthansa vault at the JFK Airport, stealing several millions in cash and jewelry. After some members purchase expensive items against Jimmy's orders and the getaway truck is found by police, he has most of the crew murdered. This part of the film is based on a true story Jimmy, in fact killed almost a dozen people in attempt to keep things silent. In his voiceover narration, as dead bodies are being discovered all over the city, Henry theorizes that Jimmy would have killed them anyway rather than share the profits of the heist. Tommy and Henry are spared by Jimmy since they had worked so close together. Also, Henry wasn’t actually involved in robbery and Tommy is going to be a made man and Jimmy wants the connection. Tommy is eventually deceived into believing he is going to be made, but he is murdered on the way to the ceremony, leaving Jimmy devastated.

By 1980, Henry has become a nervous wreck from cocaine use and insomnia. He notices that a helicopter is following him but is trying to visit with his family and deliver drugs at the same time. He sets up a drug deal with his Pittsburgh associates, but is arrested by narcotics agents and jailed. After bailing him out, Karen explains that she flushed $60,000 worth of cocaine down the toilet to prevent FBI agents from finding it during their raid, leaving them virtually penniless. Henry has nowhere to go so he returns to Paulie to ask for help and admits to dealing under the table. Feeling betrayed by Henry's drug dealing, Paulie gives him $3,200 and ends their association. Henry meets Jimmy at a diner and is asked to travel on a hit assignment, but the novelty of such a request makes him suspicious. Henry realizes that Jimmy plans to have him and Karen killed, prompting his decision to become an informant and enroll, with his family, in the witness protection program. He gives sufficient testimony to have Paulie and Jimmy arrested and convicted. Henry is grateful to be alive, but he is forced out of his gangster life and has to readjust to normal life once again; he narrates, "I'm an average nobody. I get to live the rest of my life like a schnook."

The end title cards state that Henry is still a protected witness as of 1990, but that he was arrested in 1987 in Seattle for narcotics conspiracy, receiving five years' probation. He has been clean since then. He and Karen separated in 1989 after 25 years of marriage, while Paulie died the previous year in Fort Worth Federal Prison at age 73 from respiratory illness. Jimmy is serving a 20 years to life sentence in a New York prison for murder, in which he will be paroled in 2004, when he will be 78 years old.

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Even more of an update from the end title cards, Henry Hill and Karen Hill divorced in 2001 and then Henry remarried and fathered one more child. Karen and her kids have lived in hiding and fear they will never escape possible retribution. Jimmy died in prison in 1996 before he was eligible for parole and Henry died in 2012 of cancer. With their history of explosive violence, I am kind of glad that all three of the main men (Tommy, Henry, and Jimmy) have shuffled off this mortal coil.

So I ended up watching this film three times in the last couple of weeks and I liked it less and less each time. So many people have such good things to say about the movies (including me), yet what the movie is most celebrated for is what I like the least. The first time I watched was with my housemates and they talked throughout the movie and laughed at the antics of Joe Pesci. I feel that many viewers enjoyed that crazy performance, and this was probably the reason for the Best Supporting Actor award. I am sure that capturing the volatile nature of a lunatic mafia hitman is very difficult and deserves praise.

I then watched it twice more to take notes on the different camera shots and then to compare to the real story of the Lucchese family and Lufthansa heist. I was not disappointed with the camera shots since Scorsese tends to let his actors go wild and then move the camera in interesting ways to capture the action while telling the story he wants to tell. He uses extreme close up shots and the vertigo trucking shot to represent the paranoia of Henry Hill and Jimmy Burke. He used the tracking shot to bring the audience into the world of the mafia man using the the character of Karen Hill as the “fish-out-of-water.” The choice of music was great including using the Sid Vicious rendition of the classic “My Way” popularized by Frank Sinatra. The colors were so bright in the beginning and became so bleak and washed out by the end. Fantastic cinematography and direction. 

By the last watch, I realized that I did not like Tommy DeVito (real life name Tommy DeSimone) because he made everybody around him scared. It was like having a pet feral tiger and just hoping that he never turned on you. He was not loyal at all. In actuality, he tried to rape Karen Hill while she was married to Henry. He really killed a young bartender named Spider because Jimmy was teasing him. He brutally attacked and murdered out of anger because he was completely unhinged. Just watching Joe Pesci play the part made me anxious and I wanted him to go away every time he appeared on screen. I guess this makes him a great actor, but it also doesn’t make me want to watch his movies. 

I brought this up with the Godfather movies on the list, but do Brooklyn based Italian-Americans act like these people in the movies? Constant noise in which men treat women terribly and the women go off to the kitchen and make food? I can except the loud large families and the giant shared meals, but I sure hope that the poor treatment of women and the huge lack of equality between the genders is fake or at least outdated. I have met some really nice Italian people who are nothing like the people in these films, so I believe it is a stereotype (if this is true, then Hollywood needs to stop promoting these stereotypes).

A final positive note towards the acting, I thought that Lorraine Bracco did a wonderful job as Karen Hill. She played a sheltered girl that wanted a little danger and got way more than she ever wanted. There is a scene in which she realizes that her husband is cheating and that she and her children are miserable and unprotected. She wakes up Henry with a gun in his face, but she can’t kill him because she wants that drama in her life. She is treated horribly and at one point barely walks away from a hit set up by Jimmy, yet she still stays with Henry until she is forced into the boring life of Witness Protection and she leaves him. After wading through the history of all the different characters from the movie, I actually find her story to be the most interesting.

In the end, I still want an answer for the same two questions. Does this film belong on the AFI top 100? Absolutely. It is a well made movie with a strong vision about one version of growing up in Brooklyn and how searching to realize the American dream can lead you down dark and dirty paths. Great vision by Scorsese and a well told story. Do I recommend it? Not really. I recommend doing the research on these American mobsters and get a feel for what these people were really like. I recommend checking out clips on YouTube that show the filming techniques that have become hallmarks of great directors. But don’t watch these portrayals and laugh. They are not fun or funny like they come off in the movie, these are horrible (yet interesting) people that should serve as a lesson/warning and not have their lives glamourized by Hollywood. 

[iwach4n]

this is basically an AU me and @snazzieyama have been talking about where haikyuu characters are the actors in Hamilton, and i haven’t been able to get it out of my mind so have an obnoxiously long set of headcanons about it

(i wrote this listening to the soundtrack, proper jamming i tell you)

CAST LIST (hear me out on some of these)

alexander hamilton - hinata shoyo

aaron burr - akaashi keiji

eliza schuyler - kageyama tobio

angelica schuyler - atsumu miya

peggy schuyler - yachi hitoka

john laurens / phillip hamilton - nishinoya yuu

marquis de laffayette - bokuto koutarou

hercules mulligan - tanaka ryuunosuke

george washington - sawamura daichi

thomas jefferson - tsukishima kei

james madison - yamaguchi tadashi

king george III - oikawa tooru

maria reynolds - kozume kenma

james reynolds / the doctor - kuroo tetsurou

samuel seabury - sugawara koushi

charles lee - lev haiba

george eacker - yaku morisuke

the bullet - shimizu kiyoko

HEADCANONS

hinata auditioned for hamilton despite having literally no theatre experience besides like school musicals and like one community theatre show. he was cast in ensemble at first but worked his way up to hamilton’s understudy and then the official hamilton

tsukishima auditioned for burr. he was salty that he was cast as someone else (his dynamic with yamaguchi was too good to pass up and akaashi had a better voice for Wait For It) at first but then he immediately clashed with hinata and took great pleasure with being able to roast him every night

in Alexander Hamilton, the laffayette/jefferson and mulligan/madison parts switch actors every show so bokuto, tsukishima, tanaka and yamaguchi all get to do it. sometimes they switch it at the last minute because “please dude my grandma’s come to watch i need to be on stage as much as possible”

tanaka has the Best fun on stage. he never fails to get the crowd pumped, he is jumping around and bringing so much energy, especially in his part in yorktown. it makes you mad that its a musical and you can’t start jumping up and singing along

suga was cast as seabury because he was perfectly good at the role and they preferred kageyama as eliza, which he auditioned for originally. he’s really good at it but it took way too long for Farmer Refuted to come together because him and hinata kept bursting out laughing. they both consider each other, like, the least threatening people ever, and they couldn’t take it seriously whenever hinata would have to get in suga’s face

SOMETIMES IT STILL HAPPENS!! if you watch carefully, you might see one of their lips twitch while they try to keep a straight face. the minute suga gets off stage, someone always has some cushion or piece of clothing he can laugh into because once he started laughing while his mic was still on

THE BIGGEST CAST JOKE IS ABOUT THE HEIGHT DIFFERENCE BETWEEN HAMILTON AND ELIZA!! kageyama looks so much taller than hinata (coz he is but its so noticeable when they’re alone on stage) and they torment hinata with pictures where it just looks ridiculous

oikawa always absolutely steals the show. he’s so dramatic, but he’s also one of the most simped-for cast members and sometimes he’ll throw a wink into the audience in the middle of You’ll Be Back to make things more interesting. 

also the bits in act 2 where he just comes in to watch and laugh at everything that’s happening? he’s so fun! just because he’s not the main focus of the scene doesn’t mean he isn’t gonna make the most hilarious facial expressions. half the audience ends up focusing on him instead.

daichi is the most commanding washington literally ever. he just comes on and he immediately takes over the stage. he barely has to try to give the character the air of authority. literally the perfect actor for the role

he’s also been in the show the longest. was cast as washington right off the bat and has been doing the role for multiple years. it makes him the unofficial dad of the cast and the go-to for advice since he’s seen a bunch of people do every other role

the “CALL ME SON ONE MORE TIME” line was another one that took too long for them to do without laughing. daichi has been doing this for ages but when he practices with hinata, he can’t help but laugh because this is the kid who he witnessed choke on hello kitty gummies with five minutes until the show began (back when hinata was in ensemble). hinata does the line too well and its hard to take it seriously at first

akaashi singing Wait For It is the literal most beautiful part of the show. he’s an amazing actor and his voice is incredible and it’s the sort of thing you could rewatch on loop for an entire week non-stop without getting bored

bokuto got akaashi the audition for burr, and even though their characters don’t interact too much their chemistry is really good. The “everyone give it up for everyone’s favourite fighting frenchman!” line is so genuine they just really admire each other as actors

lev auditioned for lee for the sole purpose of getting the line “i’m a general, WHEEEE”. he got the role mostly because he was just,,, really good at that line

atsumu refused to interact with anyone outside of rehearsals and performances for a solid month. the instagram of the cast had loads of photos on the story that were just mugshots of him saying “day 24, atsumu still won’t talk to us :(” whenever any of the cast take over it for a day

akaashi is the second most simped-for actor in the cast (after oikawa). you can literally feel people in the audience swooning in Dear Theodosia because he’s just so sweet

when yachi found out she was the only girl in the main cast she was literally terrified. she latched onto kiyoko really quickly and there’s a ridiculous amount of pictures that every fan has seen of those two together

kiyoko is really mesmerising as the bullet!! when she’s lifted her form is just stunning she just looks really nice okay-

every wondered whether kageyama would be like,,, actually good because he just seems kind of awkward off stage, but the minute he’s on stage and following a script, he’s like the perfect eliza

nishinoya has the perfect range for both laurens and phillip. fun and friendly yet still principled and serious rebel? check. small sweet nine year old? check. charismatic flirt? check. heartbreakingly dying from a gunshot wound? check.

tsukishima is a really unique jefferson. he’s not as flamboyant as the role usually is, but he’s super sassy to make up for it. it’s really refreshing and SO fun to watch. “uh,,, france?” becomes “france.” with a ‘are you stupid’ expression

yamaguchi wasn’t expecting to get anything past ensemble but he came in to audition with tsukishima and he is so good at what few lines he has. “which I wrote!” is said with such a scandalised tone, it gets a laugh every time

everyone who knew kenma before thought he’d be too awkward to do maria but he is actually really good once he gets past the initial awkwardness, he manages to portray her like a victim really well

i’ve already done like two of these so here’s some more scenes that took too long before they didn’t burst out laughing: eliza teaching phillip to play piano in Take A Break (just imagine nishinoya and kageyama doing it i can’t-), the duel in Ten Duel Commandments (the height difference between nishinoya and lev made them laugh every time they turned around), 90% of Say No To This but especially the kiss (kenma would just stop and get off like ‘no, i can’t, i can’t do this’ every time it was about to happen while hinata just started cackling)

part of the reason noya got cast as phillip as well as laurens was because he’s one of the only people who auditioned who was shorter than hinata

in rehearsals, akaashi has fallen off the table from The Room Where It Happens because they couldn’t time him jumping while the tablecloth was pulled off. there’s a compilation of the falls on youtube, no one knows who recorded them, let alone who posted it (it was kuroo)

speaking of kuroo, he takes his like five lines and he runs with them. he’s awesome as james reynolds but he’s also the fandoms favourite instagram of the cast because he just posts all the backstage shenanigans. he’s somehow always recording whenever something is going wrong.

he also teases kenma relentlessly about how their characters are married, but kenma is having none of it. it always goes like “awe we’re married” “,,, you’re literally abusive” or “come on, do it for your husband” “i’m cheating on you”

(i stopped here to jam to That Part of Hurrican. i wrote my way out hell i wrote my way to revolution i was louder than the crack in the bell i wrote eliza love letters until she fell-)

bokuto managed to rap Guns And Ships first try. he listened to it like twice, read the lyrics, and he could immediately do it. he took ages to do a convincing french accent though, and it pained everyone

TSUKISHIMA COULDN’T DO THE FAST PART OF WASHINGTON ON YOUR SIDE AND HAD TO ASK BOKUTO FOR HELP

bokuto is just,,, such a good laffayette. he’s jumping all over the place, flexing his muscles while he does the fast raps without looking out of breath at all. it seems almost impossible

also!!!! kuroo has a ridiculous amount of videos of bokuto backstage fortnite dancing to serious songs like Burn or Its Quiet Uptown

kageyama in Burn!!! heartbreaking and beautiful but he burns his hand on the letter too often. he’s gotten used to it at this point so he only slightly flinches when the flames touch his hand. its worrying

congratulations was almost brought back because atsumu really likes it and he absolutely kills it. they recorded him singing it in like a studio and everything because its just that good

when noya found out yaku was playing eacker he was so happy because they’re both short and he already looks ridiculous and tiny enough in the first duel

tsukishima will never admit how much fun he has with “southern motherfucking democratic republicans!!!” but its so clear his eyes literally shine (he kind of carries that line coz yamaguchi and akaashi are a lot more mellow)

oikawa once got dared to fortnite dance in reynolds pamphlet when he’s throwing the one singular sheet of paper. he was going to do it but the directors found out about it and literally threatened to fire him if he did it (they did it in a rehearsal to make up for it)

you know that bit in Your Obedient Servant where its like “careful how you proceed good man, intemperate indeed good man, answer for the accusations i lay at your feet or prepare to bleed good man”? literal chills from the look on akaashi’s face when he does it

whenever other cast members get food gifts from fans and they leave them unattended atsumu will always steal them. only daichi has figured out its him and he has kept quiet on two conditions - he leaves his alone, and he gets half of all the cakes

sometimes yachi just likes to lie down in the middle of the spinny floor and spin to destress. yamaguchi joins her sometimes.

there’s always a ton of people waiting at stage door, and kuroo has made it his mission to come out first and announce everyone as they leave. people play along with it and cheer for every person. some of the cast (mainly oikawa and bokuto) make it super dramatic and do massive bows as they walk out. kageyama never fails to look bewildered despite it happening every day

oikawa chills in full king gear backstage way before and way after he needs to. like half of his instagram is selfies is him in it doing dramatic poses. he’s broken the crown too many times because it fell off his head

hinata sometimes subconsciously does the My Shot dance while he’s going about his life. he can’t escape

they can be sorted into three groups: is the literal sweetest baby to their fans and is kind of shocked they even exist, adores having fans and fully expects them to exist, and the ‘i appreciate the support but pls leave me alone i want to go home’

i don’t know how to round this off but this is getting too long and its gonna keep on going because i’m listening to the soundtrack as i write. maybe there will be a part 2 one day.

[srta-peppa]

The writing problem of season 4 so far explain by a Literature major in the making (second/third year if someone wants to know) A few disclaimers, One English is not my first language, so please excuse any mistake I made. Second, while one part of the post is facts on how to write something, the other part, it’s my opinion based on my knowledge, as I said before. Third and most important to me, these writing issues made a story terrible and not enjoyable, but we have more significant problems during this season than those I talked about here. PLEASE! GO AND READ POC’S OPINION ON IT!!! TALK AND SHARE THEIR FEELINGS, THEIR POINT OF VIEW, AND THEIR VOICES! This post only means to be an answer to the general writing of any literature story. (In this case wtfock season 4)

Okay, so bear with me…

To write a story, you need first to establish what you will/want to say with this project, why people want to read/watch your story, and how you will do it.

I’m pretty sure most of you had learned in school that stories have a beginning, a conflict/breaking point, and an ending (outcome). This structure is the most commonly used in plot lines for “real life” teens shows. Take Eva’s season as an example.

We have the begging of the season where the writers tell us who Eva is and how her life is now and how it was in the past.

After this, the writers start to build the conflict: Eva feels lonely after losing her old friends, she feels insecure and jealous because of Jonas and Ingrid. She thinks that he cheated on her, and because of that, she ends up cheating on him instead, and now she also has to lie to the boy she loves. All of that is the building of the central conflict in her story.

When all of that is settled, we get to the “knot” of the story. All of these problems that we (the character and us) had until now ended up becoming a conflict that leads to the breaking point. (Jonas finds out about her, and Chris P and some of her new friends don’t support her.)

If we were reading a stand-alone book, movie, or like skam one season x main after the breaking point comes the problems’ resolution. (Eva talks with Jonas, apologizes to him, and opens up about how she felt lately and why she felt like that. She also talks with her new friends and decides she wants to be alone and focus on her friends and being a teenage girl.) And that was the outcome, the ending of the story.

To summarize, we have the beginning (what and why are we watching this story), the built-to of the conflict, the knot and breaking point of the story, and (in regular teen shows) the ending growth of the story. That’s basically how you write a plot.

The next step is the characters. (I’m going to focus on the main characters to make it short)

First, you need to create the characterization of the main character (yes, I know, Haha) To do this, you need to answer these questions:

1) How do they look? 2) How is their personality? 3) What are they interested in? 4) What is their context? Family, friends, their home, the school they go, the place they work, their social-economic situation, their sexuality, etc. (You don’t need to talk about everything. You would write about the ones that matter for your story and your character.) 5) Which is their past, their present, and or their future? You don’t need to answer all of them. (You can, e.g., write about the present of the character and their possible future because the story it’s about someone that fights in their present to get what they want in the future. Or you can write about their past because that is what makes your character do what they do, and be who their are in the present.) Not write about one of these timelines could mean that it’s not essential for the story (e.g., The future on Eva’s season it’s not mentioned because it’s not part of her story), or you can choose not to write about one these timelines because you want the reader to find out at the same time they read/watch the story (e.g., You know the past of the character and their desire for their future so you can discover how it’s their present). To summarize again, you need to create at least two of these timelines moments for your character (have in mind that the future doesn’t need to be five year for here; it could merely be next month, even next week. Same goes for the past.) You write as much as the story needs, and from there, you can write more if you want but never less.

Do you think we finished with the characters? Well… No! That was only the characterization of the main character.

Now you need to write the plotline for your character: Who are they at the beginning, what would happen to them, what its the conflict/breaking point of their personal story, how are they going to solve it, and what growth would they have at the end.

That schema is what most “real life” teen shows, movies, and books have. It’s pretty rare to see the main character having some type of involution at the end, except that we were talking about shows with multiple seasons, more than one movie/book. Even in those cases, if they involution as a character at the end of the season/book, they will have proper growth by the end of the whole story.

How essential or strong your character plotlines is would depend on what your show is telling to the audience. E.g., in action movies, characters’ personals plotlines could be simple and even plain because the main plot is the story itself (also keep in mind that the final growth of the character doesn’t mean they become a better person. It means that what happened in the story changed the previous life of the character in some way. E.g., they end up making new friends or finding out they want to be a firefighter) That was a simple schema for a plotline, commonly used for teen projects. But in some real-life teen shows where the story plot is the same as the character plot (skam), you can find slightly different structures. Take Noora’s season as an example; she has more than one conflict and breaking point during her season. One the relationship with William, and Two the sexual assault. (you could find so much more narrative structures in other kinds of literature)

You would need more or less the same things to write characters such as the love interest, the antagonist, and the villans. Since they are not the narrative point of view, there would always be information that we, as viewers or readers, don’t know about them. (And it’s okay because they are not coprotagonist. They are part of the main character story) Yet these characters are also responsible for what happens in the story. They usually motive a lot of the protagonist’s actions. (e.g., Eva kisses Chris P because she thinks Jonas has cheated on her) To make these characters as attractive as the main, you need to write and create them as much deep as possible (always trying not to outshine the main). The things we don’t know about them should be because the main doesn’t know either (e.g., Isak doesn’t know that Even had bipolarity) and not because of the writer’s lack of creativity.

Okay! Now that we have the plot for the story, the characterization of the central characters, and their personal life plotlines, it comes the most challenging part of writing.  And to be honest, having problems with this doesn’t make a story terrible as much it makes it less enjoyable.

Second characters and places where the story occurs need to have a purpose in the story. And that’s all I’m going to say. These people and places need to have a point in the story. It could be positive, negative, comedy, convenience for the plot, mood-changing, different pov for the protagonist, confident, safe space, conflict, mistake, friendship, and sooo sooo much more. The most important thing is that. Secondary characters and locations were the stories occur should not, by any means, be pointless to the plot.

I know I kinda went all over the place, so if you still here, Thank you! Hahaha. As you just read, that was a summary of how to write a simple real-life plotline—commonly used for comedies, romance, teen shows, kid shows, etc.

If you read everything, I think you could already tell which are the problems with this season. First, what is wtfock trying to tell with this story? We still don’t know. Yeah, sure we have theories, but you CAN’T have your audience making theories about the story you are trying to tell at episode five/ of ten. The hypotheses should be of how you will end this story and not about what it is about. 

What do we learn at the beginning of the season? And what are the conflicts they built upon these past five episodes that would lead to the knot/ breaking point of this season? So far, all the problems we saw have been resolve for better or for worst. In this case, for worst, Moyo’s conflict was resolve without any explication. (how Moyo finds out where she dances? Why did he want to apologize? Why did she say no? why did he fall for her? Why did she fall for him? we don’t even know if she actually falls for him or if she’s using him. She is your main character; these things shouldn’t be a mystery to your audience except that they were a mystery for the protagonist, which in this case made no sense) Zoe’s conflict is already solved too, and how? Why? Was really that little call-out at the party everything that Zoe need to ask for forgiveness? Jens’s mysterious look at the girls. Why? How? If they wanted to create something with that, why didn’t they show us more little details like that one? So we are at the middle of the season, and we don’t know what kind of story we are watching, what is the big conflict we built up all of this time, or which is the climax/breaking point we need to overcome next to our protagonist. And if we would be having all of these questions about a love interest or an antagonist wouldn’t be sooo bad, but WE ARE IN HER POV! Why don’t we know all of these things?

And that’s only talking about the plot! Because what comes now it’s even worse!!! We are in episode six, and we know nothing!!! Nothing!! About the main character? We are in her point of view; there’s no reason why we know so little about the narrator’s character’s life, personality, interests, context, past, future, present. Kato is so poorly written, her characterization so plain that even when we are in her mind and eyes, we know nothing about her. Some people joke about how boring her life was because she was only in four places. Her home, school, work, and dance studio. Why are we only in those places when we are watching a teenager supposed to be an influencer? It wouldn’t be boring if we KNEW why, but do we? no, and I won’t stop saying it; she is the main she should know; therefore, we should know too. (and I don’t even want to think of the possibility of these four places not having an actual reason)

We are in the middle of the season, and Kato’s character, life, and her motives are a mystery, and that should not happen while we are Kato. BUT even if she is a mystery, she’s not an interesting one. And not only because we don’t like her, but also because there is no built-up on her surroundings that led you to be excited to find about it. We barely have other characters asking her question about her personal life and being intrigued by her as a person. If it’s not Kato the influencer or Kato the hot new girl, we had nothing (Really wtfock?)

I could go on and on, but I think the point is that we, as viewers, can’t answer any of the questions needed to write a good story.

Pointless places, pointless characters, pointless conflicts, pointless clips, all of that plus a crazy amount of unknow information makes me actually question how this season could have been approved? How could writers, producers, directors, beta readers, and some more read this and think, yeah, that’s it! Honestly, it confuses me so much that I thought of doing this at the end of the season when we would have the final project because I keep thinking that it’s not possible that somewhere we would find a catch. But, I also think we have seen enough of this season (we are already halfway the end). Season 4 lacks so much of the writing process that I explained above in this post that I can already afford to say this:

Season 4 is horribly written, says a simple second-year literature major.   If you have any more questions, you can write me a comment, send me an ask or text me privately, the same if you want to left your opinion. The only thing I would ask for is, please, if you share this, do not do it on the tag where we should be only talking about the racist white cis-hetero main we got instead of the moc character that we all deserve.  

[harmonytre]

Comic Plans

Current Projects:

Prismtale (Mondays): An Undertale AU involving NPCs and multiverse travelling. Multi-chapter comic and ongoing.

Mistbreak (Tuesdays): A Steven Universe AU with about 5 pages left of the comic. Then it will become an ask/drabble/design blog.

Flicker of a Neon Soul (Wednesdays): An Undertale AU where monsters have colored soul traits and humans have white soul traits. 10+ chaptered comic with many plans and plot.

Taffy and Steven (Thursdays): A Steven Universe where Steven and his gem are split into different people and Taffy is a wholesome boyo. One page left of the comic, then will become an ask/edit blog with occasional comics.

Future Fandom Projects:

Pokemon Nuzlocke Comics: Multiple regions and an overarching plot. I need to finish playing and writing the first arc before starting the comic. (long term)

Who I Am: A Pokemon comic where James from Team Rocket is a were-pokemon. I need to rewrite it first. About 7 to 8 chapters. (medium length)

Other Undertale AUs: Certain AUs will be revealed in Prismtale and turn into side blogs, and others will be one time comics. (varies)

Future Original Projects:

(One of these I want to make extremely interactive. Like the audience makes choices for the characters.)

Phantulfurs: A comic about teens with powers to see creatures no one else can. I’ve rewritten the first chapter multiple times, but I need to really write it out before starting the comic. About ten arcs. (long term)

Skryculars: A sequel to the above story. (medium length)

The Journeyers: A multi-book series with my cousin. About ten books. Involves animals, powers, and romance. Won’t give information beyond that. (long term)

Unnamed Animated Series: Still need to design the two main characters, but they’ll travel through many worlds from my dream world. (long term youtube series)

Unnamed Wings Story: Decided many many characters for a high school story with wings. Lots of diversity and LGBTQ. Problem is I don’t like writing high school stories and have no plot. ;^; (medium? short?)

Unnamed Long Term Comic: A story about a space girl with wings, a nonbinary person that can shapeshift and communicate with animals, twins with water and plant powers, and an angsty wholesome skeleton bean. No plot yet. (long term)

Short Term (below the cut, any catch your interest?)

(keep in mind many of these I wrote the descriptions for years ago or based off of dreams.)

“Orphan Dog” and “Martha’s Pack” An orphan finds out she can talk to dogs and realizes they are the key to finding her missing parents. (Wrote when I was 8, rewrote partially when I was 13. So very cheezy. Would be even cheezier if I didn’t rewrite it, but still drew quality serious art XD.)

“The Agency” A girl named Jill has secrets. Major secrets. For one, she can turn into any animal at will including extinct, Fantasy, or hybrids. Don’t forget that she can also turn invisible and do telepathy. (Not to mention she runs an entire secret animal spy community…) When her best friend and spy ally, Izabella the opossum, goes missing, she must find what it means to be a true friend and showing that it’s what’s inside that counts. (Actually liked this one too. Even if it’s also cheezy.)

1. “Moos” A boy is adopted by cows and is granted the power to understand animals and turn into a cow.

2. “Moos: Vile Meat” Hoover is back and he must defeat the evil Haystack, a human entrapping calfs in little domes for eternity.

3. “Moos: Cold Cuts” Hoover finds a new ally, one who creates...snow?

4. “Moos: Wakey Wakey Eggs and Bakey” Haystack is back and Hoover and his friends must defeat him before he turns all pigs into stone. (Cheezy series?)

“Extraordinaries” Emma, her friend, Millie, her brother, Clark, and her dog, Charlie, have to travel to a faraway land to save Emma’s mother, who has been poisoned. Along the way Emma and the team must find how to deal with their newfound powers of Imagination. (This one was also pretty good! A story from Nanowrimo a few years ago.)

“The Hummingbird Did It” A hummingbird turns a lazy boy into a dog. The boy must venture across country to find the cure. (Was kinda boring and just me having fun with google maps lol.)

“Sunshine and Rainbows” A girl is taken to another world by rainbow dust and must find her way back to Earth. (Can’t actually remember this one.)

“Nature’s Lifeforce” A boy and girl are given the power to turn into any woodland creature and talk to trees. (Also can’t remember, but sounds cool.)

“Ravens” A girl named Hannah, a boy named Billy, a boy named Cameron, a girl named Lyla, and a boy named Clark, among other students, have their wishes come true. This creates a problem as Cameron becomes a dog, Lyla becomes a cat and Hannah and Billy become ravens. They fix the problem for everyone except Hannah and Billy, but embark on an adventure to find the scientist who can help them. (Based on a dream, I think.)

“Dragon wings” Hiccup and Toothless accidentally sit down someplace weird. They switch bodies and Toothless claims to have heard someone press a button. (ASDFGHJKL WHAT?! HTTYD short story)

“Melody Dreambubble” A weird new pony arrives in Ponyville. Twilight is curious to find that she has no Cutie Mark, was raised by wolves, and bears mysterious powers. (My Little Pony, kinda self insert, short story)

“Eyes of Gold/The Tower” A Fan Fiction based on The Ever Afters series and two stories rolled into one. Rory finds that her two best friends have been poisoned by a new dragon species/As Rory is about to enter a tower to save Chase a random girl shows up out of nowhere and has a weird habit of annoying Adelaide. (Was my first ever self insert? And based on a book series unlike the rest? Cool! Oh I even wrote ten whole pages! Neat. Featuring a girl chasing a dragon with a bedpan!)

“Roadkill” A man purposely runs over a deer on a freeway. The deer’s best friend curses the man, later to regret it because he has to undo the curse himself. (Lol, this was interesting.)

“Melissa and Steven Started a Food Fight” A completely random book that takes the characters through an adventure of explosions, unicorns, and talking squirrels. (Used a random prompt generator. Very random. And funny.)

“Before it’s Gone” A snooty teen crashes in her car and finds a surprise when she wakes up. (Oh yeah, another old story. She turned into a dog and none of the other dogs believed her.)

“The Unicorn Killer” A short story about poachers and Julia. (Yep. Short story.)

1. “Feathers of Gold” A logical young bird griffin, Gabriel, wants to find a way to stop to war between bird and lion in his land, Genetica.

2. “Scales of Emerald” A shy young dragon, Emmie, tries to keep her land, Reptilia, from destruction.

3. “Hair of Crystal” A brave young unicorn, Crystal, tries to find a way to join together the leaders of the land of Equinsta.

4. “Flames of Ruby” A vain young phoenix, Flaxter, tries to capture the eyes of girls. Taken place in the land of Flamia.

5. “Gems Unite” Gabriel, Emmie, Crystal, and Flaxter find out they are The Gems, the only ones who can save their world, Animagicia, from the beings, called Humurns, that are trying to destroy it. They must come together and find who they truly are. (Might have fun with this series. I’ve always loved mythical animals.)

“The Distance from Sam” An 8 year-old St. Bernard named Barry, a 3 year-old Golden Retriever named Mick, and a 1 year-old Sheltie named Sandy set off to return to their owner Sam, after being kidnapped and sent across country. (Kinda like Homeward Bound. Came in mind when I saw these three dogs alone by a street, no humans around.)

“The Skilled” Andy and Ashley(both fifteen) and their eight year-old siblings, twins Alex and Alexa, gain powers from the sewers. All: understand animals and fly, Andy: talk to toys, Ashley: speak to plants, Alex and Alexa: psychic powers. “I used to think my toys would come to life when I was gone. I guess I was right.”-Andy. Based on a dream. (Too many “A” names, oof. Also, toy Story much?)

“The Moon’s Eye” A teenage girl named April gets trapped under a snow drift and wakes up to be a wolf. A nearby wolf pack needs her aid and calls her The Mooneye, a changeling. (Cool. Cool.)

“Unusual Forces of Omnipotence” A woman and her horse are supposedly crushed by a U.F.O. When Tanaya wakes up she finds out she has super strong senses and can run as fast as her horse. Pluto the alien knows he’s going to be in trouble if his planet finds out he crash landed and accidentally gave a human the powers of her horse. He tries to fix it. Told from Tanaya, Sunray (the horse), and Pluto’s point of view. Based on a dream. (Sounds interesting! Title came from before I knew UFO was an acronym lol.)

“The Lawn” Unknown to humans, a yard full of statues come alive at night. There is an elk, two bears, four buffalo, a wolf, an eagle, three horses, a small boy, a moose, a bighorn sheep, and a rabbit. (Based on a real lawn I’d see on the way to school.)

“Dragon Eyes” Max has an ordinary life, until his family, him, and his three friends, Alice, Peter, and Samuel, are transported to another world. His parents are then kidnapped and they have to fight against an evil Mother Nature. Based on a dream. (Interesting. The dream was freaky.)

“Sweet Treat” Emily’s dad works at a candy factory, and one day she visits him and realizes his work is not all it seems… Based on a dream. (What? I don’t remember what was different about his work???)

“The Flight of the Supernatural” Randy thinks he is mostly a normal kid. Sure, he and his dad live inside a mountain, and sure, some flying species of human killed his mother, that doesn’t mean he can’t live normal life homeschooling and watching TV. But unfortunately, Randy’s life turns around when he finds out he can fly. Is his father telling the truth? Did his own species kill his mother? Based on a dream. (Actually REALLY loved this story.)

“Whispering Willow” A girl named Willow helps 20 wolf cubs escape a pet store and then is recruited by a zoo. Pretty soon all of the animals know her as Whisper. Based on a dream. (Cool. another animal whisperer.)

“The Invasion of Our Minds” Little black aliens invade Earth and only one person can stop them: Julia. Based on a dream. (Oh RIGHT! Yeah I remember that.)

“The Marble Island(Possibly a short story?)” Julia goes on a trip to a new marble island only to find the owner turns people into stone figurines. Based on a dream. (Links to the previous story, I think.)

“Have some candy!” Violet, an expert on strange occurrences, needs to help a group of people who mysteriously turned into animals after attempting to grab candy bars from a bin in a local store. Based on a dream. (More animal transformation.)

“The Guide to Mythical Creatures I Made Up” A guide to everything from the Mystic Melody to the Gollan. (I don’t remember either of their designs! :P )

“Trying to Get Back to Mom” Michael and Annabelle meet new friends, while they frantically try to reunite with their mother. (Don’t remember.)

“Surprise of the Future” Pearl travels to the future and has to fight her now-evil brother in his stone mansion. (Not Pearl from SU. Based on a dream.)

“All for You” A man has to overcome many obstacles, such as mermaids, yellow smoke wolves, and magic maps, to save the world and his girl. (Oh yeah, this was a cool one. Based on a song, but I can’t remember which one.)

“The Stranger at the Door” Keith and Amber have lived with their grandmother for many years, but now they live alone and nobody knows. Then a strange girl arrives at the door. She claims they will have to leave town within 2 hours or risk being stuck in a quarantine zone. There will be traffic jams and other hindrances, so it's best to leave right now without taking anything with you. Unsure about everything, including this strange girl, the teenage boy disagrees to the proposal, if all this turns out to be true, this choice will seem foolish. His younger sister does agree. But what if this strange girl can't be trusted. Or what if all this is an elaborate trap. How could an ordinary teenage girl and boy end up in a situation like this. Time to find out. (Oh, a quarantine story? How long ago was this? 2017 I think.)

“The Beginning of the Hybrid Brothers” A backstory that shines a light on how Ralph the Rat-Man and Dr. Discord came to be evil. (YES, MY TWO VILLAINS NO ONE KNOWS ABOUT BUT ARE STILL DEAR TO MY HEART HNNNNNNNG.)

“Unnamed but same as the blank” A girl named, _____, lives in a family of nine. She and her mother are the only ones who aren’t “Morhumals”, or people who can turn into one animal. After the twins mess-up and send a “Morhumals” hunter after them, it is up to ___ and her sister, ____ to rescue them.

“Song of the Siren” ____ is back after her fourteenth birthday. She finally has received her animal and must follow her family to the mythed Siren hideout.

[entertainment]

Entertainment Spotlight: Brian Volk-Weiss

We got the chance to chat comedy and tortoises with Comedy Dynamics CEO Brian Volk-Weiss, called  "one of the most influential stand-up comedy producers in the country” by the LA Times. Brian started Comedy Dynamics as a  comedy record label and grew the company into the country's biggest comedy production and distribution company - earning 5 of the 5 Grammy best album nominations this year as well as last year. He has built his success by personally taking financial and creative risks to launch the careers of some of today's biggest stand-up stars (especially Women in Comedy) including Tiffany Haddish and Ali Wong. He has also created and directed multiple comedy specials and television shows, among other things. When Brian isn’t making comedy history, he’s hanging out with his three kids and his 65-pound East African land tortoise. 

Do you have a checklist or any must-haves for identifying top talent?

These are the things I look for: 

- Is their material and/or voice sharp and original? 

- Do they make me laugh out loud? 

- Even if they don’t make me laugh, and I don’t think they’re sharp or original, do they make a lot of other people laugh? 

- Are their touring ticket sales jumping up aggressively? 

Sometimes all I need is one of these to be true, and sometimes I need all to be true, depending on the artist.

Is there a common link or theme that unifies all of the specials and shows that you’ve produced?

All the artists we work with have something to contribute to the history of comedy in a way that allows the audience, present and future, to forget about their lives for a few minutes or up or to an hour.  Stand up is very, very hard to do, and the best make it look easy. So anyone who can make strangers laugh over and over, all over the world, is what unifies everything we try to be a part of.

What is the funniest joke you’ve ever heard told?

I have a bunch of favorite jokes all tied for first place, probably around ten at the most, but the three I’ll mention here are Harland Williams’ ‘did you know the pumpkin is the only organism with triangle eyes?”, Ali Wong’s joke about shitting at work, and Gary Gulman’s joke about being stuck on a plane for a long time; ‘all we had was everything’.

You’ve said that standup is becoming its own genre -- what do you think is next for comedy?

I don’t think [there] is a next or has to be a next; we just need more and new humans to have more thoughts and experiences and turn them into great comedy.  I’ve never been one of those people who says “I want to do stand up in a different way. How do we find a different way?”  The reason is I do not think the audience wants to see stand up done in a different way. The audience wants to see a human get to the mic as fast as possible and tell the best jokes as possible. If I thought the audience wanted something else then I’d look for what’s next. But I don’t think they do. At least not right now or in the past. They just want to laugh.

What I do think is going on is that due to a combination of social media, YouTube, and NETFLIX pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into great comedy over a 5 year period, stand up is being viewed as an option of entertainment for many people who would have never thought about it before.  I know a mom in my kid’s school, early 40s, who had never seen live stand up in her life till six months ago and now she and her husband go a few times a month.  I hear stories like that all the time.

What would you say to someone trying to break into the comedy world?

First, move to NY or LA. Second, give yourself at least 8 to 10 years before you start to worry that you might not be successful, and to that point, do not ever look at anyone else and judge your race by how they are doing in theirs. Root for them and root for yourself. Third, build up as much good will as you can with your fellow comics as possible and avoid ill will as much as possible. Your fellow comics will pull you up as they rise, and you should pull others up as you rise. Lastly, just work on your material as much as possible, again and again and again. Refine, refine, refine.  Don’t try to get an agent or manager, or do anything other than perfect your five minutes, then your ten, then your 30, then your hour. Agents and managers will find you, when you’re ready and the time is right.

If you were to have a special, what would it be called and what would you talk about?

Brian Volk-Weiss: my only talent is hard work.

You’re a huge Star Wars fan -- did the franchise have an effect on your career goals, and does it today?

Star WARS, at around 3 years old, inspired what I chose to do for a living, but it was Star TREK that gave me, in a way, a code for life.  My guiding principal is a line from Star Trek 2 where Kirk says “I don’t believe in the no-win scenario.”  This quote, which I sort of turned into a philosophy, has gotten me from A to B again and again through many dark and scary moments.

What project are you most excited to tackle this year?

I hate to say it but I can’t talk about it yet because it’s not been made public. But it’s AWESOME!!!!

Any sage advice from your tortoise?

‘More dirty socks please’ (he loves the smell of human feet).

What’s a question that you’ve always wanted to be asked in an interview?

Why didn’t you take an easier path?

You’re in a food fight and can only use one food -- what food do you use and why?

Relish, because it’s disgusting on multiple levels.

Thanks for taking the time, Brian! We relished chatting with you.

Photo by: Stephanie Kleinman

[connan-l]

Glitters

Fandom: The House in Fata Morgana

Rating: General Audiences

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Relationship: Maria Campanella/Pauline Asama

Summary: Teenage Maria is going to spend the summer holidays at Pauline’s home in Amsterdam. Some things goes as expected, some others do not.

For ‘Day 9: Ocean’ of Femslash February 2020!

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Link on Archive of Our Own

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Notes: Just a short and fluffy gay thing I wrote for Femslash February 2020! Well I say ‘short,’ but it actually got a lot longer than originally planned...

To be honest, I actually struggle to ship Pauline and Maria — Pauline seems way too much into Yukimasa, and Maria kinda struck me as aromantic and as the type who’s just more invested in platonic friendships — but… they’re also the most obvious f/f ship of the game? So, hey, why not. They can be cute!

This takes place during the modern days pre-Reincarnation, but I admit there are probably some details I forgot about it (can’t recall if they mentioned anything about Maria and Pauline’s childhood or about Pauline’s family), so, sorry if there are any inconsistencies with the game.

Disclaimer that I don’t speak Dutch and I’ve never been to Amsterdam or even in the Netherlands, thus there will likely be some… mistakes.

Technically this is for ‘Day 9: Ocean,’ though I actually started writing this before seeing the prompts.

Spoilers for the main game, Requiem and Reincarnation! Though you can understand even without having read Requiem or Reincarnation.

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The first thing Maria did upon leaving the plane was to throw up.

Which was a pretty unusual thing; she was never sick, be it in cars or planes or boats. But here the journey had been particularly cantankerous.

It’s the last time I take the plane in my entire freaking life, she thought to herself while she was wiping her mouth. Though she knew pretty well it was a lie, as her return ticket had already been booked. She now practically regretted bitterly to not have cancelled her vacations altogether — but it was a rare occasion, as her family rarely went on vacation, especially not in another country.

“Ahh, Maria! There you are!”

Maria turned around, and saw a young black-haired girl with a ponytail waving and running towards her with a smile. However, when she saw Maria’s pale face, she stopped and put both of her hands in front of her mouth.

“Oh my God, are you okay?”

“Do I look okay, you idiot?” Maria snapped back.

She actually hadn’t intended to sound that mean — especially not to her best friend she hadn’t seen since at least six months — but it had been a knee-jerk answer. Pauline just tended to instinctively get on her nerves and activate her hostility button.

“N-No, you don’t,” she blurted out, wincing. “Uh… I didn’t mean to—”

“It’s fine, forget it,” Maria said, grabbing the handle of her suitcase. “The flight was pretty awful so I just got a bit sick, but I’m good now.”

“O-Oh… well, I can ask my mom to give you some medicine once we get home—”

“I told you, it’s fine. Don’t bother. More importantly, you’re alone?” Maria asked, as she could only distinguish her friend in the halls. She looked around to search her mother’s blonde locks or her father’s boorish figure, but saw neither of them.

“Orlando is the one who brought me,” Pauline answered. “He’s waiting for us in his car in the street below.”

Right, Orlando. An old friend of Pauline’s mom. Apparently, they had known each other since they were kids, and as far as Maria was aware he’d always hanged out around the Asama family. He didn’t seem to be very fond of Pauline’s father though. (Maria always thought the dude had a crush on Pauline’s pretty mom, but she would never tell her theory to anyone of course.)

As they were slowly walking towards what Maria supposed was Orlando’s car, she caught Pauline’s gaze on her — she had a dumb, gentle smile on her face, her black ponytail bouncing softly behind her back at the rhythm of her steps.

“What?”

“H-Huh? What, what?”

“You’re staring at me!”

“Ah, umm… sorry, I was just thinking you’ve changed since the last time we’ve seen each other.”

Maria cocked an eyebrow. “Oh yeah? You on the other hand you haven’t changed at all.”

“Th-That’s not true! I’ve changed too. I took three centimeters since last time! And I bought new clothes!”

Maria just laughed, and Pauline began to complain about how “mean she was” and how “she could compliment her a little.”

Maybe Pauline had changed a little in the months they hadn’t seen each others, but on the other hand it felt like their relationship had stayed the same during these all years they’ve been friends.

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Maria had only come to Pauline’s home in the Netherlands two times.

They had first met when she was around six years old — Pauline’s father had been on a business trip in Milan, and exceptionally he had decided to bring his wife and daughter along with him. She and her mother had came in a park one afternoon, where Maria had been playing with her grandfather, and like the little bully she had been back then, she stole the ice cream of that annoying foreign little girl. But then said little girl started crying so loudly that in the end she just handed it back to her. And then for some reason they started to play together. None of them knew how to speak the other’s language at the time, but as the small kids they were that didn’t bother them much.

After that, their parents met and so they stayed in contact. Pauline’s family was actually surprisingly wealthy — her father was a tradesman traveling very often, so she was able to come to Milan at least once a year, and the rest of the time they’d call or sent each other letters and emails. Maria’s family, on the other hand, had always been more on the poor side. Not excessively so — Maria always had a roof over her head and food in her plate, and she never truly lacked of anything — but she certainly couldn’t bring herself to pay some vacations in another country whenever she wanted. Which was why, three months ago, Pauline had proposed to invite her over for the summer vacations to celebrate her fifteenth birthday together — and she would pay for everything, trip price included.

“You still haven’t decided what you’re going to do after high school?” Pauline asked, tilting her head.

They were both chatting side to side on the car’s backseat, catching up with each other’s, while Orlando was silently driving. Both Maria and Pauline were speaking in English, and the poor man barely knew how to say ‘Hello’ and ‘Good bye,’ so he was probably feeling sidelined. Pauline always tended to treat him like he was her manservant. Maria kind of felt sorry for him.

“Not sure,” she mumbled back, her eyes falling on the window behind which scrolled through Amsterdam’s streets.

“That’s not good,” Pauline said, in that big sisterly tone she sometimes used and that tended to really annoy Maria. “You’re going to enter your last grade next year, right? So you should hurry up and decide.”

“Gee, thanks Mom,” Maria replied, glaring at her.

Pauline puffed out her cheeks. “I’m saying this for your sake!”

“I don’t want to hear this from the girl who can’t even choose her own clothes the morning,” Maria said dryly, and before Pauline could reply, she just added, “And you know what? I’ve decided already. I’ll probably enter the mafia or something.”

Maria grinned at her friend, and as she expected, Pauline stared at her with her brown eyes and her mouth wide open. It was so easy to predict her reactions that it was almost ridiculous.

To be honest, Pauline had actually good reasons to believe Maria wasn’t joking: ever since she was a child, she’d always bragged about how her grandpa was originally born in Sicily and that her family, the Campanellas, used to have ties to the mafia. Now in all honesty, Maria didn’t know how much of this was true — it was some kind of unspoken rule within her family to not talk about this, and her grandfather had always dismissed her whenever she’d questioned him about it — but she certainly had a lot of fun of teasing Pauline when they were kids by telling her that if she pissed her off, some mafioso would come to skin her alive. She had stopped doing this now, of course — that had been pretty childish of her, and Maria was going to be eighteen next year, so these days she tried her best to act more like the grown up she was soon going to be. Though teasing Pauline was just so much fun and so easy it was still hard to kill that habit.

“I’m just joking,” she finally admitted, releasing Pauline from her shock. “I’m not that much of a delinquent.”

“Yes, well,” Pauline said, sighing. “With you, I never know.”

Maria chuckled, when suddenly the car came to a stop.

“Wij zijn hier,” Orlando suddenly said in a stern voice.

Pauline and her family lived in a huge, modern house in Amsterdam-Oost with an extensive view on the sea. They had two floors with multiple rooms, a big garden, a pretty balcony and a garage. The first time she went there, Maria was ten, and she could still remember the intense jealousy she felt while seeing this. Compared to this, her small humble family apartment in Milan felt miserable. It’d be a lie to say she wasn’t still a little bit jealous now, but she was used to it at least.

The two girls went out of the car, and Pauline chatted in Dutch with Orlando through the window for a moment, before finally turning around towards Maria and signaling her they could enter the house.

“He doesn’t come?” Maria asked as she saw the car pulling away.

“No, he said he had a lot of work to do. Anyway, let’s go!”

“W-Wait, don’t run! I have my suitcase with me, remember?”

Both of them entered upon the spacious patio, and Pauline excitedly opened the front door.

“Mama! Wij zijn gearriveerd!” She exclaimed, before adding to Maria in a quieter voice: “Let your suitcase here, we’ll put it in my room later.”

Maria was going to reply, but before she could she heard a sound of door open, a few footsteps, and then a beautiful woman with long, wavy blonde hair in a harlequin sundress showed up.

“Maria! Buongiorno!”

Pauline’s mother beamed at her, and Maria instantly imitated her. “Goedemorgen, Filippa!”

Maria had always liked Filippa quite a bit. She was a nice, smiling woman, radiant like the sun and always dressed in colorful clothes, and unlike her daughter, she actually had some spice to her personality. She was a stay-at-home mother, as apparently her husband’s pay was more than enough to sustain the family (and, from what Maria had gathered, it was also because Filippa’s family was pretty rich). However, she was still a busy person, as not only she was taking care of her daughter and of the house almost all by herself, she also often participated in all sort of town activities and events, and was pretty invested in charities.

Looking at Maria, Filippa brought her hands to her chest, her blue eyes shining as if she was about to cry. “Oh my God, you look so grown up now!”

“Well, it has been about two years since the last time we’ve seen each others, right? So that makes sense,” Maria said, then sighed. “Though to be honest, I don’t think I’ve grown up that much. I used to be even taller than the boys in middle school, but now I’m one of the smallest girls. Hell, I can’t believe that even fucking Pauline is taller than me now. It’s depressing.”

“Oh, but small girls are so cute!” Filippa said, giggling.

“Bleh. Not interested in being cute. I’d rather be huge and frightening, like a bear!”

“Bears stink, though,” Pauline said, wincing.

“Why is that the first thing you think of saying?”

Filippa laughed heartily. “Still, I can’t believe how much you’ve changed… The both of you are going to become young women before I even realize it. It makes me a little sad.”

“No need to be sad. Pretty sure Pauline’s gonna be eighty and still be an unreliable kid inside.”

“H-Hey!” Pauline protested, elbowing her friend, while Filippa laughed again.

“Now, now, don’t fight! Though I suppose Maria isn’t wrong.”

“Not you too, Mom!”

Then Pauline began complaining in Dutch to her laughing mother, and Maria wasn’t able to catch everything they were saying. They may have been friends since they were kids, but they’ve always mostly babbled in English. Maria could understand some basic Dutch, but she was far from being fluent. Though the same could be said for Pauline — despite the fact she’d come to Milan quite a few times, she only knew how to say a bunch of Italian sentences, and her accent was absolutely awful. Maria, like the brat she was, used to make fun of her because of this back then, and little Pauline would start crying and call her a “meanie.” Fun ol’ times.

“Anyway!” Filippa said again in English. “You girls are here just in time. I just finished the meal’s preparations, you just need to go set the table.”

“Oh, okay,” Maria replied, as Filippa was exiting the room. “So we need four plates?”

“No, it’s just the three of us,” Pauline replied.

“What? What about your dad?”

“He’s back in Japan right now, for work,” she answered.

“Eh? But it’s August. Shouldn’t he be in vacation?”

“No vacations for sailors,” Filippa answered from the kitchen. There was a very clear sharpness in her voice, and with the grimace Pauline displayed, this told Maria her mother was irritated.

It wasn’t something new. As far as she could remember, Pauline’s parents always had this problem. They didn’t have a bad relationship exactly — from what Maria had seen, they actually were quite a loving and happy couple. But Pauline’s father still privileged his work over his wife and daughter, and he was very rarely home as a result, which was something Filippa had a lot of issues with.

This never seemed to bother Pauline much, though. Her parents’ problems seemed to completely pass over her head. Maria had asked her about it once — if sometimes her mom and dad’s disputes were something distressing to her — but she had just shrugged and replied that “It’s just how it is.”

To be honest, Maria thought it was a little… weird. Admittedly she never cared much about her own parents’ problems either, but she could still remember that some of the biggest arguments they had had still impacted her a big deal. So Pauline’s indifference concerning her family’s issues felt off sometimes. Her friend had always been an airhead, sure, but sometimes it really seemed like… she was a bit too much disconnected from reality and the world around her. But maybe Maria was just overthinking it.

For lunch, Filippa served them a bountiful plate of Italian spaghettis with tomato sauce, which she had cook specially for Maria, and which was of course delicious. They finished the meal with a vlaai for dessert, and then the girls ran into Pauline’s room and Maria started to unpack her baggage. The Asamas’ house had a guest room and was big enough in general for Maria to sleep alone in a bedchamber of her own, but Pauline had insisted for them to stay together. She had accepted without thinking much about it, until she realized it also meant sleeping in the same bed as Pauline’s.

This shouldn’t be something weird; it wasn’t the first time they’d sleep together — though the last this had happened, they were in elementary school. So now that they were older — almost ‘young women,’ like Filippa had said — it felt… a bit odd to her, somehow. This shouldn’t be odd. Friends slept with each other platonically all the time, right? So there was no reason for it to be odd. Maria hoped that if she told herself this enough times, this would convince her. Somehow.

But this issue quickly faded from her mind as Pauline dragged her in the living room in front of their really big, flat screen TV, where they spent the afternoon switching channels and making fun of the stupid melodramatic soap operas broadcasted while eating snacks. Although honestly they mostly spent their time chatting and laughing rather than truly watching the TV. Filippa interrupted them two or three times to try to make them leave the couch and go outside while the sun was still up and shining, but she finally left them alone when Pauline promised her they’d go out tomorrow. And before they even noticed it, the night had already fallen.

After the dinner, Maria was the first to change herself, then she let herself fall onto the bed while Pauline was busy in the bathroom, the muffled sound of a Dutch TV presenter resonating in the background from the living room — except this time it was Filippa who was in front of the screen. In the meantime she looked around the room, which honestly hadn’t changed much since the last time she came here. Pauline’s room was pretty girly and common; some posters of boys’ bands on the walls there, some cute stuffed animals here, some romance novels scattered around. The most distinguishing features were the trinkets from all sorts of different countries and cultures that her father always brings her back from his travels as souvenirs, and that she collects on top of a few shelves.

Pauline entered back into her room, and she was dressed in a white pajamas with dolphin patterns, her long black hair unusually let down and falling on her shoulders gracefully — and, despite the fact Maria thought the dolphin pajamas looked pretty silly (she wasn’t ten anymore, dammit), she did admit she was kinda cute like that. She thought it was honestly a shame Pauline never let her hair down like that. As far as she could remember, she’d always tied it in that messy ponytail, even when they were young children.

“So,” Pauline started, smiling at Maria. “What do you want to do now? I have some board games if you want. Do you like Monopoly? Or Cluedo?”

Maria sighed, then scratched the back of her head. “Nah, I think I’d rather go to sleep.”

Pauline gasped, then stared at her as if she had just confessed she had murdered someone.

“What? I’m tired!” Maria exclaimed, feeling almost offended.

“It’s just it’s not like you at all,” Pauline gently replied. “Usually you’re the one who want to stay up as late as possible, and I have to beg you for us to go to sleep… On top of that we spent the afternoon on the couch in front of the TV…”

“Yeah, well, I spent hours travelling in a plane before coming here, remember? And the trip was pretty awful. So I’m exhausted.”

“Oh… I see…”

Pauline looked genuinely disappointed, and it was so funny Maria couldn’t herself but grin. “Ahh, I see you expected me to keep you up all night, huuuh? You naughty girl— Hmph!”

Her face as red as a tomato, Pauline threw a pillow at her, which crashed directly into her face before she could say any more words.

“No, you don’t start!” She exclaimed, then sighed heavily. “You said you were exhausted right? So fine, let’s sleep.”

“Don’t sulk, Pauline! I promise I’ll make it up to you tomorrow. We’ll stay up late as muuuuch as you want!”

“Ahh, shut up!”

Pauline turned away from Maria who wasn’t trying to hold back her laughers now, and picked up something from her desk, that looked like a small ball.

“What’s that thing?” Maria asked.

“Oh, it’s my nightlight,” she simply answered.

It took some time for Maria to process what she meant by that. “What, are you fucking kidding me? You’re still sleeping with the lights on? How old are you?”

“J-Just with that tiny nightlight!” Pauline protested, blushing. “It’s very faint, it shouldn’t bother you!”

“God, that’s not the issue,” Maria replied, rolling her eyes. “I swear, you’re such a baby.”

All while talking she lied down and buried herself under the sheets, while Pauline plugged her nightlight. It was indeed of a very faint, soothing blue color, and light never bothered Maria to sleep anyway, but she still couldn’t believe Pauline needed this as if she was a freaking toddler scared of the monsters below her bed. She felt the other girl rejoin her beneath the blanket, the mattress shifting under her weight. This reminded Maria of the times where they slept together as kids — Pauline is a rather touchy-feely person around her loved ones, so she’d always ended up snuggled against Maria the morning, arms tightly wrapped around her waist. She really hoped Pauline wouldn’t do this tonight. It just… wasn’t the same thing anymore, now that they weren’t kids. For a moment, neither of them spoke, only the sound of their breathing and of the muffled TV resounding in the room, and Maria almost thought she was going to fall asleep when Pauline raised her voice again.

“It’s because I have nightmares.”

Maria raised her head and looked at her friend. Pauline was staring at the ceiling, and she couldn’t really make out her expression in the darkness, but her gaze seemed unfocused.

“Nightmares?” She repeated. That was new. She’d never heard about Pauline having nightmares before — or at least, she’d never told her about it…

“It’s pretty rare,” the younger girl admitted. “But a few months ago I’ve had a really bad nightmare. Ever since, the dark prevent me from sleeping well, so Mom bought me the nightlight, and it helps.”

“Huh…” Maria didn’t know what to answer to this, and now she actually felt a bit like an asshole for having made fun of her without knowing this. Maybe Pauline read her thoughts — a pretty rare occurrence, as she usually wasn’t very good at this — because she smiled at her softly.

“Like I said, it’s not a big deal, really, so don’t worry.”

“I wasn’t worried,” Maria replied by reflex, though it wasn’t completely true. She hesitated for a moment, before asking in a softer voice: “What… What are they about, exactly? Those nightmares.”

“Hmm…” Pauline’s frown burrowed, as if she was searching through her memories. “To tell you the truth… I don’t really recall well. It’s very blurry. But…” She stopped.

“I think… there’s a monster in it…” She finally added, and her voice sounded a bit odd. “A beast.”

Maria blinked. “A… beast.”

“And… I think he kills me.”

(The beast killed her.)

For some reason, a chill ran down Maria’s spine, and she felt as if her entire body grew cold.

“Strangely enough, though, I… I’m not scared,” Pauline continued. “I think… maybe it’s a bit sad, but it’s not scary…”

Maria really struggled to stay focused on her words; she felt as if she was far, far away, in a place where she couldn’t reach anyone. For a very brief moment, it was as if she wasn’t in that room anymore, warm and safe under the soft the blanket, but somewhere else, in far away old city drenched in blood and corpses — among them, clothed all in black and white, lied Pauline, looking older and motionless—

“He won’t kill you.”

Pauline blinked, and stared at Maria blankly.

“The beast won’t kill you,” she repeated, firmly. “I won’t let him.”

The black-haired girl next to her looked so confused, and Maria honestly couldn’t blame her. She wasn’t even sure herself what she was saying exactly. She just knew her body was still cold and that the scent of blood still persisted in her nose and that she had to tell her that. Instinctively, she reached towards Pauline and grabbed her hand in hers, as if she felt the need to feel her warmth there — to reassure herself she was safe and alive, by her side.

“If… If the beast ever comes to you, then all you have to do is call me, and I’ll go kick his ass. I definitely won’t let him kill you.”

Pauline’s shock slowly faded from her face, and instead a warm smile replaced it, which Maria suddenly felt kinda embarrassed about. Why was she spouting all this nonsense? What the hell was wrong with her tonight? But then Pauline giggled softly, a silly, but content and happy expression on her face… so maybe it didn’t matter after all.

“Okay,” was Pauline’s only response.

And then she gently tightened her grip on Maria’s hand, and closed her eyes.

“Maria?”

“Hmm?”

“I’m glad you’re here.”

Maria couldn’t really see Pauline in the dark, but she could imagine her soft and genuine smile from her voice, and while she had always loved to tease Pauline and would’ve usually retorted a snarky reply at this… this time, just for this one time, she chooses to answer sincerely.

“Me too.”

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 “I’m sorry, but I just don’t get why you find those sandwiches so good. I mean, they’re just… sandwiches.”

“They’re not ‘just sandwiches’! They’re ham sandwiches! And it’s not my fault if you don’t know how to appreciate good things.”

“I’m not saying it’s bad, I’m saying it’s… normal. Common.”

“Well, that’s why it’s great! Ah, geez, whatever, forget about it.”

Pauline puffed out her cheeks, then forcefully bite into her ham sandwich they had just bought, as if she was trying to prove to her friend how good they truly were. It had been almost two weeks now since Maria arrived in the Netherlands. They had spent a big part of their time hanging out at Pllek beach and in the Vondelpark, though Filippa had also managed to drag them to the Rijksmuseum, despite the girls’ complaints. Right now, though, they were just a few streets away from the Asamas’ home, in a cozy place with a pretty view on the sea. It had always been Pauline’s favorite spot ever since she was a child; a bit like a secret base. Well, except it wasn’t secret or a base.

“So did you manage to make Filippa tell you where we were going for your birthday?” Maria asked, swinging her legs on the bench where they were sat.

“No,” Pauline answered, shaking her head disappointedly. “She kept saying it was a secret.”

“Fuck, I hate secrets. I just hope it’s not another museum…”

“Well… I did hear her vaguely mention the Anne Frank House…”

Maria chocked on her sandwich, then glared at Pauline. “You’re kidding me! No way am I going to some dead girl’s museum for a birthday!”

“Now, don’t be disrespectful…”

“I’m not being disrespectful, I just don’t want to think about freakin’ Nazis during my summer vacations!”

Pauline chuckled. “Don’t worry, I’m sure we’re just going to go celebrate to a restaurant. The Anne Frank House was about something else.”

Maria narrowed her eyes. “Wait. Did you just trick me?”

“Pauline!”

A voice called out from behind, and the two teens turned around to see a familiar middle-aged man heading towards them.

“Orlando? What are you doing here?” The interpellated girl questioned dubiously.

“Filippa asked for you two to go home,” the man replied in Dutch, and Pauline could see Maria frown besides her while trying to decipher what he was saying as much as she could.

“Why?” She replied.

“She needs your help. Did you forget? She had her new wardrobe and shelves delivered today, and she wants you to help install them.”

Pauline gasped and brusquely stood up upon hearing this. Her mother had in the prospect of redecorating the house, and she decided to start with the furniture. A few weeks ago, she had ordered a new wardrobe and shelves, and Pauline had promised her to help her out with them. Except she had completely forgotten about that! Her mom was going to be so angry!

“Hey, what’s going on…?” Maria asked tentatively, but she wasn’t able to get an answer that Pauline had already grabbed her hand and started running.

“We need to hurry! Otherwise there will be no birthday party at all, be it at the Anne Frank House or elsewhere!”

They managed to reach the house in ten minutes total, which was a record, and while Filippa reprimanded her daughter for her usual absentmindedness, there was no much of a scolding, as the girls helped as much as they could — although Maria did spend quite a few of her time grumbling. And she was still complaining about it even after the night had fell and that they were about to go to bed.

“If I’d known I was going to do manual work and have history lessons, I wouldn’t have accepted to come,” she said grumpily, sat on the half-opened window.

“It was not so bad,” Pauline tried to argue, but she only managed to get a glare from Maria.

“Vacations are made to have fun! Not to work! Your mom is a tyrant. Geez, seriously, what kind of idiot works during vacations?”

“Don’t… Don’t your parents often work during vacations…?”

“Yes! And they’re idiots!”

Pauline smiled awkwardly, then cleared her throat and quickly tried to change the subject to improve the mood. “Aren’t you cold in front of the window? We should close it. Plus, it’s starting to be late.”

“I’m not tired,” Maria replied. “And it’s not cold either. In fact, it’s still surprisingly warm outside.”

As she said this, Pauline came to her side, and indeed, she was right — there was a cool breeze, but overall the weather was still pretty hot. This wasn’t really surprising in August, though.

“Hey, Pauline?”

The girl turned her head towards Maria, and when she saw the wide grin her friend had placarded on her face, she instantly knew she was going to propose her something she wasn’t going to like.

“Let’s go hang out outside.”

I knew it! Pauline thought, and instantly frowned at Maria.

“No!”

“C’mon, let’s go! It can be fun!”

“B-But I don’t have Mom’s permission to go out tonight!” Pauline protested.

Maria rolled her eyes. “You’re fifteen! Stop acting like a baby already!”

“T-Technically, I’m not fifteen yet…”

“Are you fucking kidding me? You’ll be fifteen in like, five days!”

“The point is, I don’t want Mom to get mad at me…”

“She can’t be mad at you if she doesn’t know.”

“You… You want us to sneak out of the house without permission?”

“What? You never did this before?”

“O-Of course not!”

Maria was looking at her with such a stunned expression Pauline honestly thought she was going to shook her for a minute.

“Never? I’ve been sneaking out of the house without permission since I was like, ten!”

“Yeah, well, not everyone can be like you!”

Maria rolled her eyes for what was probably the hundredth time today.

“Come on, let’s go! It’ll be fun.”

“But…”

Maria sighed yet again, then she took Pauline’s hand in hers, and stared at her straight in the eyes. Her face was so close to hers that she could feel her breathing and that their noses could touch.

“You trust me, right?”

Pauline stared at her for a few seconds, and then she slowly nodded.

“Then let’s go.”

And despite her reluctance, Pauline decided to listen to her friend, and so they started to prepare themselves. Maria grabbed a top with a cleavage that was a bit too revealing and a skirt that was a bit too short in Pauline’s eyes, then took out red high heels from her suitcase. The other girl chooses a more simple and comfy blue dress, and then Maria winked at her and unpacked a box from her bag, before Pauline realizes it was makeup. Filippa refused for her daughter to wear makeup, because she always said she was still too young for that, but she felt that if she were to say this to Maria she would just laugh at her again, so she decided to stay quiet.

“Let me guess,” Maria suddenly said. “You never used makeup before, right?”

Pauline winced. “I did,” she argued.

Maria arched an eyebrow. “For Halloween?”

“Yeah, well, that counts!”

“No, it doesn’t. It’s not the same thing at all. But don’t worry; I’ll teach you. It’s not that complicated.”

And so she did; she first put lipstick, some blush and eyeshadow on herself, and then on Pauline. She made her sit straight on a chair, and the whole experience felt pretty stressful to her — she had to stay still during the process, as Maria was only a few centimeters away from her face, applying and bumping and brushing all sorts of products on her cheeks and eyes and lips while she couldn’t see any of it. And she honestly couldn’t tell if it was not knowing what her friend was doing with her face that bothered her so much, or if it was the proximity and intimacy of feeling her delicately touching her lips and eyelids. Maria, however, seemed unfazed by this, completely focused on her work, and Pauline was honestly surprised by how thorough and meticulous she was. It made her wonder how much experience she had with this — how many parties she went to before, how many friends she have back in Milan. She knew Maria was quite the sociable type, and she had told her a bit about some of her Italian friends, but Pauline never actually got the occasion to meet any of them.

To be honest… sometimes she felt like she actually didn’t know much about Maria. They’ve known each other for most of their lives, but because of the fact they lived in two different, far away countries, they still missed quite some parts of their respective lives. And Maria wasn’t exactly a secretive person, but she was still the kind who preferred to deal with her problems by herself, or to downplay the things that happened to her. She wondered if Maria felt the same about her too — that if, in the end, she also had the impression she ignored a lot of things about her supposed best friend…

“That should be good!” Maria exclaimed, putting aside the eyeliner. “What do you think?”

Pauline finally looked at herself in the mirror, and… she had to admit that, although she’d always thought of herself as a rather plain girl, right now, with her lips shining of a pretty pink color and her eyelids and cheeks softly colored, she was… quite pretty.

“It’s… really good,” she said. “You’re really good at this, Maria!”

“Yeah, I know,” the blonde agreed, a smug grin on her face. “I’ve had quite the occasion to practice before.”

Once again, Pauline wished she’d know what she meant by that, but for some reason the question stayed stuck in her throat and she felt unable to say anything when Maria put her hands on her hips and smiled brightly at her.

“Well then, let’s go!”

“Ah… yes.”

Pauline rose from her chair, and then was going to head out of the room when Maria suddenly grabbed her wrist and stopped her.

“No, wait. Let them loose.”

“What?”

“Your hair. Let them loose.”

“Why…?”

“Why? Uh, no reason. It’s just… You always tie them up. So I’m curious to see you with your hair down.”

Pauline blinked at her, incredulous. Then she realized she had no reason to refuse, so she did as she asked, and slowly untied her long black hair, letting them fall on her shoulders.

“Like this…?”

Maria smiled. “Yep, perfect! Now let’s go for real.”

She enthusiastically grabbed her hand, and following her friend’s firm step, Pauline exited the room. Maria softly closed the door behind her, then put a finger in front of her lips and mimed a ‘Shh,’ which made the other girl gulp. She had almost forgotten that now came the most difficult part: sneaking out of the house without her mother noticing them. Maria still in head, they slowly advanced in the corridor, and Pauline was impressed at how little noise the blonde was making despite the fact she was wearing high heels — while on the other hand, she had the feeling she was a giant elephant with just her normal shoes.

Then Maria suddenly came to a stop, and Pauline noticed that the door of her mother’s room was open, and that light escaped from it. This almost made her panic and turn back; but Maria’s hand was still tightly holding hers, and she started to walk with such confidence that Pauline didn’t even get the time to say anything. So they managed to go down the stairs and reach the house’s entrance without Filippa show up. Pauline realized they were actually extremely lucky her mother wasn’t in the living room, because otherwise the whole operation would have been impossible. Maria then quickly asked for the keys, which Pauline knew were always hidden under a flower pot near the door, and without making a sound they got out of the house and disappeared in the darkness of the night.

________________________________________________________________

Amsterdam at night was quite different from the day. Pauline may have been born and lived in this city her entire life, but she still had very few occasions to go wandering in the street when it was dark outside, and whenever she had it had always been with her parents. Under the starry sky, her hometown almost felt like a completely different world, and even with the bright street lamps at every sidewalk, she felt wary of the dark, and she couldn’t help but threw nervous glances behind her shoulders whenever she heard a noise.

Maria, on the other hand, seemed to be completely oblivious to her struggles, and didn’t seem frightened the least in the world — she walked with so much conviction, her high heels clicking confidently on the pavement, as if she owned the entire city. Watching her from behind, Pauline felt genuinely envious of her self-assurance. How did Maria always manage to appear so bold and assertive, in every situations? It was almost frustrating.

There was quite a few people around; some workers coming back to home late, some group of friends hanging out together — and despite the fact all of these strangers seemed to be absorbed in their own little world and couldn’t care less about the two teenage girls trotting down the streets, Pauline felt suspicious of every one of them. At some point, a very tall, middle-aged man in a big black coat walked past them, and she shrieked and grabbed Maria’s hand, as if she was afraid he was going to hit her. Maria, obviously, sensed her fright and rolled her eyes.

“I swear, what a wimp,” she commented, though she still didn’t let go of Pauline’s hand.

“You’re not even a little bit worried?”

“No? It’s cool, I’m used to it.”

“But— But what if that man had assaulted us. What would you have done then?”

“I don’t know. Kicked him in the balls? Wouldn’t be the first time it happens.”

“Wha— You know what? No, I don’t want to know what happened.”

Pauline sighed, but she didn’t have the time to regain her composure that Maria then instantly added: “So, where do we go?”

“Where…? Uh, I don’t know… I thought we were just going to hang out outside…?”

Maria sighed. “That’s boring. We need to do something. I dunno, maybe go to a bar.”

“But we’re both underage.”

“So?”

“So it’s illegal! They won’t let us enter!”

“Do you think something being illegal ever stopped me?”

Of course it didn’t. “No, but, I mean, that’s still— A-Ah, Maria?”

Her friend had stopped caring about what she was saying. Her eyes suddenly lit up, and she had brusquely started to run, crossing the street in the opposite direction. Pauline felt obligated to follow her, so she hurried to chase her down. When Maria finally stopped, she felt out of breath, and it took a few long seconds before she could regain her respiration.

“What… What’s going on?”

“Look!”

Pauline raised her head, and in front of her, behind a small wall, was a big, cleared esplanade, that directly gave view on the ocean. Pauline had already been to this place before, but it was the first time she actually saw it during the night; and she had to admit that the undisrupted sight of the sea, shining brightly under the moon and the stars, was quite enchanting.

“I wonder if the water is cold,” Maria pondered in a soft voice.

“It probably is,” Pauline argued. “I mean, it is the middle of the night…”

“Hmm…” Maria scratched her head, her eyes still staring at the ocean, and then a grin took shape on her face and she turned around towards her friend. Pauline instantly knew what she was thinking about without she even needed to open her mouth.

“No! Maria, don’t—”

But she had already thrown away her high heels, and without even taking the pain to remove her clothes, she climbed on the wall, and made a dive head first inside the sea, splashing everything around her, Pauline included. She resurfaced a few seconds later, the water only coming to her waist.

“Aaahh! It’s so fucking cold!”

“Of course it is!” Pauline yelled. “Hurry up and come back here! You’re going to catch a cold!”

Maria only laughed at her, then waved her hand. “Hey, you’ve always loved the ocean, right? C’mon! Join me!”

“What? I will absolute not join you!”

“Come on! For once in your life, stop being a coward!”

“I’m not being a—”

Pauline suddenly felt something grab a pan of her dress and pulling on it with all of its strength. And, as she never had the best sense of balance, this inevitably made her fell into the sea. Before she could understand what had happened, icy water was overwhelming her, and as soon as she got her head out of the sea she instantly started rubbing her arms and chattering her teeth. Then she glared at Maria, who, of course, was just giggling.

“You’re insane! I could’ve got seriously hurt!”

“But you didn’t, so everything’s cool.”

“Ah, God… I hope you’re happy now.”

“Hehe! Yes, very!”

Maria had that pesky wide grin on her face, and she looked genuinely so happy that Pauline couldn’t even bring herself to stay angry at her, which was annoying.

“Geez… The makeup you spent so much time doing is all ruined now…”

Maria shrugged. “No big deal. It’s just makeup. And it’s not like anyone can see us anyway.”

Pauline looked at Maria, and all of a sudden the situation seemed so weird and ridiculous — the both of them, two girls fully clothed into Amsterdam’s sea in the middle of the night — that she couldn’t help but chuckle. A chuckle that quickly morphed into a full on laugh, and that was contagious as Maria quickly rejoined her shortly after. Pauline knew that she should be upset at the other — the water was so cold and her hair and clothes were clinging to her skin in a really disagreeable way… but even after she calmed down and stopped laughing, despite everything, she still couldn’t help but feel strangely warm and happy.

Suddenly, she felt a hand brush her cheek. When she raised her head, her eyes met Maria’s. She was smiling gently — a soft, tender expression on her face that was a far cry from her usual smug smirks or mean grins. That was an expression Pauline wasn’t familiar with at all on her friend’s face, and it took her aback. Her hand was cold, but there was still something incredibly warm in the way she touched her cheek and put some of her black locks behind her ear.

“See? I told you.”

“T-Told me?”

“To let your hair loose. Your look a lot prettier like that.”

It was very dark, even with the light of the street lamps, so Pauline really hoped Maria wouldn’t notice the blush creeping on her cheeks.

She knew that she’d always been of the romantic, dreaming type. She had been the kind of little girl who dreamed to have a handsome prince to sweep her off her feet. Ever since she was a child, falling in love with a man, marrying him, and having children had always been her dream — and, despite the fact the people would tease her because of it, it was still her dream even now, and she never thought there was anything wrong with that.

As such, she’d always thought her first kiss would also meet all of the standard romantic criteria — after a lovely date with her boyfriend, he would bring her to a place where you could see the sea to watch the sunset, and then he would gallantly embrace her in his strong arms and gently put his lips on hers. It had always been how she pictured it. And yet…

And yet, when she looked at Maria, her blonde hair a mess and her clear green eyes shining like jewels, in the middle of that ocean of glitters, she felt a strange impulse taking root in her heart. She looked honestly so pretty, all sparkling and smiling and dazzling under the moon, and so without thinking she leaned in…

And kissed her on the mouth.

It was a brief, soft kiss; lasting only a handful of seconds. Maria’s lips were thin and soaked and salty. When Pauline pulled away, she saw her friend’s expression, which made her froze. She was staring at her, stunned, her eyes as wide as saucers, her mouth open, and her face the color of a brazen fire. Never in her life had she thought she would see Maria Campanella makes such a face, and she was absolutely sure that if she were to tell anyone, no one would believe her. And that’s only then that what Pauline had just done struck her.

“Ah!” She exclaimed. “Th-Th-That’s— I-I mean, that’s— This is—”

Pauline tried to search an excuse, an explanation. None came. She felt herself panicking. Why on earth had she done that? Sure, she’d always loved Maria a lot, but not… not like that. She… She didn’t think, at least? And Maria who just kept staring at her blankly in silence, as if her brain had just ceased functioning.

“S-Say something!” Pauline finally exploded.

“Ah, uh… I…”

At long last, Maria seemed to come back to herself, and winced while scratching her head. She opened her mouth, then closed it, and only a few seconds had probably passed by but those were actually the most excruciating seconds of Pauline’s entire life—

—until she sneezed.

The girls looked at each other in an awkward silence, and then, eventually, Maria spoke again:

“We should… probably go home before we got sick.”

________________________________________________________________

“Thirty-seven nine for Maria, and thirty-eight for Pauline,” Filippa declared, putting the thermometer on the nightstand.

The first one groaned, and the second sighed. Both of them were in Pauline’s room, muffled under the bed’s blanket with wet washcloths on their foreheads. It seemed it was a lot harder to discreetly came back home when you have an unstoppable cough, and they ended up getting caught before even reaching the stairs. Filippa had been generous enough to let them take a shower and sleep before any scolding, and when this morning they’d wake up with a high fever, she had also been relatively calm and understanding about their escapade.

“Honestly, what went through your heads? Going outside this late, all alone, without telling anyone. This is so dangerous! You’re lucky to only get out of this with a fever!”

“I’m sorry,” Pauline murmured, dipping her head under the duvet as if she hoped to disappear under it. “I didn’t want to…”

“You better not put the whole blame on me,” Maria suddenly added. “I didn’t have to insist that much for you to come with me.”

“Yes you did!”

Filippa sighed, then rose up from the bed. “Well, in any case you’ll have to stay in bed for at least quite a few days. I’ll see if Orlando can go to the pharmacy to buy some medicine…”

“So… there will be no punishment?” Pauline asked warily.

“I think spending your fifteenth birthday bedridden with a fever will be punishment enough.”

Her mother’s voice betrayed some irritation, but Pauline felt she had been more worried than angry about the whole ordeal. She then exited the room without saying anything more, closing the door behind her.

“You know your mom is still super cool,” Maria commented. “Mine would have never let me live if she’d have caught me completely soaked in the middle of the night in her living room.”

“You called her a ‘tyrant’ yesterday…”

“I was exaggerating. Trust me, compared to my parents, she’s an angel.”

Pauline had actually no troubles at all trusting her. She was well-aware Maria’s parents tended to be really strict, especially her mother. She witnessed it multiple times before, and it always made her feel grateful for the parents she had.

“It still doesn’t seem to prevent you from continuing to do bad things though…”

“What can I say? That’s just how I was born.”

A faint silence followed, until Maria broke it, in an unusual awkward voice:

“So, er… are we going to talk about it or not?”

“Talk about…?”

Maria groaned. “C’mon! You kissed me yesterday! On the mouth! Remember? I think that’s something that deserve a bit of a talk, right?”

Oh, right. The kiss. Pauline had, indeed, done that. For some reason. Yesterday felt like such an odd night honestly, and with her fever, everything seemed so far away and in a blurry that she had almost wished it was something she’d hallucinated. She and Maria hadn’t exchanged a word on the way back home, then they went to bed, and they’d been with her mother all morning. But Maria was right; obviously, this had happened, and they couldn’t just… ignore it.

“Well… I…” Pauline started, doing her best to not look at her friend in the eyes. “I don’t know.”

“You… don’t know.”

“I-I’m aware how silly it sounds. But it’s just… yesterday, things were weird, you know? We were in the sea, it was dark, and the water was so shiny, and, and… I don’t know! I thought you looked pretty so kissing you didn’t felt… out of place at the time… maybe…”

Pauline could hear Maria’s breath right next to her, but she couldn’t guess what kind of expression she had. She wasn’t courageous enough to look at her.

“So you just… felt like kissing me,” she finally said.

“Yes…”

“Because… what? I looked pretty?”

“Yes…”

Maria stared at her. She was clearly expecting… something else. But Pauline honestly couldn’t give her a comprehensive explanation. She herself didn’t truly know what had crossed her mind at that moment.

“So it wasn’t anything more.”

“More…?”

“You don’t have… any feelings for me.”

Pauline gasped. “Oh no! No, no, no! Of course not.”

Maria let out a huge, big sigh. “Right. It was just a weird impulse on the moment. You’re… just my friend. You like me, but, like, platonically.”

“Yes, yes, that’s it.”

“Yeah, of course that’s all. That’d be silly otherwise, huh?”

“R-Right…”

Then both of them looked away, an awkward silence still hanging in the room. Yes, Pauline was sure it was nothing. She wasn’t in love with Maria or anything. She was just her friend. So, really, there was no need to feel as awkward as she was feeling right now, right? She looked over at her friend (and nothing more!), who seemed to be lost in her own thoughts.

Surely Maria didn’t have… any feelings for her either, right? She always spent her time making fun of Pauline or telling her what a crybaby and an idiot she was… Sure, she knew Maria still liked her, otherwise she wouldn’t keep seeing her, but she wasn’t, like, romantically interested in her… She didn’t think…

Pauline felt like her brain was burning and about to blow up, and she didn’t know if it was because of the fever or because her thoughts were continuing to going back in circle in her head. So she decided she needed to stop thinking altogether, to speak.

“It was… my first kiss.”

Maria blinked, and stared at Pauline weirdly. “What?”

“You know. Yesterday. It was my first kiss.” She paused, before continuing: “I’d always thought my first kiss would be with my boyfriend, during an incredibly romantic date…”

“Oh. Uh. Sorry?”

“It’s not your fault. I mean, I’m the one who kissed you, after all.”

For some reason she still couldn’t fathom. Though thinking about kisses and Maria suddenly made an odd question birth in her mind.

“Say… Was it…”

“What?”

“Was… That wasn’t your first kiss?”

Maria snorted. “Of course it wasn’t.”

Pauline was kind of expecting that answer — Maria was older than her, and she knew she’d always been pretty popular. She never mentioned having dated anyone before, but Pauline still felt a bit disappointed that unlike her, it wasn’t her first kiss. Maybe it was childish of her. Now that she thought about it, she remembered that time two years ago when Filippa had asked her if she had a boyfriend, and Maria had just laughed awkwardly while dismissing the question… She thought she should let the matter at that, that it could be a potentially slippery topic, but the next question escaped her mouth before she even thought about it:

“Did the people you kiss before were boys or girls?”

“Is that any of your business?”

Her tone wasn’t especially disgruntled, it was just her usual snappiness, but Pauline still winced at it. And Maria noticed that, because she then sighed and added: “Both, actually.”

“Oh…”

Maybe that was why, then, that she never brought up the subject with her. Maria had never been the kind of person to be bothered by what others thought of her or to be judged, though, but… then again, what did Pauline knew about Maria, truly? They never seemed to discuss about important things together, or to really confide in each others.

But… maybe it was Pauline’s fault, too, a little bit. Maybe she should just ask Maria more about herself. She would never be able to know more if she never asked. Maybe she should take the first step and try to confide herself more to her, too.

“Though… you know, to be honest, I…”

Pauline hesitated a little, thinking maybe she shouldn’t say the rest for fear to be misinterpreted, but Maria’s green eyes seemed to push her to keep on.

“I actually don’t really regret it that you were my first kiss. I think it’s… actually rather nice for it to be with you. Plus it was also… kinda romantic, I guess.”

Maria stared at her, then finally she smirked, and let out a small chuckle.

“Sometimes you’re really so fucking weird, you know that?” She commented, and Pauline wasn’t sure what she meant by that, but there was an odd fondness and warmth in her voice, so it couldn’t be something mean.

Then she gently bumped the top of Pauline’s forehead, and she thought that, definitely, even with them ending up bedridden and with a fever, she didn’t regret at all any of the things they had done yesterday, or since the beginning of the month, for that matter. Maria always ended up causing her problems or dragging her into troubles she would have never gotten into without her, but maybe sometimes, just sometimes, it was worth it.

She thought it was worth it just to see the Maria who’d promise her to protect her against an imaginary beast from her nightmares while holding her hand, or to eat common ham sandwiches together, or to see a tender, genuine smile on her face during the night in the middle of an ocean of glitters.

And seeing a smiling, glittering Maria was worth all the fevers and punishments, and she would exchange it for nothing in the world.

[sacredlettersspn]

Letter #3: Character (Dead in the Water, 1x03)

Theme: Character

Definition: mental and moral qualities distinctive to an individual; the way someone thinks, feels, behaves

Welcome to the Sacred Letters of Supernatural. Today we will be covering episode 1x03, “Dead in the Water” while thinking about the theme of character. When I think of character, my mind goes to the first part of the definition above, the “moral qualities” distinctive to an individual. I am reminded of citizenship awards in elementary school and posters in school hallways with slogans like, “Character is what you do when nobody is watching.” Character has a moral connotation to it with the expectation that I should have “good” character. But that is not the only way to define or think about “character.”

Character is also distinctive qualities of any kind that define a person. Being an avid reader and television show watcher, as a well as a writer of fan fiction, this aspect of the definition is also familiar to me. Creating characters for a story involves building distinctive, compelling individuals that viewers will be invested in. Characters can become so defined that we come to expect certain actions and behaviors from them, and when their actions fall short of our expectations, we label them as “out of character.” In fanfiction, keeping characters “in character” can be a challenge for writers. There is a need to place close attention to the actions, motivations, and philosophies of the people that are being written about. Without these elements, stories can fall apart and readers lose interest. Character is important to a story.

In addition to feeling something is “out of character,” we can have other reactions when a character’s actions surprise us, like when the bad guy finds a cause to be heroic or when the grumpy, standoffish character makes a friend. If these unexpected behaviors are written in a compelling way with clear steps of character growth or appropriate catalysts, we enjoy seeing a character change. Humans can also surprise us in this way. The quiet student can stand up against a bully or a person who has been to jail multiple times can decide to turn their life around. 

It seems that most of the time, we enjoy these kinds of stories. But there are limits to the amount of change we can accept, and that limit is different for everyone. There are men who stop being sexist, nazis who leave their ideology, bullies who develop self-awareness and try to make amends. Accepting these changes can be difficult, if not impossible for some. Yet many of us love movie characters like Loki who develop from the “bad guy” into something better and more selfless. There is the real life vs. movie screen distinction to take into account when thinking about why we react differently. We also understand Loki’s past and watch his development, so we can empathize with him. However, it appears that we often like the idea of the bad guy turning good, but we have a hard time accepting it in real life. “Cancel culture” is an example of this challenge to accept change in people or to recognize the diversity of character within one individual. 

This is not to argue what we should or should not accept, to put a label on right or wrong when it comes to character growth and how we respond to it, in fiction or real life. There are legitimate reasons for not trusting or accepting a person who has committed horrible acts against other humans, or who have passed our own personal boundaries in terms of what we will accept. This discussion is meant to be an observation, one that I think is worth exploring. The purpose of thinking about this idea is to learn more about yourself and how you view the world. I think we can look at this concept of character growth on a smaller scale and consider how we relate it to relationships in our personal lives, and then we can take it and examine how we approach the bigger issues. To begin digging a little deeper into our personal perspectives on this issue, we can ask ourselves, what side of the “acceptance spectrum” I lie on?

So with that question in mind, let’s summarize the episode.

The episode opens in Lake Manitoc, Wisconsin with the morning routine of the Carlton family. There’s Bill, the father, and his two children, Sophie and Will, who live in a small house by the lake. Sophie is getting ready to go for a swim. The weather and the lake is calm, but once Sophie’s out on the water, the swimmer can’t help but feel that something is underneath the surface. She pauses to look around, sees nothing, but is soon dragged under by an unseen force. She drowns and her body is never recovered. 

Sam and Dean enter as federal wildlife officers after seeing an article about Sophie’s drowning. This lake has already claimed a life that year, and several more in the past. The Winchesters talk to the sheriff in town, Jake Devins, and meet his daughter and grandson, Andrea and Lucas. Sam and Dean learn that the daughter’s husband was the first drowning earlier that year, and that the grandson witnessed the event. Lucas won’t speak anymore, he only draws. 

Dean attempts to gain Lucas’ trust while he and Sam investigate the lake. They try talking to the Carltons, but Bill shuts them out. Soon after this first conversation, Will dies by drowning in the kitchen sink. Sam and Dean visit a second time and try harder to make Bill talk, but he is almost comatose with depression. 

With no other leads, Sam and Dean leave Bill alone and happen to meet Andrea in a park. Dean connects with Lucas and receives a picture from him, a drawing of a house by a church with a boy standing by the fence with his bike. They find this house in town, and Sam and Dean visit the house of an old woman whose son, Peter Sweeney, went missing when he was around ten years old. Sam and Dean realize there’s a connection between this boy and Bill when they see an old photograph in the house. 

They visit Bill again, but find him riding his boat out onto the lake. While they try to get his attention, something knocks the boat into the air and Bill falls into the lake and drowns. 

The sheriff kicks Sam and Dean out of town after the incident, looking up their ranger numbers and finding out the ID’s are fake. But Dean doesn’t listen, he feels like something is off, so he turns around and visits Andrea and Lucas. Lucas is frantic when he answers the door. His mom is trapped in the bathroom, drowning in the tub. Dean saves her, and she tells him she heard a child’s voice in the water saying, “Come play with me.”

Dean looks through Andrea’s old photo albums while in her home and sees a young Jake Devins with Peter Sweeney. Lucas directs Sam and Dean to a random spot in the yard by the lake, and they dig up an old bike. The sheriff finds them and holds them at gunpoint. Sam and Dean tell him they’ve made a connection. They guess that he and Bill killed Peter Sweeney as kids. The sheriff tries to deny it, but while facing his daughter, he can’t lie. He admits to the killing, stating that he and Bill bullied Peter, but one time it accidentally went too far, and Peter drowned.

The adults argue about whether the missing boy is haunting the lake, with the sheriff calling Sam and Dean crazy. Meanwhile, Lucas goes out to the dock, drops a toy in, and attempts to fish it out. He’s pulled in by a ghostly hand. Sam and Dean jump into the lake to save Lucas. Meanwhile, the sheriff runs to the edge of the lake and sees Peter’s face, pale and dirty, pop up just above the surface. While Sam and Dean search frantically for Lucas, the sheriff sacrifices himself by wading into the water and begging the spirit to take him instead. It listens, pulls the sheriff under, and releases Lucas to Dean.

The character in this episode I want to focus on is Jake Devins because of his involvement with the murder of Peter Sweeney. While Bill Carlton was also a participant, I would argue that the episode focuses more on Devins character and family. We learn that he’s a family man by hearing how he helps out with his grandson after the death of his son-in-law. We see multiple conversations and interactions with his family, so we’re able to get a sense of the kind of man Devins is. He comes across as a hardworking sheriff who cares deeply about his family. He appears to be direct as well, sometimes intense or intimidating in the way he talks with Sam and Dean about the lake. In general, we get an idea that Devins is a honorable, experienced man, so it might come as a shock when he later admits to being involved in the murder of a fellow classmate as a child.

While the audience may or may not have predicted Jake’s confession, his daughter Andrea is completely taken by surprise. She wavers between doubt and wanting her father to admit the truth in the scene where Devins divulges the secret he has kept for three decades. She is shocked by learning the truth, never considering her father capable of murder. But the truth doesn’t appear to change how she thinks about her father. At the end of the episode, she tells Dean that whatever Jake did in his past, Andrea knows him as a good father and grandfather who loved and took care of his family. This version of Jake is what Andrea chooses to remember. I can’t help but wonder if I would have the same capacity as Andrea to ignore something like murder. Would I be able to focus on the good parts of a person’s character after learning of an action like that? And why would I want to do that?

While watching the episode, my own appraisal of Jake Devins’ character fundamentally changes after learning that he frequently bullied Peter Sweeney with Bill and this bullying caused Peter’s death. I wonder how someone can go that far with hurting someone and still call it an “accident.” I wonder what kind of child Devins was growing up and the lack of empathy he would have had to be a bully. I think about the inability he and Bill had to tell the truth, which comes across as cowardice to me. Their actions led to the death of someone’s son, and Peter’s mom never gets any answers. She has to live the rest of her life not knowing what happened to her son. 

It’s challenging to reconcile the two parts of Jake’s character that we see, the honorable, family-oriented sheriff, and the bully who killed a classmate. In the end, Devins’ family-oriented side wins when he sacrifices himself to save his daughter and grandson. But I can’t help but feel that doesn’t atone for his actions. Somehow Andrea is able to reconcile these two sides of her father. Maybe it’s because of the family bond they have. I am an outsider watching this happen, but if Jake was my father or my brother, my response might be different. 

Character is not absolute, although at times we’d maybe like to think it is. It would make things simple for the bad guy to be all bad, and the good guys to be all good. But humans, and fictional characters, exist in the gray. Every one of us responds to that gray area differently. I extend lots of sympathy to Sam Winchester, for example, who in later seasons makes many questionable choices and endangers many people. But when I think about Sam, I don’t define him by those bad choices. I understand the reason he made the choices, and I believe that makes up for the actual content of the decisions he makes. Jake, however, was a bully. He wasn’t acting questionably for a noble cause, he was doing it to be mean and exert dominance. The intention behind the actions matters to me when I’m judging a character, but it's more challenging to judge a character when two juxtaposing actions exist in the same episode. Jake is both a murderer and a loving father/grandfather, and that makes his character very, very gray.

Again, there’s no right or wrong way to view this issue, but I’m offering my perspective as a point of observation. I think it can be useful to ask ourselves how we judge character, by what standards and to what degree of absoluteness, and consider when we are able to forgive or overlook bad choices. Understanding this can give us insights into how we punish and forgive those in our personal life, what issues we feel passionate enough about to draw a line on, and how we may vote on certain political issues. Learning how we respond to fictional characters can give us insight in how we respond to people and issues in real life. 

Lectio Divina

The next segment of this letter is called “Lectio Divina,” which is a Christian spiritual practice for reading scriptures that involves interacting with the text on four different levels. I am following Harry Potter and the Sacred Text’s use of this practice and adapting it the best I can to the visual format. Normally, you pick a scripture or a line of text to analyze. I randomized numbers between 1 and 42 (the amount of minutes in the episode), and picked the first full line after the minute mark I was given.

Line: 5:00, “I’m agent Ford. This is agent Hamill. We’re with the U.S. wildlife service.” -Dean Winchester

Now we analyze this line on the four levels of Lectio Divina : literal (narrative), allegorical (metaphors and symbols), reflection (how do I connect to it), and invitational (what is the text asking of us or teaching us). 

Literal: Dean and Sam are knocking on the door of the victim’s family. They’re posing as wildlife agents in order to get information from the family about what happened to the victim. They’re using aliases of actors, Harrison Ford and Mark Hamill, who are widely known for their roles as Han Solo and Luke Skywalker in the Star Wars franchise. 

Allegorical/Symbolic: The names that Sam and Dean choose immediately jump out at me. The first thing I think of when I hear these names is Star Wars and then I think of the characters, Han Solo and Luke Skywalker. The choice of these character names for Sam and Dean can give us an insight into how Sam and Dean are meant to be portrayed, and how Sam and Dean see themselves since Kripke has stated that Sam and Dean were originally based off of these characters. Perhaps Dean identifies with Han Solo, the rugged smuggler who’s a bit cocky but ends up having a heart of gold. But I’m not sure whether we can say that Sam identifies with Skywalker because we don’t know if he chose that alias. It seems more likely that Dean chose the alias’ in this situation.

Personal: Here, Sam and Dean are lying for a good cause, but their lie seems dangerous. I tend to think lying is a bad thing except for rare cases. Sometimes I might lie to avoid hurting someone’s feelings, but even the acceptableness of that is arguable. It’s hard for me to imagine posing as federal agents as comfortably as Sam and Dean seem to. I can imagine myself sweating, a knot in my stomach, and stuttering when I attempt to speak, but the fake agent names roll off Dean’s tongue as smooth as his own. In real life, I would argue against people posing as agents, but I’m supportive of what Sam and Dean are doing. Without their ability to pose as agents, their work would be nearly impossible. I can justify the use of their lying, but I don’t often justify lying in real life.

Invitational: I think this line is asking us to compare the characters of Sam and Dean with their alias’ characters, and to see what insights we can gather from this comparison. With these alias’ used so early in the first scene, I can’t help but think their use is significant, not random. And if we can compare the Winchesters with other fictional characters to gain insights into their characters, then I don’t think it’s too far a jump to say we can use fictional characters to gain insights into ourselves. Characters are powerful, just as powerful as the story itself, and I would argue that this ability to compare and relate to fictional characters is what gives power to a story. We can see pieces of ourselves and our own lives in a story, see courage in the face of hardship, and find inspiration to face our own tough choices. So maybe we can ask what Sam and Dean see in these Star Wars characters, and how might they gain inspiration from Han Solo and Luke Skywalker’s stories. 

Before I finish this letter, I would like to end with a question for the audience. This question is for personal evaluation or contemplation, but if you would like a chance for your answer to be featured on the blog or to begin a discussion, please send your answers to my Tumblr inbox.

This week’s question:

Who is your favorite fictional “bad-guy-turned-good” character?

And last, but not least, a special thanks to our patrons!

Jamie S.

[catsvrsdogscatswin]

Higurashi Month 2020, Day 20: My Inspiration

I think what I really love about Higurashi is how it layers things. I knew it was a murder-horror anime before going into it, but even then, watching Higurashi for the first time was a treat. We’re introduced to your typical moe anime cast –tough tomboy leaderish girl, demure average schoolgirl, feisty mischievous child, cute small child, token male lead– but Higurashi takes that a step further, giving a logical reason for all these wildly unalike people to be in the same friend group –they live in the back end of beyond with only 18 children in the class, themselves included, and this group has a game club.

Of course, as the series progresses, we slowly get to know more about the characters. Keiichi isn’t just the dumb token lead, he’s a former school all-star that blew off steam by shooting kids with a fake gun, and moved to Hinamizawa to start over. The story introduces his crime, Keiichi’s obvious regret, and then a confession from his perspective. (Or at least, in the manga it does. I was dumbfounded when I rewatched that episode of the anime and realized they just left it at “he used to shoot small kids.”) Mion isn’t just a tomboyish leader, she’s also the heir to a complex and tradition-heavy family organization. Rena isn’t just a smiling ditz, she’s an intuitive girl with a history of mental issues and trauma. Same with Satoko, and Rika’s deeper characterization, of course, needs no words.

What really invests me in this series (and gets me through writing all these prompts every June, lol) is how deep you can dig and keep finding things. The framework for Higurashi is amazing just in itself: the plot is solid, the characters are ever-growing and almost all of them achieve the completion of their character arcs, even minor characters like Oishi and Akasaka. Oishi’s so gung-ho about the murders because the first victim was a father figure to him: he’s introduced as a suspicious, pushy cop that gets Keiichi into trouble, but as the series progresses Oishi’s deeper motivations are revealed, and he changes to a proud, desperate man who isn’t afraid to put his nose to the grindstone and deeply cares about protecting the citizens of Hinamizawa. Oishi’s hatred of the Sonozakis is also resolved, and he even has a friendly conversation with them. In the manga, he laughs and cries with relief when Rika tells him that the Sonozakis aren’t actually behind the murders, and Hanyuu delivers a very moving line about how not having anyone to hate anymore is a good feeling, rather than a bad one. There’s even a postcredit snippet in the manga where Oishi and Mion and Shion’s mother start playing mahjong together after everything’s resolved (and the riot police “may or may not” have been deployed to keep an eye on that).

The plot, characters, and lore of Higurashi are well-knit and constructed, and the story itself is genuinely moving and endearing, and a fascinating take on human morality and decision-making. The time cycle lets us see things from multiple angles, the consequences of various decisions, in a very interesting way.

You may also notice I say “but in the manga” a lot, in both author notes for other prompts and in this explanation. Actually, for new viewers (aka not the people reading this, hehe) I’d suggest watching the anime first. In my opinion, both the manga and anime adaptions have some serious good and bad points –I have yet to play through the games, but it’s on my list. The anime, in my opinion, creates the larger flow of the story better –Rika’s whole secret protagonist-dom, the time cycle, etc. are all mostly under wraps until the very last second, something I feel adds to the story rather than detracts from it. For the first few arcs, lets say Abducted by Demons up until Time Wasting, the audience really just needs the knowledge that these are all different scenarios or time loops, and that’s it. Rika is suspect, but not obviously someone who knows things, and it’s not clear just how much she’s aware of. By jarring contrast, when I first read the Abducted by Demons manga, at the end after everyone dies Rika comforts a crying Satoko and stares off into the middle distance while saying they’ll see the others again in the next world. It was so abrupt and contrary to the entire tone of the manga thus far –Rika and Satoko were barely featured– I feel a new viewer would have their experience with Higurashi spoiled. Higurashi isn’t about Rika until much later: initially, it’s a murder-mystery series to be solved, and the addition of Rika’s much-more-obvious cycling distracts from the mystery the author, at the time, is trying to draw our attention towards.

However, I also say “in the manga they did this” a lot because the anime basically cut that out and simplified the plot. A lot of stuff in the manga is not in the anime, and while some lines might make it in, generally these scenes are cut for brevity –something I don’t always agree with, but then again, I didn’t animate the series. Keiichi’s explanation of his crimes in Atonement is a good example: while I wouldn’t ask for a flashback sequence like in the manga, a voiceover or something would be nice. Just a line dropped in there to counter Rena’s statement of “ew pervert who used to shoot small girls.” Contrarywise, stuff like the full (fuller?) scene where Rika tells Oishi about the truth behind the murders in Festival Music, which is longer in the manga, I can completely understand why they cut it down. While the extra information was nice, it was not vital to the plot.

Hence, by my logic, the Higurashi manga is better served as supplementary material after you watch the anime, but that’s my opinion, of course.

Anyways, my Higurashi muse. What I love to do, and what all of everything above this serves to construct for me, is dig deeper into characterizations and lore. Rena had her mother leave her and went briefly crazy due to Hinamizawa Syndrome –she also seems to be coded for depression, or at least depressive episodes, to a significant margin in both the anime and manga, especially in Atonement. How can I play with that? How does that affect her? How can I expand on it?

Rika is one of my favorite sandboxes for this, so to speak. She’s lived hundreds of years, what kind of experiences must she have had? I like to follow the lore, clues, and character traits to their logical end. For example, even though Rika is hundreds of years old, she’s been a child that whole time. We know this because (in the manga) she sees and reacts to Hanyuu as an infant being held by her mother, and that Time-Wasting showed she was cognizant of her full range of reincarnated memories five years before 1983, because she has asked Akasaka for help multiple times, enough so that she can form contingencies around him trying to use a phone and cut multiple lines before he can do so. This is also why, unlike most translations, I always say she’s hundreds of years instead of a hundred years, because Rika is ten years old. Arguably she’s being reincarnated back to the beginning of her life every time, but for minimalism’s sake I’ll say she’s being turned back five years, to just before Akasaka showing up. So every time she reincarnates and lives through her failed world, that’s five years.

100 divided by 5 is twenty. By the Rika-is-only-100/110-years-old argument, Rika would only have gone through twenty world cycles, and if she’s reincarnated way back to the beginning, she would have only lived through ten cycles. This, obviously, is impossible, because between the anime and manga there are ten cycles she is involved in directly: Abducted by Demons, Cotton Drifting, Time Wasting, Beyond Midnight (manga-only), Eye-Opening, Atonement, Disaster Awakening (anime-only), Massacre, and Festival Music. This list disregards the worlds introduced in the OVAs, such as Outbreak and Dice-Killing (though Dice-Killing was in the manga), and Rika also talks about other world cycles we don’t ever see, such as ones where Keiichi never moved to Hinamizawa. (She mentions that that world doesn’t happen often, and calls it desolate.)

Point being, for Rika to have experienced all of these worlds more than once, which she says she has and evidence obviously shows she has, she would have hit multiple hundreds in age-experience a long time ago. Like, the most conservative estimate (five years) says that experiencing the worlds just twice would hit one hundred years, and for Rika to memorize things so precisely she knows the day and sometimes even the time things happen, it would probably be more towards ten repetitions of each cycle, perhaps even dozens.

Arguing against this, of course, is the fact Hanyuu only reincarnated her about a month back in Festival Music, but again, Rika had been reincarnated all the way back to 1978 multiple times, and she also expressed considerable alarm and shock at the “shortness” of the time this go around.

See, this right here is my general mode of operation when writing Higurashi, when I’m not adapting scenes or doing fun little AUs. I like to investigate things and figure them out, foil them like a weird math equation and then present my findings to the rest of the fandom in some hopefully interesting way.

I hope whoever reads these and reads down this far is inspired to write some Higurashi stuff on their own. It’d be nice to have some comrades, though I’ll keep on rowing this boat myself if I have to!

[popculturebuffet]

The Loud House Reviews: Schooled!

Season 5, and regular coverage begin! The loud house finally moves into a new year chronologically: Lincoln and Co move up to Middle School but find themselves seperated when LIncoln accidently signs up for the wrong class and ends up with a mean teacher and frienemy chandler, and then ends up commuting to a Canadian school instead. The Canada part is more believable than a middle school not having multiple teachers for multiple subjects frankly but more ranting on that later. Meanwhile in order to get Lori moves on to college only to find every dorm is a comedic set piece, and Lynn Sr and Rita try to get Lily ready for pre school by potty training her. Finally in all this chaos Leni ends up attending pre school. Again still more believable than the single class thing. Ramblings about well guess, how amazing it is the show has lasted this long in this day and age, my thoughts on Lynn Jr being kind a obnoxious. 50% chad and my lessened hatred for rusty. Which again I assure you is more believable than the single class nonsense. Back to School, under the cut.

Welcome readers new and old to regular coverage of The Loud House! Couple of reasons for that. The first is, like amphibia, so I don’t fall behind as I tend to procastinate and let episodes of shows pile up, and i’m tired of it. The second is that I feel we need more Loud House content on this site that’s not loudcest, people shipping sam and lincoln soley to try and get back at the show for having a gay couple, and some weird stuff I can’t quite unwrap because i’m old. And keep in mind I understand 50% chad just fine.. look at him. 

So yeah I have a feeling young or old, i’m not the only one scared to go int here and hopefully I can give ya’ll something fun to look forward to or worth sifting through it. 

Now i’ve covered the show before.. 4 times in fact, having covered Brave the last dance as a one off way back and having covered ALL THREE SALUNA episodes during pride month. So check those out if you want my previous thoughts on the show as a whole, my faviorite character and her special lady, and me ranting about rusty/.. and we’ll get to him. But i’ve got a lot to talk about, some of it not directly about the episode so pitter pat er let’s get at eer.  The first thing I want to talk about is.. how big an occasion the show is. It’s not only at 5 seasons but it recently got renewed for a 6th and still has a movie on the way.. as I hope so does rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles.. please don’t let that movie have been canceled, that show went from okay to leaving me wanting more of my mad dogs... but yeah getting back on track they’ve offically reached... 

And that’s.. incredibly rare ESPECIALLY for nick. I mean yes spongebob will never die, and the fairly oddparents died way after it should’ve, but for the most part nick is a giant tire fire of dickheads when it comes to running a network. They have an absolutley ghastly habit of canceling a show as soon as possible, and if they already commissioned season 2 shuttling it to sister network nicktoons to die a quite death. They expect every show to become an overnight sucess, or else and it’s a freaking disgusting practice. And it’s still going: I mean just to bookend it, around the same time loud house started, we got the utter classic Harvey Beaks. The show had a sizeable audiences and what kids I showed it to loved it but because it wasn’t doing spongebob numbers Nick shuttled it to nicktoons then yelled at it’s creator for daring to be upset they you know.. moved his show to their designated graveyard without telling him and ended the show without giving them notice to change the ending. The final episode still WORKS as a final episode, but it wasn’t INTENDED to end on a bittersweet note and I blanme that on nick.  The bookend part comes from the fact that about a month before this Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turltes ended it’s run.. on Nicktoons, with no fanfare and like Harvey fans likely only knowing thanks to scheduling, had it’s final season cut in half so they had to rush the pacing of the final few episodes to wrap up as much as they could, AND the cancelation reason was the always reliably stupid “low toy sales” excuse.  The odds of a show surviving on nick, nevermind thriving are very slim and even outside the nightmare factory that is my once beloved childhood network, most animated shows last around 3 seasons. Disney channel usually cuts htem off around 4, and cartoon network around 3 if their that nice, with utter classic OK KO being one of the latest victims of the cancelation bug, and steven unvierse only got a 6th season after essentially being canceled and having to rush the ending, only THEN getting to go back and fill in the cracks with Future and the Movie.  And unlike fellow network loved show that’s gone on for a while, Teen Titans Go, the Loud House is still a pretty good show. It has it’s bumps, we’ll talk about some of them here and i’ve talked about em before, especially the “”With the casagrandes mini” which could’ve easily hurt said show but thankfully didn’t. It’s grown, going from being about the one boy among ten girls to being about all 11 kids, AND their parents and making earnest attempts to make once hated characters like Lori and Lola fully fleshed out.. it’s been more 50 50 with lynn, but more on that later. My point is the show’s tried to evolve, to grow out of having a simple status quo and actually let things change and it’s refreshing when a lot of comedy shows refuse to. The show CAN be hit ore miss in quality, but hte misses have become less cruel and the hits have become that much more impactful. 

Not only that but the show surivived the seeming impossible of it’s creator being revealed to be a sexual harassing creepy asshole who hopefully gets his dick sanded off for all eternity when he invetibly ends up in hell or whatevers next. Screw him but good on Nick for firing him swiftly, one of the few times in the last few years i could really say that about them and not be sarcastic, and good on the crew for carrying on easily without him. 

My point is.. it’s nice to not be attending another show’s funeral. After rise and then venture bros, it’s NICE to have a show surivive and carry on and decide NOT to rest at this stage and stay in it’s comfort zone but shake things up a bit. It’s nice in this stinkhole of a year to have something to celebrate, and yes i’m aware a back to school specail is ill timed, for obvious reasons, but it was likely in production long before covid and I can’t fault the writers for wanting to give kids an escape, nor for doing the quarntine special earlier to help them talk through it. So congrats loud house you earned it.  Now that’s out of the way, the not resting thing.. the thing that has me covering the show, and had me exxcited for this episode.. is that they decided to shake things up a lot by moving all the kids up an age and moving Lori up to college. And what makes this work.. is this wasn’t something they just sprung on the audience. it would’ve worked with that after 4 years of the same age and general stuff.. but season 3 started setting it up with Lincoln and Clyde’s middle school visit and Lori’s college interview, both things i’ll likely cover ventually, while Season 4, after the mini series, had most Lori episodes focus on getting her ready for it: From her senior year, to Leni realizing she’d be gone and being panicky over it, to her working to get a car, which she rides off in this episode. The show dedicated one of it’s few arcs, and probably the only non-romantic one outside of Ronnie Anne and Bobby moving to their spinoff, to this. 

They were all in on this and there was no turning back, and shaking up the status quo like this is a risk as some viewers fear change and run from it like cowards> Me.. I loved it. I loved the idea of taking Lincoln to a new school, giving him and his friends new stuff to do and new challenges to face,  having Lori move away, have Luna learn to drive, have Lisa enter kindergarten, Lily say more etc. And there’s even things I didn’t think of that two upcoming episode synposis suprised me with: birthday episodes, though it’d be best to spread them out but i’m hoping strife of the party isn’t the only one, and the power vacum: Can Leni take over for Lori.. should she? Should Luna or Luaan try instead. Do they even want to? it’s all good questions. It’s a simple but small change that helps change up the show for the better, opens up new avenues while not salting the earth for the old as demonstrated by half of the upcoming episdoes for the next two weeks being ones that could’ve been done at any point in the show. 

So yeah my hype was at maxium, helped by the fact I love one hour specials of shows: “Change Your Mind” “Reign Storm”, all three ducktales have done so far with “Let’s Get Dangeorus” likely adding to that list.. it’s usually a great time for shows to go all out, show waht they got and tell deeper stories. So the big question all this has been leading up to: what did loud house, 5 seasons in,k with a clean slate and tone sof potetial do with their premiere? Well let’s take a look shall we?  This episode is divided into 4 plots, one of which is really a plot inside a plot but still technically 4, all centered around school starting: Lincoln and Co have their first day of middle school, Lori is moving to college after all that setup, and Lily is finally old enough for daycare. And Lynn Sr is having a slow motion breakdown at first, he gets out of it quickly, because understandably he’s feeling mealcholy about not only having all his kids in school but having his first leave him. Sure he still has a full hosue but it’s still rough having one of the few constants in  your life , a chaotic life at that go. So each one focuses on one of them. THe fourht if your curious has Leni accidently end up in Lily’s pre school and is comedy gold. More on that in a minute.  This is actually one of the episodes problems as only Lincoln’s plot and Lori’s plot feel like they naturally dovetail, while Lily’s plot feels like an eleven minute episode that was bootstrapped to this one either to get her into daycare faster or to pad it out to an hour along with parts of the Lincoln plot. It’s till not a BAD episode, but it dosen’t feel quite as cohesive as it should, or as big in scope being an hour long, with most of the loud kids outside the four with plots not getting more than a cameo, though Lisa gets to be the best part of LIly’s plot, and Lynn.. we’ll get to her. It’s not great. I do GET why they did this, as trying to focus on ALL of them at once is nigh impossible and it let the stories breathe better, but it still feels weird that none of them have a reaction to lori being gone and frankly I think the stronger story would be to have had lily potty train LAST season, and then focus this on Lori leaving, the family adjusting, and have Lincoln’s middle school woes be the b plot. Now granted we have a full season to rumninate on her absence, and how it effects the others, so it’s not the hugest lost, but i feels like a waste of the extra time to just pile three episodes into one when a half hour could’ve done the same and saved you two half hours for later. It’s not terrible, but it could’ve been better. Now i’m done moping about the special as a whole for a second let’s break down each plot one at a time. 

The A-Plot: Lincoln Took off to Canada the Other Dayyyyyyyyy The plot is very simple and the adds and summary sadly telegraphed it.. which didn’t help because it’s very clear from the episode Lincoln getting sent to canada is a wacky twist and not supposed to be in the adds. I mean I can’t blame them it’s in half the episode, but it still would’ve been funnier if they kept it as a suprise. And yes if you didn’t know about this episode LIncoln gets sent to canada which is somehow not too weird for the show.  So Lincoln and Co are starting high school. And now’s as good a review as any to TALK about Lincoln’s supporting cast. I did a bit during my review of Brave the Last Dance but feel it’s a good time to talk about them again update opinons and what not. I do feel like they sometimes blend into each other a bit much and shine best when one of them is given the spotlight to play off the others instead of all playing a supporitng role. It’s why I like “Pasture Bedtime” and “brave the last dance” so much: They let the characters breathe while still giving one some extra focus. As for each indivdiually. 

Clyde as I said there i’ve come around on: Early on how tolerable he was was a coin flip: he could be an adorable, somewhat awkard, sheltered kid but one eager to help his friend with his various schemes, as he is now only with a love of baking which is even better. But he could ALSO be a creepy little bugger who either had a freaking anime nose bleed and fainted when Lori was around, or tried to break her and Bobby up, Bobby who is not only the nicest character on BOTH shows in general but was extra nice to Clyde despite all this. Granted I think my boy was too dense to realize Clyde was being a one man asshole parade, but still. It dosen’t help that with Savino’s later ousting for doing the same shit but as a grown ass man. Thankfully he has done a complete recovery and the Lori bit was thankfully dropped and with Bobby gone, he couldn’t hurt my baby boy anymore, so they moved on to other parts of him. Plus I love his dad’s not just for the obvious being gay dads but for being good characters in their own right. 

Stella is easily my favorite of the group, i’ve gone on about her before and Haley Tju does a wonderful job with her, and she feels a bit more three dimensional than the rest of the non-clyde members of the group. Not fully, but still a bit more than the one trait they get and hopefully like our next one up and clyde, she actually gets to start showing up outside of lincoln’s friend squad team episodes. 

Liam is easily my second faviorite. I”m aware he’s not the most complex boy: He’s a farmer, and he knows how to tame animals.. that’s about what he’s used for.. but he’s a sweet enoguh kid he makes it work. And frankly said trait works for him because shockingly, out of all of lincoln’s non clyde friends he’s shown up the MOST in stories not involving Lincoln, and even in one of those lately not involving hte rest of his friends. No really, he popped up in racing hearts in season 3, and Senior Moment and Snoops On Last season. It’s not a TON of episodes overall but compared to the rest of them it’s very noticable and I love it. More please. 

Moving on to the ones i’ve bitched about... Zach. Yeah.. my thoughts can best be summed up as this. 

I mean.. Lincoln’s friends, even the more cheerful ones are capable of feeling defeat and pesimsim, if you want one to downtalk people you have rusty, and “has a tatoo , likes antqiues and belives in cryptids” aren’t really great quirks. If they did more with them or used them OUTSIDE of his episodes sure, but otherwise .. why is he here other than not wanting to explain his absence? Sure he plays off rusty.. but Stella could easily do his role as that and even then they don’t use him for that enough to really justify being him around. Either have a point with him or quitely write him out.. Star Vs, for all it’s flaws, leanred this as far back as season 2 with alphonso and ferguson, AND when people qutestioned where they are actually brought them back to properly write them off and gave them closure in the episode they gave the rest of the echo creek cast the same. Just pick one. And if you want him to knock rusty down a peg fine, just do so.  And now Rusty.. my old nemisis.... and things have changed. Do I still LIKE Rusty? nope. Just.. nope. I don’t. He’s still a skeezy little idiot.. but I realized that unlike LIam he at least has a purpose in the group: He’s the Micheal Kelso. Granted UNLIKE kelso, they don’t go the extra mile and have his friends poke fun at him, but this isn’t that kind of friendship, and with Lynn now around more and Chandler now likely going to be the same, there’s more opprotunites for someone outside the group to rightfully insult the little moron. And if their not going to.. I realized I could. I realized I ENJOY insulting him, taking the piss out of his unjusitfied ego, and just having fun making fun fo the little goober. And more than that.. I realized he DOES have redeeming qualities. He’s a genuinely good friend, he loves his friends dearly and has no trouble showing affection despite his misplaced swagger. I may mock the kid, and I will again.. but he’s not a bad person and will likely grow out of being a dipweasel, just not on screen. I realized having a deep abiding hatred of him just wasn’t good for me when simply mocking him constantly does the trick. There are other, more important things to get pissed about. Rusty isn’t that important. But he is good joke fodder and unlike the show with Zach I refuse to pass up an opportunity. 

But yeah now that’s out of the way, the basic setup here infuraties me. It’s for mildly stupid reasons, but ones i’m going to go to bat for: Lincoln dosen’t get into the same class as his friends. As in their still treating this like elementary school and having everyone in the same class for every subject. That.. that’s not how middle school works. that’s not how any of this works. They don’t lump groups of the same kids into one tract of classes, even electives like cooking or forced ones like PE, which thanks to my autisim I was allowed to attend a diffrent kind of PE that wasn’t an utter fucking nightmare. And you may say “Well Jake your a near 30 blobby shell of a man and things change” which is accurate but they haven’t changed that much. Girl Meets World was only 6 years ago. And while they DID have Cory as the only real teacher they USED, he was still shown to be their history teacher and it was lampshaded sometimes how he wasn’t their only class. And yes I know a lot can change in 6 years, the hellscape we’re in proves that, but just simply ASKING my middle schooler nephew if this is still how that works.. and yup it is. Now it could be diffrent by region, but for the most part the conseus seems to be on diffrent teachers for diffrent subjects. And again as Girl Meets World shows, it’s not THAT complicated. Just have one teacher you use for everything or have a home room. Why do this, why. Just why exactly. Why. You barely used actually in school classes for plots anyway and mostly did stuff around the edges like crushes or lunch or dodge ball. Speaking of which where is Girl Jordan. Where IS she? Anyways, my point is this, especailly as a ned’s declassified school surivvial guide on this very network,f fan really annoys me and takes me out of things..  And the thing is they COULD’VE still done this plot just had the gang all adjust, not just lincoln, to not being in the same class togehter. Have them have to do various classes WITHOUT having each other to rely on. You could even have chandler and mr. bohlmer show up. But the way they do this just..d osen’t really make sense and just feels lazy. And if there were good jokes i’d be fine with his but their aren’t. IT’s just a mean teacher and Lincoln being picked on by a moron for the first half while his friends struggle to function without him. It’s just sad and not in the well written, well thought out way.  Then we get to “This needs to be an hour” portion of the plot as again the above could’ve EASILY worked for the full hour but because they instead went with this, they had to think of something else... and went with something bonkers that at the very least is entertaining: Lincoln, after convincing his teacher for a transfer, which I did like as he uses his head: He sees his teacher wants something diffrent for lunch and paper airplaners her a cupon for his dad’s restraunt then talks himself into an off campus lunch to talk her into a new class.. and winds up transfered to canada as she well meaningly  did so he can’t get out of. And while I thought this was just wacky exageration having him commute.. turns out .. nope. While I don’t know if any school would actually have a student commute to Canada rather than jsut stay there turns out Royal Woods is in michigan and Michigan is across a lake from Ontario.. so yeah.. they did their geography research but not their middle school one. Weird ain’t it?  Anywho, I ended up liking this portion... and not just because it has canada gooses, which means i can use this. 

And if you have a problem with Letterkenny you got a problem with me and I suggest you let that one marinate. But yeah we get an ENTIRE number playing into canadian stereotypes and it’s clear this show is rather than using them for a cheap laugh just exagerating things for fun and a slight nudge to canadians, who I clearly love. It feels less like “oh ha ha canada” and more like if the great white north was stretched over 15 minutes but still worked. 

It’s just good fun. And they also again have an entire musical number full of canadian sterotypes and expressing love of this great country which I hope to visit some day.. and possibly live if this country countinues to get worse. It just feels nice and more creative than the first half. It’s still not FANTASTIC, but it works somehow and Ic an’t explain why. Eventually LIncoln tries to get kicked out, fails then plans to blow the hockey game for everyone and calls on his friends to help, sending them all to canada wh ere they get lost in the wilderness. There is a funny bit where Stella’s gps literally freezes over and zach acidently smashes it as well as Rusty’s “Moustache” one pathetic hair because why should his moustache be anything else freezes off. and given even with me being less vitrolic his suffering is my catnip I enjoyed it. We also get a cute sequence of them runing the ice and rusty failing at anything because of course he does, while Liam both tames a moose and slathers them in grease to swim across because of COURSE he does. Of course he does. IT’s just a refreshing jolt of energy after the first half. But we do get a really damn good scene after htey fail.. besides the fact Rusty’s head is frozen, which would be funny even if it wasnt’ happenign to rusty, that just makes it go from chuckle worthy to giant uncomfortable laugh worthy, where Lincoln gives up: They’ll still be firends and he’ll still come visit but it’s best he just adapt to his new life instead of try and fight so hard against it and he’s starting to enjoy canada. It’s a well acted and sad scene that ends with a huge hug from clyde and another bit we’ll get to in a second.  But because having LIncoln in canada would be hard to maintain for a few seasons, and because as degrassi shows me the odds of him getting nearly beaten to death, caught in school shooting, stabbed in a parking lot or ending up in a kevin smith film which back then was a treat but now is a coin flip, are very high. Seriously he dosen’t want to end up in moose jaws, he instead gets banned from canada for three years for refusing maple syurp... which is also fucking hilarious just for it’s sheer rediculousness. Who dosen’t love canadian maple syrup?  So the ballance is restored, Liam has  moose now, and Lincoln actually gets the trailer heat turned down because he asked.. this plot was not very good as I made clear and drags the specail down and it’s in part because there were other joke and character opprotunites iwth ACTUAL middle school and instead it just comes off as another episode of “Smack lincoln around because tha’ts funny right” and wastes good opprotunity. It’s not all terrible, the canada jokes worked becuase they felt like they were in good fun and more a loving jab at canada instead of just using stereotypes for sterotypes sake, and given the loud sisters started as basic character achtypes it fits the shows tone. So canada part good the rest a huge disapointment. Also before we move onto Lori: Lynn.. was utterly terrible this episode. The girl one, obviously. Lynn Sr is usually a delight. Yeahhh while I don’t hate her like some do, I do find her to be REALLY hit and miss: she’s either an enjoyable additon to the episode, an intresting lead.. or an obnoxious nightmare who makes everyone around her suffer and is used for gross out gags.. which if nothing else it’s good their using a girl for it but it dosen’t make it actually funny? And here she’s Hall Monitor and a giant terror to everyone INCLUDING THE PRINCIPAL and it feels like a waste.. other episodes have had her be lincoln’s mentor when it comes to his shift to middle school and when the time comes where that would be utterly useful... she’s instead just a jackass because they coudln’t think of something better to do with her and it’s another disapointment.  The B-Plot: Lori Loud and the Infinite Comic Set Pieces This plot was better but likely would’ve worked better in a shorter episode to me if i’m being honest, but it’s grown on me the more i’ve thought about it.. plus it has Bobby! 

I haven’t really had a chance to mention it since most Loud Houses i’ve covered are after his exit and he only really shows up in lori episodes and I haven’t covered the Casagrandes yet.. but I love this idiot. He’s sweet, charming, kind, a good boyfriend, a good big brother, and a caring individual. Sure he’s dumb as a box of hammers, but he’s a good kid and post season 1 he and lori have good chemstiry. And he was easily one of hte biggest draws to the spinoff for me which has fleshed him out nicely with his work at the Mercado, showing he is good at something. He’s just a great character and i’m glad to see him back on the mothership, even if he doesn’t do much and at most just keeps coming back to help Lori move at a moment’s notice. But it feels less like her being selfish and more like him being selfless: Sure she’s asking a lot.. but he probably gets that moving away from home and into a strage place is hard for his lady and just wants to help her be happy and settle in. Because he’s the best. 

As for why Lori keeps moving part of it is the fact that the dorms at fair way are insane comic set pieces and I am here for it. She starts out at the silent dorm, which just.. no. No on that no. Then moves to the driving range dorm which is exactly what it sounds like and is a hilarious hurricane of balls. “Sigh” Archer if you would. 

And the sand trap dorm, which just has a giant bunch of sand in the closets for some reeason.. presumibly to keep darth vader away. And yes I get it’s supposed to mimic a sandtrap but theni t should be all around like the other dorms. It’s goofy, it’s dumb.. and I can’t help but laugh at it and the fact that Fairway apparently is so intense about golf they train students via having them live on certain hazards like this was an anime... and I would totally watch a spinoff about lori that was her undergoing anime golf battles. And I hate golf. Plus put bobby in there.. he can be on two shows. Make it a diffrent world but with dragon ball z golf battles. But eventually Lori comes crying home after breaking down, like any college student living away i’m told.. and that’s where the dovetail I mention comes into play. Lori overhears lincoln’s pep talk and decides to go back and face the exesntial nightmare that is her dorm life, giving her brother a sincre hug and thanking him for uknowingly helping her. It’s a really sweet moment. It’s why her plot works for me.. it has the emotinal weight that feels lacking from the main plot. It’s a bit repetitive, but frankly that’s the show’s bread and butter at this point and i’ts more a case of which repettition works better sometimes. That one moment saves the plot form being unwatchable and Lori moves into the water hazard floor of the dorms, and is finally ready. And while at first I thought the exagerated dorms lowered the punch of things.. it really dosen’t. From what i’ve heard Dorm life isn’t easy, and being away from home is even harder. My mentally anxious self would’ve broken down within days. Their just taking it up twenty notches because loud house. The real issue is lori being homesick, which I do feel could’ve been handled better, but for what hit is it’s okay. Not as good as it couldv’e been but still better than the a-plot. But it’s a nice bit of character stuff: it shows usually in control Lori out of her element and trying to adapt and hopefully we’ll see more of her this season in that context. And more of bobby, may he reign forever. Okay one more. 

The C and D plots: Leni and Lily Go to Preschool  This one won’t take long, thank god. Lily goes to preschool, the loud parents, after some empty nest.. enjoy having the house to themselves for the first time in years. They actually have TIME with no kids and just the two of them to goof off and, presumibly off screen, boink like rabbits.. granted that’s how they clearly usually do it given they have 11 kids but still. But Lily gets sent home for popping herself, and they have to teach her to go it’s eh aside from a few bits. As I said Lisa is the best part of this as Lynn Sr and Rita yank her out of school, with Lisa responding to Cheryls worries abotu her missing school with a dry “I think i’ll be fine without finger painting”. The resolution, or at least the start of it, is genuinelly clever. Turns out Lily KNOWS how to use the potty, she just dosen’t want to go to school yet, and the Loud Parents.. actually take this well, confronting her with it but gently, understanding she may not want to leave the nest and letting her stay. 

Meanwhile Leni ends up in preschool in the shuffle of not having Lori around to guide her one brain cell. Which is honestly hilarious and her outfit for the episode is fucking dope.. I honestly wish she’d wear her hair in a ponytail more often and the jacket is nice. I wish this was her new outfit.. like they could make it green so she’s not stepping on Lola wearing pink, but it’s a nice change of pace. But yeah it’s hilarious, especially since neither she nor the actual professionals notice and it has a nice bit of subtext on tumblr noted: She may be regressing, or simply enjoying little girl school because she misses her big sister and it’s easier than navigating a scary world without her best frined. To dig into it a bit myself we’ve seen in previous episodes that Lori is her rock, who she goes to when she has a problem in her solo episodes, who she relies on. Sure they fight over a closet but they depend on each other. We saw how worried Leni was about loosing her last season, and now she’s lost her and dosen’t know what to do without her. It’ll be intresting to see more of.  Or it’s because while she’s a capable young woman she’s also as dumb as a box of hammers like her future brother in law> you make the call. Eventually Leni gets sent back, and bemoans missing all the fun of preschool.. which gets Lily to go as she gets a trampoline, and the nest is finally empty.. also Leni goes back for a few more bounces. Yeah I love this kid. She’s sweet, kind, and hilariously moranic and voiced by LIliana Mumy who along with Carols is easliy part of my stable of voice actors. So yeah the family’s moving on, etc etc, and this review is finally over.  Final Thoughts: This episode was okay. It reaks of wasted potetial, but it’s a fine enough one hour, it jsut couldv’e been MORE with such a long run time and the lily and leni bits would’ve fit better in a seperate episode. It’s not TERRIBLE but it’s just an okay start to the season and a waste of good stories and good laughs in places. Still the show’s had worse, it’s just okay overall. Not TERRIBLE but it could’ve been FANTASTIC. Next week Leni deals with the lori power vaccum and Lincoln and Clyde snoop on the neighbors. Until then you can find other loud house reviews on my blog, hit me up iwth an ask for suggetsions or a dm to comission an episode you want to see me cover and until then, GO TEAM VENTURE. Play us out servo

[mobius-prime]

199. Sonic the Hedgehog #131

Deep breaths, guys. I know what the cover page says. I know. We'll get to that. Just hang in there. I think you might like what I have in store.

Home (Part 2 of 4): The Gathering

Writer: Karl Bollers Pencils: Ron Lim Colors: Jason Jensen

So not much actually happens in this installment of Home other than the various characters talking to each other about and preparing for the upcoming battle. Since Sonic has been gone, a new Freedom Fighter Special has been constructed that can cut travel time dramatically around the globe. A journey that in the Tornado or on foot (in Sonic's case) would have taken up to two hours can be completed in a mere half hour now, thanks to Rotor's engineering prowess. And thus, Sonic and Tails head out to Old Megaopolis to stop Eggman's twin nukes from launching, along with an… interesting backup team, to say the least.

Man, remember Fiona? It's been ages since we've seen her! It appears that while Sonic was in space, she joined up with the crew in Knothole and has been helping them fight Eggman. That's definitely a better life for her than to be running with the likes of Nic the Weasel, eh? Meanwhile, Knuckles, Julie-Su, Amy Rose, and the other two (active) members of the Chaotix head to Fort Acorn, where General D'Coolette is giving a speech to the soldiers under his command. We've never even heard of this fort before, but according to the general it's been here for ten years, keeping a forward watch on Robotropolis, and this watch has been maintained even after Robotropolis' destruction in case of just such a situation as the current one. With their reinforcements from Knothole, the crew at the fort prepare to defend the city against a massive swatbot assault to lower the forcefield keeping the radiation in check. Back in Knothole, extra measures are being taken to make absolutely sure that even if the worst happens, the citizenry will be safe.

Station Square, for their part, has sent a squad of GUN commandos to help in the battle at Old Megaopolis. The commander of the military is baffled by this decision, wanting to send in their full fighting force, but the president instead opts to trust his allies from Knothole - though just for insurance, he's sent one of his own operatives along for the ride…

Now that's what I like to see! It's about time Rouge got herself some proper screentime. As all this is going on, Eggman waits aboard a docked battleship in the harbor of Old Megaopolis with his assistant M, and orders A.D.A.M. to begin the missile countdown. However, almost immediately, the sound of a biplane puts them on high alert, and Eggman is shocked to see Sonic and Tails bearing down on his location, not having expected them to be able to get here nearly so fast. See, Eggman, this is why you resist the siren call of your ego and keep your damn plans to yourself. All you did was give your enemies ample warning to prepare to foil your evil plot, you idiot!

Mobius 25 Years Later: Prologue

Writer: Ken Penders Pencils: Steven Butler Colors: Jensen

Okay, guys. This is it. We've reached the most Penders thing of all time. This is something that has been hinted at here and there from all the way back in the Sonic In Your Face special to now, and we're finally seeing the culmination of all of that buildup. All the intricate worldbuilding, all the complex character arcs, all the intrigue and political spider webs and back to back wars and everything that the world of Mobius has been through up until now - there's so much to explore, so many directions it could have gone. We're about to see what this world might look like twenty-five years into the future, and with so much rich history to draw from, what might you imagine this story might look like? What genre might it fall into? Well wonder no longer!

It's a drama. It's a teen drama.

There's a reason that Mobius 25 Years Later is widely considered to be one of the worst parts of the comic. The tone of it is just so far off anything else we've experienced so far that it clashes horribly with what we've come to expect. It's not some masterful subversion of expectations or something - in a lot of ways I consider it to be a genuine insult to the rest of the preboot's material up to this point. It's painfully and immediately clear that this is a story Penders has wanted to tell for a while, but, not being able to fit his "middle-aged adults adulting everywhere and being so adult-like while ignoring the feelings and difficulties that ordinary teenagers face" plot anywhere into the rest of the comic, he's opted to just fire the world a couple decades into the future, pair all the major characters off into weird and oftentimes arbitrary heterosexual marriages, give everyone 2.5 children and a titanium picket fence, and then throw in some allusions to the old "war against Doc 'Botnik" here and there lest we forget, entirely understandably at this point, that we're reading a Sonic the Hedgehog comic here. This thing goes on for nineteen whole issues, taking up each subsequent issue's backup story, and ultimately has no real impact on the actual story involving the characters we already know and love. However, this is technically canon, or at least a version of canon (as when you play with alternate realities and multiple timelines, futures are bound to get mixed up here and there), so we're gonna be covering it - all of it. I wouldn't be tempted to skip it anyway, as by delving into each chapter in this trainwreck, we can actually explore why this whole thing fails so hard, and why it's therefore so loathed in the fandom. Plus, I do recognize that some people actually do enjoy this arc for various reasons (one of my close friends does, and has a whole AU of her own relating to it in fact), so I do plan to at least try to be fair in my review - but I really can't hide that I find this whole affair boring as hell, often downright offensive, and ultimately completely out of place. With all that in mind, let's dive in!

We begin with a full page of exposition delivered to us via high school lecture, because everyone knows the best way to establish your worldbuilding is by infodumping it directly into your audience's eyeballs. Apparently, over the last twenty years, Angel Island has been heavily developed into its own independent republic, with a new city, Portal, acting as the center of trade between the island and the mainland below. We're once again introduced to Lara-Su, who, instead of being the badass time-traveling young adult whom we followed before, is now an ordinary teenager taking ordinary high school classes among a bunch of ordinary high school echidnas.

One of the biggest failings of this story is that Penders writes every teenage character how he thinks teenagers act, from his point of view as a middle-aged adult. This becomes abundantly clear the longer you read, as every teenager is a hormone-fueled, authority-defying, entitled, whiny, fickle child who just doesn't understand how the real world works, while every adult is a wise, experienced, and highly logical individual who always knows more than their younger fellows and refuses to pay attention to the whims of mere children. Like, I'm not even exaggerating here - I'm going to be pointing out every instance of this kind of behavior over the entire rest of this arc, and you can't stop me, so nyah nyah. Penders shows so little respect for the mere concept of teenagers, which is a terrible attitude to have not just in general, but especially if you're one of the head writers for an entire series about teenagers saving the goddamn world! Anyway, case in point: the teacher, instead of admonishing Rutan for being a bully, merely snaps at Lara-Su for not acting enough like a "young lady" and tells her to stay after class. Ugh.

Later that day, Rotor arrives on Angel Island as a liaison for the royal ruling couple, Queen Sally and King Sonic, because yes, Sonic literally becomes king in this timeline. He catches a ride from Harry - hey, good to see our favorite dingo still doing well for himself at least - and meets with Espio, who is now apparently Knuckles' secretary or something. At least, that's all I can assume from this weird-ass conversation.

As a matter of fact, yes, Sonic and Sally are bringing their two children, Sonia and Manik, to the family dinner! How very mid-70s domestic family unit of them! Espio informs Knuckles of this over a television screen as the latter broods around in some kind of high-tech facility. Unlike what we've seen of Espio, the years have dramatically changed Knuckles' appearance - his right eye is missing, replaced with a mechanical one, and he sports the cowboy hat that Hawking gave him in the past (you know, the one we never saw again after he received it). While I actually quite like the idea of a main character in the comic losing something as important as an eye, I feel like there's a huge missed opportunity here - instead of just thrusting us into an alternate future where everything is fine but one character is inexplicably missing an eye, how about actually showing us the story of how that eye was lost? Show us a Knuckles who's learning to cope with the loss of an important body part, and having to adjust to his mechanical prosthetic! Go into his feelings about the subject, as someone who has so long been opposed to a faction that thrives on mechanical prosthetics, instead of just skipping over what has the potential to be the most interesting part of this story! Ugh, sorry, there's just nothing that gets to me more than a missed opportunity like this. Knuckles and Espio exchange some tortured small-talk about their kids for a little while, with the only interesting part of the conversation being their discussion of Rotor's arrival and how he's likely here to see someone named Cobar, with whom he apparently has a history. More on that later. Knuckles excuses himself from the conversation, as he has to be home in time for his daughter's "Unveiling" tonight, and as the call ends we zoom out to see that apparently nowadays, the Master Emerald is hooked up to all sorts of technology in this facility, presumably maintaining everything automatically. However, this story isn't done throwing weird curveballs at us yet - it's time to see what our former villains are up to in this future!

There is so much to unpack here. Dimitri, feared overlord of the Dark Legion, is now an amiable cyborg-head-in-a-bubble. Lien-Da, the treacherous second-in-command who regularly spoke of betraying Dimitri and taking the Legion in her own darker direction, is now apparently a single mom who's embraced the domestic life, taking care of her rowdy teenage son while, predictably, complaining about the behavior of kids these days. And weirdest of all, apparently everyone is just fine with these literal former terrorists living in their midst and doing ordinary mom and grandpa things, with Lien-Da even apparently amenable to the idea of trying to make up with Julie-Su because "they're family," despite her history of, you know, erasing Julie-Su's memory multiple times and killing her biological parents as revenge for her birth. I mean, is this what Penders thinks adulthood is? Is he even entirely sane? Does he know the definition of terrorism?

Any-goddamn-way, Knuckles arrives home to his eerily sterile-looking steel-plated mansion that looks more like the lobby of a pharmaceutical laboratory than a place where people live, and greets his loving housewife Julie-Su, who's gained a cute giant ponytail but lost absolutely everything else that made her unique, including her own cybernetic parts and just her personality in general. She informs Knuckles that Lara-Su has locked herself in the bathroom and is having herself a mighty tantrum, refusing to come out to get ready for her Unveiling ceremony, which is apparently the equivalent of a Quinceañera for echidna girls. Knuckles, instead of doing something reasonable like asking her why she's upset, starts aggressively demanding that she come out of her room this instant, while Lara-Su repeatedly yells about how she doesn't wanna. Ugh, teenagers, amiright?

Seriously, I just can't get over how little respect Penders has for teenagers in his writing. Like, yes, I acknowledge that teenagers aren't always the most logical of beings, but they're also not goddamn three-year-olds either. They're old enough to articulate their desires and express their unique opinions, and often do so in very mature ways, especially if they're raised well and treated with the same respect you'd afford any adult. I should know, I was one myself. I would have assumed Penders was one as well at some point, but perhaps he just popped into the world one day as a fully-formed 43-year-old, full of disdain for those younger than himself. It would certainly explain everything we're seeing here.

Anyway, it turns out that the reason Lara-Su is upset is because Knuckles refuses to train her to be a Guardian, and so she whines and yells about it from behind the door like a petulant child as Knuckles continually refuses to actually give her a solid reason why he won't let her be one. When Julie-Su basically forces him to calm the hell down and explain himself, he reluctantly explains that since all the duties of a Guardian have by now been taken over by other functions of their society, he feels there's no longer any need for one, himself included. This is apparently enough to make Lara-Su immediately happy enough to burst out of the bathroom and grab her father's arm, suddenly totally excited to go to her Unveiling as long as Knuckles promises her the first dance. Ah, the fickle mind of a silly, silly teenager!

Kill me.