#(which is where the protag ends up toward the end of the first book or maybe beginning of the second)

[auberginesdonthavelimbs]

Just finished book 2 of 5. I was impressed at how grounded and believable the protagonist was at first; everything she did felt like what a 15-year-old in her situation would do.

But then, alas, the love triangle. She had to be illogically in love with the guy she'd had two conversations with because. You know.

And of course he's also gross and possessive, and the other guy is a bit too but not as bad. But also literally just everyone involved in this situation has handled it so badly. Mostly before the book started. So much of this could have been avoided.

So, not important why, the fairies needed an in to human society, so they picked a fairy girl who was still young enough to pass for a human toddler but I guess in their culture old enough to make life and death decisions for herself. Someone compared her mental development at that age to a human 11- or 12-year old.

She agrees to have her memories completely and irretrievably erased. Her entire identity will be erased and replaced with a new person who will grow up thinking she's human. This kid has volunteered to die.

And this kid has a best friend, maybe a bit more than a best friend. And she - irresponsibly, cruelly - promises him that she'll try to remember him, and that they'll find a way to be in each other's lives again after her memories are erased.

That was nonsense and she must have been told as much. Either she was lying in a misguided attempt to make it easier for him or she really didn't understand, but either way I think it shows how immature she was.

So this kid's memories get erased. She's basically dead now. A new child occupies her body, who is able to speak and reason but has no autobiographical memories. She grows up and becomes her own person.

Meanwhile, the best friend is waiting to see the girl again. As soon as he's old enough (actually two years before that standard age, no idea why that was allowed), he enlists in the fairy military so he can be assigned as a guard to the girl. They are trained in combat, but the guards' role mostly consists of making sure no one finds out the kid isn't human, and using memory-erasing elixers to cover up any revelations. When the friend enlists, it's been about 7 years, and the girl is, for most intents and purposes, a ten year old child.

He spends the next five years spying on her off and on. For her protection, and to keep the secret, of course. It's still an uncomfortable violation of her privacy, but at least for the other guards it's just a job.

But this guy. Is convinced that his best friend is still in there. Worse, at some point before the book begins, he has managed to convince himself that he is in love with this girl, who he's never actually interacted with outside of spying.

He's a full adult. He was practically an adult when he first enlisted, five years ago. When she was 10.

This should not have happened. It would have been blindingly obvious to anyone why he wanted this assignment so badly. He was obsessed with this girl. He did not hide this fact. Someone should have sat him down and explained that his friend was dead and not coming back. Someone should have denied him the guard duty on the grounds that he is way too emotionally involved. He was clearly not ready to be normal about this child who was wearing his dead friend's face.

(And name, incidentally. That was also a stupid idea. Whoever decided that is also on my list of people who handled this situation badly. This girl, the protagonist, who was raised as a human, deserves better than to be called by the name of the dead child she looks like. It was already going to be hard enough for people who knew that girl to see the protagonist as her own distinct person. Giving her the same name just unnecessarily muddies things.)

And he is not remotely normal about it. He immediately starts flirting with the protagonist the first time they speak. A few conversations later, he says he's in love with her. Not just because she used to be his friend, but also because he watched her singing to herself when she thought she was alone. And whatever else he saw of her when she didn't know he was there.

And I think the adults in his life failed him, and I think his friend told him a cruel lie that gave him false hope, but also he is an adult now and holy shit dude no you are not in love with the child you've been spying on the last five years please stop.

It gets worse in the second book.

I am still planning to finish the series.

I just started reading a Twilight knockoff (affectionate) from 2009 and was delighted to find the protag was a whiny annoying 15yo. She apparently hates other teenagers and complains to her parents about being forced to interact with them. 20 pages in and my expectations are so high.

[zzthekaiju]

Best of the Reptiles in Media - 02 - Heart

Here we are again taking a look at some of my favorite scaly heroes. And this time, we go to the realm of animation. That golden frontier where anything is possible.

A lot of people have asked me what my favorite animated film is. And ever since 2016, I've had the definitive answer. It's a film from Japan staring who might be one of my favorite animated protagonists of all time. One that I wish was recognized by way more people than just the cult following his movie got.

You could say that this character...has a special place in my Heart.

And yes, that is his name. You'll learn to appreciate it.

Omae Umasou da na (You are Umasou) (2010) is an anime adaptation of a series of children's books revolving around a belligerent Tyrannosaurus Rex who ends up adopting a baby Ankylosaurus, with all the mishaps that implies. I'll admit, when I heard about this film for the first time, I wasn't sure what to think. Surely, this free film uploaded to Youtube wouldn't possibly--

It proceeded to rewrite my brain chemistry forever. It really is a great film. It's beautiful to look at, the animation is really action-packed and cute at the same time, it's got a gripping story (which I'll get into), and above all, it's main character is a martial arts-practicing Godzilla-looking T-Rex who engages in interspecies adoption. WHAT MORE COULD I HAVE ASKED FOR?!

But enough beating around the bush, why is Heart so compelling to me?

Let's start with an introduction. Heart is a Tyrannosaurus Rex from a prehistoric world whose lost egg winds up found and adopted by a kindly Maiasaura. Unfortunately, a carefree life of fun and peace with his mom and half-brother Light is brought to an end when he discovers his true nature as a "Big Jaw" (as in, carnivore). After running away out of fear of what he might do to his family, he grows up hardening both his soul and his combat skills so that he may survive the unforgiving badlands outside of the forest he grew up in (complete with training montage).

Then, as if life wasn't done throwing him curve balls, Heart is imprinted upon by a little baby Ankylosaurus he was just about to eat (complete with calling him the Japanese word for delicious, hence the name). Soon, Heart is caught between going with his true nature or taking a few cues from his own adoptive mother...

Design-wise, Heart isn't winning any accuracy contests, but then again, no creature here is. And it hardly matters, either. This dino manages to find a great balance between looking like the kind of character I'd want a plushie of (seriously, why haven't we gotten on to that) and one that conveys great ferocity and coolness. A major part of how that's conveyed is his expressions. This guy is a GOLDMINE of reaction faces for almost every occasion. So much so that, long ago on my Instagram page, I posted a compilation of faces that either cracked me up or just showed his facial range in general.

What's your favorite? Let me know in the notes/reblogs!

Anyway, then there's when he fights. And MAN, does it go hard! Heart doesn't exactly wear kiddie gloves when he's put in a combat situation, utilizing heavy kicks and deceptive agility as his opponents barely keep pace. We see him go up against sauropods and other Big Jaws, and really, I just need to show you these GIFs to sum up what it's like.

But that's not where Heart truly shines. It's his role in the narrative. You see, in most dino media aimed towards younger audiences, the big mean carnivore is the villain. This was most prevalent in works like The Land Before Time with Sharptooth, and the Carnotaurs from Disney's Dinosaur (both of which were the stuff of nightmares for little dino nerds like me). Not that this is necessarily a bad thing. Giant theropod dinosaurs are indeed scary, so of course they make for good villains. But then you consider that most of these predators aren't hunting our adorable plant-munching protags because they're evil. It's just in their nature as predators. What are they gonna do? Go vegan?

And that's the troublesome crossroads Heart finds himself at. You could say this film offers a deconstruction of the "vicious meat-eating dinosaur" archetype. The Anti-Sharptooth, if you will. We're obviously meant to root for him because he's the protagonist and an altogether pleasant guy, but at the same time, both herbivore and carnivore are fully-sapient beings here, and Heart must feed.

The film does NOT restrain from showing him hunt down his prey, but it has the intelligence to show that this is not malice or even pleasure, it's simple survival instinct. He is a huge shade of grey in what would otherwise be a very black-and-white scenario in any other film. And it gets even harder for Heart when Umasou enters the picture.

For the record, almost all of Heart and Umasou's interactions are the definition of adorable. Little Umasou is such a little ball of sunshine both inside and out, and poor Heart just doesn't have the...well, heart...to either eat or abandon him. Seeing his exasperation while keeping him safe while also training him in the ways of fighting like an anime protagonist (complete with training montage) is all kinds of endearing and a testament to Heart's strength of character. Of course, it leads to the inevitable point where he has to let him go...but unlike the source material, it doesn't take. Umasou knows that he and his adoptive dad are as different as can be, but he doesn't care. He's his family, and vice versa, something Heart comes to accept whole-heartedly (I did it again, didn't I).

And with that, the ending to this amazing nature vs. nurture story is very bittersweet, starting with Heart and Umasou reuniting with the former's mom.

Actually, before I keep going, I just want you to know that this scene in which they finally see each other again made me go from "wow, great movie, ten out of ten" to "I NEED TO TALK TO MY MOM!!!" in less than a minute. Seriously, if you're looking to strengthen your maternal bonds, watch this movie and watch the magic happen.

Aaaaanyway, after a heated battle between Heart and the one implied to be his real dad, the truth remains that he can't stay. He's resigned himself to a life as an outcast, never being compatible with his parent and brother's kind while at the same time being shunned by his fellow Big Jaw for adopting food. Nevertheless, he leaves in high spirits, having mended what had for the longest time been a broken bond. That, and he doesn't have to be a straggler alone, anyhow.

Really, Heart is everything I love about a lot of protags in one big package. He's a reptile (a dinosaur no less), he's a badass, he's a nice guy, he rages against what he is in order to be WHO he wants to be, and he's undoubtedly dad of the year. I hope more people come to recognize and appreciate him as much as I do.

Also, he's heavily implied to be in a steady relationship with an adorable Elasmosaurus, so he's got that "interspecies romance" trope possibly going for him too! C'mon, fellow You are Umasou fans old and hopefully new, you can't tell me you don't see it too!

[chipistrate]

Alright- been talking about Riri protag all day so I'm gonna throw my 2 cents out there about my opinions on the protags (while trying to not be biased towards any character)

I think Vanessa is the most plausible considering everything- putting aside the hand saga, I think there's a lot that points to her being the protag, a few examples being the wording in the trailers (Handunit saying 'welcome back' and the entire new trailer talking about being employed and trained at the Pizzaplex) and just the fact that this is a sequel to HW1, the game where Vanessa was first introduced as the protagonist. I wouldn't be against that- I just think we've gotten a lot of Vanessa content as of late (movie, HW1, SB, Ruin hints, her ending being confirmed canon which means she'll show up even more later)(all of which I love ofc) and it might be better to throw someone else in as the protag this time.

Cassie protag seems very unlikely imo- there's nothing in the trailer that really screams 'Cassie', all there is towards the theory iirc is the hand model change (which could be her or Gregory), and the first teaser for HW2 that kinda paralleled the elevator ending in Ruin. I don't think she'd be a bad choice- I'd love to see Cassie back as a protag and find out what happened post-Ruin! But I think that compared with Vanessa and Gregory, going off evidence, she'd be the most unlikely choice. Plus she just got her time in the spotlight a few months ago, so it'd be nice to focus on someone else for a second- give her cliffhanger a bit more time to breathe yknow?

Gregory protag, while definitely not as likely as Vanessa protag, still feels possible to me, and, putting aside character biases, would be the best choice imo. Gregory is a generally mysterious character, even though he has an entire game and book story (though a lot of people doubt how canon said book is), not a whole lot is known about him. Taking this game as a chance to finally explain more about Gregory after, at the point of HW2's release, almost 2 years since his introduction, would be great and very much needed for his character! Especially after the cliffhanger in Ruin- it could give more context as to why and if he really dropped the elevator. The boy needs more fleshing out and, if we're going with the events of HW1 where we watched Vanessa get glitchtrapped, HW2 would be the Perfect time to introduce GGY into the game canon, same way Ruin introduced Mimic, while paralleling the first game (either with Gregory getting glitchtrapped or Gregory freeing himself). But even discarding throwing book lore into the games- I still think Gregory is the character in the most need of the spotlight again.

TLDR;

-Vanessa is the most likely based on evidence. -Cassie is the least likely and needs a bit more time before we pick back up on her story. -Gregory is kinda likely and needs the spotlight the most.

I'm curious what others think though! ^^

[lepertamar]

silkycoal -- what do you think tesena thought when kjorel showed aer the (probably really weird) picture he painted of tamar... cognitohazard — ...tbh I'm not sure? ....personally I'd joke he wouldn't be able to draw himself anymore bc "are you just gonna leave everything minus your eyes unpainted?" ........... Like a negative of Tamar HUH. silkycoal —OOOH

cognitohazard —I imagine tesena would have a certain amount of "ofc you'd paint that, that's sooooo you-fron-a-few-days/weeks-ago" silkycoal — man.... i wonder if it looked horny.....like Male Gaze Boobage but for her eyes cognitohazard —...it probably looked like a pinup where suuuuure there is no explicit nakedness but there's very obvious "gesturing" at the goods

silkycoal —IUDFUGADUGFUGIDKUHVHDAVHFRB cognitohazard — Do you think kjorel ever realises that what he felt was that he Wanted that and a certain amount of envy towards tamar Or does it take another violent breakdown bc "oh yeah you were Contaminated by the thought even back then" /shot silkycoal — probably? no doubt that was part of whatever they talked about after the end of the book... jhkbefhjkegfhjkbegrjkegwrjlerg perhaps onion-like realization breakthroughs iirc he was staring distractedly into the chemistry fire at age 13 soooooo cognitohazard —That just makes the first meeting funnier BC. Kjorel staring at chemistry fire (kinda God-imagery moreso?) And tesena pops up to Court him into aer (unless the chemistry-fire was Pure Light?) silkycoal — ^a^ yeah! 'slightly frozen at the idea of putting a chemical into the fire and changing the flame's color' ah cognitohazard — HM Kjorel, realising he's always been like this:

silkycoal —me thinking back to some of the appallingly kinky games i played as a kid:

cognitohazard — XHSJDJSHCMSJ

cognitohazard — A different series would actually take the skin holy thing into a horror direction since the last chapters have the thing of like, it being unclear who's moving + explicitly tesena moving kjorel Which firstly, plural feels, secondly, the horror of "your" body moving without your input...m silkycoal —YEAH there's so much of that.....'would-be horror but changed the genre by being such a silly goofy guy society' that post that was like 'horror protags have a bad time even if they're just stuck in a pokemon movie' and man...... cognitohazard — FHSHXJSJS yeah!!!! I wonder if that's what makes it so psychotic-flavoured to me? Like vibewise. "If you squint this is a horror. but actually its a cute coming of age/slice of life-y/friendship is power story (incl when you squint)" silkycoal — hgfhjjhfddhfgj yeah! it's like the reverse of 'making this mundane story horror by revealing how this stuff is secretly Bad' cognitohazard —YES.... "Making this mundane horror story not-horror by revealing how it's good" qnd God saw it was good.....

[skinnamon39]

was going to put this in the tags but they got really long so... yeah

I can't remember the name of it right now but it was an anthology book. some stories I remember:

a kid gets on a roller coaster in the middle of the night after not being allowed to only for the admission ticket to fly out of his hand during the ride and it doesn't let him get off without it

a couple kids find a guy chained up in a basement and become convinced he's a vampire so they line up a bunch of mirrors to direct sunlight into the basement except he turns out to be like a reverse vampire so the sun strengthens him and he brutalizes them

some guys paving a new road straight up bash a kid's head in with a shovel as a “sacrifice” to ensure the road's longevity

an old man leaves handkerchiefs with his address printed on them lying around in public so that when people go to his house to return them he can easily murder them

something involving like. medical stickers? I had never heard of them before reading so I was confused and I still don't really have any idea what the story was talking about. the stickers are people-shaped and kids are supposed to demonstrate where/how they got hurt or something. anyway. the injury relationship between the kids and their respective stickers gets reversed. like the leg of a sticker gets torn and its kid gets a cut on the same leg. story ends with one kid's sticker (which was on a window) shattering and the kid almost immediately comes face to face with a tank of liquid nitrogen careening towards them

other kids' horror books I remember enjoying include

the first volume of the The Books of Elsewhere series by Jacqueline West (never had any others though), in which main protag Olive and her parents move into a new house and she discovers a pair of glasses that allow her to travel into the house's many paintings. things get much worse

Doll Bones by Holly Black! three kids find a porcelain doll with a girl's remains (and possibly her ghost) inside and so go on a completely unsupervised road trip to find her grave

im curious and no I’m serious about the poison apple books, they were so entertaining

[canmom]

some fascinating gender shit from the early 90s in Temporary Agency (1994), the sequel to Unquenchable Fire (1988) by oldschool trans author Rachel Pollack:

it's interesting that the idea of a trans girl computer hacker is like, as old as consumer PCs pretty much. the protagonist in this one is a cis lesbian which makes it this funny sort of reacharound thing where Pollack imagines the pov of a cis girl who is kind of reverent towards this plot convenient trans girl. very different time...

(also the old school computer shit is quite funny, protag rents a couple of hotel rooms and sets up modems to proxy her signal, and this gets quite a bit of detail. it's a curious one this book, much more of a spy/detective story than the first. hopefully I'll be able to make another worthwhile Post on it when i reach the end...)

[ignitesthestxrs]

read nona the ninth over the weekend and like. i enjoyed it! a lot! i love nona, i love the sixth, i love to get more kiwi shit, but i also like. hmm.

i think that if your book ends in the literal location and event with which it should have begun (in the tomb with alecto being awoken), you probably hecked up somewhere. muir is such a good writer on like, a literal sentence level, she is a master of character and she knows how to punch a bitch in the guts with feelings when she wants to, but it's really unclear why this book exists. nothing happened in this book.

i described it to a friend as 'very fandom famous fic vibes where it's 3/4 original and the main character is an OC and beloved side characters get more prominent roles' and that's still how i feel about it. by the time we get to the end of the book, the narrative is literally telling us that we no longer have to care about what happens to nona, that nona is not one of the people the book has been dangling in front of us the whole time, that one of our previous protags is a corpse who has had a whole bunch of off screen character development, and the other protag is literally God knows where.

nona does not feature in the climax of her own book so much as she is dragged fadingly through it, and no one really seems that bothered by the fact that she is fading in the first place. she just ceases to be a character that people around her cared about, almost ceases to exist really, by the time we get to the end of the book. and i know this whole series has been building Towards Alecto, but i can't care about Alecto Arriving if i'm not sad about Nona Going, you know? there's no cost there by the end. and muir's penchant for narratives that are intentionally confusing to the reader means that nona just kind of trips and dissipates, and instead of being given space to have a feeling about that, i'm being thee and thou'd at and told there's another puzzle in the puzzle box to unpuzzle.

it's not that the puzzle isn't a good puzzle, it's that i want to read a book.

[dreaminlittlenightmares]

Everyone has been sentenced to a mandatory vacation. Where are they going and what are they doing?

What the heck is a vacation??

The Maw

Six: Doesn't particular care where she goes, as long as there's plenty of GOOD food. Might hang out with the other Protags, if she feels like it the Janitor: Has to get kicked off the Maw to go on vacation, but has no place he wants to go? Might just stay in a harbour based town to relax before he's finds a ship back the Twin Chefs: They both always wanted to go to some gaming convention/tournament to win...and then maybe pick up new cuisines the Lady: Legitimately has no idea where she's going. It was the Thin Man's idea and she's just going along with his antics the Granny: Totally going to a lively place near the water. Just wants to mingle with people the Runaway Kid: Goes far, FAR away from the Maw. Maybe to Pale City or the Nest to explore and read books

Pale City

Mono: Doesn't care where he goes, as long as there's adventure! He's the type of person that books too many activities on a vacation, so he's burned out when he comes home the Hunter: Throws a dart at a dartboard of lively cities and goes there for a few days. He misses people, but has a limit for the amount of interaction he can take the Teacher: Exotic rustic village in the country side. It's calm and peaceful, with plenty of hidden things to do the Doctor: Goes somewhere where hiking is a readily available option. He doesn't vacation often, but likes to be active on his days off. A quiet walk down a path is relaxing for him the Thin Man: Beach house away from everyone, and takes the Lady with him. He doesn't like being alone, so going with the bestie/worstie is a good idea

The Nest

the Raincoat Girl: Always wanted to go to a rain forest! There’s just something enchanting about listening for parrots that makes her excited. Definitely brings a (reluctant) friend or three along... the Craftsman: Goes to a city first, then rents a car and drives to somewhere. He prefers car trips and will probably spend his time drive around aimlessly the Butler: Goes home...that’s it. Butler doesn’t vacation often, so he takes advantage of the time off to visit family. Spends about a month or two with them before heading back the Pretender: Picks a castle and rents it for a week or two as her vacation. She’s already the self-proclaimed “Princess of the Nest”. But, now she can be a literal princess on her vacation

all the Extra Kids, Flash Light Girl, Bread Boy, and Scarf Kid:

They all go to Disney. That’s it. The end. If Disney is too much, they all vote to go to another amusement park. They arguably have the best vacation out of everyone, and are exhausted when they return

the Ferryman: Goes to a seaside village and hangs out at the local tavern for most of his vacation. He takes vacation time seriously, in which he eats and sleeps, and nothing else the Mirror Man: He travels a lot, via the mirrors, so vacations are a weird concept for him. If there’s a place he wants to check out, he’s already there thanks to his powers. Spends his “vacations” watching people the North Wind: If it was up to them, they would flew to outer space. But, they haven’t gotten that far yet, so North Wind heads towards lesser known territories in the south, east, and west to cause havoc

The Missing Characters

the Hanging Man: Beach vacation, and tans. He might go swimming, but maaaannn does he need some sun the Wax Bellman: Like the Janitor, he has to be kicked off the Maw to go on vacation. Ends up going to some historically important place because it’s interesting the Lunch Lady: Vacations in the mountains and goes mountain climbing. If it’s during the winter, she’ll go skiing/snowboarding the Principal: Staycation and sleeps. He spends all his vacation time catching up on the sleep he doesn’t get snoozing in his office the Barber: Deliberately picks shady places or tourist-hostile areas as a vacation. Everyone tells him it’s a bad idea, but he always comes back unscathed  the Mail Recipient: Camping trip vacation...

[gollancz]

#Mine is apparently so hyperspecific I had to make a comic myself but I will take more#Gay men as main characters/protags in science fiction that#1) don't die in the story#2) get at least a neutral ending (it doesn't even have to be happy)#3) don't have a relationship that exists to be the Gay Version of a straight marriage with an eventual kid#Like a relationship that's complete just by itself and is defined by the lovers#And isn't like Santized Acceptable Married Gay Dads Who Are Barely Allowed To Hold Hands#OK I KNOW THIS ISNT REALLY AN INTEREST#BUT LIKE IM GAY AND TIRED SO IT KINDA IS

@featureenvyproductions

OKAY SO.

We have two titles coming up in the early part of next year. ONE I can definitely tell you about is THE PRINCIPLE OF MOMENTS by Esmie Jikiemi-Pearson. It's an epic space opera science fantasy, and one of the two protagonists is a gay man trying to travel through time to find the Prince he fell in love with. The other protagonist is a girl trying to save her sister from the evil empire and LET ME TELL YOU she's not afraid to smash stuff up to do it.

THE OTHER I can't tell you about yet because we are waiting to announce it. But MY GOD. It's good. Keep an eye on our socials.

One of our Masterworks might be of interest: CHINA MOUNTAIN ZHANG by Maureen F. McHugh, which is set on a future dystopic Earth, and looks at the shifting social and political landscape around the main character's personal journey.

We also have some titles on our Masterworks list which feature MMF relationships (not QUITE what you were looking for):

IMPERIAL EARTH by Arthur C. Clarke, which is an imagined future where humanity has colonised the solar system. The main character has a triad relationship with a man and a woman, which - considering Clarke's reputation for hard SF and the fact that this was published in the 70s - was groundbreaking

BOLD AS LOVE by Gwyneth Jones, which is an alternate Earth facing a climate crisis, trending towards the trippy and inspired by the story of Arthur, Lancelot and Guinevere, except Gwyneth looked at them and went "they would be a lot less sad if they had sex in a triangle instead of fighting", and lo, they did. (Most of Gwyneth Jones' SF is phenomenal in terms of looking at cisheteronormative society and going "I'mma break it")

DHALGREN by Samuel R. Delaney, which is a trippy, circular plot and the main character pursues relationships with women first, and the expanding into a triad is with a 15-year-old. So, it's not the most comfortable exploration, but again it's another book from the 70s - by a Black author no less, who was already fighting an uphill battle for space in the genre - so it's an interesting piece to look at.

Another one worth looking at might be ARTIFACT SPACE, by Miles Cameron. The protagonist is a woman, but the worldbuilding casually and naturally includes LGBTQIA+ rep; one of the novellas in an upcoming collection in the same world - BEYOND THE FRINGE, due out in eBook and Audio later this year - has husbands finding themselves trying to negotiate a trade agreement with a hostile colony.

We have a decent amount of fantasy with gay male protagonists, including SWORDSPOINT by Ellen Kushner, and THE STEEL REMAINS by Richard Morgan. I would also deeply recommend checking out Aliette de Bodard's 'Dragons and Blades' series of novellas - she's one of our authors for our other works, although we don't publish novellas - which are M/M romantasies specifically, set in a world that spins off from her 'Dominion of the Fallen' series.

(I also would like to go slightly off-book here, since we don't publish these, and recommend - if you're into comedic SF - BATTLESTAR SUBURBIA and its sequels, by Chris McCrudden. While the MC is not explicitly denoted as gay in book one, as the books progress you see him finding his identity more. McCrudden is gay himself, and I do think contributes to the very natural evolution and portrayal of the character, even within this crackers, high-comedy world.)

And hey! This is perfectly time for Pride! We actually have 30% off our Pride reading list titles in store - there are other titles on there than mentioned here, because they may have other LGBTQIA+ rep than the specific gay male lead. But they're all FAB.

@torbooks me + you = bffs

[crimeronan]

Can you explain the appeal of Julian Blackthorn? This is a genuine question because I read the books and came away utterly bored by him and unconvinced of his moral greyness as opposed to like, Adam Parrish’s. He seemed so one dimensional to me but I want to know if I’m Wrong TM considering I tend to be very very biased toward my favourite characters and bored by the rest, and my favourites were Mark and Kieran. So maybe I just didn’t pay him enough attention??

it’s been a while since i wrote any earnest tsc meta but cringe culture is dead and the chance to infodump about my julian thoughts has me vibrating where i’m sitting so.  yes okay.

technical stuff

(aka: things pertaining to How The Story Is Constructed)

cassandra clare’s characterization has become much stronger just in general since she first began writing the series like twenty years ago

perhaps most importantly: the more recent stuff i’ve read from her has involved characters who actually grow, change, and learn from their past mistakes 

rather than repeating the same stupid decisions over and over again

and over and over and over some more

seriously take a shot every time someone in tmi miscommunicates or self-destructs in ways They Have Learned Not To Do for no real reason. u will die of alcohol poisoning

in tda this shines ESPECIALLY with the evolution of mark, kieran, and cristina’s relationship, but that’s a separate post

clare’s trademark is also the angsty traumatized jerkass love interest with a secret heart of gold

the woman is almost singlehandedly responsible for draco in leather pants and the proliferation of this kind of character type in fandom and teen lit. this isn’t a criticism it’s me marveling at how if you commit hard enough to a single trope you truly can change the world.  follow your dreams

sad jackass with a heart of gold isn’t an Inherently Problematic Character Type

but poorly done it can lead to relationship dynamics in which one partner is constantly being hurt by and then forgiving the other despite them making no real effort to change, because they are narratively absolved due to being sad

(there’s a lot of this with earlier jace content.  in some ways i think will was later created specifically to be a same-archetype protagonist who actually does get called on his shit and grow. that’s also another post)

also if all of your sexy male love interests are tortured jackasses with a heart of gold then people start calling you a one-trick pony

enter julian blackthorn!

from the very start everything about him is designed to be the INVERSE of the heart of gold jackass.  which immediately makes him interesting just from a meta perspective

(mark and kieran are also both alternate angles on this time-honored archetype.  mark gets the heart of gold and kieran gets the jackass and then they’re both much more deeply messy than that.  yet another post)

julian is kind, self-sacrificing, empathetic, artistic, emotionally supportive, responsible, and favored by old grannies everywhere

so a completely nonthreatening milquetoast guy, right

immediately forgettable if you’re only here for the dramatic conflicts and shithead antics of clare’s other protags

except that he is A Mess

and that he has structured his priorities very carefully, and they are as selfless as you expect from The Hero (TM) but they are also Not Heroic (TM) and they do not align with the moral framework The Hero (TM) is supposed to use

moral ambiguity in characters always exists in relation to their narratives imo. you mention adam parrish - trc’s narrative already mucks around in different ethical shades of gray, and adam falls on the canon scale about where julian does on his canon scale.  both more willing than the average pov character to do the ruthless thing or make the fucked-up choice if the ends justify the means; both with an intensely strong sense of internal priorities that they adhere to at all costs, both so unbelievably fucking down for murder; etc

i do think there are ways julian’s choices could have been pushed even further, but considering the number of readers who hate his guts already, i can see why clare opted not to go for the most controversial possible conflicts

so we’re flipping the narrative

instead of seeing this angsty bad boy and peeling back the layers of his trauma to find his heart of gold, we’re seeing the put-together selfless family man and peeling back the layers of his Responsibility Mask to expose the rotting husk underneath

MMMMMMMMMMMMMMM

THAT IS FUN AS FUCK

then when julian DOES lash out in hurtful, uncontrolled ways, he has significantly more narrative justification for it than most of clare’s protagonists (will elaborate in characterization thoughts)

julian is also interesting as fuck because of how his struggles allow for a more in-depth look at the failings of shadowhunter society, something that’s also sorely lacking in clare’s earlier work

his apparent amorality is simply the result of him making pragmatic and impossible choices because he has been faced with fucked-up ethical dilemmas since age 12 Because Society Has Failed Him

which opens the door for narrative exploration of how and why he’s been failed so badly & what needs to change

i also love that he has such a coldly calculated way of analyzing situations and allowing harm to occur when need be, bc a lot of clare’s early protagonists have such a bad case of Rush In And Get Myself Killed Because I’ve Got Feelings About Impulsive Heroism syndrome that i wanna push them in front of a truck

probably there’s other meta narrative stuff i could say but i’m stopping myself and moving on to character analysis

characterization stuff

(aka: reasons why i’m also attached to him in a vacuum)

i don’t read him as one-dimensional at all tbh

u may feel the narrative pushes “ruthless julian blackthorn” too much without delivering enough actual ruthless julian But i don’t think that’s the same as having only one dimension

from the get-go, the big question centered on julian is always “how far are you willing to go?” and the narrative pushes the stakes slowly higher and higher to continuously test julian’s “the price is always justified” mindset

he has a far more layered and realistic response to trauma than clare’s early protagonists - trauma affects every single aspect of his personality and how he conducts himself, and the effects vary depending on the circumstances

his conviction that he has to be the perfect parent to his siblings because they will fall apart if they see him show weakness??  rooted in how he feels like he’s fallen apart since losing the stable adult support he once relied upon

his willingness to hurt semi-innocent people, commit coldblooded murder, manipulate people using political leverage, allow harm to befall any stranger if it protects his family??  rooted in how he has already had to ask himself how much he’s willing to sacrifice, and how his family is his only source of stability when the world has never done Shit for him

his conviction that he has a darker heart than anyone else because he killed his possessed father, even though intellectually he knows he was saving his brother’s life??  rooted in having no means of processing this trauma and being unable to voice his feelings for fear of backlash from a deeply non-understanding society

the way he represses every single negative emotion he ever has, to the point where emma - his actual literal magic soulmate who can feel his emotions - is startled to find him hurting or angry??  once again all about how he has to be the perfect father or he’s failed completely

the way his anger is so totally disproportionate to different situations and the way his negative emotions can only come out in completely uncontrolled breaks??  all that repression baybey.  this kid has not processed a single bad feeling in five years.  every single real grievance and petty annoyance has been festering indefinitely inside him like a slowly spreading infection

julian’s arc involves him needing to get thru being his worst self to actually start to heal

as in, he has to actually learn to acknowledge his feelings, take care of himself, lean on his family, and let other people take some responsibility

he also has to learn that in his quest to be the perfect emotionally controlled authority figure, he has not actually learned how to control or deal with his emotions. like. At Fucking All. good god

the narrative setup is also about asking “how far are you willing to go?” until the answer is finally “not this far.  not this far”

and once he reaches that point, he has to reevaluate everything about how he weighs his priorities and morals and plans, etc

(i also like that emma has a perpendicular arc in which she’s always the one tempering julian and telling him “no we can’t go that far” until she’s willing to do something horrific that he absolutely won’t and HE has to stop HER. very sexy)

it’s also just really nice to have a character who’s learned to relate so well to literally every single member of his family while still having a very detached ruthless interior consciousness. i have similar feelings about how adam teaches himself to love people, but with julian it’s spelled out more explicitly in canon & it’s a more central character theme

i’m sure i’m also forgetting stuff here but this post is long enough so i’m gonna say good enough

and like i said in the tags on my other post, there are things i’d personally write differently if it were my story - plot points i’d shift, character contrasts i’d up, themes i’d explore differently, pacing i’d adjust, etc.  i have plenty of ways i could be nitpicky and editorial about the effectiveness of julian’s arc.  but i also don’t feel like writing them out at the moment & none of my critiques on effectiveness have an impact on the core appeal of his character 2 me.  he’s so fucking good

[jccacchs]

Me ranting why I hate Nightwing books and it slowly turning into why I genuinely had fun reading Nightwing Rebirth

Reading more and more nightwing related comics is slowly making me realize that Dick is honestly better off without the batfam or he’s better off if he didn’t age and stayed as robin

Like this isn’t even on a plot perspective its on a writing one cuz tbh i only found like a handful of nightwing stories that I like (which are not even related to the batfam at all: First few arcs of N:Rebirth, Titans, NTT and outsiders)

For some reason bunch of nightwing books are bad or boring which is such a shame cuz is character has so much potential

I like Rebirth a lot (especially untouchable which is my favorite N book) since its a lot more focused on Dick’s outlook on things, with it being grim from either the beginning or middle with a hopeful optimistic outlook on the ending, a sort of light in the end of the tunnel theme

I feel like those theme vibes more with his character way more than whatever the fuck happened on the original nightwing run (its funny actually since i prefer so many things in pre-flashpoint but this is literally the only book i hated and dropped from reading)

I think it’s because they tried to make him so edgy ? And it sort of have a suffocating vibe to it and it’s genuinely not fun or entertaining to read (bro I’ve come to the point where i even prefer reading GRAYSON over whatever dafuq dixon and devin wrote)

NOT TO MENTION THE VILLAINS SUCKS ASS MAN HOWWWWWWW EVENNNN?????

Like the literal one I only liked is shrike but pretty much everything else is so garbage and daredevil wanna be its driving me almost mad

The large civilian cast is cool dont get me wrong but omfg the villains are literally so generic i wanna cry

Not to mention Blockbuster went from pretty much being bullied by whoever the fuck decided to visit Dick that day to sudden big boss which imo ruins the intimidation factor from him BY A LOT

Hes also a kingpin copy pasta but less of the substance on what made Kingpin terrifying and sympathetic

Bro ITS SO FUNNY TOO CUZ THEY MADE AN ENTERTAINING BLOCKBUSTER IN REBIRTH PLEASEEEEE

Like THATS the dude I wanna see, smart charismatic and cunning. He honestly doesn’t give a shit about Nightwing as long as he didn’t interfere with his shit. He’s not out there to ruin peoples lives but he’s there to be on top of the food chain. AND MAN DO I RESPECT THIS FUCKER

The bond he forms with Dick is interesting too, and they actually have a good chemistry. They became enemies that profit off each other. Dick gets info from him while Roland uses Nightwing to get rid of his competitors

LIKE THATS HOW YOU WRITE A GREAT VILLAIN AND PROTAG DYNAMIC!! Its honestly such a shame that dude has little screen time in rebirth

(This is the part where i rant about why i hate tom taylor for bringing back boring Blockbuster instead of keeping the Rebirth!blockbuster)

Also BLUDHAVEN

WHY IS THAT PLACE IN PREFLASHPOINT JUST GOTHAM 2.0 BROOO ITS SO GENERIC

UNTOUCHABLE IS SO GREAT CUZ THE HISTORY SURROUNDING BLUD AND IT MADE ME CARE ABOUT A TREE

A TREE

Supporting cast tho I think Preflashpoint has a better one compared to Rebirth

The occasional titan visits are adorable, Amy is such a chad i love her, the people at the appartment, the people at the cop bar, etc.

imo it gave a more neighborhood like vibe which is nice especially for a starting vigilante story cuz it shows who is Nightwing fighting for which rebirth is certainly lacking since it favors a more standalone story format.

Batfam inclusions on the first few Rebirth issues are soooo damn good tho. They didn’t really steal the moment nor overstayed their welcome. They felt like small cameos but they still managed to give a wholesome note (if im not including the babs one cuz thats one is written just so they can break up)

Also im a shrimp for morrison’s batman&robin soooo i have an unearthly biased towards Damian, man that kid’s adorable.

The dragon issue with them is such a bop too btw holy hell

Eh but after that tho N:R kinda slowly started to get bad around and before the metal event happened….The court armory is kinda cool tho

I probably have a bad grasp on Dick’s character…idk but its genuinely such a shame that I prefer reading him on titan stuff rather than his standalone comics

In conclusion, fuck you tom taylor for bringing back blockbuster and including so many batfam members in a Nightwing comic (except the jason annual that was kinda cute ngl)

[perpetualexistence]

Yeah, having this be like a constant cycle of students while these three stay the same really builds into the idea that they're unstoppable because they're just always there no matter what you try to do. The way I see it, the ROTI cast were freshmen during their time at school as humans, while the Pahkitew island crew are the freshmen that come in after the ROTI graduate. There's a much bigger gap between Pahkitew and Reboot, which is why by the time the Reboot cast comes in the Eldrtich trio really in the groove of how these cycles work.

It also means that Open House for the Reboot cast is a great time for them to check in on their former classmates. And also a stressful time as they try to prevent some former classmates from recognizing them. And also a stark reminder that their friends are going to pass away long before they will. They'll be fine. (They're definitely not quickly wiping away watery eyes while they hug the people who were there for them when they needed it most.)

But onto lighter thoughts! I think it would be nice if Noah actually did just use Cameron's dnd module for his own campaign. His last interaction with them might have been evil gloating, but he does still miss that first Scooby gang. He makes them important NPCs.

And given that you're saying Millie's indifferent to the whole thing, I do find it hilarious that she hears all of these horrifying things and just says "Oh, okay! So can I make a book about this?" Poor girl seriously needs to learn people skills. Also, it's especially going to be heartbreaking when Priya finds out the only reason her parents have been better to her is because Alejandro's been making them. Because that's when it'll really click how horrible they were.

I also think it'd be hilarious if MKulia still happens in this AU. Julia's just being the absolute worst, and then being made to absolutely go through it. And MK just watches all of this and says "Yeah, that one. I want that one." Noah tries to lead her towards literally anyone else because he doesn't want MK to put herself into Heather's warpath by association. He should have known better than to try to tell her 'no' because he's pretty much just thrown MK directly into Julia's arms. The worst part is he can't even be too mad at her because he'd be a hypocrite since he's dating Alejandro and Heather.

As you can see, I too love to ramble about the Reboot cast. Now onto your question of Pahkitew Island cast. I haven't actually watched it outside of clips, but I do have a few ideas.

I can see Amy wanting the spot of head cheerleader, though more because it means she'll have more reason to boss Sammy around. While that normally would make her Heather's victim, I think Alejandro would actually take over for this one. He probably meets them while having a talk in public with Heather when he sees Amy bullying Sammy. He immediately gets flashbacks to his relationship with José. He makes it his personal mission to destroy Amy. She's going to learn what it's like to live in her sister's shadow. Quite literally.

Heather's victim of the cast ends up being Sugar. She thinks she's a Queen Bee despite having none of the intelligence to back it up, which pisses Heather off to no end. It's not even that hard to do, which frustrates Heather even more. She loves a challenge, and a challenge Sugar is not. She will be incredibly relieved when Julia happens because finally she can pull out the big guns again.

Noah probably ends up going after Topher. He can't stand a suck up. He also reminds him too much of Justin for his liking.

Then, for the Scooby gang! At this point I've noticed a pattern in Scooby gangs being protag trios, so why fix what ain't broke? This time around it's Amy, Shawn, and Jasmine. Amy because she notices weird things happen to her sister, possibly including her disappearance depending on where we end up settling the timeline with that. Jasmine because she's friends with Amy, and Shawn through Jasmine. He stays because he's convinced that Alenoaheather are zombies. Even when they do finally reveal what they truly are, he just hears 'undead' and knows their zombies. Heather is this close to just making him forget what a zombie is. The only reason she doesn't is because it's so integral to his personality it might actually screw him up too much if she does. Because they don't really have too close of connections with these three, Alenoaheather treats their rivalry more like a game since they know they'll win in the end.

Then, chronologically speaking, we have the first two who actually want to track down the Royal Court for evil purposes: Max and Scarlett. Max is very open about wanting to rule first the school, then the world, using the dark magics he knows exist and are hidden somewhere in the school. But he's so incompetent that the trio let their guard down. They'll keep an eye on him, but he clearly doesn't know what he's talking about, and they feel sorry for the poor girl he drags around with him.

I'm putting a read more for the next part because we start getting more into story here with a trigger warning for death and a sacrifice.

Scarlett's the real problem. She actually knows that eldritch beings exist and knows a few rituals. She wants to rule the world and will sacrifice anyone to do it. She's effectively using Max as a psychic deterrent because he's so unpleasant to be around Heather just turns her mind reading gaze away from him because god he's just so annoying. ...And that extends to Scarlett because of how physically close the two are most of the time.

And that's how Scarlett is able to steal the summoning book for the Royal Court from Noah's library. She and Max find it, and at first Max grabs ahold of it and laughs triumphantly because he's done it! He's won! ...He's not sure exactly what the next step is, but he's won!

Scarlett is so close and she's just had it with Max, so that's when she reveals her true colors. She snatches the book, snatches Max and lets him know he's the first person she'll sacrifice, and leaves.

Cue Alenoaheather panicking. Because if she does manage to successfully summon the Royal Court, she could convince them to make a deal that's much more dangerous for the rest of humanity. And she's outside of school grounds, meaning they can't get to her because at this point they've been confined to the school.

They immediately stop playing the good guys vs bad guys game with the Scooby gang. They've got all the knowledge, and the Scooby gang are the only ones who can go out to actually use it.

"Guys, we can't just work with the zombies!" Shawn argues. This gets him an insult that sends him collapsed to the ground, his heart ripped out, and temporarily forgetting how to breathe. These three don't have time for this, and if showing the Scooby gang exactly how much they've been holding back is the only way to get cooperation, so be it. Because yes, they are, in fact 'going to work with the zombies'. They are going to find Scarlett, Max, and the book, and bring them back to the school.

The Scooby gang do end up defeating Scarlett before she can summon the Royal Court. She got as far as managing to pull Alenoaheather out of the school and into her summoning circle before she was stopped. The lords weren't summoned...but they weren't able to save Max, whose sacrifice was needed in order to summon the vessels to Scarlett to be contained.

Neither Alejandro, Noah, nor Heather had seen death since they wiped out the cultists that sacrificed them. They do still have vivid nightmares of that night, courtesy of the Royal Court. And to see someone else like that? Just like them, with the potential for a redemption that can never come, slaughtered without a chance of being brought back? They completely forget about needing the book back as they turn into semi-eldritch creatures. They launch themselves at a captured Scarlett, drag her with them through the portal they were summoned through, and aren't seen again until school the next day.

Leaving Amy, Jasmine, and Shawn to process what's just happened. And realize no, they're absolutely not about to give the demon summoning book back to the demons. They try to destroy the book, but it's indestructible because otherwise how would the Royal Court be able to have their fun? So instead they settle for giving it to someone completely unrelated to the school to hide away for them, or otherwise send it off they have no idea where. That way Heather can't just read their minds and get someone else to grab the book for them because not even they know where it is.

Alenoaheather's pretty peeved that the Scooby gang actually managed to pull one over on them. Fortunately, they got rid of most of their bloodlust through Scarlet and do still have humanity left in them. Plus, it was a pretty clever scheme. So they just agree to leave each other be from now on. They won't try going after the book, and the Scooby gang won't try stopping them from entertaining their lords.

It's a deal that eventually leads to problems in the future as a young Lauren stumbles across this book. It's the day she becomes Scary Girl.

...Okay so most of that literally just came out as I was typing it so wow apparently I did have ideas for Pahkitew crew. I also wasn't expecting Pahkitew to then build up a bit into Reboot. Whoops!

you guys ever hear a new song and frantically conceptualise a whole AU around it, starring your current Main Blorbo? or is that just me?

[c-is-for-circinate]

I'd love to hear more of your thoughts about why P5R didn't quite land for you. I had the same reaction to it, but I've never quite been able to properly articulate why the last section fell so flat.

God okay so I've tried several times to answer this, and it seems like the answer is 'I still have way too many feelings, personally, to say this in anything less than thirty pages and fifteen hours of work', because Persona 5 the original is a game I loved a lot and care about a great deal. And most of the reasons I disliked Royal feel, in my head, like a list of ways it broke some of the things I liked best about P5--which means explaining them feels like I need to explain everything I loved about the original game, which is a book in itself, complete with referents to P3, P4, Jungian psychology, the Joseph Campbell mytharc, and fuck all even knows what. And that is too much.

But today I realized that I could instead describe it from an angle of, Persona 5 Strikers succeeds really well at doing the thing I think Royal was trying to do but failed at. And that I think I can talk about in a reasonable amount of wordspace, hopefully, behind this cut because I have at least one friend who hasn't played Royal yet.

Note for reblogs/comments: I HAVE NOT FINISHED STRIKERS YET. I got through the jail that pretended to be the final jail and have not yet gone into the obviously inevitable 'ohshit wait, you mean there's something more than simple human machinations behind all of this?' dungeon. (I got stuck on a really frustrating side quest, put the game down, and then dived into Hades to avoid throwing the Switch across the room for a while--and anyone around this blog lately knows how THAT'S been going.) Please no spoilers past Okinawa!

So, one of the many, many things I really appreciated about Persona 5 was its straightforward and unashamed attitude towards abusers and their acts of violence. Because, while yes P5 is a story about the use of power and control to make others suffer, it fundamentally isn't about those abusers themselves. It's about their victims, those that survive their crimes. And this shows up repeatedly over the course of the game.

We do not give a shit why Kamoshida wanted to beat and rape his students. We really don't. Kamoshida does not deserve our attention one moment longer than it takes to make him stop. Because, ultimately, that's the goal of P5, start to end. We don't know for sure if what we're doing is fair, if it's justice, if it's questionable. What we know is that people are being hurt, badly, actively, right now this second. What we know is that victims are suffering. What we know is that we, personally, us-the-protag and us the Phantom Thieves at large, are in danger. And in those circumstances, we don't care about the abuser's side any more. We don't. We don't have the space or time or capacity to care, because that is not the point.

The point is to help the weak. To save the people who need saving, right here and now. To give others the courage to stand up on their own behalf. We're not even out to change society, not really--that's a byproduct. We are reactions. We are triage. We are important.

There's something so empowering and validating about that as a theme, y'know? In a media landscape so full of "sympathetic villains", the idea that, you know, maybe sometimes you don't have to break yourself to show compassion that might possibly heal the bad guy--that sometimes you can just make the bad guy stop hurting people--feels both refreshing and satisfying. I really appreciate it as a message! I liked it a lot!

And yes, there's nuance to that theme, and the game is not without compassion. We save Futaba, because 'make the bad guy stop hurting people', in that case, means 'make this person stop hurting herself'. We give Sae a path forwards, help her fix her own heart. Yet it's worth pointing out that in both of those cases, while we were very glad to do those things, to save those people, we also went into both of those palaces for extremely practical reasons to begin with. We needed Futaba's help. We needed Sae's help. The fact that we chose to talk Sae into a change of heart rather than simply stealing her treasure, while ultimately a very good thing for her, was absolutely a practical choice predicated on the need for her palace to still exist to save our life. And yes, we wanted to save her, for Makoto's sake--yes, we wanted desperately to save Futaba. But Sae and Futaba let themselves be helped, too, and that doesn't change the overarching themes of the story itself.

Akechi (and to some extent Okumura) would not let himself be helped. Akechi's another interesting nuance to this theme, because of all our villains, we do learn the most about what drove him to the cruelties and crimes he's committed. He's at that intersection of victim and villain, and we want to help him, as a victim--but we also know that stopping him as a villain is more important. We'd like to save him from himself if we could, because we save people from their sources of trauma, it's what we do. We regret being unable to do so. But in the end, what matters to the story is not that Akechi refused to be saved--it's that Shido and Yaldabaoth need to be stopped, for the sakes of everyone else they're hurting now and may continue to hurt in the future.

The thing is, there's space and maybe even a need for a corollary discussion of those places where victim and villain intersect. It's an interesting, pertinent, and related topic. Strikers made an entire video game about it, a really good video game. It's centered in the idea that, yes, these people need to be stopped, and we will make stopping them our priority--but they're not going after us, and that gives us some space to sympathize. Even for Konoe, who specifically targets the Phantom Thieves--compare him to Shido, who actively destroyed the lives of both Joker and Futaba, who ordered Haru's father's death, who's the entire reason the team is still dealing with the trauma of Akechi's everything. Of course the game can be sympathetic to Konoe where it can't with Shido. There's enough distance to do that.

But right--Strikers is a separate game. It's a separate conversation. It's, "last time, we talked about that, so now let's take it one step further." And that's good writing. (It's something Persona has done before, too, also really well! Persona 3 is about terrible, occasionally-suicidal depression and grief. P4 is about how you can still be hurting and need some help and therapy even if things seem ok. Related ideas, but separate conversations that need to be separate in order to be respectful and do justice to either one. P5, as a follow-up to P4, is a conversation about how, ok, changing yourself is great and all, but sometimes the problem is other people so how do you deal with that? Again, still related! Still pertinent! Still alluded to in P4, with Adachi's whole thing--but it wasn't the time or place to base a quarter of the game around it.)

So one of Royal's biggest issues, to me, is that it tries to tack on this whole new angle for discussion onto a game that was originally about something else.

Adding Maruki's palace--adding it at the end, which by narrative laws suggests that it's the true point that everything else should be building up to--suddenly adds in about a hundred new dimensions at once. It wants us to engage with "what in this abuser/manipulator's life led him to act this way?" for basically the first time all game (we'll get to Akechi later). It wants us to engage with, "if the manipulator has a really good reason or good intentions, does that mean we should forgive them?" It requires us to reflect on, "what is the difference between control and cruelty?" It asks, "okay, but if people could be controlled into being happy, would that be okay?" (Which, based on the game so far, is actually a wild out-there hypothetical! Literally not a single thing we've seen in the game suggests that could ever happen. Even the people who think being controlled is safer and easier are miserable under it. Control that's able to lead to actual happiness is completely out of left field in the context of everything we've encountered all game so far.)

That's too much! We don't have time to unpack all that! We only have an eighth of the game left! Not to mention we are also being asked to bring back questions we put to bed much earlier in the game about the morality of our own actions, in a wholely unsatisfying way. Maruki attempts to justify his mass brainwashing because "it's the same as what you're doing", and we know it isn't, but the game didn't need Maruki calling it out in order for us to get that. We already faced that question when we started changing hearts, and again several times throughout the game, and again when we found our targets in Yaldabaoth's cells. The fact that we change hearts does not mean we think "changing hearts is fine and kind and should be done to everyone, actually." Changing hearts has been firmly established in this game as an act of violence, acceptable only because it prevents further systemic violence against innocents that we must prevent. The moral question has never once been about whether it's ok to change the hearts of the innocent, only about how far it's ethical to go against individuals who are actively hurting other people. Saying "you punched that guy to keep him from shooting a child, so punching people is good and I will save the world by punching everyone!" is confusing! and weird! and not actually at all helpful to the question of, how much violence is it acceptable to use to protect others! So presenting the question that way just falls really flat.

(And right, I love Strikers, because Strikers has time to unpack all that. Strikers can give us a main bad guy who wants to control the whole world for everybody's own good, because Strikers has earned that thematic climax. It has given us sympathetic bad guys who started out wanting to control the world to protect themselves and ended up going too far. It's given us Mariko Hyodo, who wanted to control the world to protect other people and went too far. It's given us a long-running thread about police, the desire to serve, and the abuse of power that can lead to. And since we are actively trying to care for the people whose hearts we're changing in Strikers, we can open the door to questions about using changes-of-heart and that level of control to make other people happy. We can even get a satisfying conclusion out of that discussion, because we have space to characterize the difference--Konoe thinks that changing peoples' hearts means confining them, but the Phantom Thieves think it means setting them free. We have seen enough sympathetic villains that we as an audience have had the space to figure out how we feel about that, and to understand the game's perspective of "stop them AND save them, if we can possibly do both." And that message STILL rests firmly on Persona 5's message of "it is Good to do what you have to do to stop an abuser so long as you don't catch innocent people in your crossfire.")

It's worth noting that the general problem of 'asking way too many new questions and then not answering them' also applies to how Royal treats its characters, too. P5 did have unanswered questions left at the end! The biggest one, and we all knew this, was Akechi, and what actually happened to him, and how we should feel about him, and how he felt about us. That was ripe for exploring in our bonus semester, and to Royal's credit they did in fact try to bring it up, but by god did they fuck up doing it.

Akechi's probable death in the boiler room was absolutely the biggest dangling mystery of the game. It was an off-screen apparent death of a key antagonist, so all of the narrative rules we know suggested that he might still be alive and would probably come back if the story went on for long enough. So when Royal brings him back on Christmas Eve, hey, great! Question answered. Except that the situation is immediately too good to be true, and immediately leads to another mystery, which leads to a flat suspicion that something must be wrong. We spend several hours of gameplay getting sly hints that, oooh, maybe he's not really alive after all, before it's finally confirmed by Maruki: yup, he really died, if we end the illusion we'll kill him too. Okay, at least we know now. Akechi is alive right now and he's going to be dead if we do this, and that doesn't make a ton of sense because every other undead person disappeared when the person who wished for them realized they were fake but at this point we'll take it. So we take down Maruki, and okay, Akechi really is dead! Probably! We're fairly sure! Aside from our lingering doubts!

And then we catch a glimpse of maybe-probably-could be him through the train window, and I just want to throw something, because come on.

Look, it is just a fact of storytelling: the more times you make an audience ask 'wait, is this character dead or aren't they?', the less they will care, until three or four reversals later you will be hard pressed to find anybody who gives a shit. Royal does this like four different times, and every iteration comes with even less certainty than the last. By the end, we somehow know even less than we did when we started! Did Akechi survive the boiler room to begin with and Maruki just didn't know? Or was Maruki lying to try and manipulate us further? Or was he actually dead and then his strength of will when Maruki's reality dissolved was enough to let him survive after all? Is that even actually him out the train window?

Where is he going! What is he doing! How did any of this happen! What is going on! We all had these questions about Akechi at the end of the original P5, and the kicker is that Royal pretends like it's going to answer them only to go LOL JK NO. It's frustrating and it's dissatisfying and it annoys me.

The one Akechi question that Royal doesn't even bother to ask, though, let alone leave ambiguous, is how does the protagonist feel about him? The entire emotional weight of the third semester rests on the protagonist caring about Akechi, Sumire, and Maruki. Maruki's the person we're supposed to sympathize with even as we try to stop him. Sumire's the person we're trying to save from herself. And Akechi is our bait--is, we are told, the one thing our protagonist wished for enough to actualize it in this world himself. Akechi's the final lure to accept Maruki's deal. Akechi's survival is meant to be tempting.

For firm Akechi fans, this probably worked out fine--the game wanted to insist that the protagonist cared for Akechi the same way the player did. For those of us who're a little more ambivalent, though (or for the many and valid people who hated him), this is a super sour note. Look, one of the Persona series' strengths is the way it lets players choose to put their time and emotional investment into an array of different characters, so the main story still has weight even if there's a couple you don't care about that much. It has always done this. The one exception, from P3 all the way through P4 to here and now, is Nanako Dojima, and by god she earned that distinction. I have never met a person who played Persona 4 who didn't love Nanako. Nanako is a neglected six-year-old child who is brave and strong enough to take care of herself and all of the housework but who still tries not to cry when her dad abandons her again and lights up like the sun when we spare her even the tiniest bit of time and attention. It is impossible not to care for Nanako. Goro Akechi is not Nanako.

And yet third semester Royal doesn't make sense if your protagonist doesn't feel linked to Akechi. The one question, out of all the brand new questions Royal throws out there, that it decides to answer all by itself--and it's how you as a player and your protagonist ought to feel about an extremely complex and controversial character. What the fuck, Royal. What the fuck.

In conclusion, I'll leave you with this. I played the original Persona 5 in March and April of 2017, as an American, a few months after the 2016 election and into the term of our then president. It felt painfully timely. A quick calendar google early on indicated that the game's 20XX was almost certainly 2016, and the closer our plot got to the in-game November leadup to an election destined to be dominated by a foul and charming man full of corruption and buoyed up by his own cult of personality, the more I wanted to laugh/cry. It felt timely. It felt important. It felt right.

I went through Royal (in LP form on youtube, not having a platform to play it on) in summer of 2020, with a hook full of face masks by my front door and protests about racial tension and local policing that occasionally turned into not-quite-riots close enough to hear at night if I opened the windows of my apartment. The parts of the game that I remembered felt as prescient and meaningful as ever, if not even more so. The new parts felt baffling. Every single evil in the game felt utterly, painfully real, from the opening moments of police brutality to the idea of a country led by a guy who probably would use his secret illegitimate teenage son as a magical assassin if the opportunity presented itself and he thought he could get away with it. Yaldabaoth as the cumulative despair of an entire population who just wanted somebody to take over and make things be okay--yes, yes, god, in summer of 2020? With streets full of people refusing to wear masks and streets full of people desperate for change? Of course. Of course that holy grail of safety should be enticing. Of course it should be terrifying.

And then Maruki. Maruki, who was just so far outside the scope of anything I could relate to the rest of the game or my own life. Because every single other villain in the rest of Persona is real. From the petty pandering principal to the human-trafficking mob boss. The corrupt politicians and the manmade god of cultural desire for stability. And this game was trying to tell me that the very biggest threat of all of them, the thing that was worse than the collective force of all society agreeing to let this happen because succumbing was easier than fighting back--that the very biggest threat of all was that the world could be taken over by some random nobody's misguided attempts to help?

No. Fuck no. I don't buy it. Because god, yes, I have seen the pain and damage done on a tiny and personal and very real level by the tight-fisted control of someone trying to help, it never looked like this. Not some ascended god of a bad therapist. All the threats to the world, and that's the one I'm supposed to take seriously? This one man is more of a threat than the fundamental human willingness to be controlled?

Sorry, but no. Not for me. Not in this game. Not in this real-life cyberpunk dystopian apocalypse.

[2bastardsandabluray]

The Empty Man - Spoiler Review

"This looks like dogshit," I hear you already saying, "Another lazy cheap-assed slenderman type horror movie for middle schoolers. You really watched this? Fucking narc!"

Oh I sure did, asshole. And you should too because looks are deceiving. RLM's Jay Bauman, the immortal weird-indie-sex-pervert-film conniseur, commands it - and who am I if not his humble shill servant? The Empty Man has a lot going on, and this combined with its runtime (>2hrs!) lends toward the general impression that first time writer & director David Prior probably should've pitched it to Fox Studios as a TV series. So even though I do love to complain, I can hardly do so about this movie. Each of the 3 acts are more or less their own film, their plot threads carefully spun together, weaving a mostly successful third and final act.

I haven't actually said anything about the plot yet, because, well... I'm honestly not sure how to summarize it; Even the IMDB summary fails to properly advertise what happens. The plot of The Empty Man is functionally the plot of a full trilogy of movies, which Fox evidently was not willing to gamble on. If the studio wasn't one monolithic quivering pussy, David Prior's ideas would have had ample time across 4ish hours of screen time. In our day and age nobody is really willing to sit down and watch a movie for that long (have you ever tried to watch the original Ben-Hur? Jesus tittyfucking Christ it's like watching a 300 year old man-corpse play shuffleboard with his bare hands) and fairly so. Resulting from this unfortunate reality is a conceptually DENSE movie which makes use of some ideas I've never seen thrown around in a horror film before. I like 'em dense, babey.

The Empty Man opens with a trope-y and unceremonious vignette about a group of hiking buddies working their way up some unnamed mountain in Bhutan, c.1995. One of them, whom I can only refer to as Kmart Brand Aaron Paul, falls into a hole on the mountainside. Whoopsie! Within the hole/cave, Discount Paul discovers, uh, well, it's not entirely clear what he's looking at in this scene. I'd elaborate, but then I bet you wouldn't be as interested.

Hiker fella #2 hurriedly rappels down, fearing his buddy might've broken a bone, or something. Discount Paul appears unscathed, but he's acting really fucking weird. Completely unresponsive to people around him, just sitting cross-legged on the ground mumbling (praying?). The next 15 minutes are pretty bog standard, but it takes a strange twist at the end of this little intro when Discount Paul just fucking murders everyone and then throws himself off the mountain. "Huh," think we, the audience, collectively, "Fuck's this supposed to be about?" I'm writing a review right now and I'm here to tell you I have barely any goddamn idea.

Act two is where things get slightly more explicable. It's a procedural cop drama now, and our tragically generic (but quite nice as detective protags go!) lead is a grizzly, hard boiled ex-detective who left - or lost - his job for reasons we don't really know yet. Cool. His friend's kid (lesbian Finn Wolfhard) has gone missing though, oh no! Detective Whatever sets about hunting for clues and discovers quickly that a bunch of other annoying-ass teenagers have also gone missing here in Plotsville, seemingly in connection to some cheesy Bloody-Mary-esque ritual the school kids venerate as local tradition.

From this point, all the building blocks of a by-the-book garbage horror flick for children who've just recently been allowed into a PG-13 are in place. The Bye-Bye Man, The Smiling Man, Dark Shadows, Slender Man, that one that's set in Moscow I don't care what it's really called, ad nauseum. Act 2 approaches - but deftly avoids - relegation into an obscenely large rolladex of pissass garbage. As it makes this crafty maneuver away from irrelevance, the really interesting events and plot concepts start to throw themselves at you.

Detective Whatever has linked the kids' disappearances to an exceptionally wacky cult, so he pays them a hard-boiled visit and listens to a sermon delivered by Barry and Office Space alumnus Stephen Root's character, who comes across as far less wacky and more trustworthy than your average cult goon. Detective Whatever and the kooky minister sit down for a chat after the service, wherein our hero utterly fails to make any sense of what Root's character is trying to explain. Nice try though, Detective Philistine!

mumble grumble mumble my stapler

Root's dialogue in this scene gives us just a glimpse of what these supernatural yokels are up to. He tries, very very patiently, to introduce our hero to the concept of the noosphere, the imaginary realm from which originates - and through which flows - all conscious thought, human and otherwise. The homely minister goes on to paint a picture of a fascinating occult ideology which draws not only on various sects of Buddhist thought, but also on a real-world cult from the early 20th century called Theosophy.

The cult is fixated on notions of the noosphere, of thought manifestation, tulpas and the like. We don't know what exactly their goal is yet, but a circle of people chanting gibberish (not a foreign language, I mean actual vocal jibberish) in a giant unlit abandoned warehouse probably needs to be stopped by our dashing protagonist before something truly spooky happens.

heehee hoohoo we're gonna summon a demon or some shit idunno

Stop them he does not, however, and hooboy does it get fucking weird from here. Detective Whatever has moved a few links up along the chain of clues, and worn himself down to the bone in the process. The guy is falling apart at the seams trying to find the end goal behind all these high-minded ideas and violent cult bozos, while at the same time struggling to manage what appears to be PTSD due to a tragic loss.

Somewhere along the way, all that he's seen and been told about a higher plane of pure consciousness, about a world beyond the realm of our perception, about entities ancient and malicious, has more or less shredded his relationship with reality. As the plot threads begin to wrap themselves together, Detective WhoEvenAmI unravels at a rapidly increasing pace. Then, coinciding with his complete psychotic break, the detective happens upon the missing girl essentially by chance. She looks extraordinarily cult-y. The girl reinforces this initial judgement by saying some seriously bizarre shit. Detective Cuckoo's Nest is not, in fact, a real person, and nor was his tragically lost family. He is a manifestation of the cultists' combined thought and concentration, a sort of tulpa. "We made you!" she gleefully informs the harrowed and broken man, "We invented every aspect of your existence and conjured you into being".

Why? Fuck if I know, dude. That you're reading this on a Tumblr post instead of Roger Ebert's website or something similar is a decent enough indicator that The Empty Man falls a few hairs short of its ambition, losing some box office schmeat in the process. It's a shame, too, 'cause excepting the last 10 minutes the whole ride is unique in tone and deeply fascinating in content. Prior's debut movie is well-shot, well-edited (if a bit short), and the story is carefully crafted to have you scratching your head and ass the entire time. I love me a movie like that. And though the ending is neither explanatory nor wholly satisfactory, David Prior's blended vagueries of Buddhist philosophy and mass psychology are a very new and fresh take on a horror macguffin that can be spooky and/or scary. If you like spooky mysteries, and especially if you like cult horror, both I and the Great Immortal Jay In The Sky beseech you. Give budding director David Prior two hours of your time, you probably won't regret it. Besides, what were you gonna do with those two hours anyway? Scroll through Instagram? Fuckin' jackass.

[blee-bleep]

Though I disagree vehemently about your take I'm also very curious of your arguments for why you think Akko is such a bad character?

Anon, you have no idea what you just fucking asked of me. Time for a review! This is going to be hella’ long. 

Vanilla Character that insists that she has personality

So the one thing I’m going to start off with is; The Relatable/Vanilla Protagonist Syndrome. This is the syndrome that is used for most main characters in order to have a clean-slate character that is basically the audience in order to promote the world-building in the series by having them absolutely no clue of what is the world around them. That is what Akko exactly is, and that is what Trigger abuses her out of. 

Little Witch Academia is an anime that focuses solely on world-building, so much so that they’re willing to pile over their characters in order to show what magic can do. 

(And apparently for Trigger, world-building also means learning who the author of a 200-yo Twilight spinoff book is and who was Holbrooke’s dad)

But the point is, the anime is a pile of boring trash fire that focuses on world-building, even from its original exposition of the OVA. It uses the pattern of ‘theme/problem of the week’ in half of the series with arcs going nowhere for a while and suddenly rushes an epiphany in the last few episodes. *cough ep 15*

The point with world-building serialization is that it needs a way to be promoted, and what way for it to promote is to get Akko to fuck around with it. As her job as the protag, that’s exactly what she does for more than half of the series. She’s like a stretchy character that is carried by the plot with gross insistence from the show that she has character (which is being stubborn and clumsy that is written off as ‘passionate’).

What’s worse is Trigger has all these ideas yet none of them are polished to its fullest (like the political divide between witches and modern government) or is overlapped by some bullshit to add because Japan. (seriously, a hunting-themed episode with cool lore, and yet a third of the episode is all about robots and building it? What the fuck?)

See, that’s why I think Akko is a horribly written character, not her character itself (if that were the case then I would’ve ditched the show the first episode) but because how she’s executed with it for the show. She’s constantly pulled by different bullshit the show comes up and makes her pull the answers the episode needs out of thin fucking air just because the writers said ‘fuck you’ to development and that they need to end the problem at some point right?

If characters can’t be tied correctly to the worldbuilding then there’s a chance that the character themselves would break, because it just can’t often work with what you’ve already placed in the previous episodes you’ve set up in the first place. Arcs overlap with each other and LWA doesn’t do shit for that until it needs a banging climax. 

Akko is constantly renewed and she learns nothing from what she learned (or at least hints of it), except for the metamorphosis bullshit and Shiny Rod. Which brings me to my next point on why Akko is such a horrible character.

Shiny Rod is a Leech

This thing is basically the plot device that Akko is so tied to. If there’s ever an episode where it solely focuses on Akko herself, it’s often related to either Shiny Rod or Chariot du Nord, which is the shittiest way to limit a character with so much exposition with everything the series has thrown at her. The only other way the series doesn’t do this to her is Diana in episode 12, but it isn’t even focused on her, it’s focused on the cabbage and her Draco Malfoy syndrome.

Anyways, were an episode be connected to Akko in some way, it’s always limiting to her duty as the holder of the Shiny Rod and the occasional situation from Chariot. Not from her friends, who she clearly relates to and has more history with, but with the Shiny Rod and Chariot.

The series lazily signs this as Akko’s resolution to her character by the last episode (FUCK THAT) and does nothing else with her relationship with other characters outside of Diana and Chariot. Honestly, you’d expect that after going through Sucy’s mind and visiting Lotte’s hometown, she would’ve grown as a better character and more than being a two-dimensional ‘chosen-one’ character who only gets an episode if it focuses on the plot-device that pulled her in the magical world in the first place. 

But no, Trigger is still insisting pies, weird shops, and other boring stuff needs to be shown for the series to make it interesting, and dumps the idea to the next. An arc is never properly made for all the shit they let Akko go through because the series is so fast-paced in the wrong places. And when it does focus on what is important (more important than finding about Nightfall’s author), it’s usually done spontaneously thus eliminating the suppose suspense that the single important thing is supposed to do *I HATE EPISODE 15 WHAT THE FUCK*

The point is, Akko is just a ‘believing heart’. A holder of Shiny Rod, who managed to get under Chariot without her knowing. It’s like she’s Midoriya (My Hero Academia) but much watered down and if you take that away from her, she has nothing, when out of all the stuff she could’ve had.

What LWA’s writers hadn’t realized is that what they actually wrote for Akko is what could’ve been her focus but Trigger insists for the world-building theme is that Akko’s arc should only come in the climax and the filler episodes are for her friends because you know, it won’t be more interesting that way and now they have a main protagonist that’s actually interesting beyond their design and suppose-personality. 

Thus I’m next to my last bullshit:

Akko, the Wasted Potential™

I recently rewatched Citrus lately, and though the show is much narrow than LWA’s world of magic, I realized what actually makes it better than it in ways that the latter fails. And it’s their protagonist.

I know you guys will trash about Yuzu being a simp and all, and I absolutely agree with that, but what makes Yuzu better than Akko is not because she’s more down-to-earth, but she has a three-dimensional mindset, a mindset which is the very thing kept away from Akko. 

While Yuzu may not have been pushed into a world of magic by the neck and gets dragged by the plot as violently as Akko (and the two very different themes of the two shows of course), but if you pull those away, their passion are nearly built the same. What differs them both is that Yuzu actually acts out what she needs to do and builds a steady relationship with the other characters around her, even if it’s very subtle and small. (Like, Harumin being her wicked hot sidekick? God yes, top-tier Gyaru)

Akko, on the other hand, literally goes into one of her best friend’s mind in a poison-induced coma and gets shoved into her other best friend’s culture by visiting her hometown. You might think she’d grow from that and realize what it takes to be a better character, right? WRONG.

Of course, Trigger uses these things as filler episodes and nothing more. It doesn’t reflect on Akko’s character because she’s not allowed to think like it should. Though the show would insist she has personality, it does the opposite when Akko’s only character is only used as ‘believing heart’ for the Shiny Rod and nothing much else, because the only times when they do get her a new attitude is dropped off right after.

It would’ve been cool if they dropped the world-building theme for a bit and focus on how they should make the characters much more interesting than having their personalities as the root problems of episodes. 

When I first watched LWA, I had so much more expectation for the characters themselves, especially Amanda O’Neill after her introduction in episode 3. But came episode 5 and then she… didn’t really matter that much despite being in half of the episode. And she didn’t have another one not until 11 episodes later. Imagine making and hyping up such a unique character and barely giving her screentime of three episodes! That’s one of the grossest things you can do in baiting lesbians, Trigger! 

And it doesn’t stop at Amanda; it applies to almost every other character. Chariot is the pink-print disappointment of a hyped character that didn’t have enough time. She’s a plot-device character that everyone was anticipating but she’s barely given the after of a shitty episode 14 (that has another completely different problem altogether). Episode 15 was literally the worst you could’ve done to make a twist because a) the development leading to that revelation was undercooked, and especially shitty because the show basically used Croix as a plot device, b) it’s done nearly towards the end of the series so the timing for her hype was weirdly placed, and c) Chariot’s personality from that episode is being used repeatedly just to let Akko become a sitting duck. 

So yeah, Trigger was so focused on the concept of world-building and making magic look as interesting as possible that the idea that maybe the characters would flat-out look bleak was not in their cone of vision. Akko was fundamentally a boring protagonist because she keeps getting pulled apart and has not ingrained anything in that, and to rub salt into the wound, she becomes so used to it that when Croix set her up with the Wagandea trap, Chariot has to intervene and at the cost of her flight powers, which does not help their characters one bit.

Akko is a shitty protagonist Trigger shredded apart just for their sake of world-building and she has learned nothing from what the show has thrown at her because the writers didn’t think she needed it, because, in the first place, it’s not about her. It’s about the Shiny Rod and completing Chariot’s story (which is half-assed in its own way). Lord knows how they botched her to the point she’s blank. She’s nothing more than a ‘believing heart’ and if Trigger just keeps there, that’s forever what she is. And that, in itself, is why I think Akko is a horrible character.

[yarrowleef]

Read Darkness Within all in one sitting last night and then passed out so here are my scattered thoughts i wrote down as i read, (afterthoughts in parenthesis)

Darkness Within Spoilers, obv

UGH GOD THE SECOND HAND EMBARRESMENT FROM SQUIRREL FAKE FLIRTING WITH ASHFUR IT HURTS

Just remembered Sandynose died and got a small boost of happiness (will Hawkwing and Plumwillow ever be allowed to talk again now? I mean probly not b/c they aren’t protags and non-protags don’t rly have friends but I can hope. Sorry, Hawkwhing and Plumwillow’s short-lived friendship in Hawkwings Journey was one of the last times I felt something)

Ghost fleas lol

Mothwing: i’m rude now. (but more importantly, Fuck Tigerheartstar for forcing his son to be around the cat that hurt him so badly, like he HAS to know how upset everyone is regarding Shadowsight and his accidentally helping the imposter, and he’s making him be the sole one to tend to him??? There is NO REASON Puddleshine couldn’t have done it. You think Puddleshine is going to try and murder someone?? )

Oh no don't make this a traveling book, and a ROOTBRISTLE traveling book this is going to be insufferable

BACON AND EGGS

Lightleap Is Good (Hey didn’t Shadowsight have another sister? lets be real we all knew Pouncekit was going to end up as the forgettable 3rd one)

Bristlefrost’s crush continues to feel unnatural to me. It’s like she’s grasping at straws romanticizing the most generic things.....wow....I love how ur just so...bare minimum competent....being polite to the loner we came all this way to ask for help like any somewhat reasonable person would....How admirable...I love the way you just *clenches fist* exhibit some basic traits of loyalty and skill that literally every warrior has (I s2g I’m this close to head canon-ing Bristle as a clueless aromantic who doesn't understand what romance is actually suppose to feel like so she just looks at feelings of low-bar admiration and assumes “oh I guess this is that “romantic attraction” everyone’s always talking about? guess I must be in love???” because both her crushes have felt out of nowhere and like. Idk fake/forced sounding like she’s just telling me that that she’s In Love Now while I continue to not actually feel it at all from her end. I know it’s just that I hate the way Erin’s write female characters in love but this head-canon makes me laugh)

Got scared because I thought they were going to villainize Spotfur for not wanting kits for a minute, but also excited at the concept of maybe exploring a female character that doesn’t want to be a mother, but it turns out she was just pulling a Sparkpelt and actually DID want the kits all along and was only hesitant because she’s sad. Shrug oh well.  (the only female character in warriors that was distinctly upset about pregnancy and motherhood was Lizardstripe and as we all know she was eeeeeevil and abusive and “overly ambitious” because why else would you not come around to being happy about motherhood?? YES I’M STILL SALTY ABOUT YELLOWFANG’S SECRET, BAD BOOK)  Whatever it’s fine so long as Spot doesn’t lose her rebel leader spirit forever and default to “soft mom” personality for the rest of her life, I gotta have hope because I actually like Bristle and Spot’s current relationship. Also I am actually very grateful they never made Bristle resentful at Spot for getting with her crush, as lots of middle grade/YA media has a very bad habit of demonizing female romantic “competition” and its super gross, so I rly do like that Bristlefrost is so protective and caring towards her instead. )

This series is trying to tell me that Rootspring is actually Big but I refuse to accept that. he has dumb scrawny bitch energy and we all know it

Sunrise: “Thunderclan may be better with a new leader” lol go off (i mean........they right tho...It’s unfortunate that the tension in this whole plot is a bit dampened by the fact that i DO in fact want bramble to die v badly. I don’t even have special hatred for him, I’m just bored of him.)

Yes Lionblaze beat the shit out of Ashfur

*HOLY SHIT THAT’S FUCKED!!!! (I wrote this in reference to the ghost summoning scene, this was all I could manage at the time, that scene was WILD and I am VIBING WITH THE HORROR OF IT ALL)

* Brashfur: Oh yeah? Could Ashfur fake THIS? *stands up with slightly better posture* Shadowsight: oh damn you got me there...... (asdfhhfhhgh im sorry that was really funny, how did that prove anything?? ONLY A ~REAL~ WARRIOR COULD STAND UP STRAIGHT WE ALL KNOW ASHFUR IS INCAPABLE OF GOOD POSTURE!)

End of the book: *LAUGHING NERVOUSLY* WHAT THE FUCK??? (I thought he was just gonna kill Squirrelflight right there holy shit can you imagine the RIOTS that would ensue in the wake of all this Squirrel/Bramble discourse I was so scared for a second.  

 But it’s fine, she just....went to super hell instead......Warriors has come so far lmao WHAT IS HAPPENING

Final Notes:

*On Mothwing, I don’t think her behavior struck me as “CHARACTER BUTCHERING” as much as it did for other people? I mean.....Warriors fans will say that literally any time a character does ANYTHING less then perfectly nice I think her actions just seemed that much harsher because we are reading from Shadowsight’s POV, and Shadowsight is taking everything 10x more personally right now (understandably so, but Mothwing isn’t inside his head) she wasn’t trying to hurt him. Also... like... Shadowsight DID get his name too early. It’s not Mothwing’s job to put his feelings above everything else, she’s not even his mentor, Puddleshine on the other hand, as his main mentor, I don’t understand what his deal is ignoring Shadowsight, that’s not how you help an apprentice but I suppose I chalk many of his mistakes up to also not being the most experienced medicine cat (he barely even had his own mentor.) Maybe he’s distant because he feels guilty and actually blames himself for not guiding Shadowsight better?? the two of them haven’t communicated about it yet so idk

 any way I give Mothwing a pass to be a little short tempered right now as a cat who has had her abilities periodically questioned all her life no matter how hard she works or how much experience she has, just because she doesn’t vibe with the spiritual cult side of the clans, I can understand why she’s a bit defensive of being questioned and frustrated watching so much hurt happen Yet Again due to reliance on StarClan visions over common sense, and I for one still stan her for slandering StarClan and refusing to accept Mistystar’s bullshit banishing like everyone else. Sometimes a character is at the end of their rope and can’t manage to be 100% nice 24/7 and that’s maybe not inherently bad writing? idk just my hot take. At a certain point we all gotta reckon with the fact that our perception of most popular supporting characters in heavily colored by fanon and we can’t always get mad at the authors for not adhering to it

*The sisters magic shit is my fav worldbuilding warriors has had in AGES, I love the way it’s described and it actually feels like it adds something to this world. I love this horror imagery with the ghosts, very excited for that. 

*still won’t be thrilled if Ashfur is working alone, because his motive doesn’t make sense right now. I mean the trying to get Squilf thing, sure, whatever, but the “I will make everyone pay for what they did to me”???? cause like?? Who??? they didn’t do anything to him?? Ashfur’s grievance was very specifically JUST Squilf. He has no other cause for revenge, he had no other beef or complaints about the clans to my knowledge? The cat that killed him is dead, and she’s like, the only other one that I could see as having “wronged” him?? I guess he also didn’t like Firestar much according to Graystripe’s Vow (and on account of how willing he was to kill him w/ Hawkfrost) but Firestar is ALSO dead. I don’t understand his angle. Will have to see last 2 books to judge i suppose.

*All in all I am interested to see where this is going!! but also the pacing as I feared is becoming a major issue. It’s better then ending the main conflict on book 3 like Vision of Shadows did, but omg. Hardly anything happened in all these pages. I realized I was over half way through and nothing about the situation had actually CHANGED or advanced at all in all that time. Similar to the past 2 books which I believe could have been combined, this plot felt like it should have been the first half of a book. Discussing whether or not to kill the imposter isn’t much of a standalone plot, it’s just the set up to a plot. Finding the sisters didn’t need to be a whole long thing, the debates about the Imposters fate didn’t need to be repeated 10 times, all those chapters illustrating that “Shadowsight is sad” were also drawn out, repetitive, and interchangeable, we probably only needed 2 or so chapters showing his struggles to get the necessary information across. It felt like a lot of padding, it was really slow and I did a lot of skimming. I am still very interested in the overarching plot and mystery behind the ghosts so that kept me reading but man this “will they won’t they kill him” plot did not justify it’s own whole book. Alas this is a persisting issue that will never be resolved while they continue to force 6 books into 1 series that doesn’t need 6 books. I’m sure the writers are doing the best they can with these unfortunate constraints but still, it’s a wonder this slow padding isn’t more of a detriment to their younger readers that the books are supposed to be marketed to.