#which will further my understanding of the novel and make my adaptation better

[szynkaaa]

04. In Which They Have Language Lessons Together

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“What are those symbols you are writing above?” A bored monkey king was lounged in a chair next to me, his eyes following my hands gripping my fountain pen and scribbling things into a book that Shen Monkey gave me. Or rather, he was going to throw it away, and I decided to take it. It first started out with just being curious to see how books were made in ye olde ancient China, and then turned to slightly horrified when I realized, I can’t read half of the text inside.  

I usually pride myself with being able to understand and speak Chinese fluently. Informal Chinese, but better than nothing. My reading skills were also good enough to be able to read Chinese boys love web novels at three am in the dark, on the bed sideways with autor-otate turned off on the phone.  

The unfortunate reality was that I learned how to read simplified Chinese, which in my world was adapted less than 100 years ago from my time. That means while I was able to recognize some words and characters, a lot of I was not able to read the full text and understand the context.  

It’s like having learned French for a year on-and-off and when you open up The Little Prince in French, you are only able to understand every third word or less. Sometimes you understood the sentence context, other times there were just too many unfamiliar vocabularies for me to make any sense of what it was trying to say.  

Not being able to read a text in a language that I was familiar gave me a sense of loss of control, and there was nothing less I liked than not being in control of things in my life.  

So that was something I needed to rectify, and unfortunately for my favorite monkey, you were tasked with helping me learn how to read some words. And you seemed to be very happy when I approached you and asked you to help me. I haven’t seen much of you lately, as you were busy discussing with your generals and rebuilding Mount Huaguo, making sure it was habitable again, so I supposed you jumped at the first chance to be able to spend more time with me.  

Might have also heard you yelling ‘Clear my schedule for the next few days’ to your advisors, who did not look very happy about it but did not argue further with you.  

So here we are now, sitting outside in a nice forest clearing close to the waterfall, with books and papers and ink and brushes scattered across the table. You plucked a few of your fur, chewed on them and then blew them out to turn them into furniture.  

Very practical to have a walking and talking IKEA store with me.  

The ‘symbols’ you’re asking about are the Pinyin I was writing above the Chinese. “Those are Latin letters,” I explained “back in my world, we use Pinyin as a way to write down how Chinese characters sound, and have a standardized system. It uses Latin letters, because it also helps foreigners to learn Chinese.” The explanation was a very dumbed down one, but I hoped it was enough for you to understand the gist of it. “By writing it down above the characters I don’t recognize, I will know now how this word is pronounced. So the next step will be memorizing and hopefully next time I see the same character in another text, I can point at it and go ‘Hey, I know this because Old Sun taught me this’”.  

Your tail perked up at me calling you Old Sun, and you grinned. “So this is why you want my help. Do not fret, with your Monkey King as your teacher, you will be able to read every text in the mortal realm.” You boasted, tail now swinging left and right.  

My hair fell over my face, the long strand dipping into the clay tray that was holding the black ink. I grimaced at the ink staining the tip of my hair, and tucked the strand over my ear. My hair has goes a bit over my shoulder now. I was mostly used to short hair, but you liked to play with my longer hair, so I haven’t gotten around to cut it yet.  

“Latin letters...” you repeated what I said, and then pointed at the Pinyin again, “Is this the writing system used when you speak ‘English’?”  

I had to bite back a laugh, remembering your very confused face the first time you heard me cussing and cursing out loud in English at a yaoguai, because sometimes it was better they didn’t understand what my filthy mouth was saying.  

“Yeah, it's that. There are many other languages that use the same writing system.” More hair fell into my face, but you reacted fast this time and put the tray of ink color away before my hair could dip into it again. I gathered my hair in my hands and tucked it under my hanfu, hoping they will stay there.  

“Chinese and English... Impressive, my cherry blossom speaks knows two languages.” You said, a grin across your face, like you were very proud about the fact that I was multilingual.  

“Four.” I corrected you, and took a sip from my tea. You raised your eyebrow, even more impressed now. “Except three of them are virtually useless here, and I am struggling to read basic text here.” I added, pointing at said text book in front of me.  

My hair fell forward once again, and you could tell that I was getting frustrated by having to constantly pull my hair back somehow.  

“Why do you not use the hairpin gifted to you by the zodiac villagers.” You asked, there was a bit of bite in that question. The hairpin you were referring to was a birthday present from the villagers, given to me when I was seeking shelter there and hiding away from you for a few weeks. I think a part of you was also hurt that you missed my birthday when I was avoiding you, and I insisted that it was alright, and you didn’t have to get me anything.  

“I don’t know how to use it.” I replied, thinking back about the hairpin sitting on my vanity, unused.  

You remained silent at first, so I went back to studying and copying characters I was unfamiliar with, repeating the Pinyin silently trying to memorize it, when is saw from the corner of my eye how you picked Jingubang out of your ear. I looked up again, your golden staff now the size of a hairpin in your hand.  

“Face me and do not move.” You commanded.  

I did as you asked, putting my pen down and shuffled in my chair to be facing you. My heart was starting to pick up speed, my gut predicting what is coming next.  

You leaned forward, close to my face. With Jingubang in one hand, you used your free hand to gather my hair, and then moved both hands back to twist it a few times around your staff. In a few seconds, my hair out of my face, and tied up neatly around Jingubang.  

You then leaned back, and had a big proud smile on your face. “There, now you do not have to worry about the ink staining your whole black hair back.” You said, referring also to our time on the road when I temporarily tried to dye my hair black.  

My face heated up, and I carefully reached a hand to the back of my head to feel your masterwork, fingers running over Jingubang. There was something very precious and special knowing that he transformed his trusty golden staff into the size of a hairpin and then tied my hair up for me...  

“Thank you.” I said sincerely, and without thinking much, I quickly moved my head forward and planted a kiss on the cheek-part of your face that was covered in fur. The result was instant: The tip of your ears was turning red and a big red blush began to blossom on your face. Oh, how I loved seeing you blush, and even more when it was me who caused it.  

With the speed your tail was waggling, one would think you were trying to dust the floor.  

“Do you wanna know how to write your name in Pinyin?”

  

[hallowpen]

There was a lot of destructive criticism surrounding My Marvellous Dream is You, but I actually thought the series was quite good despite its shortcomings. I'm a lot more forgiving than most when it comes to Thai GL series, and that will have absolutely affected my viewing experience. But... every time I would see a comment that just read "This is boring/terrible/stupid" without ever elaborating, I felt very much like Khun Pu's character from Be My Favorite hehe

*WARNING*: There will be minor spoilers for the final episode of My Marvellous Dream is You, should that be something you wish to avoid.

I will be the first to admit, that I was very skeptical about this series in the first handful of episodes. So let's just get my personal negatives out of the way first... I think, by now, it's no secret that I do not support where a lot of Thai GL adaptations source from. So, this series already had an admittedly disadvantaged subjective expectation from the get go. It wasn't really surprising to see pacing issues within the first 5ish episodes, that seems to be a common occurrence in Thai GLs produced by IDOLfactory. Whether that is a result of the novels the series have thus far been adapted from OR from a choice in direction is up to you. I, personally, think it's a bit of both. Where I believe certain productions struggle in letting their narratives breathe, I find the complete opposite problem to be true with IDOLfactory. There were a lot of plot points that needed restructuring or to be removed entirely in order to have a stronger cohesive story that focused on the main characters' relationship more so than it did.

Now, while I stand behind my opinion that the series could have benefited from tighter and better organized storytelling, a lot of the groundwork was there to make a decent character driven narrative. And that's what I've chosen to focus on. Wan and Kim are both deeply flawed characters. There were so many inferences to be drawn from character relevant visuals and their joint backstory that truly informed their current dynamic.

The👏🏾character👏🏾focused👏🏾visuals👏🏾in👏🏾this👏🏾show!!!

One of the most interesting parts of watching a series, for me, is having to pick up on certain character cues in order to understand and delve deeper into the core of their behaviors.

Wan and Kim share a trauma, and it's easy to see how they both became so dependent on one another to fill the void their fathers left.

In flashbacks, Wan is presented as egoistic and headstrong since high school. She is also shown to be extremely protective of Kim before she even realizes her feelings. Kim, on the other hand, is a bit more sensitive. She cherishes Wan's attention and affection to a point where she would be willing to play a little dirty in order to keep it for herself.

All of these emotions become heightened once they are forced into adult life with adult problems. Wan is struggling with her mental health. While trying to balance fame and the repercussions her actions might have on her career, Wan must also deal with her mother's alcoholism... which has essentially caused her to check out from Wan's life. Her need to have Kim by her side, and never leave her, has become less protective and more possessive. Kim's desire for approval and affection has led to an over devotion of herself to Wan and constant worrying about disappointing her mother. She's neglected her own wants and needs for so long, that she's afraid putting herself first would be considered too selfish...too much like her dad. Her mother's cancer diagnosis further pushes Kim to continue to place her mother's wishes over her own desires. Even though comments about Wan and Kim being 'annoying' or 'frustrating' were aiming to be negative... they weren't exactly wrong. The audience was supposed to feel that way. Heck, even the surrounding characters called out their behavior on more than one occasion. Because in an effort to not lose one another, Kim and Wan fell into a cyclically unhealthy dynamic where their actions and reactions were actually pushing each other away. Their inability to communicate their true feelings to each other beyond their (unbeknownst) shared dreams prevented them from making any true progress toward a romantic relationship that they both so desperately wanted, but were each terribly afraid to pursue. Their feelings for each other were put up against the reality that their love being unreciprocated could spell the end of their relationship altogether. There was an added pressure of being unfairly compared to their fathers, where any romance between them might be found 'unacceptable'. Couple that with societal views of same-sex relationships, and you can understand why these two were so hesitant to reveal their truths.

(Quick sidenote: I did not agree with the idea that what Kim and Wan did was exactly the same to what their fathers did. They did not leave and abandon their families. Marwin didn't make it easy for them, and given the glimpse we saw into his family's cruelty, it made all the sense in the world to have him react in the way he did. Kim and Wan were at least willing to stay and face the hard consequences of their choice, no matter the outcome.)

I think them having to work through all of their issues made the moment of Kim and Wan finally deciding to be together that much more satisfying... And that was the point Kru A was trying to make when he explained his direction for their relationship on social media after hearing viewer feedback (He was subsequently rudely criticized by interfans for that decision, to the point where he alluded to the fact that he might take a break from directing... but that's a whole other discussion).

That final scene of them being married purposely not clarifying whether it was in a dream or in reality alluded to the fact that their shared dream world and their real life were no longer at odds, finally. I thought it was very fitting.

The frustration caused by KimWan's lack of communication reminded me of a similar dynamic between Team and Win in Between Us, a series that suffered from a lot of the same problems (not enough focus on the two leads and irrelevant plot points). However, those characters and the actors that portrayed them didn't receive even half the amount of negative reactions. They existed, trust me, but there were a lot of positive reviews to balance it out. I'm not going to get into what that means, because I think you can make the inference for yourself.

All in all, I don't think this series deserves to be completely written off. Is it perfect? No... but an effort was made, and it wouldn't hurt to make the effort in return to understand the vision. Fay and May did an incredible job for their first go around as main leads. And I hope they get the chance to develop their craft further.

[perenial]

gene im so glad you said this cause I haven't seen anyone else comparing it to the book as source material for like character and tone but i am So sure that if terry was alive the season would not be like this but i fear good omens fans dont realise how big a factor the lack of terry's influence is?? or like they forget that good omens was never just neilman???

ok before i go any further: i rly don't want to detract from anyone's enjoyment of the season and everything im going to say comes from a place of love for a) the original novel (& season 1 to a certain extent bc it got me back into it lol) and b) tv as a medium so like peace and love on planet let people enjoy things etc etc

but

like u said, terry's influence on the book was enormous – what makes gomens gomens is the balance of his genuine warmth and precise understanding of humanity tempered with neilman's sardonic voice and general like.....savvy approach to storytelling? i guess u could call it? anyway what rly helps the book is that it took them years to write it, passing ideas back and forth and rewriting each other's work until their voices blended seamlessly and a well structured capital-s Story was created. when i praise the book for being self-contained i think a huge part of that comes from the circumstances in which it emerged: two authors with complementary styles writing in a v particular time period where they had both the space to play with their ideas and the constraints of the novel as a storytelling format from which to craft something extremely specific.

adaptations are a tricky business and a tv version of gomens produced literal decades after the book was always going to have some unique challenges, but i don't think that's a bad thing bc the challenges could prove to be creative opportunities to take both the established audience and those new to the story by surprise. my biggest hot take here is that i don't think translating a story into a different medium means it has to follow the original narrative exactly, bc each medium has its own ways of communicating information and these structures, rules and traditions in turn inform what that story is. what matters more than following a story beat-by-beat is capturing what that story is about at its core, what themes and messages and ideas it works through and how.

all this is to say i never expected tv gomens to be a perfect reproduction of the book and if it had it been, it probably would have been worse off for it. that being said, there are parts of the book – like u said, its tone and character – that needed to have some fidelity in order to pull it off, and for the most part s1 did that bc it was still working predominantly within the bounds of the novel & its core ideas. while i did have some issues w how neilman & amazon adapted some details and characterisations, i generally rly liked s1 – it reminded me of why i loved the book and it was just generally fun to watch.

s2 was. not that fun to watch

a few positives before i go ham w the critiques:

the hair & makeup + costumes were fantastic (although i feel like s1 was slightly better re: makeup?)

the sound design & score made some of the more awkward scenes bearable and thats no mean feat imo

david & michael gave incredible performances w what they were given – michael especially managed to salvage aziraphale enough that his complete 180 didnt feel completely tonally dissonant (more on this later)

the detail of the sets is NUTS and i genuinely want to see more of hell bc of how intricate and fun the props look

i actually like gabriel/beelzebub!! their getting together montage worked for me, although they could have spent sliiiightly more time establishing what it is they like abt each other so much + why gabriel wanted to stop armageddon 2.0 so suddenly

the opening scene, although not on par w the novel's & s1's, was visually gorgeous and thematically resonant (although neilman owes me royalties for ripping it off from this shitty fic i wrote back when raphael!crowley was all the rage lol)

now w THAT being said:

like i said yesterday, the pacing was fucking awful. flashbacks are hard to work w at the best of times and the way they were used in this season felt so needless, especially the 40s one in ep 4 that takes up like 90% of the episode. in both flashbacks + present day there were scenes that dragged for no real reason, dialogue that looped back around on itself to stretch out the runtime, and weirdly enough places where there should have been character & plot work where there just,, wasn't any?? for example, maggie & nina's night locked in the café – some parts of the dialogue in later episodes made out that they'd had some rly deep conversation abt how they feel about each other or even that they'd had an affair, but that isn't clear from those scenes in the café. i'm not saying we had to see that conversation in its entirety but that there needed to be more connective details – either in dialogue or direction – that gave that part of the story coherence.

(there were pacing issues w the editing too but i don't want to jump down the editor's throats on this one bc im more focused on writing & direction issues)

the second major problem that i mentioned in my tags yesterday is the protagonist shift, which is an issue that started in s1. aziraphale & crowley are side characters in book gomens – significant ones, yeah, but still somewhat peripheral to adam (& anathema who counts as a deuteragonist imo). this works incredibly well w who they are as characters: they're Just Some Guys who happen to be involved in this epic biblical-level bureaucratic nightmare and importantly, they don't want to be in the spotlight. the arrangement was created so that they could explore what it meant to be themselves away from the Big Narrative; literally any time they get involved in larger affairs is bc the plot is alive and caught them unionising on company time. the last fucking chapter is adam (& god) being like haha u guys are alright keep it sleezy and letting them go. like. hello. neil u let them go.

but then!! tv gomens s1 does something interesting at the end w the body swapping addition that i dont totally hate – it gives aziraphale & crowley the extra bit of character work that brings them slightly more adjacent to their book selves. see i kinda view tv a/c as the younger, less settled versions of book a/c; they're still caught up in the immediacy of being key players and haven't fully realised that earth is their home. i haven't watched s1 in a while but one scene i remember rly clearly is crowley throwing all those astronomy texts in the air and angsting abt when he was an angel; i remember it bc his anguish in that scene feels a lot newer and rawer than book crowley's feelings about falling. when tv a/c do their bodyswap, it gives them the chance to land a blow against heaven/hell in a way that solidifies their allegiance to earth in a way that more closely resembles what book a/c have been abt the entire time (still adjacent, though. not parallel).

the reason why this works is that it does one final pivot to orient aziraphale and crowley as almost-main characters in a manner that makes sense in relation to a) their book selves and b) the position the tv show has placed them in. a combination of factors made tv a/c feel a lot less mature than their book counterparts but at the end of s1 they're sort of facing the same direction the book ended in, albeit through their own flashy late 2010s means.

when s2 was announced i was.......apprehensive bc to me, that felt like a satisfactory ending. i get the impression that amazon saw how wildly successful the adaptation was and was like oh shit we could make way more money out of this and neilman, having all those undead darlings that he and terry killed in the process of whittling the book into a workable novel, jumped at the chance to resurrect all those half-realised ideas. but not only were those ideas probably discarded for a reason, they've either been laying in wait for years unworked or they're new inventions, which means they weren't molded in the way that the book had been. like i said before, book gomens underwent years of rewrites and creative collaboration, and i think that process was what made it so good; s2 didn't have that. even if some of terry's ideas made it into s2, his influence is still missing bc he and neilman weren't in dialogue the same way they were in the book (and in some ways s1 bc i know terry was involved in the process of adapting gomens to screen before his death).

i don't think it's a case of newer fans forgetting terry so much as it is the context of terry's involvement being so removed from the current circumstances that certain aspects & discourses (i.e. is the s2 finale queerbaiting (no), does binge watching change the viewership experience (yes), etc etc) about the show overshadow other discussions that would usually be taking place. and before anyone says it's a case of neilman forgetting terry, i definitely don't think it's that either bc thats. yknow. wildly disrespectful. but also there are larger systems and structures at play than one writer no matter how much beef i have w him and his decisions, bc ultimately he's just one guy (a powerful and wealthy guy, but just a guy) and there's a wider cultural shift happening rn towards rehashing old stories without understanding what made them successful in the first place, and that same culture just doesn't allow for much, if any, constructive discourse analysis

so yeah

[janetkwallace]

Abuse isn't funny, or why I don't like 2019 Moominvalley's "The Invisible Child" episode

Months ago, I wrote my thoughts about 2019 Moominvalley's season finale. In that rant, I briefly mentioned that Gutsy screwed up their adaptation of The Invisible Child or something, but I didn't elaborate any further because my focus was on the Groke pulling an Iron Giant and saving everything at the end of season four. I said I would do it later, and well, here we go.

But first of all... If you like The Invisible Child, then that's great! I wish I could have enjoyed that episode as much as you did, but I simply can't. There's something wrong about it, something I can't quite put into words, but I'll do my best so you understand how I feel about that episode.

Secondly, this won't be a "the 90's anime did it better" rant, instead I'll comment on the 2019 adaptation and only. Both shows have their merits and different goals, after all, and once again, my opinion isn't universal, so feel free to disagree with me.

With all of that said, let's begin (Plenty of spoilers ahead, so be warned).

No, I didn't hate the episode as a whole. In fact, there are a few things I liked, from the atmosphere (that scene in the fog comes to mind, it's very delightful) to some of the characterization (Moominmamma being kind and welcoming to Ninny) to the song that plays at the end of the episode following the message that people who have experienced abuse in all shapes deserve to be heard instead of ignored. They need to be listened to, otherwise how will they be understood?

But nothing's perfect, and this episode is far from perfect. It's evident that some care was put in it, like people were really invested to retell this story to a new audience and the people working at Gutsy often do an exceptional job at many things, a few which I've listed above, yet... I don't know, something about this episode has left me sour. I'd say I was offended, but bitter seems more appropriate, and from this point onwards is when I’ll try to write down my thoughts on The Invisible Child based on the conflicting emotions I felt while watching it.

Okay. So, Ninny's healing isn't even the focus of the episode. You know, one of the things that made the short story from Tales from Moominvalley be worth a read. It supposedly is, but Ninny doesn’t feel like a protagonist of her own story. The story that is named after her. The story about her and how she changes for the better. I know it’s a 22-minute long episode, but you'd think there would be enough time for us to see how Ninny feels when someone actually cares for her and is concerned about her well-being. For once in her life, she isn't being mistreated by her awful aunt.

Oh, but she gets mistreated by the Moomins. Quite a lot, intentionally or not. See, one major difference between the original story and the 2019 adaptation is how both stories begin. In the original, Too-Ticky goes to the Moominhouse followed by Ninny and explains to everyone about how she became invisible due her aunt’s neglect; whereas in the adaptation, no one but Too-Ticky is aware of what Ninny has been through and she appears almost at the end of the episode to reveal Ninny’s past, shocking everyone and the audience right after Moomintroll forced Ninny to see her aunt.

Yikes. Also, in the novel, the aunt character never appears in person, which’s a very important detail I’ll comment on later, but now that you’ve been told that the Moomins don’t know anything about Ninny or what to do to make her visible again (In Moominmamma’s book, only the word “listen” was written as for the cure to invisible people), what follows is a series of misunderstandings and moments that were supposed to be funny but are not really.

Other than pacing, the early seasons of Moominvalley had this issue in which they had to find a way to make a scene humorous, even though there was no need for it. Want an example? When Ninny is in the yard helping Moomintroll collect fruits, Moominpappa tries to startle Ninny with a BOO! (because being invisible is like having hiccups, sure), but that doesn’t work. Instead, she falls from the stairs, she is scared and that did not make me laugh. 

But it gets worse. There is another scene in which Moominpappa narrates his memoirs and Sniff comes by the front door. He gets completely ignored, Moomintrol tells him to shush and I don’t know why, but Sniff wants to sit on a chair, but Ninny is sitting on that chair. He doesn’t know Ninny is there, all he sees is a red dress, so he throws it away, thinking it’s just a dress.

It wasn’t. Ninny was sitting on that chair. So, yeah, Sniff threw Ninny out of the chair. Ninny, who has been ill-treated by her aunt, was thrown out of a chair. And that was supposed to be funny. Sort of like “Hey, let’s have Sniff do a silly thing! Haha, very funny”. See if I’m laughing, Gutsy. Really, that was meant to be a funny scene, otherwise why would it be there? Why did Sniff appear only at that scene and then never again? What was his contribution to the Invisible Child to make her feel better?

There was none, he did nothing useful. His purpose in that scene is to make Ninny run off scared and cry, while Sniff is like “A ghost Waaaaah!” and he runs off and cries too, but that was meant to be funny. Alright then. When I saw that scene for the first time, I was like "this is not funny", and I don’t mean “this is not my kind of humor”, oh no.

No. It simply wasn’t funny. The episode insists that I should be laughing, but I can't because it is not funny. 

I don’t blame Sniff, he didn't know Ninny was there, but someone could have told him! But no, he gets ignored by the Moomins, they don’t greet him, they don’t say hi, they don’t introduce him to Ninny, they don’t stop him at the moment he is about to throw her out of the chair, they don’t do jack! 

A while later, Moomintroll tries to comfort Ninny. He says: "Sorry about Sniff. He didn't know what was going on". Of course he didn't because none of you bothered to tell him what was going on! And it's nothing complex, they could just say that they got a new guest in Moominhouse and her name is Ninny and she is invisible and they’re trying to make her visible again and that’s it. Instead, Sniff is treated the same way as always in every episode, like a joke, like a character who no one cares for or even bothers to talk with or explain things or listen to and isn’t that a kind of abuse? Like, say, neglect?

Moving on, because I have to tell you about one last thing that I did not like in the episode. Ninny’s aunt makes an appearance. So, Moomintroll discovers the place in which Ninny used to live and he forces Ninny to see her nasty, evil, uncaring, unloving aunt who’s a Hemulen and wait a second, this is a major difference from the source material, one I’m not very fond of. 

Why? Because seeing the aunt in person takes away the subtlety of abuse having no proper embodiment. It isn’t something committed by just one person, neither you can tell who’s abusive or not by how they look. “Ninny’s aunt is awful? So let’s make her appear awful in appearance too”, though someone at Gutsy, which isn’t always the case when some of the most gentle and receptive of people can turn out to be assholes, like musicians, writers, artists, actors, your neighbors, everyone wears mask that deceive those who observe and don't know the person for what they are. 

Anyway, Ninny runs away from her aunt, Moomintroll is like “You suck, Ninny’s aunt! You don’t deserve to take care of her at all! and she slams her head on the door, haha! And I don’t know what  else to say. In the end, Ninny becomes visible again, she startles Moominpappa who falls on a lake, everyone laughs and the episode has a beautiful message about other Ninnies being out there in need of being listened to and being taken care of by people who genuinely care for them, it’s all great and wonders, except you’ve read this entire rant and you know not everything is wonderful as it should be.

Or maybe it’s just me, I wrote all of it based on my own interpretations and someone else may have a different opinion than mine and I will listen to theirs because I’m not alone in this world, my word isn’t the absolute truth, just an opinion I had to get out of my mind. Thanks, and hope you have a nice day.

[j4m3s-b4k3r]

CREEPY Steve

2024 is the 50th anniversary of Stephen King’s first published novel, CARRIE. The story of a bullied telekinetic teen, who gets blood-soaked payback at her prom. Since then, he's written 65 novels, 200 short stories, and 5 nonfiction books. A freakish feat, almost worthy of one of his supernatural characters.

King’s first published story was when he was 19 years old. He continued selling short stories after graduating from the University of Maine, and while teaching English at a public high school, all later collected in NIGHT SHIFT. He's averaged more than a book a year since 1974. Many of his novels were initially released under a pseudonym, lest their sheer number dilute his ‘brand’. I became aware of King via the early movie adaptations of his books. CARRIE, THE SHINING, and THE DEAD ZONE. A great introduction, as those early films were all good, whereas most adaptations of his work are terrible, sadly. 

During one of the Halloweens in the covid era, Julia & I got into a CREEPY STEVE frame of mind. Watching the better film adaptations, and listening to audiobooks. Those narrated by Will Patton were faves, as he really brings the characters to life. The Bill Hodges trilogy - Mr MERCEDES, FINDERS KEEPERS and END OF WATCH - were all marvellous, and introduced the wonderful character Holly Gibney. Who then appeared in further stories of her own. 

There are 10 Stephen King short story collections, and all that I’ve read contain several gems. JUST AFTER SUNSET has the terrifying (yet somehow hilarious) tale of a man trapped and left for dead in a capsized porta-potty. DIFFERENT SEASONS contains the stories that inspired THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION and STAND BY ME. Donald Sutherland starred in a great film entitled Mr HARRIGAN’S PHONE, taken from IF IT BLEEDS. Which also contains another great Holly Gibney story. 

ON WRITING: A MEMOIR OF THE CRAFT, is an engaging book, narrated by the author himself. Part memoir and part how-to instructional. Reminding me of William Goldman’s ADVENTURES IN THE SCREEN TRADE, in that it can’t truly deliver the secrets to making the magic that it promises, but serves up entertaining & revealing autobiographical anecdotes instead.

We are now used to seeing vampires in contemporary settings, so some of the 1970s impact of SALEM’S LOT has been lost. But both the book and its movie adaptation have many indelible images. Such as a vampire child hovering at the window.. (an inspiration for John Ajvide Lindqvist perhaps?)

After listening to book after book of King’s, and loving their brilliantly observed characters, and wonderful dialog, DARK TOWER was conspicuous for not having the elements that are normally intriguing in his books. Maybe I’ll give this series another shot someday, as friends swear it gets better. 

We read THE SHINING and its sequel, DOCTOR SLEEP, watching & enjoying both movie adaptations. King apparently despises Kubrick’s version of THE SHINING - "The book is hot, and the movie is cold; the book ends in fire, and the movie in ice. In the book, there's an actual arc where you see this guy, Jack Torrance, trying to be good, and little by little he moves over to this place where he's crazy. And as far as I was concerned, when I saw the movie, Jack was crazy from the first scene.” 

After reading the book, I understand King’s critiques, and agree with his second point. Jack Nicholson seems already about detonate on his drive to the hotel. Whereas King’s Jack was driven to madness by the malignant spirits within it. However, Kubrick’s film is so indelibly stamped into my mind, that I cannot unsee it. Nor unlike it neither (sorry, Stephen).

“Plot is, I think, the good writer’s last resort and the dullard’s first choice. The story which results from it is apt to feel artificial and labored.” - Stephen King.

I work in storytelling too, but in my biz it’s the dullard’s choice all the way - everything plotted & discussed, ad infinitum. King apparently starts with the merest idea, then writes straight ahead, surprising himself as he goes. A magician pulling a string of goodies out of his own head. At his best, this approach produces stories that feel naturalistic, with surprising twists and turns. 

At his worst, it can be rambling, meandering and self indulgent. Especially when he struggled with addiction. Apparently, King was so out of control in the late 1980s, that he was confronted by an intervention after finishing the TOMMYKNOCKERS manuscript. A pity then that the editor wasn’t given more latitude in tidying up that waffling mess before it went to print..

Stephen himself agrees - “I mean, The Tommyknockers is an awful book. That was the last one I wrote before I cleaned up my act. And I’ve thought about it a lot lately and said to myself, “There’s really a good book in here, underneath all the sort of spurious energy that cocaine provides, and I ought to go back.” The book is about 700 pages long, and I’m thinking, “There’s probably a good 350-page novel in there.”

We enjoyed the screen adaptations of IT, CHRISTINE, 1922, THE MIST, and 11.22.63. After soaking in worlds King has created, on page & screen, it became clear that the recent NETFLIX hit, STRANGER THINGS, is merely glorified Stephen King fan fiction. By the end of the pandemic, we’d chewed through many stories, yet only a mere fraction of The King Catalog. 

King is thought of as a master of the paranormal, but his real genius is for the everyday. Some of my favourites King stories are his straight crime fiction, or stories about real life. Even his famous horror stories are grounded by settings in relatable blue collar situations.. The writer Peter Straub even compared King to Dickens: “Both are novelists of vast popularity and enormous bibliographies, both are beloved writers with a pronounced taste for the morbid and grotesque, both display a deep interest in the underclass."

How does a man who’s been a millionaire for decades, with a very recognisable face, keep an ear for dialog patterns of common folk? Does he wear a disguise, and lurk in truck stops, diners, dive bars, and greyhound bus stations, taking notes?

 “He's one of the first people to talk about real Americans and how they live, to capture real American dialogue in all its, like, foulmouthed grandeur... He has a deadly ear for the way people speak... …Surface-wise, King's work is a bit televisual, but there's really a lot going on." - David Foster Wallace

Lately, we’ve embarked on yet another quest to chip away at the KING oeuvre. Having already fallen in love with Bill Hodges & Holly Gibney, it was fun to watch the Mr MERCEDES TV series. Even though the filmmakers took liberties with the characterisations. Rather than the shy, smoking, middle aged, OCD woman of the novels, the TV Holly is a perky & cute 30 something. An autistic variation on the manic pixie dream girl trope. (sigh..)

Taken from a short story collection entitled EVERYTHING’S EVENTUAL, the gripping movie 1408, starring John Cusack & Samuel L. Jackson, is the creepy story of a skeptical paranormal investigator, whose cynicism is challenged by spending a harrowing night in an actual haunted hotel room.

In THINNER a selfish fat lawyer is cursed into anorexia by a gypsy. Entertaining, in 'the guy deserves everything he gets' manner of a parable from the Twighlight Zone. It seems to have inspired Sam Raimi's DRAG ME TO HELL.

GERALD’S GAME seemed like a story written on a bet, or an author’s exercise - “write a novel where the protagonist never leaves their bed for most of the story.” To me it felt like it might have worked better as a short story. When King fails (for me, anyway) it's when there hasn't been enough editing.

King has apparently said that PET SEMATARY was his book that scared him the most, and it is extremely creepy, but for me, MISERY was even more terrifying. I'd already seen the film, and Kathy Bates’ Oscar winning performance, but the book is even scarier somehow. There’s nothing paranormal about this story. There is utter horror, but it is the worst kind that there is - the twists & turns of the human mind.

Despite, or perhaps because of, King’s great popularity, literary critics long damned him with faint praise. In 2003, when he received the National Book Foundation’s ‘Medal of Distinguished Contribution to American Letters’, some became openly hostile:

"The decision to give the National Book Foundation's annual award for "distinguished contribution" to Stephen King is extraordinary, another low in the shocking process of dumbing down our cultural life… ..What he is is an immensely inadequate writer on a sentence-by-sentence, paragraph-by-paragraph, book-by-book basis." - Harold Bloom

Bloom is dead, so King gets the last word - “A lot of today's reviewers grew up reading my fiction. Most of the old critics who panned anything I wrote are either dead or retired".

In 1999, Stephen King was flattened by a vehicle while walking along a highway - "After the accident, I was totally incapable of writing. At first it was as if I'd never done this in my life. ...It was like starting over again from square one." As someone who was been flattened too (but in a very different way) one of the many inspiring things about King is how he recovered from that terrible accident, to do some of his very best work.

CREEPY STEVE is a one-man multimedia idea engine, keeping the publishing & Hollywood machines running. We are still enjoying poring through the King library (listening to THE INSTITUTE now) so if any of you have further recommendations, please let me know in the comments!

[eddseddede]

i HATE mary shelley's frankenstein (the movie)

(Very long rant under the cut)

First off im gonna be clear im absolutely NOT talking about the novel frankenstein written by mary shelley. This book is my favorite story ever and i could rant for hours about how much i love it. Im specifically talking about the movie titled "mary shelley's frankenstein". If you ask literally any frankenstein fan they will tell you that most movie/show adaptations are relatively inaccurate. Thats why when i found out that "mary shelley's frankenstein" was considered to be the most faithful and book accurate adaptation, i was super excited to watch it. I was incredibly wrong.

At first, i didnt really know how to feel. The movie was fairly entertaining, i liked how they expanded on a few characters and made a few story changes, but thats about it. What makes me dislike this movie SO MUCH is the fact that it feels like instead of actually reading and analyzing the book, the creators just read the sparknotes of frankenstein and tweaked the story a bit. It removed some details/plot points that seem insignificant at first glance, but any further analysis will show those "small details" were super important story-wise. It lacked so much of the depth that i was hoping for.

One thing i noticed from the very start was the portrayal of victor and his family. I will say that i dont really mind how william and elizabeth were written. I tgink my main gripe would be that they feel so flat and one dimensional (especially elizabeth), but i kind of understand since they arent really given much depth in the original story either. i thought it was cool that they made justine have a little bit more depth and they showed her close relationship with william, i thought that was cute. I think they couldve done that better without having her have a one sided crush on victor though. It just felt like a lazy attempt to make her seem more interesting.

What i HATED was how victor was portrayed. No hate to the actor, but he is NOT victor at all. Some of my gripes are personal things (blond hair, beard, etc) but others just straight dont make any sense. Like... he just seems so much more outgoing and friendly than og victor. It wasnt the vibe he had in the book and was a very.... interesting creative choice. And WHY in the world did he have ABS. Victor spent 2 whole years making his creature and its obvious he barely takes care of himself in this time. Even if he was well built beforehand (even then. does he really seem like the type to work out) i really dont think he'd still be in shape after the trauma his body goes through during the creation process. The narrative also lowkey felt very... apologetic towards victor. A lot of scenes that highlight victors selfishness and flaws are cut from the movie, which made me really upset because it takes so much away from victors character. Victor's complexity and moral gray-ness is what makes his character so interesting and appealing to me, so this victor portrayal just overall felt very flat and bland.

One of the two things that really frustrated me was the lack of justine's trial. The trial is SO incredibly important because it is the first scene where victor truly has to face the consequences of his actions, yet he lets another person take the fall. However, in the movie, william is killed and justine is found next to his body. The town immediately carries her with pitchforks to the town center (?) with victor and elizabeth chasing after them yelling to stop. Justine is immediately hung without any questions or anything. This change is so terribly detrimental to the plot, i was shocked they changed it. The fact that the trial in the og novel spanned several days gave us time to see elizabeth spiraling into depression, justine eventually accepting her death, and most of all, the guilt eating victor alive. We see him contemplating saving justine, but in order to save himself, victor stays silent the entire time. This conflict highlights victor's selfishness and his tendency to run away from his consequences. Victors guilt does not purify him.

The other thing that infuriated me was henry clerval's lack of importance. Basically all he does in the movie is lighten the mood at certain parts. This is such a superficial way of portraying his character, and i was super disappointed as someone whose favorite character is clerval. In the movie, Frankenstein and clerval meet in college, both studying science/medicine. This immediately gave me a bad feeling, since the whole point of victor and henry is that theyre opposites, but love each other nonetheless. Victor is into science and sees everything very matter-of-factly, while henry is into poetry and sees the beauty in life. The two balance each other out and their opposite traits give them great chemistry. Them being childhood friends is also super important, which is taken away in this movie adaptation.

I wont go into depth because if i do ill ramble for hours, but clerval is so incredibly important to the story, especially victors character. He represents victors happy and relatively carefree life before his obsession with reanimation, and provides comfort when victor is at his lowest. One of the most important clerval scenes is actually his death. Victor is left absolutely devastated by the death of his best friend, to the point where hes pushed to thw brink of insanity. Why? Because the death of clerval symbolizes the death of his old self. The consequences of his neglect and selfishness have ruined his life so much, to the point where he can never be happy like he used to be. Clerval, the man he describes as the most pure being, the (literal) light of his life, is gone forever because of his actions. As you can tell, this effect is not achieved when victor and henry only know each other for their short college careers, and it's definitely not achieved when clerval doesnt die. It feels like they only added henry just to say they had a character that is typically forgotten by adaptations in their movie (btw if you really wanted this achievement then add ernest frankenstein into your movie cowards). If thats your motive, then id rather you a stereotypical mad scientist frankenstein movie instead.

If you like this movie, absolutely no hate to you at all. I can def understand why and i really liked some parts of the movie. The reason why i hate it is mainly because it is advertised as a book accurate, faithful adaptation, when many crucial parts of the book are discarded

(Please dont bully me about grammar/structure im writing this purely off passion 😢)

[indigowriting]

Author Ask Tag

tagged by @tryingtimi (thank you tímea!) putting this below the cut for length ^.^

1. What is the main lesson of your story? Why did you choose it?

hm, i would say that the main, overarching lesson of most of my stories are that you have to live for the present, that getting stuck in the past and what has been and obsessing over that will only hold you back in the long run. this shows up in various works of mine—in r&r, the love interest has spent most of her life stuck in the past, for understandable reasons, and it's only after she's forced out of that time that she's able to begin to be her own person, rather than being tied to what happened, and in BIRCHLORN, the main character is only able to live a happy, fulfilling life once she puts the unresolved past to rest.

2. What did you use as inspiration for your worldbuilding?

a lot of what i write is historically inspired; r&r draws on a lot of my knowledge of the mid-ming dynasty, as well as media like the cnovel chssn and its adaptation, and the "present day" portions are inspired by my love of the china i grew up in, but melded with elements of futurism and scifi-esqueness (hence the time travel and the fact that it's no longer called china); BIRCHLORN is inspired by various transmigration novels, and my research into the tang dynasty, particularly the tang dynasty during the wu zhao interregnum under wu zetian, as well as elements of wuxia shows and novels. i also generally pepper in elements that i've picked up from tradpub novels i've enjoyed, making for a rather eclectic combination. the only one which isn't historically inspired is efaw, which is a futuristic scifi novel in space, but even then, it takes inspiration from cnovels like dmbj, tradpub novels like the locked tomb series, and elements from the ascendancy series by k. arsenault rivera, all thrown into space with my own spin. (i can't delve any further into efaw unfortunately, because i have yet to write it ^^***)

3. What is your MC trying to achieve, and what are you, the writer, trying to achieve with them? Do you want to inspire others, teach forgiveness or help the reader grow as a person?

birchlorn's bai hua is mostly just trying to make it out alive, because she has the unenviable status of having been transmigrated into a cannon fodder side character in the original plot. as for what i, as the author, am trying to achieve............well, i'll be honest, i don't have any lofty goals. i write because it's fun and because there are concepts that i haven't seen anyone else to do that i'd like to read. so i guess my goals are probably to put more lesbians in things haha.

4. How many chapters is your story going to have?

birchlorn SHOULD have ~fifteen chapters; i've written twelve of them so far. i'm not the best at writing very long things—birchlorn having a goal of 50k is already longer than anything else i've ever written for an original novel! as for r&r, i still need to go back and revise and chunk it into chapters (i wrote it all in one go over a week, without chapter divisions), but i'd guess about fifteen to twentyish chapters?

5. Is it fan fiction or original content? Where do you plan to post it?

i actually write a lot of fanfic, but my writeblr is strictly for my original works. my dream is to have one of my novels, maybe multiple, traditionally published, though i know that if that were to happen, it would take a lot of work, and be rather far off.

6. When did you start writing?

i started writing in 2013, but as for when i got serious about original writing, i would say that was when i started this blog, so around the start of 2023.

7. Do you have any words of encouragement for fellow writers of writeblr? What other writers do you follow?

my words of encouragement: write a lot! you can only get better, i promise. and have fun while you're writing! don't turn it into a chore, or something that stresses you out. as for other writers i follow, i follow a lot of writers! i couldn't list all of them out, there's so many, but i appreciate each and every one of them and love seeing their posts ^.^

no pressure tagging:

@thelittlestspider @onomatopiya @muddshadow @asher-writes and open tag for all my other followers!

[erdariel]

Hi! This is a bit random, but I’m always really interested by your Finnish posts, and was wondering if you have any recommendations for learning more about your country?

Any stories/bits of art or music that are particularly special?

No need to answer this if it’s intrusive or anything, of course!

Hello! Let me see... This post gets quite long, so I'll put my recommendations under a readmore! To be honest, most of them are just random Finnish stuff, not necessarily specifically oriented to teach anything about Finland, but it's something.

Any other Finns can reblog and add stuff if you've got better recommendations than I have, btw!

Music-wise I suppose it depends on what kind of music you like - if you're into metal music, there's a lot of Finnish metal bands and I think some of them even sing in Finnish, but it's not a genre I personally listen to a lot. What I myself listen to is frankly a mess that doesn't make any sense, but here's a couple relatively well-known Finnish songs that I personally occasionally listen to (the method of choosing was random "whatever comes to mind first"):

Autiotalo by Dingo

Rakkaus on lumivalkoinen by Yö

As for stories - I have to admit I read shamefully little Finnish literature. One thing that comes to mind, however, is Maria Turtschaninoff's Red Abbey Chronicles fantasy series! I heard of them from a friend and read them some years back, and personally I really liked them. I don't know that they'll tell you particularly much about Finland as a country, but I like them as books. And Moomins, of course - I haven't read the books since I was a child, and I've never seen the entirety of the 90s anime adaptation because we didn't have a tv when I was a kid, but they're lovely stories, and if they don't tell you about Finland as a country as such, they're still a big part of Finnish culture.

I suppose I could also point you towards some classics of Finnish literature (Seven Brothers by Aleksis Kivi, The Unknown Soldier by Väinö Linna, that sort of thing) but I also don't read a lot of classics, and I try to keep to a rule of never recommend books I haven't read and/or don't like personally, so I can't actually recommend them as such, all I can state is that they are classics of Finnish literature that exist and are set in Finland (of the two I mentioned, Seven Brothers is set in the 19th century in rural Finland, it's fairly comedic in tone, and generally held to be the first novel actually written in Finnish, while The Unknown Soldier follows a machine gun company throughout the Continuation War; so in terms of that, expect a number of violent deaths and all of that) and I'm relatively certain there are English translations of them (though whether those are easily available anywhere, that I cannot say)

Speaking of classics, there's Kalevala. You should be able to find one or two different English translations of it in Project Gutenberg. Now, with Kalevala there's a whole can of worms regarding cultural appropriation of Karelian culture and stories that I do not understand thoroughly enough to explain it properly, but I don't think there's any argument that it shaped the Finnish culture and national identity when that was still in the process of being created in the 19th century.

As for artwork, I don't have a lot of specific ones in mind, but you could take a look at the Finnish National Gallery's website and see what stuff there speaks to you!

You can also search for specific artist's works on the website, so here's for example pictures of the works of Akseli Gallen-Kallela, Hugo Simberg, Albert Edelfelt, and Eero Järnefelt, to name a few of our famous painters (note: i haven't refined those searches beyond selecting for a given artist, which means the search result includes a lot of sketches and stuff, but if you like, you can further refine the search to only show you paintings, for example).

Personally, I quite like the bunch of Hugo Simberg's paintings that portray Death (as in death as a character, pretty much the black-robed skeleton type). The most famous of those, I think, is this one, the Garden of Death:

[gremoria411]

Alright, given that I haven’t rewatched Gundam Narrative yet, let’s talk about something I did watch this week.

*Spoilers ahead*

Mobile Suit Gundam Twilight Axis: Red Blur, an 26 minute ova which adds new scenes to the original Twilight Axis, making it actually coherent in the process. The plot of Gundam Twilight Axis concerns three main characters:

Mehmet Merca - Earth Federation special forces commander, who’s been tasked to investigate the remains of the Axis Asteroid base to recover any evidence of psycho-frame or other newtype weaponry. IE the wreckage of the Sazabi. Despite what you may think, he’s actually a very nice and reasonable guy.

Arlette Almage - Formerly Char’s personal mobile suit mechanic throughout the One Year War and Char’s Counterattack (Second Neo Zeon War), though she did not join him in the AEUG. Also a Newtype from the Flanagan Institute (though apparently not a patch on Lahlah, the star pupil of the Flanagan Institute). Char personally handpicked her from Zeon’s Flanagan Institute when she was a young girl, so she views him as something approaching a father figure (honestly it’s a little unclear). This translates to her wanting to know what happened to him, which is the reason she helps Mehmet Merca to help navigate Axis.

Danton Hyleg - Formerly Char’s personal test pilot. Happily retired with Arlette, and is mostly along to support her. As he’s significantly older than her (at least ten years), he has a more realistic view of Char, outright telling him around the time of CCA it would’ve been better if he hadn’t come back to them. A very good pilot, but unable to actually pull the trigger and kill someone.

Overall, I’d say it’s pretty good, it does just enough with the time it’s got for you to be invested in these characters, and it’s got some good action scenes. It can’t disguise the fact that it’s got a very low budget (there’s a lot of scenes where you can’t see people’s faces, so they don’t have to animate lip movements), but it knows where to prioritise. I do like how even though it’s technically a set up for a later antagonist, it keeps focus on the actual characters first. Twilight Axis was originally a light novel and was adapted into an OVA and Manga. I have read a translation of the Light Novel and found it very good, since it fleshes out a lot of stuff missing from the OVA (IE Birnam’s motivations), to the point where I could honestly consider twilight axis a very good advert for it. The Manga adaptation, which I haven’t read, also looks very good. I’m given to understand that Arlette and Danton also cameo in MSV-R: the Return of Johnny Ridden, which is neat. The reason I’m pairing it with Narrative is that I view them both in similar lights - after unicorn showed off how utterly ridiculous psycho-frames can be in the right hands, we’re left with the question of what happens between now and F91 onwards for it never to be used or spoken of again. Both Narrative and Twilight Axis deal with the fallout of Psycho-frame mobile suits such that we can understand why it was sealed away and not further developed. Or, as I like to think of them, they’re curatorial works, made to answer some lingering questions.

However, I have two main non-ms design criticisms of the story - The First, and most forgivable, is that we’re not really given any information on the enemy pilots, the Fermo Brothers. I’m more forgiving of this because I think the manga fleshed them out more, and you don’t really need that much information. The Second criticism is both petty and bothersome to me, because it’s entirely likely it’s borne from my own assumptions. The Flanagan Institute, where Char headhunts Arlette, is shown to be performing inhumane experiments on children, with one of the bosses explicitly mentioning “disposal”. What bothers me about this is that to my knowledge this is basically the only piece of evidence that ever shows the Flanagan Institute to be abusive. Why does that matter? Because central to Zeon’s stated philosophy is that of the newtype, a new type of human adapted for space with the ability to sense, communicate and emphasise with others over long distances. The Federations’ refusal to recognise the newtype is synonymous to their refusal to recognise the autonomy of the colonies. The Federation refuses to recognise the capacity of mankind to evolve past it’s need for the Earth, since (as many characters are fond of saying) their souls are still bound down by gravity. So the revelation that the Flanagan institute, Zeon’s shining beacon of Newtype advancement, needed to resort to the mass death of children for its newtypes just completely undermines that. We know newtypes can naturally awaken in combat, but nowhere is it suggested that they *need* to, with both Challia Bull and Paptimus Scirocco basically just showing up, with no indication of harrowing battles beforehand. Furthermore, it also completely undercuts another notable organisation in Gundam, the Titans, who actually do resort to the kind of inhumane practices shown here. Why? Because they view Newtypes as nothing more than weapons, further demonstrating their utter contempt for spacenoids, having twisted one of the central facets of spacenoid independence into just another tool of oppression, with all the dehumanisation that implies. But if they’re just following off Zeon’s playbook for the “production” of newtypes, then it implies that newtypes aren’t actually a development for humanity at all, simply a reaction to large-scale trauma. I know Victory and other later UC shows went back on the Newtype philosophy a bit, but they (Zeon) knew from essentially day one that it wasn’t it? It just throws into question why a lot of the success stories of the Flanagan institute would even stay with Zeon, if that’s how they were treated (and it turns newtypes into the whole “super soldiers through trauma” thing, which…. I see a lot in fiction, and I bothers me a little that this is the route they decided to go for).

But enough quibbling about a whole 14 seconds of animation, what do I think of the mobile suit designs? These are arranged favourite to least favourite (though to be honest I’m not particularly crazy about most of the offerings here), and do not include the R-Jarja (I’ll cover it if I ever talk about Neo Zeon/Axis Zeon or the Gyan). Given that most of these suits are variations, I’ll typically discuss my feelings on their original counterparts as well. I’m using the Novel Artwork, since I generally prefer it (and image limits), but this applies to both versions of the designs.

First up, the AMX-011S Zaku III Custom. Straight-up my favourite mobile suit here (though that doesn’t mean a whole lot….) I like the Zaku III because it’s chunky, well armed and proof that even Neo Zeon is not immune to nostalgia. True, it gets outclassed during the First Neo Zeon War by all the 4th-Gen mobile suits running around, but it’s still a very solid design. I like how the Zaku II-to-Hizack-to-Zaku III-to Geara Doga-to-Geara Zulu line plays out too, with each one having slightly different characteristics. I have a very mixed views on Char’s custom mobile suits - which I like, because I enjoy judging the suits mostly on their own merits, rather than on who’s piloting them (key word being “mostly”). That said, occasionally one of Char’s suits can end up being a really baller design, which I just adore. Sadly, the Zaku III Custom shown here is not one such design, though I do like the idea of Char Piloting a Zaku III for whatever reason, hence it’s inclusion here. It’s actually quite nice, since it’s a relic of Char that the two characters attach value to, a momento of their time together, that nonetheless must be left behind on Axis. Just like Char.

Note: GB02’s decision to spit out a Byarlant Isolde at me is essentially the reason for this entire post, since I was forced to actually formulate an opinion on the blasted thing, having been utterly apathetic towards it until now.

The Original Byarlant is a suit I’ve gone back-and-forth on over time, disliking to tolerating to (generally) liking. It’s got a very unique silhouette to it, and I like how it essentially ended up a high-mobility suit with so much of its body devoted to thrust, and you can believe it’s high mobility, since it’s so many thrusters that can move and swivel to precisely direct the suit where it needs to go. The head’s pretty gorgeous and I like how inhuman it is, along with the Byarlants hands and feet. It’s got a very minimalist armament - just two beam sabers and beam guns (strong beam guns, mind), but I find this only adds to its sleek feel. It looks like someone wanted a war machine that was also a race car. The colours are both villainous, appropriate for a Titans machine, and eye-catching, with the yellow drawing your eye to the face, and the red highlighting either thrusters or limbs, again emphasising it’s mobility. I do like how the feet look both delicate and weighty at the same time - they’re both designed for high speed and yet don’t look like they’d struggle to hold up the suit itself.

The Byarlant Isolde takes several features from the later Byarlant Custom - chiefly the shoulder thrusters and back fuel tanks, creating the sense that Birnam was able to get their hands on some new parts, but not enough to fully upgrade the Byarlant. I will say that I absolutely adore the new colour scheme - I didn’t expect to like a lilac and white mobile suit this much, but somehow the Isolde makes it all work. I should note that the Byarlant is similarly outdated to the rest of the mobile suits present, however, The Titans and Neo Zeon didn’t have that much of a tech gap, chiefly since Neo Zeon declared war basically right after the Titans defeat. They undoubtedly had an edge in Newtype weaponry and heavily armed mobile suits, but from a practical standpoint, a high performance suit from the latter days of the Gryps War is probably going to stand a better chance than a Grunt unit from the Neo Zeon war. The Byarlant was always a fast suit, so this makes even more sense. This is why it slightly baffles me that the Tristan is considered Birnam’s best unit, but I’ll talk more about that later. Though I do like the original Byarlant’s head, I find the Isolde’s Gundam-style head to be growing on me. It’s likely a more advanced head than the original Byarlant, and likely better suited for its environment of a dense asteroid base (in UC, Monoeyes tend to be better at range, whereas Twin-eyes are better in close quarters (it’s to do with target tracking at differing ranges), though it’s not a large enough difference for it to get called out). It was likely also chosen for the lingering psychological effects it may have on any former Zeon or Neo-Zeon personnel they might run into while investigating axis - appropriate, since the Titans also dabbled in that. I will say that the new head gives the Isolde and absolutely wonderful silhouette - the sunken red-on-white eyes make it look very imposing and it reminds me of some of the head designs from Gundam Sentinel (the geometric nature of its V-fin also helps with the intimidation factor in my opinion, though I’m not really certain why).

The Ahava Azieru is a weird one. I know basically nothing about the design or it’s origin, and even it’s general form is unclear. It’s a mobile armour that I can only assume is patterned after the Neue Ziel, but when I first read the novel, I assumed it was some sort of prototype to the Alpha Azieru, so I’ve no idea what it could be a derivative of. It’s very well armed, and it seems to have at least some common design features of Late-UC Mobile Armours. I do like how it can essentially afford to sit back and throw beams at its opponents, but it seems remarkably slow for a MA (though that could be down to the pilot). It seems to have the design of a dragon, with its large winglike shields and funnel tail, which is an odd decision, since it’s ally, the R-Jarja is mentioned multiple times as being a “Knight”, an enemy of a dragon. Yet Arlette uses it to communicate with the enemy pilot, so they don’t come into conflict? It’s an odd thing. I do very much love the head (perhaps I have a thing for inhuman head designs in Gundam, though it’s awkward to see in relation to the rest of it).

The Jegan (Birnam Type). It’s a purple Jegan with a custom visor and rifle, used by Birnam. While it’s nice that it’s giving us a preview of what the Crossbone Vanguard’s suits will eventually look like (it’s rifle resembles a shot lancer somewhat), it honestly doesn’t do anything. It could have been replaced with any other grunt suit and it would have been the same (I’ve gone off the Jegan’s design a touch as of late, so forgive me if I’ve little to say on this one).

Finally, the Gundam AN-01 “Tristan” (typically just called the Tristan) and Kurwenal. Since the Kurwenal is an add-on to the Tristan, I figured I’d cover them together. This is also because although the Kurwenal is my least favourite design, I have more to say on the Tristan itself. I find the Kurwenal to just be boring honestly. It’s a bunch of missiles and Newtype tech bolted to the Tristan, relying on overwhelming firepower as opposed to anything else. I don’t like it’s colour scheme or it’s form at all, it feels too much like a toy with its blue and red colours and blocky psycommu claws. While it’s 5-tube beam pods make for a good visual, I can’t really appreciate them because they’re just a box that shoots scattering beams. There’s no design or artistry to them like there is with funnels, those agile and adaptable little attack drones. Lastly, when it gets broken up the Tristan just sits there. I’m not saying I expected it to leap out and continue the fight, it just looked so very goofy that I couldn’t take it seriously as a weapon. Onto the actual Tristan then. The novel art does help it a little but……. It’s just so boring. It’s the NT-1 Alex repaired with parts that make it look more like the MK-II. Performance-wise, the Byarlant Isolde was probably better-performing than it. It looks very generic, especially when compared to other Gundam-type mobile suits. Part of it might be that it exists at a time when 4th-Gen MS are all the range, while it’s only a 2nd gen at best. But the way it’s presented as Birnam’s big trump card is just silly when it’s roughly two wars out of date. It almost got taken out immediately by the Zaku III custom and only survived because the pilot couldn’t pull the trigger. I guess it’s supposed to represent the Gundam’s legacy in the same way that the Zaku represents Char’s legacy? But it’s basically the only Gundam that neither Char or Amuro had anything to do with, so that line of thinking falls a bit flat. It’s just overall dull.

Oddly so, even, because despite it changing very little, I find that I prefer its predecessor, the Gundam NT-1 “Alex” considerably. Part of it might be the older style of design, the well-defined place that the Alex has - it’s a nice piece of Late-OYW design, being cutting-edge and (spec-wise) able to give pretty much anything of the same time period a run for it’s money in the right hands. It feels like something between the RX-78 and the Gundam Development Project (Gp01, etc) and I like how elegant it feels, without losing any of that all-important weight. It feels like a space-specialist Gundam, counterbalancing the Gundam Ground Types from 08th MS team, with its extra ambac thrusters, compact and powerful backpack and general blue colourscheme. It’s well-used, since it shows the Federation moving to capitalise on their strengths and how desperate Zeon is at that stage of the war to stop things getting any worse. It also further demonstrates the massive power disparity between a Gundam and many of Zeon’s mobile suits, only being destroyed through great sacrifice and luck. That might just be it, the Tristan has too many recycled elements for me to look at it as it’s own thing, and it’s missing all those finer details from the Alex, so it just looks lesser by comparison. It’s little more than a charismatic grunt, compared to the absolute terrifying monster that was the Alex.

[filmfauxpas]

All Quiet on the Western Front

Reflecting on the 2022 Adaptation

All Quiet on the Western Front is one of my favorite books read in school. Being one of the first science fiction novels I read, it allowed me to understand a uniqe perspective, one that uncovered the bleak reality and popaganda of war. That being said, I was excited to watch the 2022 Edward Berger's adaptation of All Quiet on the Western Front, which to put it simply, is great. Having read and thoroughly enjoyed Remarque's novel, I was intrigued to see how its deeply personal and introspective narrative would translate to the screen, especially given how much the book relies on the emotional complexity of Paul’s inner thoughts and perspective. I went into this film without having seen the original 1930 adaptation, and with all that in mind, I was pleasantly surprised by how this version remained (for the most part) faithful to the source material, while further amplifying its powerful commentary on the senseless horrors of war.

Cinematography and Score

Visually, All Quiet on the Western Front is both compelling and dynamic, without overworking itself to create "meaningful" shots. To be more specific, the blandness of the trenches and battle fields paired with lively landscape and vibrant red/ blue bombs, that appeared between fight scenes, created just the right amount of juxtaposition. Along with the cinematography, the score was equally haunting and beautiful, with the eerie synths and pounding drums of the main theme capturing the desolation of war. Meanwhile, the softer ballads helped to heighten the film’s grim tone without ever romanticizing the events depicted on screen. While the choice to incorporate synthesizers into the score may be somewhat controversial, I believe it’s one of the best additions to the film. As said before, it emphasizes the emotional weight of the situation at hand while making it more palpable for contemporary audiences.

Writing

The writing also stood out as a highlight, crafting a narrative that felt both intimate and harrowing. Additionally, every actor delivered a good performance, bringing their characters to life with raw emotion and nuance. Their portrayals made the tragedy of the story all the more devastating.

That being said, I do have a couple "issues" with some of the creative liberties taken by the creators. My biggest being the change in how Kat dies. In the novel, his death felt more fitting and in line with the harsh, random conditions the characters were enduring. While I understand the writers’ choice to introduce the farmer’s son as a means to highlight the unending cycle of violence and its inherent senselessness, I still prefer the original version in the book. Kat’s death there felt more poignant and thematically resonant for me. Similarly, I had a slight issue with the slight change to Paul’s death at the end. The novel’s conclusion carried a quiet, understated tragedy that I think worked better than the more dramatized approach taken in the film. Despite these minor disagreements, I found this adaptation to be an excellent and a faithful interpretation of Remarque’s work.

[sluttish-armchair]

Me: “I’m going to stop procrastinating and read The Invisible Man this weekend.”

Me, not even a day later: “Hehehehe Fahrenheit 451 go BRRRRRRR”

[alderaani]

more than gold

summary:  A lost Jedi Temple, a riddle, some literature, and feelings that Cody isn't ready to speak out loud. | AO3

note: written for @codywanweek and the alt day 5 prompt Sith/Jedi Artefact Shenanigans! sliding in on the last day with one more thing written than expected, so i’m happy with that! i’m pretty ill today so i hope it actually makes some coherent sense 😂 also if the riddle was super obvious, soz, never written one before and turns out it’s really hard.

-

“You know, I could have sworn I told you not to touch that,” Cody says conversationally, from where he’s splayed out on his back.

“Really? I’m sure I didn’t hear you,” Obi-Wan says, cheerful despite being crumpled in a heap. His elbow is in Cody’s gut. Cody glares at him.

The room they’re lying in is circular, stone, carved out of some Forced-damned mountain and according to Obi-wan, practically thrumming with power. The ceiling is high and vaulted, letting in slivers of light where intricate mirror systems catch the sunlight of double suns and project it deep underground. It takes on a slightly blue cast, reflecting off the huge pool of water they were lucky to not fall into. Four walkways at each cardinal point lead to a central platform, and interspersed between them are four waterfalls.

It should be serene. Except now the waterfalls are travelling backwards, and all the doors, including the one they came in by, are blocked. Cody scrambles up onto his elbows, dislodging Obi-Wan with a grunt.

“What did you do?”

Obi-Wan follows his gaze and gasps, delighted. “Now, will you look at that?”

Cody is looking. Frankly, he doesn’t trust this place enough to not keep his eye on it at all times. Obi-Wan keeps saying that this temple was built long ago, by ancient, peaceful Jedi as a place of learning, and that it won’t hurt them. After they got cut off from the rest of their men at the entrance, however, Cody thinks he could be forgiven for having his doubts.

As Obi-Wan himself proves, peace-keeping hardly rules out danger.

“Amazing,” Obi-Wan breathes, hoisting himself to his feet without a second glance, to walk back up to the plinth and stalk round it, examining the incomprehensible runes engraved there.

Cody is left to peel himself off the floor, and instead goes to prod at the barriers now sealing the exits with the end of his blaster. He tries not to look too much at Obi-Wan, at the soft sweep of his hair and the span of his shoulders. Being on their own like this is something he’s avoided, of late - not because he doesn’t enjoy it, but because he’s starting to enjoy it all too much.

He doesn’t trust the way his heart leaps when Obi-Wan smiles, when he asks him to call him ‘Obi-Wan’, when the cycle draws on and they’re up late again, companionably finishing reports and debating strategy. Or, as they had been doing until Cody got cold feet and started finding excuses, debating novels, which Obi-Wan checked out of the Temple archives and read aloud, one chapter at a time, before they turned in for the night.

He doesn’t trust himself not to ruin this by overstepping. There’s something about his general that makes him lose all control of his tongue, and puts him in danger of voicing thoughts that really he should not be having at all.

It’s agony. It’s bliss. It’s stretching him to breaking point, and this is possibly the worst situation they could have ended up in, really.

“These are made out of water,” he says over his shoulder, grunting as he tries to push his blaster through. He is, of course, unsuccessful.

“Ingenious,” Obi-Wan says. “How did they manage that, I wonder?”

Cody cuts a glance back at him, and grins, despite his exasperation.

“You’re not more worried about how we’re going to get out?”

Obi-Wan waves a hand. “I’m sure the path will reveal itself, in time. Oh, look - Cody, I think this is a puzzle!”

Cody bites back a groan. They do not have time for this. They never really had time for it, but Obi-Wan promised it would be a brief detour on their way to the capital for hyperspace lane access negotiations. He’d looked so excited by recon reports of a lost temple that Cody just hadn’t been able to say no. He’s never able to say no to Obi-Wan, even when he isn’t following orders. It’s probably his fatal flaw.

“I don’t suppose there’s an off switch? A back button?” He asks hopelessly. The Force, at least the Jedi sort, very rarely seems to work that way. Obi-Wan is always talking about moving through problems, about seeking balance and adapting to what’s around you, rather than manipulating it. It’s not Cody’s favoured approach; he was trained to leverage his environment to its maximum advantage, and finds he has little patience for anything else.

Obi-Wan snorts. “This is a defensive mechanism, I’m afraid. Judging by the architecture this was built at the height of the Sith Wars. This artefact is designed to trap us here until we understand the mechanism and progress, or until, back when the temple was occupied, someone would come and deal with the intruder.”

“That doesn’t sound very peaceful,” Cody says.

Obi-Wan shoots him an amused look, the warm, soft kind that makes heat rise from the pit of Cody’s belly right up to his ears.

“Even a pacifist may defend himself,” he says, then leans over the pedestal. “Now, how about you stop grousing and come help me with this?”

Cody rolls his eyes, but goes, slinging his blaster across his back and crossing his arms.

“And stop looming,” Obi-Wan laughs, catching one of Cody’s gloved hands and pulling it down to rest at his side. The simple touch makes Cody’s cheeks burn.

“Don’t see what help I can give you, Sir,” he says, frowning down at the characters surrounding the bright blue artefact. “I was never any good at Ithorian.”

Obi-Wan pauses, then tilts his head up. “Ah. Is that what it is?”

“I - I think so?” Cody was never any good at his language flashtraining; he never had the proper patience for it, but he can usually figure out the basics.

“No, no,” Obi-Wan muses, stroking at his beard with his free hand. “You’re quite right. Goodness me, it's been a long time since I last saw this dialect. Let’s see now…”

Cody steps back and waits, keeping his attention firmly split between their blocked exit points while Obi-Wan ponders. The slow upward movement of the waterfalls is eerie - it still makes noise, but none of it is right. Instead of the gentle patter he expects of water joining a larger pool, there’s a faint gurgling as they move further into each grate, travelling somewhere he cannot see.

Obi-Wan finishes his fifth circle round the platform, and the hand at his chin goes still. Cody stands at attention, expectant.

“It’s a riddle,” Obi-Wan says, and if possible, his delight grows. “Yes - the language is coming back to me now. Do you know, I haven’t looked at Ithorian in maybe 12 years?”

“Sir?” Cody says, tilting his head to look at the characters more closely. He doesn’t have even a passing proficiency at modern Ithorian, and presumably it’s changed a bit over the millennia. His training was focused on the basics, and only the useful bits, at that. He thinks he can make out the words for ‘ water ’, and ‘ enemy’ , both of which are either unhelpfully descriptive or frankly discouraging, but that’s about the extent of it.

“My old master - he loved prophecies. When I was a teenager I could never see the point of it, but it meant I spent a lot of time learning the old Ithorian dialects. They’re known as the most peaceful species, did you know?” Obi-Wan shakes his head. “They’ll exile anyone violent, it’s quite remarkable, really. I suppose in some sort of idealistic emulation, a lot of the early Jedi texts are written in their dialect.”

His blue eyes are keen, his laser sharp focus firmly on the podium. It gives Cody a moment to observe his clever fingers, the long line of his neck, the open delight with which he tackles this new problem. It’s a rare thing, to see him so relaxed, and Cody can’t help the fond smile that creeps up on him despite the circumstances. This almost makes it worth it, and on reflection, he’d rather an ancient temple than the last thing that had made Obi-Wan so happy; a wretched, bioluminescent fungus, which had infected half the battalion and given them hives. Their general had studied it for weeks.

Obi-Wan’s lips quirk up. Cody barely trusts himself to speak.

“I didn’t know, Sir,” Cody croaks, then pauses, fishing for something normal to say. “Didn’t we have to defend the governor’s daughter from an Ithorian bounty hunter on Ganaris-IV?”

“Well,” Obi-Wan grins. “Those exiles have to go somewhere, don’t they?”

Cody huffs a laugh and reaches up to scratch his neck at the seam of his bucket.

“Let’s just hope they didn’t all come here. What’s this riddle, then?”

Obi-Wan shifts to the side, then points at a spot on the podium. “As I said, it’s been a long time, but I think it starts here, and goes something like:

A thing to be forged, where water is thicker,

Worth more than gold, unless it’s pyrite that glitters.

An enemy of my enemy, or in hard times, in need,

Sometimes fair-weather, or in high places indeed.

What are you, traveller? ”

All of Cody’s hopes that it would be something nice and obvious, like “lightsaber” or, given what’s going on around them, “gravity”, escape from him like smoke. Jedi and their metaphors. It’s not just a quirk of Obi-Wan’s, clearly.

“Does that mean anything to you, Sir?” he asks, turning the words over in his head once, twice, then frowning when nothing comes immediately.

Obi-Wan’s brow is also furrowed, but in a leisurely, meditative manner.

“...I have some ideas, I think,” he says. “How about you, my friend?”

What does he think? He thinks that there are other sorts of puzzles he is much better suited to. Word play and idioms...what does a clone have to offer that?

Still, Obi-Wan is watching him, expectant and gentle, and he sifts back through the lines, a little more seriously this time.

“Ice, maybe?”

Obi-Wan nods, slowly. “Perhaps. Walk me through it.”

Cody swallows. “Ice is something that can be made, right? It’s not exactly forged, but…”

He trails off in uncertainty.

“Go on,” Obi-Wan says with another one of those soft, devastating smiles. It fractures all the thoughts in Cody’s head, and he has to stop, clear his throat and gather up all the pieces.

“I suppose...it’s just thicker water, isn’t it? On warm planets it’s a valuable commodity, it’s found in high places, and I suppose if you wanted snow, a freeze would be fair weather.”

Obi-Wan is rubbing his beard again, and he’s still smiling. “Fascinating. I would never have thought of that...only, I don’t think it’s quite there. That mention of pyrite is troublesome, and the ‘enemy of my enemy’, where does that fit in?”

Cody shrugs his shoulders, frustrated, and feels a hot flush creep up his neck. “Don’t know why you’re asking me, to be honest, Sir. Kamino hardly covered poetry.”

There’s a slight pause, then Obi-Wan’s hand is on his again, tugging it slowly down from where he’s crossed his arms.

“I wish you wouldn’t do that,” he says, soft.

“Do what?” Cody’s voice is gruff.

“Dismiss yourself. You do it sometimes when we’re reading together. There is often no right and wrong answer to these things, no secret. There is only perspective, and you see things I never would, if only you would trust yourself.”

Cody looks down and away, back towards the waterfalls and their slow, glacial climb. He isn’t sure that’s true. He enjoys what Obi-Wan shares with him, what other lives he gets to touch in their books, but more than anything they convince him that, beyond war, he knows very little of anything at all. He would like to, someday.

His eyes land on Obi-Wan’s lips briefly, before he tears them away. Particular experiences he would like to know more than others.

There was one book that Obi-Wan had read early on, back when this infatuation was just setting its first tendrils into him, about a forbidden romance at the heart of the old Mandalorian court. Two heirs of rival clans battling to be together against the good approval of their noble relatives. It had been torrid, ridiculous and entirely unexpected when Obi-Wan had suggested they break up their reports with some literature.

But what it had done was give him the words to express the crawling heat in his stomach, the urge he has to reach out, to touch, to soothe, to care for. He’d known what he wanted before that, of course, in a more rudimentary manner, but it had gifted him the language of yearning.

Suddenly, a particular passage springs into his mind and he straightens.

“You don’t think it could mean ally, do you? In Beneath the Armour, Mata threatens Clan Riza by saying he has ‘allies in high places’.”

Obi-Wan pauses, and then a brilliant smile spreads over his face. “Yes, that’s it! Pyrite - Fool’s Gold; a false friend! Brilliant Cody, whatever made you think of that?”

Cody grins, even though Obi-Wan can’t see it, and doesn’t answer.

“Is that really it?”

“I think you’re very close,” Obi-Wan says. “The characters engraved into the platform...yes! Stand close to me, Commander.”

Cody does, watching curiously as Obi-Wan lifts his hands, shuts his eyes, frowns, and pushes . Six blocks that make up the platform lift, the characters on each glowing bright, lurid blue. Under their feet, something scrapes, shifts and clunks, before the platform lurches upwards, spinning gently.

There’s a thunderous gurgling sound, before all of the pool beneath drains away.

“The answer,” Obi-Wan says, slightly breathless, his hair a little out of place. “Was friend.”

“The doorways are still blocked,” Cody notes drily. The plinth with the blue orb that started this whole mess has also risen, and underneath it are a set of very wet, slimy looking steps. “I don’t suppose it’s as simple as just walking down these and getting in?”

“Likely not,” Obi-Wan agrees, then inexplicably shifts a little closer, so that they are sharing space. Cody’s heart skips a beat. “But it’s like I told you, Cody. You are far greater than what you have been given.”

Cody coughs and looks at his feet, at their boots almost toe to toe, pleasure at the praise singing low through his body.

“Now,” Obi-Wan says, too close and not close enough. “How do you feel about another puzzle?”

Cody groans, laughing, and after a moment, follows his General into the dark.

[wahbegan]

The Black Phone Review

So, since there isn’t much in the way of an actual review of the movie in The Black Phone tag, primarily because it’s full of....ahem....other things, I thought I’d give writing one a spin, since I do that sometimes.

So far, i honestly have no idea if the Stephen King curse of having 95% of all adaptations of his work suck shit is hereditary or not. Joseph Hillstrom King, better known as Joe Hill (whose pen name is apparently because he doesn’t want to live in his father’s shadow, but honestly i think it’s because he doesn’t want to go by Joe King because it sounds like a fake name the fucking Joker would make up), only has four adaptations to his name, present company excluded. So far. The Locke and Key Netflix series, the NOS4A2 AMC series, and the films In the Tall Grass and Horns. And In the Tall Grass was co-written with Stephen King, so it’s more like three and a half.

Now I’ve never seen the tv shows because i haven’t read Locke and Key and because NOS4A2 is by far and away my favorite of Joe Hill’s novels, and i almost know for a fact that it would disappoint me because of the love i have for that book and the image of it built in my head. But they both got good reviews. Not STELLAR, but good.

In the Tall Grass was received about as well as any other adaptation Stephen King gets his filthy mitts on, and Horns was pretty much considered mediocre. Just...fine, i guess.

So we’re in this limbo here with Joe Hill adaptations, which is a shame, because by and large, i actually (HERESY ALERT) tend to like his work better than his father’s. None of his movie adaptations have been just hilariously fucking awful like a lot of Stephen’s, but none of them have really been fucking solid gold diamond-studded hallmarks of cinema like the select few of Stephen’s, either.

So it’s a bit odd to me that Scott Derickson picked The Black Phone to adapt. I mean Hill only has four novels to his name, the rest being comics and short stories, and someone already has the rights to The Fireman, while Heart-Shaped Box languishes in development Hell for idk 15 years, so it’s understandable he’d go for a short story.

But still, The Black Phone is a very simple story, about ten pages long, with all of the action confined to a brief kidnapping scene and one room. Certainly an ambitious thing to try to tackle, but i was worried about how much expanding on the story the movie was going to have to do.

I was then further worried by the trailers, because whoever edited them honestly needs to be taken out back and shot. Those despicable fucking trailers that just take you beat-by-beat through the movie, first of all, and also edited lines of dialogue to, inexplicably, make them sound much less natural and much more expository and heavy-handed than they actually were.

Also, you may remember Scott Derickson as the lad who did Sinister. Ohh, now it makes sense why he’d pick this movie, he fucking loves mixing true crime with dead kids jump scaring his audience. And I was worried it would be too much like Sinister, where the truly fucking harrowing part of that movie (the snuff films) ended up taking a backseat to his love of dead kids running about and over-the-top goofy looking villains.

Again, this wasn’t helped by the trailers, which put the dead kids and the killer’s mask (not present in the original story, in which he was just some fat, gross-looking guy) front and center, including a group shot of all the dead kids blocking the road that Derickson pretty much copy/pasted from Sinister.

But this is Joe Hill, i thought, and i actually have a girl to take to see it, and it’s getting good reviews, so what the hell.

So does it do it? Does The Black Phone finally make a Joe Hill adaptation that is as extremely good or extremely bad as one of his dad’s?

Well.....no. Not...really. Unfortunately, it’s not the kind of movie that is so good it’s going to be culturally revered or anything.

This is all just my expectations, though. Which muddied things a lot. My advice? Just don’t watch the trailers at all, and don’t think of Sinister or the legacy of Stephen King when you watch it. And for the sweet love of merciful Christ, don’t think of what lurks in The Black Phone tag on tumblr. Take it as its own thing.

Because as its own thing, it’s a very fucking good movie. 

Everything Sinister did wrong, The Black Phone does right. The supernatural elements are actually used fairly lightly, and almost all the horror in the movie comes from how fucked up the all-too-familiar true crime situation is. A boy stops to help a seemingly clumsy, friendly doofus who took a pratfall and spilled his magician’s act all over the pavement. The next thing he knows, he’s got wasp spray in his eyes and is being bundled into a van. And this isn’t the first time. 

Those kidnappings serve the same purpose the snuff films in Sinister did, but are a lot less in-your-face and just let you simmer in the implications.

Even Ethan Hawke’s masked child-killer, The Grabber, doesn’t appear very often. It’s the tension. The mystery of what, exactly, he does to kids between kidnapping and murdering them. The horrible but very nicely restrained descriptions of some, but not all, of the atrocities committed on his victims. The heavy implication, but refusal to outright confirm that he’s a pedophile. The agonizingly long shots of his victim trying to escape his basement dungeon, knowing that he could appear at any moment.

This wouldn’t work as well if The Grabber wasn’t acted superbly, but he really is. Ethan Hawke is fucking terrifying, which is not an adjective I would have ever used for him before, but he really is. He plays The Grabber with this....softness is the wrong word, but at least a front of it. A disquieting and jarring childishness in some scenes, a clear immaturity. Whether he’s just stunted emotionally or putting on a front for his victim’s sake isn’t clear, but either way it gets under your skin.

Especially because they never tell you anything about this guy. Not even his name. There’s no backstory of abuse, no rounds with his therapist, no diary, nothing. All we have to go on is Ethan Hawke’s excellent performance and tiny scraps of implication. It makes his behavior and mood swings harder to predict in a very refreshing way. 

Like most abusers, he wasn’t angry the majority of the time. Wasn’t outwardly threatening. Even his weird Devil mask, while ostentatious, seems to be less of a fright mask and more of his own bizarre, childish way of expressing his mood and persona at the time. He swaps it out between a completely mouthless version when speaking to the protagonist just after the kidnapping, a sickening grin when he dotes on his victim and brings him food, and an exaggerated, pouty frown when he waits at the top of the stairs, shirtless, holding a belt, just waiting for him to try to escape.

I know a lot of people think that image is hot. Let me be clear, it is probably the single scariest fucking shot of the movie. I just couldn’t stop thinking of some incredibly damaged, sick motherfucker imitating what he saw as a kid. Making a vaudeville horror show out of child abuse. 

Yes, this is one of the most effective horror movie killers in recent history.

But there’s so much more to the movie than that! The protagonist and his sister are also both played fucking stunningly, both being given a LOT of VERY heavy material to work with. Abuse, bullying, the kidnapping that forms the crux of the movie, and they nail it. The sister’s hysterical screams and sobs as their father beats her while the brother watches, angry out of his mind but paralyzed with fear is....

Jesus.

This movie is very gritty, by the way. Not in an over-the-top, in-your-face way, just a...an air of detached realism. It’s set in the late ‘70s, but instead of the nostalgic sheen recent media puts over everything from that fucking era, it’s portrayed in a very naturalistic way. There’s some lovely use of 8mm film, the lighting and costuming department did a very good job capturing the look of the era, and most importantly, childhood in the ‘70s, when beating your kids was still pretty normalized, missing faces got printed on milk cartons, and stranger danger was at its peak. 

It’s not glamorized at all, is me point. 

BUT it’s also not all doom and gloom. The kids are the main stars of this movie, and they do an amazing job at not just being victim, but being survivors and rising above the bullshit they go through. The protagonist’s little sister in particular is an incredible character, given some of the best lines in the movie.

And over the titular Black Phone...the dead children are played as scary a bit. Thrice, in fact. There are three jump scares, one of which made a woman in my theater scream. But for the most part, they’re not played for horror. They’re played for a surprisingly meditative melancholy. They’re played for just fucking sadness at the young lives cut brutally short, whatever innocence they had lost.

And by the end, they’re played for a sense of camaraderie in darkness that really fucking tugs at your heartstrings. I was not expecting this movie to be as emotional as it was. 

So in the end, The Black Phone is gripping, tense as fuck, psychological, pretty fucking harrowing, depressing and cathartic all at the same time. The direction and art are quite nice, and i don’t have many problems with it.

James Ransome’s character is a little weird, sticks out just a mite, buuuutt that can be forgiven. It is also very Stephen King-y, with absolutely psychotic bullies and an abusive alcoholic father, although his abuse and alcoholism are both contextualized in a bizarrely grounded way.

Finally, yeah, just a content warning, in case you haven’t already picked it up. As I said, there are no explicit mentions of or depictions of pedophilia  but it is heavily implied. No kids are shown being murdered, but they do talk about it, and they do get the shit kicked out of them both by other kids and by their parents. I mean violence against children is the principal theme of this movie so, while it ultimately ends on a pretty uplifting note, i’d still avoid it if you’re squeamish about that sort of thing.

But will it be remembered alongside The Shining or The Shawshank Redemption? Or even the recent IT movies? Fuck no, but i would venture a guess and say it’s definitely the best Joe Hill adaptation to date

[dlamp-dictator]

Thoughts of Spellblades

God, there are no good banner-esque images of this series.

Last year I made a post about the anime adaptation of Hundred, a subpar and overall generic combat school anime from the mid-2010s and what seemed to be the last of the combat school craze that had hit the 2010s along with my general opinion of why I liked that niche genre of story telling. In that post I discussed how I found that anime completely subpar on almost all fronts, both as a combat school story and a story all on its own. It’s setting wasn’t fully utilized, it’s main character was neither interesting nor did their reasoning for being at the school feel very important, and almost every other character within the main cast was more interesting and would serve as better protagonists. A very generic show that practically refused to engage in the elements that made it unique. It was with this anime and series like it that I thought the combat school would die with, a semi-decent and fun premise to always be squandered for cheap action, easily marketable waifus, and simple plots without much thought to them.

And then folks, read the first three volumes of the manga Reign of the Seven Spellblades and I have some thoughts.

Positive thoughts. Positive enough thoughts that I think this dead genre might be coming back with some writers that actively care about what they’re writing and have an honest love of both the characters and setting they write about. I... have hope, something my cold, dead heart hasn’t felt about anything anime/manga/light novel related in years lest we count the Korean Webcomic scene.

But first, before I get carried away, that synopsis.

Kimberly Magic Academy is a well known... well, magic academy, taking in the best and brightest young mages to mold their talents into something worth a damn for the greater advancement of sorcery. Our main character is Oliver Horn, attending Kimberly as part of his family’s tradition and following in their footsteps. He quickly makes friends with several students, most notably the foreign exchange student Nanao Hibiya from the Far Eastern lands of Azia and a few others. For the next seven years he’s to study and further his magical ability. However, the world of mages is a dark and cruel one. For all the encouraged curiosity and exploration of magic there is equally a lack of ethics, respect for life, and even civil rights. As the headmaster stated to the arriving mages: A mage’s role is to be acquainted with evil, feel it, understand it, then control it. Magical advancement is through the mountain of corpses that made the same attempted and failed, and these students will learn that lesson well in week one.

If you want the short version of my opinions on this series:

There is a genuine love and care put into the main cast and writing that I haven’t seen since some Royal Road serializations.

The world takes its magic and world more seriously than most and the setting feels stronger for it.

This is less and combat school and more a school with combat in it and is better for it.

My original draft was going to have me compare this series to some other shows and stories I like, but that really does this series a disservice, so I’ll be breaking those above points down in more detail.

The Setting

I’m going a little out of order here, but I feel the first point I mentioned should be discussed last. But to explain my first two points, I would describe the world of Reign of the Seven Spellblades (which I will shorten to Spellblades for simplicity) as Fate with the bullshit.

To make things very brief because I don’t feel like dealing with Fate fanboys clogging my inbox, the world of Fate’s mages is a world of advancement and exploration at the cost of humanity and morality. The world of Fate does not care for rights, morals, or righteous, it only cares about learning magic and regaining the old magecrafts at any cost. To that end are things like the Holy Grail War, human experimentation, ruthless inheritance practices, and so on. Spellblades follows a similar mindset. To give you the full quote of what I summarized and my synopsis, here’s the headmaster’s full speech to the students on their first day:

“This is Kimberly Magic Academy. The two tenets of our school are ‘Freedom’ and ‘Results’. That is no platitude. Statistically speaking, only eighty percent of you will graduate intact. Some of you will lose control of their rites, injuring themselves beyond repair. Others will go missing, lured by some unknown call. Still more will god mad, forcing their fellow students to end their lives. You have your choice of dooms. In the magical world we call this ‘being consumed by the spell.’ Accept this fact! It was true last year and the year before. It will be true next year and in all years to come! A mage’s role is to become acquainted with evil! Feel it! Understand it! Control it! Advancement in sorcery is made upon the countless corpses of those who came before! Thus, I leave you with these words- You are free to live... and free to die.”

This speech might as well be a direct quote from Tokiomi Tohsaka for just how on brand it is with the magus mindset of the Fate series, and you really start feeling that when the majority of antagonists so far in these three volumes are just senior students doing some variety of magical experiments that the school has no issue with since they’re also bringing in results. Most of the tension in the story comes not from the antagonists getting in the protagonists’ way, but from the first year students still working with a human level of empathy and compassion clashing with the colder more pragmatic senior mages and teachers, with fights to the death against magical beings being shrugged off so long as there was some level of consensual agreement or understanding that lives might be lost in the process of an altercation, that human rights being argued by our main cast is getting in the way of progress. Not to say this series is gritty or overly edgy for the sake of it, but you can really feel the apathy of the setting when it clashes with our main cast’s idealism and that’s something I appreciate. I love my idealistic heroes, but I especially love those heroes having their views convincingly challenged by the world around them. And in a setting this cold and pragmatic when the chips are down there’s a lot of challenging going on.

I know I said I wasn’t going to compare too much, but I want to at least point to Absolute Duo due to the similarity. The first moments of the series really set the stage and its what good me hooked on the series, so let me give you my dramatized version of the scene that convinced me to read this series with full engagement.

The Duel

To set the scene a bit, this happens soon after an incident with a wild troll is solved by Oliver, Nanao, and their soon-to-be friends all work together to stop the troll from harming other students. During this event we learn that while Oliver is a capable mage his skill set is more towards strategic thinking and excellent understanding of magical application, and that Nanao is a physical powerhouse that has the experience of not just a great swordsman, but a true warrior that has seen her fair share of battlefields. Soon after this event the entrance ceremony begins and the first day of classes arrive, the first class being magical swordsmanship. During class the teacher gives a basic lecture on why mages learn swordsmanship, the short of it being that while mages are magically powerful they should know some form of self-defense when unable to use spells quickly in emergencies. At the end of his lecture the teacher asks students to volunteer for an exhibition match. the mages are naturally shy about engaging in physical combat, so the training hall is silent.

Until, of course, the samurai swordswoman of the class immediately volunteers herself.

Oliver, not wanting his new friend to cause problems on her first day and be outclass by someone understanding the rules of magical combat more than her, offers to be her sparring partner for the match. This causes some grumbling at first, but once he explains his merits as a key figure in solving the troll incident and earning a right to test the other participant of that event’s mettle most arguments are quelled.

In Oliver’s mind, this is a simple practice match. While Nanao is powerful she lacks skill in magic where Oliver succeeds. He has no intention on taking this seriously and humiliating her, just fighting hard enough to make it look convincing and maybe take a swipe or two from her if the hits look weak enough to tank. All he has to do is make the fight look good without completely trouncing Nanao with his magic and embarrassing her.

And then, shit gets real.

This went from a spar to fight for survive in seconds. Nanao wasn’t just strong and fast, she was ruthless. Every dodge was avoiding a fatal slash, blocking against her strength was impossible, parrying had to be done with magical assistance and tricks, and even then Nanao’s physical athleticism practically ignored all of Oliver’s magical advantages. It was then he realized something about his friend, something he couldn’t see until he faced her blade himself.

Nanao has killed.

Not one person, not ten people, and not even in self defense. From her swings alone he can tell she’s already standing on a mountain of corpses to get her swordsmanship to the level its at. He’s not sparring with his new friend, he’s dueling her to the death to survive.

And the moment that thought sets in. The moment the two realize just what kind of fight their having and that one of them isn’t walking away from this fight...

“... ... ... It was here...”

No. He couldn’t ask for context. He couldn’t hesitate. The death match they were having wouldn’t allow him to drop his guard and leave himself open. There was no mercy at the start of this match, and there wouldn’t be any until it finished. He could only offer one thing to his friend in this moment.

“Don’t cry.”

“Sorry.”

And... well, I’ll end things there. This happens around chapter 2 and 3, so this is still pretty early in the manga, but the ending is something to see for yourself. It was this moment that I knew the writer behind this series had some love for their characters and an understanding of what they wanted to do with them. This scene is a real nice play on the typical duel of most first arcs in the combat school genre. Unlike most, this duel wasn’t a challenged issued by the female lead, instead an attempt by the male lead to keep the peace of the situation. The stakes started low but were ramped up instantly once Oliver realizes just how skilled Nanao is. And while I didn’t detail the specific moves it really is a matter Nanao’s athleticism against Oliver’s strategies and tricks, no one side completely overpowers the other. And the aftermath of this duel had some lasting consequences throughout the first major arc too. All in all this was the scene that convinced me to get sucked into the world and engage with it on its own terms.

Other Positive Notes

There’s a lot I want to talk about with this series right now, but I don’t want to spoil anything and I already did one play-by-play of a scene so I’ll try and keep the rest of this brief:

This really does feel like all my issues with Hundred were addressed and fixed to a degree. The magic school is taken very seriously as a setting, Oliver as a character -despite wanting a peaceful school life- has no issue getting involved with his friends problems for the sake of earnestly helping them, and I feel that Oliver is an interesting and fun character all on his own, with the rest of the cast being nice additions to help shape his more rational mind and show off his social graces.

All of the side cast is utilized very well, as everyone seemed to have their own thing going on with Oliver serving as an objective voice of reason and Nanao being the foreigner with her own outside view of mage practices.

This is a small thing, but the fact that every character has a realistic name is a relief. Oliver Horn, Guy Greenwood, Michela McFarlane, even Nanao Hibiya sounds like a normal Japanese name. It just refreshing to see that.

Speaking of normal, all the main cast really do feel like friends. There’s some crushes here and there, but for the most part the six characters of the main cast feel like people that earnestly care about each other’s well being, which is nice to see.

Similar to my feelings on Masters of Ragnarok, I like that the male lead is more a strategist than a fighter, with Nanao being the powerhouse Oliver has to guide through team battles, but is a competent fighter in his own right when left to his own devices.

Criticisms

While thankfully few, I do have some criticisms of this series so far. Again, these will be brief:

The first three volumes of the manga might as well end with “to see what happens next, read the light novel.” And while I am going to read the light novel out of curiosity still find it annoying to learn the manga I was reading is a glorified light novel advertisement. Especially after volume 3.

The world-building and magic system aren’t too well explained in this series. It’s decent enough that I’m not asking questions in the moment but flimsy enough that I do have them after awhile of thinking when I put the books down.

There’s a bit more focus on the female side characters than male ones. This is common in most light novels and the arcs are just starting, but there’s already a bit of a love triangle going on and it definitely made me roll my eyes a little.

Conclusion

All in all, this is a fun series. If you’ve been wanting to see some magical action in your manga collection these first three volumes aren’t bad reads for it. I’m gong to be reading the light novel later this week and I might have some thoughts worth given then. Until then, I’ll see you folks later.

[my-unmanageable-mischief]

New Norm Part 2

Hello!!! I’m back with the highly requested part 2 of my New Norm series. I am defiently open to a part 3 as well if people continue to enjoy it. Not too too much ‘plot’ here, just getting back to school while trying to navigate a new relationship. Some tender moments, and some very cuddly Sirius. I hope you all enjoy it as much as I did writing it!!

Part 1

Sirius Black x Reader

The last few weeks of summer we’re the longest and most brutal weeks of your life, and for the first time you felt you understood Sirius and how he became the lighthearted boy he portrayed daily at Hogwarts. When dealing with trauma, and Merlin his mother was traumatizing, people adapted in different ways. Never have you seen such polar reactions as you saw with Sirius and the dutiful Regulus. 

Sirius spent the first week you were living at Black Manor picking fight after fight with his mother. Not that she didn’t start her own plethora of ‘disagreements’. You could tell Sirius got something significant out of disobeying her and making her angry, much to your demise; as the woman began taking it out on you as well. She would nitpick you worse than your own grandmother. Sit up straight, ladies shouldn’t speak out of turn (Not that she didn’t do plenty of speaking), and most recently, a wife should know how to cook. So you spent hours of your day locked up with the awful Kreacher in the kitchen. 

After a conversation one evening in hushed voices, curled up under the covers he had apologized to you.

“I’m sorry about my mother,” 

“Sirius, it isn’t your fault,” You assured, playing with a loose string of his duvet. 

“I don’t help it,” He admitted, staring up at the ceiling. Your hands paused and you turned your head to look at him sadly. 

“Maybe not, but I can’t blame you either. She’s a witch, and I mean that as an insult. Like the Snow White kind.” Sirius turned to you making a face.

“What’s a Snow White?” You chuckled, shaking your head. 

“Oh nevermind, just.. God I know it’s easier said than done, but, try and ignore her? We’ll be back at Hogwarts in no time, away from her. And then my mother said next summer we will have our own home.” Sirius gazed at you for a moment before turning away to look at the ceiling again. He didn’t answer, though you gave him room to do so. Finally you stopped your fiddling with the string and reached over, taking his hand in yours and squeezing. 

“We’ll be alright.” You promised him as well as yourself. You had to be, you had no choice. Sirius squeezed your hand back and didn’t let it go for the rest of the night. Eventually silence ebbed into static breathing and light snores, and when the sun peeked through the window, you were still in bed, fast sleep, hands clasped. Sirius woke up first that morning and laid there for a while longer as you slept. He remembered his vows, that he would protect you, and that included from his own mother. If that meant becoming complacent in her demands for these next few weeks- that was something he was willing to do. For you. 

Finally the morning of September 11th, 1978 came, it was a cool morning for the end of summer, but sunny. You and Sirius were dropped promptly at Kings Cross station, receiving lectures on behavior. Sirius and his father shared a few words in private that left him scowling for a good majority of the morning, even after you had found Potter, Pettigrew, and Lupin in one of the train compartments. 

They eyed you funnily the entire train ride, and you did your best to ignore the gazes. Sirius had told you that he had told them about his wedding, but it was different now in person. 

“So is she going to be hanging out with us now? All the time?” James eyed you skeptically and you raised your eyes from your novel to narrow them at the boy. 

“She has ears, and is capable of responding to you herself.” Sirius glanced at you, the corner of his mouth twitching slightly. It was the closest you’d seen him to smiling since you boarded, and that fact was not lost on the other Marauders. 

“Are you going to be hanging around all the time now?” He asked, pouting slightly. James Potter could have received straight Os if being a git was a class at Hogwarts, but you knew he was also a sweet and caring boy, when he wasn’t being 17. You had a feeling he wasn’t keen on sharing his best mate, not that you blamed him. 

“James, she’s my wife now.” Sirius muttered, glancing out of the window. Potter made a face. 

“I know and it's weird.” You rolled your eyes, opening your book back up and slouching in your seat.

“And you think that is lost on us? We know it’s weird. We’re living it.” James looked ready to continue but Remus cleared his throat and gave him a warning look. A silent conversation you weren’t privy too took place between the two boys and James shrugged, going back to his Quidditch magazine. You finally reached the doors to the Great Hall hours later and Sirius turned to you.

“Sitting with us?” He asked, you looked past him to James and shook your head. 

“I think I’ve intruded on boy time quite enough for one day, I’m going to go find my dorm mates.” You admitted, James had the decency to look guiltily at his feet. 

“Alright, I’ll see you later.” You hadn’t kissed since you were pronounced man and wife, but you had taken to holding hands in rare private moments you had gotten together. He reached out to you, allowing his hand to awkwardly drop onto your shoulder. He squeezed before letting go and you offered him a smile before turning to go find your friends, you had missed them. 

That night was the first night you had not eaten together in a month, and it was weird for you. You glanced down the table a few times, making eye contact with Sirius. When your eyes would meet he’d smile at you reassuringly, and you always returned it. Meanwhile, your friends gushed about how lucky you were, married to the most gorgeous, the most wanted man at Hogwarts. You didn’t feel very lucky, nor did you think they could understand. So you smiled and nodded, and laughed, like things were how they always were. But they were not. They never would be. 

When you entered the common room that night Sirius and his crew were already sitting in their seats closest to the fire, Sirius waved you towards him, but you were in the middle of a (dull) conversation with your friends about whose bum had gotten the fittest over the summer, so you shrugged, going to sit with them. About half an hour later someone approached your group and you looked up surprised to see Sirius. 

“Y/N,” He greeted you, and you smiled. 

“Hey, what’s up?” Your friends around you tried to stifle their giggles and hid smiles behind hands, something Sirius was used to, but for some reason, in that moment it bothered him. Were they laughing at him? Had you been laughing at him? 

“Can we talk for a mo?” He asked, and for a moment he almost looked nervous, but mostly he looked slightly ticked off. You frowned. What had you done? 

“Of course,” You nodded, getting up from the armchair you had been longing in. You followed Sirius silently through the common room, aware of his friend’s eyes on you as you went. You reached the corridor and he walked you a little further before sitting in an alcove. You sat with him. 

“Are you angry with me?” He asked so suddenly it took a moment to process, your frown deepened. 

“Merlin, no, should I be?” You asked, turning to face him, with your hands rested in your lap. He shrugged and wouldn’t look at you. “Have I done something to upset you, Sirius?” You asked gently. He shook his head no before shrugging. 

“Why were your friends laughing at me? Why didn’t you sit with me?” He asked, and you sighed, taking his hand gently in yours, causing him to look at you. 

“Because they think you’re cute,” You smiled slightly, nudging him, “And they think it’s brilliant I’ve gotten to marry you when half of Hogwarts would die to get ten minutes in a broom closet with you.” He smirked slightly, which made you feel better. That was the Sirius you knew. “And I didn’t sit with you because.. Because I am trying to give you space. This is new and scary. For both of us I’m sure. I don’t want you to feel like I’m smothering you, and I can tell James isn’t too keen on me, I don’t want him thinking I’m stealing his best mate.” 

“But were different. I’m not married to James.” You laughed at that,

“I wouldn’t tell him that.” You joked and Sirius let out a small chuckle himself. 

“You’re not smothering me. I... I enjoy you being around. I would like you to know my friends, they’re my real family after all.” You squeezed his hand again and he lifted your hand to his lips, kissing the back of it. 

“I’ll sit with you lot more often then, just tell James to go easy on me. And don’t think I will be helping with any of your tomfoolery,” You chided jokingly, “My mother will have a cow,” 

“Well good thing I’m your husband, I’m in charge of you now,” He grinned and you used your free hand to whack him. 

“In charge of me?” You laughed, “Watch yourself, Black.” 

“Oh Black huh? Well you’re Mrs. Black.” You froze at that, and something truly haunting dawned on you. Tomorrow classes started. You were no longer Ms. Y/L/N... would your teachers be calling you Ms. Black? If the whole school didn’t already know by now, they certainly would tomorrow. 

“Penny for your thoughts?” He asked, resting your entwined hands in his lap. 

“I’m Mrs. Black,” You repeated, he nodded, not catching on. “Everyone will call me such.” 

“Does that upset you?” You shook your head. 

“No no, not upset. I mean, everything is just different now? Even my name.” 

“I don’t really fancy it either, don’t worry,” He joked, but you knew he was serious. “We can change it.”

“Sorry?” 

“When you graduate, when we move and have jobs we can change it- to whatever you’d like.” 

“I’m not sure your mother will allow that.” Sirius shook his head defiantly. 

“Once I, well now you I suppose, graduate, I have no intention of doing anything that old bat has to say.” He puffed his chest out slightly, putting on an air of confidence. Your head swum slightly. If that were the case, wouldn’t you simply divorce? “Y/N,” He continued, voice lower and more gentle. 

“Hm?” 

“It’s going to be weird sleeping alone tonight,” He admitted sheepishly, glancing at your hands, “I’ve gotten quite used to you, I admit.” You smiled at that, leaning against him. 

“I won’t miss the snoring,” 

“Oi, I don’t snore!” He laughed and you grinned nodding your head. 

“You do, love. But I will miss it too,” 

“Come visit?” He asked wiggling his eyebrows at you again, you whacked him once more. 

“No I think I’ll let you suffer, just for that.” 

“Evil.” 

“That’s me,” Sirius stood up, bringing you with him before releasing the hand he was holding to put his arm around your shoulder. 

“Come sit with us?” He questioned, “I promise James will be good.” You nodded, leaning into the boy's touch. 

“Alright, you’ve convinced me.” You spent the rest of your night at Sirius’s side.

 James was civil but you could tell he still wasn’t fond of you or your newly added presence. From that moment forward you spent nearly all your time out of class with the group of boys. You found a friendship in Remus, he was a kind boy, with similar interests. You enjoyed studying together while the others mucked around, and you talked about literature together. Even James was coming around on you, though you two still bickered constantly. Sirius once called it “Sibling rivalry.” which made you laugh. But you could tell how fiercely James cared for Sirius, it made your heart feel warm, knowing he had people to look out for him. Even Peter wasn’t bad to be around, he was funny when he wasn’t being vulgar, though he loved making jokes about the fact that Sirius was now a married man and ‘on a leash,’. 

You didn’t feel like Sirius was on a leash, and certainly not your leash. You were married by your parents' request, not dating. If he wanted to go snog some slag he was more then welcome to. At least that was the lie you told yourself. Girls continued to throw themselves at Sirius, I guess a wedding ring didn’t mean much to them, and you were increasingly more surprised every time he politely turned them down. You began to relax more, maybe he wouldn’t? 

One evening you all sat in the boys dormitory. Peter was practicing chess, Remus was reading and taking notes. James was laying on his back at the foot of Sirius’s bed, you were sitting back against the boy’s pillows, as he was resting his head in your lap. Sirius and James were debating the validity of some prank they wanted to pull- whether they could pull it off or something like that. You weren’t paying attention, you were reading, occasionally running your fingers through the hair of the boy who was in your lap. 

“You’re making me sleepy,” He suddenly yawned, turning away from James and burying his face into your jumper. You smiled, not looking up from your reading. 

“So go to sleep,” 

“Get a room, you two.” James complained, whining from the bottom of the bed. 

“We’re in a room, you’re the one in my bed mate.” Sirius laughed, wrapping his arm around your middle and cuddling into you. As time past Sirius became more and more physically affectionate with you. Not that you minded, it was comforting having someone around whom you could simply touch. James huffed, dramatically getting off the bed, pulling the curtains shut with a great flourish. 

“Use a silencing charm for our sake!” He called.

“Piss off mate,” Sirius laughed and you chuckled slightly rolling your eyes. 

“He’s just jealous you don’t cuddle him like you used to.” James made an indignant noise from the other side of the curtain and you heard him stalk away to his own bed. You carded your fingers through Sirius’s hair for a few more moments before letting out a yawn of your own. 

“I should go to bed,” You murmured, hand stilling. Sirius let out a small whine and you smirked, gently tugging on one of his locks. 

“So go to bed,” He joked, mirroring your earlier words. You started to move and Sirius’s arms around you tightened, pulling you to him. “Here,” He asked and you sighed, patting his head. 

“And if we’re caught?” You questioned. 

“Live a little, love. Girls are always sneaking into the boys dorm for sleepovers, at least we’re married.” 

“I doubt McGonagall will care for that small difference.”

“Please?” Sirius asked, looking up at you through his lashes, batting them at you sweetly. You sighed, shaking your head. 

“Fine, you’re a bad influence one me, you know that?”

“That’s the kindest thing a woman has ever said to me,” He grinned, peeling himself from you to sit up, “I’ll get you something to sleep in.” You hummed softly. Sirius disappeared for a moment and came back with a t-shirt for you, handing it over. You watched from your position on his bed as he undressed himself, you felt your cheeks going rosy. Once Sirius was down to his boxers he crawled back into bed beside you, nudging you. “Get changed, I wanna cuddle,” He murmured to you and your blush deepened. You stood up, standing beside the bed and facing away from Sirius as you removed your jumper, pulling the shirt on over your head. It was plenty long on you. Next you removed your skirt, leaving your clothes in a pile beside his head. You turned back around and Sirius was watching you, his own small blush. “C’mere.” He offered you his hand and you took it, allowing him to pull you down to him. 

You situated the covers around you both before allowing the boy to snuggle up to your side, his head on your chest. You resumed your earlier activity of running your hands through his hair. 

“Thank you for staying,” He murmured and you smiled, dropping a kiss onto the top of his head before you could think about the action. 

“Of course.” 

“You’re welcome in my bed, anytime.” He promised and you rolled your eyes, gently tugging his hair again. 

“Don’t ruin the moment, arse.” He chuckled, tangling your legs together beneath the duvet. Sirius fell asleep to the sound of your heart beating firmly in your chest, it was the best lullaby he had ever heard. You played with his hair until his quiet snoring started before simply resting your hand on his head. It took you longer to fall asleep but you eventually did, enjoying the company of the other- you hadn’t realized how much you missed just sleeping with the boy. And this new found cuddling between the two of you really added to the whole experience. 

In the morning you were rudely awoken by James, who threw the curtain of your bed open with a scowl. 

“Are you wearing clothes?” He questioned, “I was kidding when I said to use a silencing charm, I don’t want you two shagging when I’m five feet away-”

“Mate,” Sirius groaned, rolling over, glaring at the boy, “Shut up,” James huffed, crossing his arm. 

“Y/N better get back to her dorm before all her roommates wake up and wonder where she’s been all night.” You groaned, stretching your arms over your head. 

“Thanks Jamie,”

“Don’t call me that!” He whined, shuffling away, you laughed as you untangled yourself from Sirius’s limbs, standing up. 

“Do you have to go?” He asked, frowning.

“I will see you at breakfast,” You rolled your eyes, grabbing your discarded clothes from the floor. Sirius frowned, flopping back onto the bed, crossing his arms. It made you laugh, god how he and James had grown to be alike over the years. Or maybe they found each other because they were already so alike.

 “Do you want to go on a date?” Sirius asked you one morning during breakfast, your mouth full of food. You raised an eyebrow at him as you swallowed. 

“Hm?”

“A date, Y/N.” Like that clarified anything. 

“Is there a Hogsmeade weekend coming up?” You questioned him and he grinned, shaking his head no. 

“So what, you want to go on a date in the common room?” You laughed, shaking your head at the boy, “Don’t we do that every night?” 

“Not the common room, I want to show you something.” You eyed him suspiciously and he flushed slightly laughing, “Not that, who's got a dirty mind now?”

“Still you mate,” Remus interrupted and Sirius shot him a glare, but he quickly recovered, grinning at you again. You weren’t sure you liked that look. 

“Sure,” 

“Brilliant, be ready tonight at 8pm, in the common room.” You nodded your head, continuing to eat. Whatever he was up to, you were sure you’d be finding out soon enough.  That night you got dressed, listening to advice from all your dorm mates.

“Wear a dress!”

“Let me do your makeup please!”

“No no wear the blue skirt with the cream jumper.”

“Do you think you’ll snog?” You shrugged helplessly, ignoring all of their advice and going with your favorite pair of jeans instead and a black and white striped jumper. 

“I hardly know.”

“I think it’s weird. You’re married but you don’t snog.” 

“They cuddle, that’s for sure.” You flushed slightly, rolling your eyes.

“We sorta skipped a bunch of steps. It’s hard. Our relationship is unique.” You tried to explain to them. You and Sirius didn’t have some play book you could look to to figure what you should be doing and when. You were all on your own in this, on your own; together.  You allowed your friend to apply a small amount of makeup to you, no more than you would wear any other day. You didn’t want to seem like you were trying too hard- because you weren’t. You shouldn’t be. It’s not like you had to woo him or anything. Right?

You went down to the common room at 8 where Sirius was sitting with the boys waiting for you. 

“Y/N!” He called excitedly, jumping up from the sofa, “You ready to go?” He asked and you nodded, coming to him and accepting his outstretched hand. 

“Be good!” Remus called jokingly, waving from his spot in one of the armchairs. 

“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!” James added and Sirius threw them the finger over his shoulder before leading you from the common room. 

“So,” You started, skipping slightly beside him, grinning up at the boy, “Where are we going?”

“It’s a surprise, you’ll see.” You followed Sirius up to the 7th floor corridor and were met with an expanse of blank wall, you eyes him suspiciously. 

“Very nice, Sirius.” You put the hand not holding his on your hip. 

“Just watch!” He assured you excitedly, “Me and James found this place 5th year when we were running from Filch. Suddenly it was there,” You listened intently, still staring at the blank wall. Maybe you were missing something? “So we did some experiments, and I think we figured it out. Remus read about it in a book we nicked from the restricted section. Apparently it’s called the Room of Requirements, or the Come and Go Room.” You looked away from the wall up at Sirius, blinking at him. He smiled down at you, nodding towards the wall, when you looked back there was a door and you gasped. 

“How?”

“No idea,” He shrugged, “But it turns into whatever you need it to.” You looked at the door in awe. 

“Really?” You asked, shocked. 

“Yup, come on,” He tugged you forward, opening the door and ushering you in. Once you were inside you were met with a small room that closely resembled the Gryffindor common room, but maybe only one forth of the size. It had a sofa in front of a large roaring fire, there were candles lighting the rest of the room, and a few fluffy blankets sitting on the sofa. 

“This is lovely,” You breathed. He pulled you towards the sofa and you allowed him to guide you. He sat down and pulling you down beside him. You sat close to him and he placed his arm around your shoulder. You pulled one of the blankets off the back of the sofa and wrapped it around both of you, leaning into him. 

“Thank you,” He smiled, glad you liked it. It had taken him ages of brainstorming to decide what you both needed, for your first proper date. And in the end, he decided, simpler was probably better. You weren’t really one for grand gestures. 

“How are your classes,” He asked, playing with a lock of your hair, looking at you. You were warm from the fire, but your chest felt even warmer, something fire couldn’t cause. You shrugged, leaning slightly into his touch. 

“Alright, not as hard as your stuff I’m sure, but everyone’s making sure we’re preparing for the NEWTs already. It does my head in.”

“I’ve never asked you what you want to be when you graduate,” He tilted his head thoughtfully and you smiled slightly looking down. 

“I’d like to be a curse-breaker,” You admitted, Sirius nudged you until you looked at him. 

“That’s brilliant, you’ll do wonderfully.” You shrugged, flushing slightly at the complement.

“Maybe. I’m struggling with charms this year though.” 

“Is Remus helping you?” 

“Yes but still,” 

“You’re brilliant, Y/N.” He assured you, resting his forehead against yours. You smiled, leaning forward slightly to nuzzle your nose against his. “You can do anything you want to do, believe that.”

“I will try. What will you do? After you graduate.” Sirius hummed softly, and you cuddled even closer to him, practically sitting in the boys lap. 

“I want to be an Auror.” He spoke softly, “I want to save people, protect them. War is coming, Y/N. I want to make sure I am on the right side of history.” You took his free hand in yours and held it tightly. 

“That’s sweet, you’ll make a brilliant Auror.” Sirius smiled.

“James heard his parents talking about some... organization, they call themselves the Order of the Phoenix. I want to join as soon as I’ve graduated. Their goal is to be prepared for when Voldemort finally makes his move.” You nodded, trying to swallow down the worry you felt rising in your chest. You didn’t like the idea of Sirius out there battling dark powerful wizards without you there by his side. 

“Good,” You squeezed his hand tightly, “That’s good. You’re a good man.” 

“My mother will disown us, she supports those pure-blood ideologies.” He spat the words out and you flinched slightly. You didn’t want to think about what your own family thought of those horrible people. Especially not your father or your grandmother. 

“We’ll be alright.” You assured him. Sirius looked at you for a long moment and you smiled softly at him, nudging your nose against his again, “Alright?” 

“Alright.” He assured, “Y/N...” He started before trailing off. 

“Hm?”

“May I kiss you?”

“Of course,” You whispered, blushing slightly. Sirius smiled before leaning in, he didn’t have to go far before his lips were on your lips. He kissed you softly, his hand that was playing with your hair stilled, resting on the back of your neck to keep you close. You kept one hand in his and moved the other one to his chest, placing it over his heart. He broke the kiss and pulled back just far enough to look at you before his lips were on yours again, this time with more eagerness. He kissed you, lips smashed up against yours and you kissed back, moving your hand from his chest to wrap around him, pulling him closer. He parted his lips slightly, testing the water. You allowed your own lips to open as well, inviting him in. Sirius kissed you with emotion you were surprised were capable of being put into a simple kiss. Everyday Sirius surprised you more and more, and everyday you found yourself falling more and more in love with your husband. It might not have been traditional, or even preferred. But it was working, you were going to make it work. 

You spent the rest of the night alternating between speaking to each other in soft voices and snogging. It was the best, and last first date you had ever been on. Sirius was becoming you safe haven in a confusing world. He was becoming your new norm.

Tag list :  thebrigheststarinthesky ,  all-art-is-quite-useless ,  lindatreb ,  paosesposts 

Let me know if you’d like to be tagged in a part three! 

[interact-if]

Day 7 of the Pride Month interviews! Please perceive the lovely Astra! :elmofire:

Astra, author of Unmourned

Pride Month Featured Month

   You are V. Frankenstein, a science prodigy with an ambitious streak a mile wide. The eldest child of the Frankenstein family, you went to university to further your understanding of the world, and made a name for yourself as a hard-working innovator and radical thinker. Unsatisfied with the academia-approved learnings your teachers saught to instill upon you, you’ve instead turned your attention to a goal more suited to your ambitions: discovering the secret of life.

   After spending the better part of a year perfecting your craft and selecting the finest speciments for your experiment, you succeed in doing what none thought possible — you’ve reanimated a body carefully pieced together from multiple corpses. Now, it’s time to face the consequences of your actions.

Demo: TBA

Tags: retelling, thriller

(INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT UNDER THE CUT!)

Q1: Tell us a little bit about your project(s)!

Unmourned is a retelling of the classic Frankenstein tale, where you take control of the eponymous V Frankenstein and have the power to change the direction of the story. The story starts with your giving life to The Creature, and how you choose to react to that will have rippling effects throughout the story. Not only are you able to shape your relationship with the person you've reanimated, but the rest of the cast will react and adapt to your behaviour too. Unmourned is a story about identity, family, and accountability, and about how sometimes letting go is better than clinging on.

Q2: Why interactive fiction? What drew you to the medium?

I've been a fan of visual novels for several years by now and had kind of passively discovered some published interactive fiction games a couple of years ago, but it's only last year that I really discovered the interactive fiction community, and that's what made all the difference. Seeing all these passionate authors putting in hundreds of hours telling these captivating stories and always pushing the limits of what has been previously done was an enlightening and motivating experience. Just the sheer amount of personalization and immersion offered by the medium was a big selling point for me. When I discovered Twine, and all the ways you could customize your story telling experience, I knew that I found my medium.

Q3: Are your characters influenced by your identity? How?

I think they definitely are; in particular, being able to explore The Creature's journey to discover themselves and how their identity shapes the way they interact with the rest of the world is a very cathartic experience. I've known I was bisexual since I was about 10 years old but coming to terms with being nonbinary is definitely a more recent development, and I'm excited to explore every character's relationship with their gender identity and sexuality. All the characters are bisexual, but they still have their own preferences and past experiences that influence the way they approach new relationships. It's important for me to show that bisexuality isn't a monolithic experience.  

Q4: What would you like to see more of in LGBT+ fiction?

LGBT representation that does not rest solely on the identity of the main character. I feel like often, the only character able to be trans or nonbinary is the main character, there are few if any LGBT characters, and the romance options' sexuality is so intrinsically tied to the player's identity that sometimes it feels flat. I want to see more well-rounded characters throughout the cast, that have their own identities, that have had relationships before meeting the main character, that have their own preferences and motivations. I think making the entire story and side characters' personal development revolve around the main character is a formula that got popularized by published authors and that is currently being challenged by smaller authors, which is great! I'm excited to see where this new movement goes.

Q5: What or who are some of your biggest inspirations?

I think this is a complicated question to answer, as I've been an avid reader for almost 20 years now, so I've been slowly absorbing my favourite parts of all the media I've ever consumed. When it comes to interactive fiction, I find all the authors willing to put themselves out there and share their passion with the world super inspiring; I believe I'm very lucky to have been welcomed in such a warm community. When it comes to traditional book authors, I think Mark Z. Danielewski inspired me with the way he constantly reinvents the printed medium to enrich his story telling – his experimental typography and constant innovation are amazing. Stylistically, I've always been a huge fan of Kurt Vonnegut and Roger Zelazny, and I've no doubt my writing reflects that.

Q6: What’s a super vague spoiler for your current project?

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Q7: Lastly, what advice would you give to your readers?

I believe every single person has something worth sharing with the world, and you simply need to find what that something is for you. Whether it's art, fiction, music, or anything else, what you do is deserving of recognition. I think it's very easy to fall victim to the thought that everything has been done already and that it's impossible to create something completely original and innovative (I would know, I've done it too!), but it's very important to remember that none of those other works have been created by you. Regardless of what you're sharing with the world, you'll always be bringing your own personal touch, and that's what makes the magic!