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mimiri22-6 · 4 years

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I JUST FOUND OUT BEE AND PUPPYCAT HAD A SECOND SEASON! GUESS WHAT I JUST FINISHED WATCHING!

Oh my fucking god holy shit, my guys! This show. This fucking show. Where do I even start! First off

SPOILERS!!!!!!

YOU DO NOT WANT TO WALK INTO THIS SEASON, THIS SHOW, WITH SPOILERS! DO NOT FUCKING LOOK, THIS IS 1000% SPOILER TERRITORY!!!

So I will be taking the extra step of taking my laptop out, and continuing this on there(and after I wake up because it's 4am and I regret absolutely NONE of this whatsoever because, guys, I love this show with everything I have left to my being, I swear, I will die for a third season)

Warning: This is a long one.

OKOKOKOK! I know I know! It’s been uh...A Month since I first posted this! BUT I am Here Now and Ready!!! I am less than 10 seconds into the first episode of season 2 and I am already So Ready to relive this!!(Dream SMP has Nothing on this show, God I Love This Show Far Too Much!!!!!!)

...First ten minutes...I have So Much I want to say...Just-just a lot of love...

okokokokokokokokokok!!!!!! I think I know how I’m going to do this now! One bullet for each episode! Let’s see if I stick with it.

Gentle Touch

In the first episode we already get a big game changer for Bee and her development. Bee becoming more responsible as a favor for Deckard. He asks her to take care of his family while he’s at cooking school and we already see her doing this. Going out to the ocean with Weasley, going out of her comfort zone for people she’s practically family to, which is why we got the beginning flashback, once again going out of her comfort zone to stop Puppycat from punching kittens, And Finally, coming out from her nap cupboard to face Howl and help pay for bills by eating ugly food.

Little Fingers

Ooh, this one has foreshadowing dream sequence. I would say more about it if it had more significance, but it’s really just what happens to Bee in the last ep. This episode brings more of Bee being responsible, trying to take her phone away from Puppycat so he stops making bad purchases. This episode made me realize what Puppycat’s role is this season, the child. Or something among those lines. He’s the same as he was last season, but it seems/is a bit more exaggerated because Bee isn’t doing the same things anymore. She’s started to care about consequences. And speaking about consequences, Toast announces she’s pregnant while confirming that she’s been staying...in Cass’s room(?)...weird, but ok, and by Tim pointing and Merlin’s reaction, it’s Merlin’s...but also everyone else seemed like they thought they were the culprit and I don’t want to think about the implications of that....MOVING ON-OH WAIT, And Cardamon’s mom is spouting magic tears that messes with the plants, so there’s that.

Snow and Violets

I’m going to be honest, I’m not 100% sure what to put here and I’m loosing steam. (I’ve been awake since 3 am...) But I think I can put something. The situation with Mr. Cup is the definition of being haunted by your past. The guilt and regret of cheating in the past has made him lose his motivation to give it his all in racing because, what’s the point? Motivation and not caring was his norm, so he just stuck with it. Until Bee, and now he can be a rainbow and sleep with less guilt and regret on his conscience. The thing with the island rapidly changing could be one of three things. Something to do with the ship that Is the island, a metaphor for change, or something really cool the creators just wanted.

Day off Work

Not Too much to note for this ep overall. Puppycat totally did do the ‘wrecking the house in search for the owner’ thing dogs do. Finally, a dog trait! Every time I see Cardamon now I just get sad cause he’s 7, and should Not be doing landlord stuff. Bee showing worry about how Cardamon’s mom is still asleep and being worried about Cardamon himself, I’m just glad someone’s noticing. I keep forgetting that some people haven’t watched the pilot so they don’t know about Puppycat being a Space Outlaw, so when he found all his stuff under the apartment I was less surprised and more excited. The two last things I want to say is I think it’s interesting/cool/intriguing how the Wizard family just takes every weird thing either in stride, unquestioningly, or ignorance. Just trying to pretend it didn’t happen so they don’t have to deal with it(other than Crispin, but he’s coming up). And the last thing I just want to bring to light is CARDAMON BEING SO CUTE IN THE LAST SCENE! JUST BEING A CHILD! AND LAUGHING WITH HIS DOG! ON A FUNNY CHAIR! I LOVE HIM YOUR HONOR AND I WILL PROTECT THAT SMILE WITH MY WHOLE BEING!!!

My Favorite

Note, Pretty Patrick is also The Mayor. Alright. It’s definitely been a few months and you can see the relationship between Howl and Bee has gotten better, not that it was too bad to begin with, just a bit less peeved on Howl’s end. The theme of Bee being responsible is brought into play again with the train station scene. Telling Puppycat to not hit and the way Puppycat was acting around Patrick. All little kid stuff. Which also kind of clashes with what I thought was Puppycat being older than Bee by a lot, I’m honestly slowly getting more and more confused exactly how I should perceive Puppycat. THE FIRST REAL LOOK AT THE HAND GUYS! I’m still not sure what their deals are, but they have a corpse on their hands and that is already the biggest red flag. I have a guess as to what/who they are in relation to Puppycat and, by acquaintance, Bee, but I could be wrong, but I also can’t think of any other people they may be. I’ll bring it back up either the next time we see them or at the end.

Did You Remember

Grampa Puppycat cares about his granddaughter a whole lot. Don’t @ me, their dynamic is more confusing than a moving maze...Now this episode, ooh boy, it feels like a lot, but in a minimal way? First off, Cardamon finally breaks down about the stress of being a 7 year old landlord and Bee takes care of him for the day. Big Sis Bee For The Win! DON’T @ ME I MAKE UP MY OWN FAMILY DYNAMICS!!! Kind of continuing from the first sentence, Puppycat and Bee love each other(I Stand By Platonically For Them) so much already, for them it’s been a little over a year considering Puppycat fell into Bee’s life before her last birthday and now they’re celebrating another one. And I must admit, I can not for the life of me figure out wtf the deal is with the tears. They have little shapes of recent events in them and they make plants weird/straight up just make life! Like, What Even Is That?! Also, Cardamon finally gets a good sleep.

Bird Friend

Ok, so we got more ship pieces, a most likely reason as to why Puppycat was Like That in the last few episodes of season 1 and has been goopy every now and again in this season. Apparently eating things he shouldn’t eat make him Extremely off model and goopy. More hands! But not the rest of them this time around. I wonder if Sticky’s hunt for all the birds has any significance other than showing us another piece. Puppycat breaking down and spilling a few secrets after stress eating off the floor and Bee immediately saying no to someone else telling her what’s wrong with Puppycat and letting him come to her first instead of forcing him is always such a good lesson to have. Also, Cass is into weirdly shaped shiny things.

Two Clown Noses

Ah, it’s this one. The one that Really throws a wrench into the Bee/Deckard ship. THEY’RE BOTH SO CUTE! I CAN’T CHOOSE!!! This entire episode is just Crispin and Bee hanging out with the added angst of the beginning ‘story’. This world is full of such amazingly crazy characters and Crispin’s backstory is one of those crazier ones. Bee and him Lived Together and Know Each Other, he knows she’s a robot! My only question is, what happened that they broke up? WAIT- DID THEY EVEN BREAK UP?! It would be weird if they weren’t because they were living together and then they decide to live separate again would make no sense. I think I just jumped to the weirdest conclusion...Anyway! How would Puppycat get sick? I feel like that was just another thing they added to create different dynamics. The beginning birthday thing and the conclusion felt so real even though the cause was something so out there that I feel like only animated shows like this could pass, but also I feel like someone out there has done something similar, so what do I know. Yeah, not much else about this episode, it was mostly just Bee/Crispin stuff and character stuff. Gosh they’re so cute...but so is Bee/Deckard. Being a multishipper is hard...

Funny Lying

RIGHT! THEY’RE CALLED THE WARLOCKS! THAT’S THE TITLE I WAS FORGETTING! Tim knows everyone’s secrets, comes with the perk of having a lot of time and not talking much, you observe everyone else while they think you’re doing something else. I know from experience. Eavesdropping is a specialty of mine. SHIT THIS IS THE ONE WHERE CASS GETS THE MESSAGE DISSING HER FOR FALLING FOR TOAST FROM A COWORKER! I caught those vibes during the first season, but then the first half of this season came along and I was forced to drop those vibes in favor of cannon because TOAST WAS PREGOS WITH ONE OF CASS’S BROTHER’S KIDS! I’m good at catching gay vibes in fictional worlds, but I’m shit in the real world, just like everything else. And the thing is, we don’t get Any kind of explanation/closure for the entire rest of the season! We see Toast totally shocked reaction, probably moments before she was going to sneak attack Cass, but froze upon seeing that text. AND WE GET NOTHING ABOUT THAT FOR THE REST OF THE SEASON! Anyway, that was only like 2 minutes into the ep, this is taking forever. We got more Bee being responsible for Cardamon and getting rid of the tears, but the biggest part of this episode is undoubtedly Puppycat’s scenes. We got him sinking to the bottom of the ocean and getting cradled by flowers created by the tears next to the ship. We find out he was bullied and ridiculed in school as a kid and his best friend(idk what else they would be counted as), Violet, convinced him to leave their planet after they accidently summon their ship, leaving Puppycat’s mother behind. seeing how he cried about leaving her she seems to have been a great caretaker and he loved her immensely. We get the scene of Bee’s dad as a baby/Very young child on a mission, giving a presentation, and finding the candy to be a source of energy by cracking it open. Making me think, ‘Is that Bee’s fuel source? If it is, how would not taking full doses for two years effect her?’ because in the first season she splits the candy in half to share with Puppycat and in this season she didn’t eat the candy at all. Makes me even more worried for the future knowing what state she’s in when this season ends. With the last flower fever dream/memory it seems that the princess that he fell in love with was the one to make the final move to turning him into a ‘monster.’ Don’t worry tho, Bee saved him from the bottom of the ocean

Golden Eyes

(I’m getting more and more tired as this goes one. I started doing this at around 12 this morning and now it’s nearing 6 pm. I’m loosing it!) We got another birthday and it’s Howl’s this time, though it’s not really his episode. The fish are attracted to the wish crystals for some reason and one eats a bit of it to be ‘human’ for a day. I love how the fish hated being a human and Weasley didn’t even notice it was a date. I don’t know if it was or not, but ending on that was funny. We got the return of the major douche from the season 1 finally and a mention of Moully.

Why Don’t You Help Me?

(I took a break between episodes, aka I went tf to sleep, because I was falling asleep at the table and not really processing everything enough for what I’m trying to do) Ok, so this is a day in the life of Cardamon episode with supposed parelles to the Warlocks. We start with the red one stuck and the others unwilling to help...and then they start drawing Puppycat’s face on the 5th one’s corpse and these guys just do not care that it’s a dead body that they supposedly killed themselves. In short, they have all my fear because they are uncaring about body counts. Cardamon still goes to school on top of being a self proclaimed landlord and gets made fun of for being responsible and tattling at every chance he gets. Something I just noticed too is, at first I just assumed he was finally getting tired after being an adult in a child’s body for who knows how long, but now I’m thinking if he’s supposed to be asleep with Violet, his mom, then the reason for him being so tired is being awake too long. It could most likely be both, too. Just like Cardamon, I have no idea what all the tears mean. In the most recent one was see Moully as the charm in the center. What’s the pattern with these? Again we see Bee being responsible and taking care of Cardamon, making sure he gets home safe, tucking him in, and pulling an all night favor so he can sleep and get to school in the morning. Speaking of that, I can’t say I like Cardamon’s teachers all that much. I could rant about them, but this is already long and they’re not worth it. My only real question is, why the hell are their clothes so ragged and dirty? Do they not know how to bathe? Just, WTF? (either that or they’re Really not trying to hide their *ahem* activities from the kids, which just makes me want to punch sense into them or something)

Now I’m Really Alone

MOULLY!!!! Sorry, I just love him a lot. From what I can put together, he’s some kind of gift giving being. Giving wishes, exchanging good deeds and quick favors for other good deeds and favors. Just being Really nice and wanting to help everyone he comes across. This episode makes me see so much in common between Bee and Moully. They both want to help even when they don’t know how. Making messes and finding ways clean up those messes out of guilt and the feeling of obligation. They both have lost things they need to pick up and the knowledge that they have all the time in the world because they’ve both been alive for so long. It keeps getting hinted, but now kind of confirmed, that the Wizard’s know Bee is Weird because they haven’t seen her age. Hell, seeing how she interacts with Cardamon she could have even baby sat them. So all the Wizard’s know she’s Weird and, supposedly, only Crispin knew she was a robot. That was until Deckard found out in the season 1 finally. Once again bringing up the point of people in the Wizard family finding something out and ignoring it and hiding it. In the season 1 finally, Tim asked Cass if Deckard wasn’t depressed anymore, practically saying that Deckard has some form of depression. Depression being a mental illness that runs in families, it wouldn’t be a stretch to assume that some other members of the family have similar problems. One of the things I remember depression doing is the person will see a problem and ignore it. Something that many people in this show do with the weirdness around them and the emotional states/situations of the other people in the show. This season is about finally seeing the thing you’ve been ignoring and doing something about it. And that’s what Bee’s been doing this season, taking charge and finally getting her junk out of the ocean and getting REALLY far out of her comfort zone. She HATES water and the ocean, but she’s diving in to take back what’s hers and cleaning up a mess. There’s A Lot to analyze with this episode, the similarities of Moully’s and Bee’s situations and personalities, Puppycat being the responsible one again for the long run of things, the tears and how the wish crystals work, and the state of multiple character’s minds. Ignorance is bliss until it isn’t.

I Won’t Leave You Alone

Ok, SO MANY NOTES! Which makes sense seeing how it’s the last episode. First off, THOSE WARLOCK BASTDARDS VIOLATED MOULLY AND IF THEY WERE REAL I WOULD THROTLE THEM TILL THEIR HEADS POPPED OFF!!! I am a very protective person when it comes to things I care about. And I’m going to say it here and now incase something comes up of it, Cooking Prince gives be Colorful Vibes, if you know what I mean. You don’t follow someone home and bother them when they don’t want to be bothered unless you’re Into into them. That’s all I’m saying and if nothing comes of it, I will drop it. I’m barely hanging onto it to begin with. So, last episode we watched one of three hands punching the other hands to let Moully go, and in this episode it’s confirmed that the day Moully was pulled through the void, the 5th warlock died. My theory with that is, the 5th one was against getting Puppycat in some way and retaliated by fighting them off of Moully and then the others retaliated by killing them in some way. And the tears in this episode didn’t give life to the corpse, but grew new life over top of it, the tears can’t bring the dead back. The ship gets put back together and we see Puppycat being pretty selfish again, bringing the ship online while Bee gets scooped trying to help Moully. He indirectly helped, but only after he got what he wanted. Cooking Prince, an outsider, brings up how everything going on on the island is Weird and Cass celebrates someone acknowledging it. Once again, bringing back the ‘ignorance is bliss until it’s not’ thing going on around here. Cardamon does more childish things this episode, making a wish and crying in his mother’s arms. He got to finally let go of his responsibilities and let it out until he passed out, and now he gets to sleep again. Moully and Bee are out of commission and the Wizard’s+Cooking Prince stay one the island/ship to be with Bee even though they are mostly confused about EVERYTHING going on rn. Bee has multiple Bees now while she’s out, and so, they go looking for Bee’s dad. I have a feeling he has at least some white hairs by now.

I remember watching this season for the first time. I remember I definitely cried at multiple points, but I can’t exactly remember what points now. I didn’t cry this time, I was too busy taking everything in and trying to put what little pieces I could find together. The first season was to get us used to this world and get comfortable for a chill ride, but then it smacks you in the face with something much bigger at the very end. This season was to make you pay more attention and to question your surroundings. It was also about the first steps to taking charge of your life. If Bee didn’t do all the responsible things she did this season, the warlocks would have probably gotten Puppycat while the island went to shambles. Actions have consequences and that’s what this was about. I believe next season is why ‘Lazy in Space’ was the title. The characters are going to be in space, looking for Bee’s dad, and will acknowledge all the weird things going on while developing, excuse the pun, in out of this world ways.

I can’t wait for season 3.

#bee and puppycat #this show is fucking amazing #it is worth the loss of sleep time and work #bee and puppycat spoilers #season 2 spoilers #bee and puppycat season 2 #bee and puppycat season 2 spoilers #now I usually tag every character that I mention but that would be imposable at this point #show review #season review #I love this show lots #it deserves all the love it can get #(I'll rb with the link I used but I'll only tag it minimally just incase)

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popculturebuffet · 4 years

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Darkwing Duck: Just Us Justice Ducks

This is it. 7 reviews, 10 episodes, 2 teams, 7 brave heroes, 13 villians but only 5 of which are relevant here. All leading to this. One big final review of one of the most loved, most important and most awesome Darkwing Duck episodes, the ONLY two parter outside of the pilot in the show’s long history. If your just joining us, as hinted at in the opening sentence i’ve been doing reviews of every episode of darkwing duck featuring the first apperances of the Justice Ducks and Fearsome Five. The only exception was Megavolt, but I ended up doing Negaduck instead, so I could cover both Megs and the original version of Negsy in one fell swoop (A great idea and comission from longtime supporter of the blog WeirdKev27). All so I could give this the build up it deserved and get the background I didn’t have years ago when I wanted to watch this, wanted to see all of the first apperances first.. then just didn’t get around to it, not even finding out the episode order is an utter nightmare. While i’ve given out about this before, allow me to do so again: Due to prioritzing what got done first over proper order, ALL of the justice ducks first appearances eps were aired after this and while Morgana at least got an episode before this, it was her second appearance. Same with LIquidator and Quackerjack though like Morgana, Quackerjack still got an episode or two before this one. So yeah as a result to most kids it was a bunch of heroes just introduced, up against two new villians and 3 old faviorites. You kinda see the problem. It’s why I watched it in chronlogical order: to have this be a gathering of established heroes against darking’s worst foes... and the debut of the worst of THE worst, the true Negaduck at long last. So with the proper build this deserves and not much else to say, let’s look at this two parter and see if all my effort was worth it and if the hype is real. Let’s, get, dangerous under the cut

We open in St. Canard in Darkwing Duck’s secret HQ over the bridge, where he’s getting ready to go out with Morgana and does... things to his hair.

Excellently terrible hair do.. seriously I love a good pompadour as much as the next person, probably unheathily more than the next person, but this isa bit much and adding a curl to it is just..

I mean Superman’s hair looked better at this point, and for those wondering “Wait superman usually has a pretty good look”.. welll.

Yeah.. post-ressurection.. he had a mullet. Look there are only 4 people in the world who can pull of a mullet: Brock Sampson, Patrick Swayze (God Rest his soul), Hank Venture and Daniel Cooksy as a teenager. And he ALSO put a curl in it and it still looked okay because that’s one of this things along with being selfless, and idiots calling him bland for you know, being a kind hearted symbol of humanity at it’s best. But man the mullet was just not for you bud.

Morgana naturally tries to change it while Gosalyn watches and...

Yeah as you can probably guess a LOT has happened.. and all off screen. Morgana is not only fully on the side of good apparently, but she and Darkwing have gone from simply flirting with one another to dating AND Gosalyn has met her and they fought the astro mummies together.. no wait that was the Caballleros yesterday.. but still eveyrthing else is PRETTY important stuff and even with the messed up episode order the kind of thing you’d ASSUME an episode would be made about. I mean this is her meeting darkwing’s kid for fuck’s sake. That’s a big step in any relationship let alone one just starting out. And trust me, I didn’t miss anything: every other morgana ep seems to have them already in a steady relaionship. I DO think it’s stuff like this why some fans aren’t crazy about this relationship. Me I think he’s honestly too good for her.

But before they can go out for whatever vauge date they were going to have the power goes out and DW notices it’s megavolt and prepares to go after him only for Morgana to question him about their date.

Morgana.. sweetie.. the entire city is blacked out. Nowhere will be open. But Gosalyn offers an alternative, Morgana go along with him and while both are reluctant they go with it. So Darkwing confronts Megavolt... and soon finds a bunch of chattering teeth. Yup, it’s Quackerjack as the two have teamed up, and together easily defeat Darkwing, putting him in an electric chair. The two also really get along which makes sense: Both have similar personalities, being kinda nuts indivdiuals with a singular obession , which compliment each other as toys often need electric power after all. THey strap darkwing into an electric chair, that got dark fast and he begs morgana to save him.. only for her to accidently turn him into jello. I mean.. they say pudding but.. their diffrent things. Just because world famous sexual predator Bill Cosby promoted BOTH for the jell-o brand doesn’t mean Jello is magically pudding. If he could magically make one thing

Point is Darkwing is jello, the villians mock him then set up some kind of device and head off.. while also mentioning a mysterious boss. I wonder who it could be.

Nah.. too obvious. Darkwing is humilated and of course blames. morgana.. for saving his life.. as while the jello humilated him he’s also you know not dead.

Anyways Darkwing storms off while Morgana worries he likes her. Morg.. the guy got pissy because you saved his life the wrong way with some bad aim. And before that clearly just wanted you there as a trophy to impress you instead of because he valued you in any way but your looks, because let’s face it he’s shown no intrest so far in any way that isn’t superficial and neither have you in him. You both need to actually try to deepen this or end it. Anyways enough me ranting at 90′s cartoon characters, it’s time for our next Justice Duck to enter the episode as Stegmutt is selling hot dogs now, but no one stops because they just.. run in terror. Poor guy, good thing he’s too oblivoius to notice. Maybe Dr. Fossil had a point. Back to the plot and it turns out the next phase in the Fearsome Five’s plan is to take out the police... okay so wait are they the bad guys or not? Questions for later. Point is we get a nice mismatch as Bushroot’s timidity contrasts perfectly with Liquidator’s showman ship and he drowns them out. Darkwing prepares to attack, but gets interrupted by Stegmutt, refuses his help.. and we get the best and most iconic gag of the episodes: Darkwing makes a joke about playing pretend.. and senseing Stegmutt is a dummy have him pretend to “put out the darkwing”.. which equates to pulling a Droopy while saying “put out the darkwing”. So the two villians finsih their job and high five and this is one of the most charming parts of this 2 parter: the camradere between the five minus negaduck. The other four just.. easily bond and enjoy each ohters company, only fighting ONCE, and then being on the same page after that.

It’s also what makes them so deadly: the go too for ANY superhero team in any medium is to simply get the vilians to fight each other as most vilian teams are built on REALLY shaky ground, a mixture of egos and ambitions that unlike with most superhero teams, can’t really be overcome with the greater good.. because their only in it for what they want. The thing that keeps any of these groups together longterm.. is camradere. I’ts why the Flash’s Rogue’s gallery is easily one of the most dangerous; while there are outliers like the reverse flash, most of them are part of the rouges, and ascribe to their rules and morals.. and thus the camradre and support that comes with it. One guy with a cold gun or a super flamethrower or a weather wand or mirror powers.. is pretty damn tough. All four and more together, willing to bail one another out, having their own tailor and weapons hookups. The four remind me of that: a bunch of guys who have the common goal of beating darkwing but likely just.. hang out when not trying to do crimes. Well except negaduck, hence the four thing. By not being able to just easily turn them on one another, it means you HAVE to take them all at once. Even if you got rid of negaduck as both the comics and the 2017 reboot have shown.. you still have 4 immensley powerful, quackerjack included, supervillians who easily can work together instead of a bunch of angry assholes who tend to work better one at a time and just with a united goal. Point is Darkwing Duck is Darkwing Fucked. Darkwing once again refuses help and yells at Stegmutt, because he’s been evne douchier than usual, and then makes the mistake of yelling at Neptunia, who promptly has her octopus friend throw him into the distance because .. well he deserves it. So while Darkwing patches up that wound to his pride and his spleen, we finally meet our vilians new boss: NEGADUCK. And... they do not explain why a guy who looks exactly like drake is here, if he has any relation to the other negaduck he was inspired by, or why any of them would trust him. This would bother me more.. if A) it wasn’t too much of a stretch for darkwing to have foes we hadn’t seen given the whole casefiles thing and B).. well okay this isn’t really a logical opinon but since when have that stopped me.

There’s a damn good reason that Negsy has one of the biggest episode counts of Darkwings villians. The guy is just.. the perfect foil to Darkwing, the Joker to his batman, the reverse flash to his flash, the green goblin to his spider-man, the sabertooth to his wolverine. He’s Drake’s equal and opposite number. While Drake can’t take two steps as Darkwing without wanting some attention, Negsy is happy to avoid having any until the moment strikes. While Drake wants attention as much as he wants to do the right thing, Negsy just simply loves doing what he’s doing. To quote the Spies are Forever song “Somebody’s Gotta Do it” “Can’t you see.. how much I enjoy this, i’d never avoid this, cause buddy i’m a diffrent breed. This is my calling, and though it’s appaling, I love making people bleed.”

He just LOVES being evil. He’s as comically devoted to being a bad guy as Darkwing is to being a good one. He loves the idea of being able to shoot a bunny, he revels in his villiany and he loves every second. But as I said unlike darkwing he dosen’t let his flaws get in the way of his villiany as much. He still does on occasion, he’s still a version of Darkwing after all, but he has his eyes far more on the prize and is far less prone to distraction. He dosen’t care about toy deals or infamy.. he just wants to watch the world burn and laugh manically over the flames. While his obessions CAN be used against him.. as this episode shows it only lasts for a bout a second and he’s usually ready for it. He’s a Drake with no morals, no connections and few drawbacks. And he’s also every bit as clever, with him winning for most of the two parter. And not because the plot needs him too.. he’s simply THAT good at planning, with his plan here being geninely clever. I’m REALLLY hoping for Frank to lead the reboot because combining ALL of this with his reboot backstory will be divine if he gets to. Negaduck was very much worth the hype.

So his next plan, itself clever.. is to dress up as Darkwing and inflitrate SHUSH, taking out the next possibly thing that could stop them. And he does so easily, even while Darkwing is there and to show off just how friggin awesome he is predicts what Drake will say. The only thing that trips him up is drake hilarious pointing out a cute bunny, because he and the other Negsy apparently share the same burning hatred, causing him to get out his shotgun. And can I just say how wonderful it is he can use a shotgun? That’d never pass nowadays, which isn’t the worst thing but i do question why VILLIANS can’t be shown being reckless with fire arms. Their the bad guys, kids aren’t going to see it as a good thing. And they still equate laser guns with guns. They aren’t going to trivilaize gun violence because of Darkwing Duck or Looney Tunes.

Even being found out Negaduck still acomplishes his goal and floods thing. So now both the cops and shush are down, and things aren’t looking great. Darkwing’s still determined he can do this himself and beat them.. but it’s transparent that not only he CAN’T and won’t admit he’s outnumbered but freely admits he just wants the biggest win of his career by taking them all out 4 to 1. Probablem is.. he’s not spider-man and this isn’t the sinister six. As I said he’s not fighting a villian group whose egos clash so badly , at least whent hey first formed, they have to take turns or in later iterations have some member blackmailed in> Their working in concert. He needs help but as we’ve seen multiple times now Darkwing just can’t accept it. He has to be in the limelight and while he does have to relearn the lesson .. it works better here as personality flaws aren’t the kind of thing that fixes itself overnight. Sometimes never. It feels less like it does sometimes in cartoons, where the character just.. never fucking learns, and more like Darkwing has learned it.. he’s just so very human and thus can’t resist sliding black. Less peter griffin more bojack horseman is what i’m saying. I mean there are still bits of just poor writing, but for the most part his ego is like most of his enimies: he just can’t get it to stay beat.

So it won’t suprise you that when the national guard and gizmoduck are called he’s not happy. You may recall when I reviewed “Tiff of the Titans” I REALLY hated this verison of Gizmoduck. He was concited as Darkwing but treated like he wasn’t, treating the daring duck of mystery like a criminal for stupid reasons and was generally pretty useless and obnoxious. The fact that hamilton camps gizmoduck voice sounds not like a 20-30 something like Fenton is but like Grandpa Simpson mixed with a dash of dudley doo right dosen’t help.

It’s not lost on me that Dan Castellaneta’s character is NOT the one that sounds like Abe Simpson either. But while that problem is still around... the rest of them.. aren’t. Gizmoduck’s character development actually stuck from last time, so rather than be a dick to darkwing he’s warm, friendly and happy to accept his help when Darkwing shows up, thinking his old “Buddy” is just volunteering to help instead of screaming at him for doing his job. Not only that but while he still has elements of a standard superman type “Cape” hero parody... their more toned down and actually funny with him giving giant speeches, and that being useda gainst him and being over the top.. but still being the noble, big hearted hero you’d expect from the roll, just wanting to do good not for the Glory he gets anyway, but because people need him. In short.. he’s 100% better thsi go round. Well okay 80.. he still sounds like this.

youtube

Gos also brings Morgana along, because apparently she forgot the entire episode where her father was so obssed with being noticed he tried to upstage his 10-12 year old daughter... and you know the hundred other times Drake put his ego over his job.

So he naturally wants to shoo her while Gizmo. .warmly welcomes the help because he recognizes that people are counting on them not counting on him. Just then the villians make their move and activate the electro slave device from earlier which.. does nothing like that’d sound like and just creates a giant electrical wall, cutting off ST. Canard and bringing the plan full circle: The villains have now cut off the town and taken out almost anything that could oppose them. And despite you know everything Darking only gets more pissy when Stegmutt and Neptunia show up., Stegmutt because he still wants to return Darkwing’s change as Darkwing bought a hot dog from him and Stegmutt’s also a really sweet guy and Neptuina because well... .the ocean’s her thing and a bunch of bad guys just put a giant line through it she’s now on the other side of. Gizmo suggests the obvious: It’s a day unlike any other when a threat no one duck, or fish or dino duck, can face alone. It’s time to assemble! And Gos is more than excited about the idea, suggesting the name Justice Ducks which.. is honestly fairly weak in my opinon. Not BAD but very clearly just “Justice League” with Ducks in it. Given how good the series is at names, you think they’d of taken more than five minutes on this one. Maybe it was disney mandate I dunno. But the concept itself.. is brilliant and I wish it came back in other epiosdes; Taking a bunch of other heroic characters in a setting and making them into a team is always a great idea, it’s why the tmnt unvierses have been using the mutanimals more and more lately, and they do ballance each other out nicely. You have a nice contrast of powers: while multiple have super strength, stegmutt is your bruiser, Gizmo is the tech guy, darkwing’s the strategy, morgana handles magic and Neptuina can swim in anything and is super strong and agile outside and inside water, so as long as she can keep hydrated, she’s useful> Which by the way has ALWAYS been the case for aquaman.. except the superfriends version.

He really does suck and ruined it for the rest of them till Jason Mamoa and his mighty abs, coupled with Geoff Johns run on the charcter that served as the foundation for that movie, finally rescued the character from a fucking decades old cartoon’s smear campagin. They have the makings of a great team.. it’s just Darkwing dosen’t want a team and screams at everyone to get out and that he dosen’t need them.. I mean he does try to be softer on Morgana but.. he’s still a dick and she really should dump him. Seriously, their attraction is superficial, at this point at least we’ll see in Feburary if it gets any bettter, he dosen’t respect her as a person, and now he’s having to restrain himself at yelling at her.. for HELPING HIM. When he clearly needs it. Holy shit... I was not prepared for that amount of douche. And this would sink the two parter.. were this not clever setup for one hell of a downfall and not a key part of his character. Like has been said: Ego is a massive part of him, and as Tad Stones has put it his real arch enemy. It’s been the basis for several episodes and as we saw in the pilot was his motivation for getting into crimefighting in the first place. He means well and clearly has a heart.. but this is just as much about thwarting evil as it is the attention. And here it’s used perfectly as in the reverse of the gizmoduck episode, where he wanted attention but for fully understandable reasons and judged Gizmo more on stealing his thunder, which while petty i’ll admit is a bit fair given Gizmo did NOTHING in St. Canard but got the key of the city while Darwing had saved it multiple times at this point.

Here he’s being petty and selfish.. and he has no good reason. It’s just his own ego wanting the credit for everything when it’s not what he or the city needs. Honestly this feels like an ahead of it’s time parody of how Batman would be written when written poorly sometimes in the years after this episode: a massive dick who thinks he knows better than everybody else and everything else should be entrusted to him because he’s the goddamn batman, the kind who throws people out as potential parts of his family for petty shit and acts like a controlling ass and okay maybe this is spiralling a bit. But the refusal to see any other way is right? Yeah that defintelyf its darkwing like a glove and eveyrone leaves either bummed or pissed at him. And the most pissed? Launchpad who while agreeing to it, his face and tone clearly mean he’s disapointed in his buddy for acting like this when now is REALLY not the time.

And I wish.. we got more on this because Launchpad disappears till the ending scene after this. No really. Despite being Darkwing’s best friend and sidekick and despite warranting a spot on the justice ducks and despite having every reason to pitch in. he just vanishes. I mean Ducktales may of gone overboard in not having him around since Let’s Get Dangerous, but at least that’s a valid reason: he has another family, he’s really busy and Scrooge has another talented pilot to do the job for him. Granted he’s clearly still doing it offscreen at times but he was both a major part of an hourlong and will be part of any possible spinoff. And hell even back in season 1 when the character ballance was at it’s worst... Donald and Beakly at least HAD reasons for not being in a whole lot of episodes: Donald HATED his uncle, HATED adventure, and HATED the fact his kids were following in their mothers footsteps as he only saw death at the end of it. While they SHOULD have found ways to include him more and his exclusion was pretty bad... he at least had a reason. Here launchpad just has to go now his home planet needs him. And he’s not the only one Gosalyn gets more, she’s worried about darkwing, we’ll get to why in a second and wants to go but Gizmoduck refuses.. and then ALSO vanishes. Which makes even less sense as when has Gosalyn EVER listned to an authority figure? Especially when her dad might be dead? It’s just grossly out of character for her to agree to sit things out and not just tag along with steggmutt anyway once gizmo can’t stop her. I do get this is about the justice ducks but there’s no reason to neglect the other main characters. At least have Negsy capture them too or something. Cripes.

So yeah the “thinking he’s dead part”. Darkwing sets out to find the five’s lair and misses the big honking flag Negaduck set up, but finds a crumb, puts two and two together and finds them.. as Negaduck planned. Down to the crumb thing as, in my faviorite line of the episode, he planned on Darkwing missing the flag and focusing on the flimisiit clue instead. Naturally they kick his ass, EASILY, and throw him out a window to his death and in classic bond villian fashion don’t check for proof of death. Krakoa would be ashamed. So part one ends with darkwing duck getting thrown to his possible death...

Only for part 2 to pick up with him landing in a trash truck before exiting. And this.. is what makes the ego parts tolerable.. Darkwing.. earnestly reflects, depressed he let his own ego get in the way of things and shoo off his only hope, and thus let the villians take over the city, with Bushroot’s plants harassing people, quackerjacks teeth running the police, and Megavolt having taken the power company and using it to shake down locals and Liquidator flooding part of the city for a plan we’ll get to in a moment. He’s at his lowest point and tht’s while it work: his hubris DOSEN’T get unpunished, he’s fully sorry for it and while he dosen’t out and out apologize to them, he’s not only genuinely contrite but does work well with them and evenly when he finally does get back to them.. but we’ve got a bit to go before that. So with Darkwing missing Gizmo takes over as big good and not bein ga prick eagerly takes the others help Neptuina nopes out of helping, which fits her personality, so with only three left because he dosen’t consider children useful which shame on you. I mean i’ts responsible from a real world standpoint but not from a cartoon show standpoint. But anyways they split up gang: Gizmo will go take the power plant back, Morgana will try and use her spells to find the lair and Stegmutt will find darkwing. I do like despite how they neglect Gosalyn that her friendship with Stegmutt was remembered and used as a plot point here.

So we then get to a rather repttitive part of the two parter. It’s not lacking in good gags or character moments but it’s basically the same scene repeated 4 times just with a diffrent scenario and gag for each of the justice ducks and the fearsome five member they encounter. They do their respective schicks the hero is defeated.. this is 5 or so minutes of a 20+ minute episode. Not TERRIBLE stuff, iv’e seen worse repttition, but not terribly intresting compared to the rest of the four parter. So, Neptuina encounters Liquidator, whose scheme is selling rafts to people to not drown in exhange for a millioin dollars.. or whatever they have he’s not picky, and they fight but Liqui ultimately wins, Gizmoduck, in the best of the four sequences, swoops in to stop Megavolt and not only lands on his foot.. but spends so long speechifiing Mega gets him from behind, phrasing. Stegmutt hilariously tries disgusing himself with Groucho glasses and is bested by Quackerjack, and Morgana finds the lair but gets taken out by bushroot, though her pet spider archie escapes to go warn the others.

So after all that Archie makes it back to darkwing’s hq.. only for launchpad to squish him. “ew a bug!”.. just a great quick laugh. Thankfuly he’s more resilent than the average spider and is fine once Gosalyn scrapes him off and they now know the five are in trouble. Also I was wrong Launchpad does return.. for this one scene. And neither get into action once Darkwing returns and after an overly long bit of him deflecting blame to the point I was screaming.

That being said it is nice when once Darkwing is aware of the situation he gloats a little.. but still goes to save them without any hint of caring about doing it all himself. He learned his lesson. So at the Lair of the five, Negsy shows what a sadsitc bastard he is, another great side of him.. from a writing standpoint at least. It shows that like darkwing despite a comedic exterior.. he’s VERY dangerous. And he’s set up speciic tourtures for each of the five he has: He’s hooked up Gizmoducks armor to a device that lets him control it’s power flow, so right now it’s entirely drained.. but he can overload it and electrocute him to death when he flips THE SWITCH. Neptuina is stuck under a heat lamp and will fry when he hits THE SWITCH. Stegmutt is stuck in a weightless enviorment that will also loose air when he hits THE SWITCH and morgana is in a chair that will crush her tod eath when he hits.. THE SWITCH... he really loves THE SWITCH and props to him. A lesser villian would’ve had all the traps have a diffrent trigger which while making it harder on any rescuers is just a time waster asking for the heroes he hasn’t gotten to yet to break free. And while it is based in his sadism he still fully intends to watch the deaths personally. Seriously he’s got all his bases covered.. and would’ve won.. if it wasn’t for the rest of the five. The rest of the five are fighting over territoiry: Buddies they may be but they all want the pie. Negaduck, in his most badass scene shuts them up by pulling out his signture chainsaw for hte first time and scaring the crap out of htem, then using it to carve up the model of the city: They each get a quarter.. and he gets all the loot. Which they dont’ like but agree to to not die today. Though really... what’s the value of that? They have a full city held hostage, control over a quarter each, and no real way to SPEND the loot without letting someone else, say scrooge mcduck, in to stop them. Just give him the money and let him sit on it Smaug style. You get a quarter of a new york sized city to yourself to live out your dreams. I’d love that... maybe nto become a supervillian for that but still, point is you have carte blanche jsut take the W. Darkwing meanwhile uses Nega’s scheme against him and plans to be delivering skulls, after flowers only piss nega off, and then knocks the guy out.. though his attempt at playing Nega fails as the Four have wisely decided that since they outnumber him and a four way split of the loot is better than none of it, to kill him. Nega.. is not pleased and just wants them to attack him, and they do, and it seems darkwing’s going to have a front row seat for THE SWITCH. But Darkwing recovers, and we get a great tug of war between him and negsy as the switch is turnd on and off on and off till Darkwing finally wins, and then frees Morgana and apologizes and has her free Gizmo, and so on and so on. So our team is reunited, Darkwing’s finally ready to lead and thus we get our battle cries “Justice Ducks, ASSEMBLE!” “Fearsome Five, GET OVER HERE!” And the two face off

And the battle.. is fantastic. Easily the series best so far as everyone gets a moment to shine. Neptuina takes out both Liquidator and Megavolt, this time beating liquidator by creating a whirlpool inside him and turning him into a watery tornado and crashing him into megavolt before he can get stegmutt. Gizmoduck beats Quackerjack handily by using a drill on the teeth, great gag then giving Jacky some ansteic.. a boxing glove to the face. And Stegmutt takes on bushroot and when unsure of what to do.. we get a truly wonderous callback as Stegmutt.. honestly dosen’t know what to do.. so Darkwing gets some payback and tells him to “put out the bushroot, put out the bushroot” you can guess what happens next

Or if you want the more recent versoin

Point is three down two to go, and we get a call back to the pudding thing with Morgana trying to hit liquidator.. before Darkwing in a show of how much of a team player he is now, offers his help, simply having Morg teleport some instant pudding mix over the guy... I mean at least it’s brown this time even if i’ts still in a jello mold. And to finish it off he and gizmo awesomely use a mixer on both sides. So our heroes have triumphed.. almost. Negs has the controls for the barrier and runs out planning to destroy st canard if they refuse.. then being Negaduck decides fuck it i’ll do it anyway... but Darkwing stops him and we get a slapstick beatdown as DW uses an anvil a pie and other classics and utterly curbstomps his nemissi in an wesome scne. The day is saved, the generator shut down and the city freed. So we wrap up with the Justice Ducks celebrating.. with Gos and Launchpad. I have an inlking how that conversation went.

Darkwing relcutnatnly is forced to eat his own words and admit he both enjoys the team and needed their help, before heading off on that Date with Morgana.. though Gizmoduck tries to make it a group thing. Dude no one likes a third wheel.. not even when i’ts ninja brian. So Darkwing uses the iris out to escape, but Stegmutt does try and give that quarter back first, with Darkwing, in a genuinely sweet moment, telling him to keep it and then going off, having earned his happy ending and grown as a person. Final Thoughts: This episode was WORTH the build up I gave it. It turns out I really didnt’ need most of the intro epsidoes, as while it enhances the villians the heroes are all given decent enough introductions apart from morgana so tht even without the context of how darkwing knows these people it still works. It’s a thrilling, tightly paced for the most part, hilarious and wonderful two parter that ties a huge chunk of the show together into one hour long masterpice. I had my issues of course and i’ve stated them: Gosalyn and Launchpad doing nothing, the pacing towards the middle of part 2.. but otherwise.. it’s perfect. It’ has a great character arc for darkwing on top of everything, once again having his ego bite him in the ass but in a unique enough way it dosen’t feel like a retread of the pilot, and having him genuinely feel bad about it and grow. a bit smug when he learns he has to rescue them sure but he’s never smug to the heroes themselves. And ironically.. he gets his big moment. While he dosen’t beat the five himself he still infliatrated their hq, beat up their leader, saved his friends and then beat negaduck all by himself AGAIN. It may of not been the big moment he wanted.. but it’s the one he needed. As for the road to the justice ducks itself.. it was a fun ride. Only one honestly two bad episodes; Tiff otf the Titans and Paint Misbehavin and even those had their moments, paticuarlly Misbehavin’s art sequences. The rest of the episodes ranged from alright to standout and overall it was a hell of a time.. so i’m going to rank all the ones i covered leading up to this review. Just Us Justice Ducks (Both Parts) Negaduck Beauty and the Beat Dry Hard Jurassic Jumble Ghoul of My Dreams Something Fishy Fungus Amongus Whiffle While You Work Paint Misbehavin Tiff of the Titans And i’m proud to say this is the first ongoing project on the blog, the first story arc or what have you, i’ve completed. While I DID do a four parter of catch as cash can, this is the first one i’ve done over several months that i’ve completed and i’m proud of it. Does this mean i’m done with Darkwing?

Next week we’ll be wrapping up some more unfinished buisness with another Darkwing Double Feature, this time covering the short career of Quiverwing Quack and in Feburary, and the reason I spent so much time catching up, we’ll be seeing both Morgana and Negaduck again just in time for Valentine’s day. After that?

We’ll just have to see won’t we? So until there’s another rainbow, goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.

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spookyseraphs · 4 years

Text

supernatural and the x-files (specifically destiel and msr) parallels

this was intended to convert my spn friends to txf and my txf friends to spn and then it got out of hand. i got tired of finding sources for everything, so you’ll just have to trust me, i’m an expert on both subjects.

cas=scully

cas/scully's faith in god vs dean/mulder being non-believers (but believing in the other) (spn) (txf)

cas being the healer, scully being a doctor (spn) (txf)

cas is supposed to guard the michael sword but falls in love vs scully sent to debunk the x-files but falls in love (spn) (txf)

cas and scully are both immortal (spn) (txf) (also)

cas/scully's families hate dean/mulder (spn) (txf)

cas/scully coming to believe in humanity/the paranormal (spn) (txf)

i'm an angel vs i'm a medical doctor (spn doesn’t have a compilation) (txf)

they’re not like... the best drivers

hello dean vs mulder it’s me (spn) (txf)

dean=mulder

dean/mulder's fucked up fathers (spn) (txf)

dean/mulder's eldest child syndrome and their unhealthy need to protect their younger sibling (spn) (txf)

dean/mulder being the best in their respective fields (hunting and criminal profiling) and being well known for it

dean/mulder and their porn habits (spn) (txf)

no one has ever hated themselves the way dean and mulder hate themselves (spn) (txf)

dean and mulder both have issues with fire (spn) (txf)

both die, get buried, and then come back

sunflower seeds vs pie

also they both hate nazis (spn) (txf)

yellow fever vs war of the coprophages (spn) (txf)

ship parallels

blue and green eyes (hazel is close enough)

for some reason theres a pizza man parallel? (spn) (pt 2) (txf) (pt 2)

mulder/krycek vs dean/crowley (spn) (txf) (also)

cas/hannah vs scully/pendrell (poor hannah and pendrell never stood a chance... and died)

also cas/scully get laid ONE TIME (april/ed jerse) and they almost die because of it and then never do it again (spn) (txf)

vs dean/mulder having plenty of love interests/hookups

cas/scully have never done anything wrong ever

dean/mulder... sigh... i love them... but they've made some questionable decisions (i'm looking at you mulder: fucking the vampire THE EP AFTER SCULLY'S ABDUCTION AND WHILE WEARING HER CROSS and dean, kicking cas out and locking jack in the ma’lak box?? really guys?) (spn) (txf)

creators who think their relationship is platonic despite everyone with eyes saying otherwise (spn) (txf)

also the way that neither were ever written or intended to be romantic

the fandoms were split heavily between shippers and non shippers

they also both had to have scenes changed because they were being played too romantic

a kiss was cut from the episode memento mori and gillovny were always trying to hold hands (x)

jackles forever wanting to cradle misha's face and the cut i love you from the crypt scene (x)

just... gillovny vs cockles in general, i am not a real person shipper, HOWEVER they are both messy (spn) (txf)

their first meetings? iconic. chemistry? immaculate. dean/mulder are super defensive but tbh cas/scully fell in love at first sight (spn) (txf)

they also had no concept of personal space pretty much immediately (spn) (txf)

they have a baby (that has magic powers) together that they lose twice (jack dies and becomes god, william/jackson is adopted and then as far as they know he dies) (spn) (txf)

cas/scully also have a kind of kid (claire/emily) that dean/mulder are willing to co-parent regardless of the fact that they definitely aren't theirs (spn) (txf)

we get an i love you that still doesn't get taken seriously or make them canon (stuck in the middle (with you) and triangle) (spn) (txf)

dean keeping cas's trenchcoat vs mulder keeping scully's cross (spn) (txf)

they go absolutely batshit when the other is in danger or dies/is dying (spn) (txf)

they're also known and used by their enemies as each other's weaknesses (spn) (txf)

msr being mistaken as a couple vs every angel and demon cracking jokes about destiel being a couple (spn) (txf)

skinner and sam just off to the side looking frustrated while msr and destiel are having a couples moment (spn) (txf)

eating each others food (spn) (txf)

appreciating each others interests (spn) (and this one) (txf)

parallels except the roles are swapped

dreamland/small potatoes vs casifer, i just think scully/dean should have realized IMMEDIATELY (spn) (txf)

mulders fight the future speech vs cas's confession (spn) (txf)

they should have kissed and didn't

it almost ambiguously canonizes them both

AND THE SECRET TAPES, the most famous msr kiss isn't an actual canon kiss, it's a blooper of gillian and david making out in front of the camera (two different times) and it wasn't scripted it was literally just them messing around (x)

this is me manifesting jackles dropping the tapes and those tapes having the same energy

they just really love each other (spn) (txf)

non ship/general parallels

leyla harrison vs becky rosen being fandom stand ins (spn) (txf)

they were supposed to end on season 5

Good but bad (absolutely iconic) sci-fi shows

they both had two finales which both sucked

they shared soooo many cast and crew and both filmed in vancouver

they're such similar shows, motw/story episodes, the funny and serious episodes, dealing with the paranormal, they're basically siblings

also siblings in the way that they handle racism, misogyny and consent/rape/bodily autonomy

the supernatural book series vs the movie made about mulder and scully (spn) (txf)

mystery spot vs monday (spn) (txf)

tall tales vs bad blood (spn) (txf)

the benders vs home (spn) (txf)

why did both shows use live bees??? (spn) (txf)

the fbi's most wanted and the fbi's most unwanted (also everyone involved looks cute as fbi agents) (spn) (look how cute!) (txf) (cuties!!)

the syndicate vs heaven and the cigarette smoking man vs god

the bunker vs the basement office

every single side character on both shows deserved better!!! most of them literally didn't need to die!!! and i'm still angry!!!

the poor brothers adam milligan and charlie scully existing and then being literally forgotten about until the last season

the fandoms living for things cut from the scripts (spn) (txf)

team free will vs mulder, scully, and skinner

these ones are shippy, but more my opinion than factual

both pairs just keep getting traumatic events dumped on them for absolutely no reason

cas/scully both have major exasperated why do i love this man vibes

absolutely most iconic and slowest slow burn romances of all time and are just the longest games of will they/won't they, baiting, and were never INTENDED to be slow burns

they're always willing to die/kill for each other, however they WILL NOT talk about their feelings under any circumstances

in the field where i died, mulder says that he and scully have been around each other in past lives but never romantically and according to chuck, every other universe's castiel just pulled dean out of hell and listened to his orders

SO in these other lives/universes they were always linked to each other but only in this life/universe do they fall in love

the last seasons really fuck up my favorite characters

dean should not be that shitty to jack OR cas for that matter

and mulder shouldn't have left scully and william (and dearest dana?? DANA?)

and, controversial opinion, but cas/scully could do so much better and deserve so much better but dean/mulder... it's the best they'll ever get

HOWEVER, i feel like their love is MORE powerful BECAUSE cas/scully could do better but they don't want better or normal they want dean/mulder and they will fight to the death for it, it's not the easy choice, it's just what they want

and i say this with all the love in the world for both dean and mulder, but cas could have just followed his orders and returned to heaven like every other version of himself did. scully could have easily found a normal man to settle down and have 2.5 kids with. dean was always going to be stuck in chuck's plans, and mulder absolutely could not just go find a wife to settle down with.

cas/scully put up with SO MUCH SHIT from dean/mulder, while being ALWAYS FAITHFUL to them, it was never the easy option to love these men and stay by their sides, it was hard and they worked for it!!!

they’re both the greatest love story ever told, they tied

#spn #supernatural #destiel #deancas #txf #The X-Files #x files #msr #oops i guess the indented bullets don't work on mobile #anyway #i really spent two days doing this #making this made me really have to confront what is canon and what is fanon deeply ingrained in my mind #ALSO every msr moment is perfect when imagined as destiel #and vice versa #if i were smarter i'd write actual meta about this cause it was actually super interesting

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kamenriderlogik27 · 3 years

Text

Saber headcanons part 4: Kento past + pre-caliber

-Like Sora, even though his dad was a swordsman, he went to a regular public school up until the day his dad betrayed the SOL.

- The public school might be where he first met Touma (not sure about this yet since we don’t know who Touma’s parents are nor know his relation to the SOL)

- If he did end up meeting Touma at school, then their first meeting would have to be on the playground. With Touma preferring to read a book instead of play with the other kids.

- some of the other boys get annoyed at his lack of interest in joining their game, and they start picking on him. Kento, being his father’s son, detests the site of bullying and comes to Touma’s aid. After chasing away the bullies, Touma invites Kento to read with him to which Kento accepts; the start of a strong bond that transcends time.

- Even though his dad wanted Kento to follow in his footsteps, Kento’s parents (suggesting that he has a mother) encouraged him to look into other careers such as a policeman, firefighter, soccer player, etc.

- Because his dad was always away on missions, there would be times where Kento wouldn’t see his dad for moths on end. But his dad always made sure to write him letters of his adventures.

- Even though Kento was there the day his father betrayed the SOL and witnessed his father attack kamijou Daichi, he ended up fainting before he could see anything else and woke up two days later in the Northern Base’s clinic due to Ogami finding him and bringing him there.

- Kento searched everywhere, high and low, for Touma and Luna, and waited at their promised place everyday just in case they came by.

- After almost a year of waiting and not finding them, he started to believe that they were both dead and instantly blamed himself for his father’s actions.

- Wanting to at least try and make things right, he started asking Sofia and anyone he could come across in the SOL about anything regarding his father, the betrayal, and what happened that day.

- After finding out that no one really knew anything, he decided that he had to become a swordsman himself in order to investigate more.

- He became the current Espada, Shinsen’s, student after begging Sofia to help him become a swordsmen. However, in order for Shinsen to fully accept him, Kento had to prove himself worthy and complete difficult tasks such as running for a specific amount of time, cleaning a very large ballroom, etc. which Kento did without complaint.

- (according to RiderWiki, Shinsen took Rintaro under his wing after Nagamine died. I found this out a day after writing Rintaro’s headcanons. After reading it, I first thought that oh, maybe Rintaro and Kento really did grow up together then. But that still doesn’t answer why Rintaro seemed to be surprised at his presence in ep 2 and 3 and why he used formal speech when talking about and to Kento as if they didn’t grow up together. After thinking for a good long while, here’s what I came up with.)

- As Shinsen had already taken Rintaro under his wing after Nagamine died, He had trouble figuring out ways of teaching his two students in similar or different fighting styles (as Rintaro was still the successor of Nagare and Blades’s title and thus had to be taught a fighting style fit for the swordsmen of water.). Rintaro, not wanting to burden Shinsen as well as wanting to take more after his master’s fighting style, suggested that he learn Blades’s fighting style through books by himself so that Shinsen could focus on training Kento.

- Even though Shinsen felt guilty at not being able to properly teach Rintaro what he needed to know, it still worked out perfectly since Shinsen could properly train Kento while Rintaro studied, and then both boys would be able to practice what they learned by sparring.

- Kento was always super focused on training and bettering his technique, but he was still a kid at heart and wanted friends. however, at the same time, didn’t really believe that he deserved friends. This didn’t stop him from attempting to have friendly conversations with Rintaro during breaks while sparring though.

- However, due to Rintaro’s personality and habit of taking things too literally, Kento was never able to start up a fun conversation with the water swordsman apprentice that proved to be even slightly similar to the conversations he would have with Touma and Luna.

- Being as young as he is and having gone through so much pain, I can actually see Kento almost seeing Rintaro as a possible, unintentional replacement for Touma. But because Rintaro has gone through some shit himself and want’s to focus on his own path, he kinda goes against the image of Touma that Kento unintentionally put on him. The frustration Kento gets from this fact builds up so much that it explodes one day.

- That one day happened to be one of the rare days where Shinsen would be teaching the boys a new technique at the same time, since it was a pretty basic swordsman technique that didn’t require any particular style. Unlike most times where Kento would usually wait until a break or after sparring to strike up a conversation, Kento instead started speaking as the boys sparred. At first he talked about things like the weather and what they both had eaten that day (of course with Rintaro not saying much other than “can we please focus?”) then his words slowly got more aggressive to the point where Kento started mocking Rintaro’s lack of character.

-Rintaro of course, tried his best to ignore Kento and focus on sparring, but when Kento asked “who do you take after, your mom or dad?” he finally felt as if he had to respond.

- R: “I don’t know...”

K: “How can you not know? Don’t you have a family?”

R: “The SOL is my family.”

K: “Are you dumb? The SOL is an organization! They can’t be your family! A family AT LEAST has to have a mother and father!”

- The last sentence Kento said brought Rintaro to tears, so he quickly yells “You don’t know anything!” and runs off back to the base.

- For the next year, Rintaro refused to participate in anymore lessons and spars with Kento, and would always run the other direction if he so much as saw Kento appear anywhere. Kento did feel really guilty about what he said, especially after Shinsen scolded him and explained Rintaro’s situation and past. That being said, he tried his best to find Rintaro to apologize, only to always watch the boy’s back as he ran away.

- Somewhat fed up with having to chase the water swordsman apprentice, Kento came up with a plan to have Ren capture Rintaro and tie him up so that he couldn’t escape. He honestly wasn’t expecting his plan to work so well, but because it did, he was finally able to talk to Rintaro and ask for forgiveness. To which, Rintaro gave under the condition that they both work hard to become swordsmen. After this incident, Kento saw Rintaro in a new light. He wasn’t a boy that could possibly fill up the whole Touma and Luna left, instead, he was Rintaro; a fellow apprentice who was really talented and smart. And Kento really admired him for that.

- The only reason why Kento flew in on his magic carpet in ep 2+3 is because he was on a mission somewhat far away and wanted to see Touma as soon as possible once he was done.

- Despite being overjoyed that Touma was actually alive AND had been introduced to the SOL/become a Kamen Rider as well, Kento was actually super nervous about meeting him again. He thought about what he would do and what he would say. He wondered how he would ask Touma about Luna, and how he should explain about what happened that day 15 years ago. When Rintaro told him about walking into Touma’s bookstore while riding his blue lion, Kento thought that maybe riding in on his magic carpet might be a good conversation starter if anything got too awkward.

-He’s literally imagined his and Touma’s reunion hundreds of times after he heard that Touma was alive. He also wanted to ask him questions like “where did you go to school?” “What college degree do you have?” “Did you go on any adventures?(bookwise or real life)” ect. Kento just really wants to know how his friend has been all these years.

- Kento is actually a neat freak and low-key OCD. He can’t stand being messy and has his own, somewhat professional way of organizing. Though he’d rather let others clean if there’s a way for him to opt out.

- Kento is very fond of fictional novels, especially if they’re books that he read with Touma and Luna back in the day. However, he has no patience for non-fication, and secretly finds them very boring. His favorite genre of fictional novels would have to be adventure, fantasy and anything with super heroes. However, he does have a secret soft spot for romance (to the point where he has his own ships), and would rather die than admit to this fact.

- Is on the book side of the “Book vs. Movie” argument because he has never actually watched a movie to the end. Whenever he finds time to watch a movie, he ends up being so tired that he falls asleep before the climax. Reading a book at least gives his eyes something to focus on, plus books are like ‘a movie in your head’.

-Kento kind of gives off a ‘spring’ feel to me, so I think that his favorite scents could be fresh laundry, calm lavender, and a warm spring breeze.

- Doesn’t dog-ear books, thankfully. But he does end up using weird objects as book marks. (i.e. an old receipt, a library card, post-it note, basically anything small, flat and within hands reach.)

#kamen rider #kamen rider saber #kamen rider espada #kamen rider blades #fukamiya kento #shindo rintaro #kamiyama touma #akamichi ren #saber headcanons #this got super dark #honestly though this boy has been through a lot so it HAS to be somewhat dark #took me a while to write this 'cause thinking up kento's past was a bit difficult

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vaguely-gestures-to-the-void · 3 years

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Hindsight: My thoughts on Loki (2021)

Welcome back! Spoilers below!

I need to clarify that I watch Loki purely as an escape. I've got a biased perspective in that regard because I don’t actively try to find fault with the show, though there are definitely things I’m not so inclined to. This is more of what I noticed and think things mean and it’s something I’m doing for fun. Anyways, here's my thoughts on episode 2 my loves.

Episode 2: THE VARIANT

Pre-title scene

Miss Minutes’ monologue in the recap is different to the one last ep.

1985 Oshkosh, Wisconsin

C-20!

“Today’s guest performances” on a board. Don’t really know if it means anything tho.

The Iconic (TM) I Need A Hero scene.

Pony.

The green tent - the lair of Loki.

I know not everyone’s a fan of the lighting, but it made sense to me. They’re still in the dark about who Sylvie is.

Why does C-20 take off her helmet? For the drama?

I hope Sylvie cleaned her blade. Narnia taught me well.

The Time Samsung (I can’t remember what it’s called right now) says that the date’s 04/12/1985.

Loki’s first mission (?)

‘Volume 26’ - how many of these does Mobius have?? #giveMobiusajetski

“ONLY at your LOCAL AUTHORIZED DEALER” - subtext about the TVA being control freaks? Jet ski safety?

I googled Wake Magazine. They’re up to volume 20 from what I saw, whilst Loki is reading volume 26, so I guess that’s something

Loki and Miss Minutes lmaooo.

Behind Loki’s elbow is the taxidermy something from the last episode. Also confirms that Loki threatened Casey at Mobius’ desk lol.

The thing has an egg?? What the hell is Mobius collecting? (He’s a Harry Hart variant lmao).

There are little twitches in Miss Minnutes’ hands. That’s so cool!

The egg timer’s a nice easter egg (I’m a comedian).

Mobius! B-15! :)

Is it just me or do the minutemen look similar, but not exactly the same. Makes sense if they’re variants.

I just realised the lights are built into the ceiling. Whoops.

What’s Mobius’ favourite?

Couple of things:

The racks full of identical uniforms/ones just hung up on doors.

The music has started to pick up the pace, but not in the way we see later on in the episode.

There’s a sign saying ‘FARE THEE WELL’ on it. Google tells me that it’s ‘used to express good wishes on parting’. Dang that was some good foreshadowing!

The person that looks like Agatha is still present.

I wonder whether it was supposed to be colder or whether the weather was just like that when they filmed.

The pony’s still around.

I think B-15 certainty that “a Loki couldn’t have gotten the jump of C-20” comes from her experience with them. She constantly tries to make it clear that because she’s not a variant, she’d know Loki better than he would, which (personally) makes the revelation that she’s a variant feel more devastating.

Again with the lighting, they’re still in partial darkness, constantly moving in and out of the light. Whilst what Loki says about the variant setting a trap is true, it isn’t in the context that he says it. Sylvie whoops their asses later.

The black and red-orange flags remind me of tomb markers. It’s a stretch, ik.

B-15 only has tally marks on one side of her helmet.

Mobius has fake pockets in his suit jacket. They’re the worst.

The ticking increasing in tempo as they approach red line - great for setting up tension.

I believe that Loki uses personal space like a weapon - slowly approaching them from the front, and then going behind Mobius’ back when he wants his way. It would make anyone uncomfortable, especially on a subconscious level because there’s a threat behind you.

Or maybe it’s that I have different personal space boundaries, not everyone likes being approached from behind. Loki’s movement felt intentional at least.

Getting Mobius to physically turn his way because of that might have been very subtle manipulation?

Loki looking back and forth trying to judge their reactions lol.

I liked the music in this scene, it sets up tension for Loki’s first attempt at betraying Mobius but then doesn’t completely dismiss it when it’s resolved.

Ravonna Renslayer’s office

The music here is 18 morceaux, Op. 72, No. 2. Berceuse. 18 morceaux, Op. 72: No. 2, Berceuse (Arr. For Theremin and piano) by Clara Rockmore for anyone that’s curious. I found out through Natalie Holt’s Twitter (I think).

The score is, and always will be, perfection.

Mobius’ small talk amuses me.

“Why do you get to keep all the trophies from my cases in here, you don’t think I’d love having that roller skate?” Mobius, what about the thing on the shelf behind your desk????

Ravonna seems like she’s answered these questions before, but she has a fondness for him that makes me think they’re good friends.

Also does Ravonna have multiple complete collections of the Encyclopaedia Britannica in her office? What are those books??

“I hope it’s a double.” Me too Mobius, me too (drink responsibly).

I don’t get how people think Mobius doesn’t remember leaving the stains. It sounded like Ravonna was chiding him for a bad habit and Mobius just made up a remark, not confusion.

Although he does place the cup at a different spot to the rings.

The ship flying past in the windows is a wonderful detail.

“The variant likes to stall for time.” It's very satisfying to me how everything stays relevant. Every detail advances the plot/contributes to it.

“Look, I know you have a soft spot for broken things.”

“I don’t think so-”

“Yes you do.”

Both Mobius and Ravonna only look at the middle figure when referring to the time Keepers. Either the other two are side-lined or don’t contribute at all.

“I’ll delete him myself.” At this point in time, I think Mobius is serious. As the episode progresses, his status may have changed, especially after the Jet Ski philosophy session.

Ravonna’s sash on the peg reminds me of the ones the people talking to Casey were wearing in episode 1.

Man those doors are so cool.

Peak sitting outside the principal’s office energy.

Mobius whistles at Loki as opposed to talking to him like he does later.

Any screen shot from the following scene is pristine chaotic disaster bi Loki energy featuring tired-of-your-tomfoolery Mobius.

“Isn’t that precisely why I’m here?” This marked a change in Loki to me. Up until that point, he’d tried to use what he’d known, who he’d been by scheming his way to the Time Keepers. By admitting he wasn’t sure of his purpose, we’re back with the person at the end of the last episode. It’s very Loki to try all avenues to get what he wants, and after having his world turned upside-down a few times in a short period, maybe he just wanted the familiarity of his old tricks, who he thinks he is.

Loki tensing up and then trying to assert control again reaffirms what I just said.

Man, give Mobius a holiday after all of this. Loki really tested him, huh?

Loki definitely likes validation on some level.

TVA archives (a.k.a the Salad Scene)

I can’t believe that place really exists. The looks combined with the music are just *chef kisses*.

I’m not sure if I’m thinking of the right progression, but the music reminds me of a plagal cadence. Google examples and play it side-by-side, you’ll get what I mean, maybe someone knows what it really is?

On either side of the elevators near the Time Keeper statues are the signs TVA archives.

The symmetry pleases my goblin brain.

I believe the entire show was just flexing the skills of the Loki crew and I couldn’t be happier.

“Pretend your life depends on it. I’m gonna get a snack.” This was so funny in the trailers but Mobius is dead serious (delete him myself comment). And he couldn’t even enjoy his salad.

Love that the end of credits takes from some of the scenes in episode 2.

The archivist has neat glasses.

I want some TVA stationary y’all.

It’s that moment fam.

I can’t be the only one curious by the ‘DISPLACED by 000:000:002:162’. Is that in Units? It would explain why the time line looks slightly bendy whenever we see it, especially if Apocalypses are so frequent.

IT’S THE SALAD LADS!

Mobius is reading the magazine that Loki was looking at earlier. Jet skis are Mobius’ comfort character.

“Don’t set fire to the palace.”

Tom Hiddleston has so much energy, he can move so fast.

“Oh God.” - Mobius, Null Time Zone

“YOU.” - Casey, Null Time Zone

Casey!

No thoughts, head empty, the Salad (TM).

But seriously, people only seem to be at their tables with others that work in a similar section. Not hunters and analysts eating in tandem to me, folks.

Oh Casey. Please don’t hurt him.

Aw, Mobius’ little giggle warmed my heart. Owen Wilson’s giving me whiplash with Mobius. My heart can’t take this y’all.

79 AD Pompeii, Italy

They’re both so giddy, Your Honour, I love them.

Mobius snuck them out lol.

“Bird noises?”

“BE FREE MY HORNED FRIENDS, BE FREE!” The post wouldn’t be complete without this.

Loki just throwing food at people and telling them “...enjoy your last meal while you can” is top tier comedy to me.

This is the first time we see Loki openly say nothing matters. I feel like the case file on the destruction of Asgard really pushed him to treat fate as unchangeable.

LXXIX is 79. Nice one Loki crew!

Mobius’ eye twitching as he checks the variance is a nice touch.

Loki throws away the stick that was holding the goat pen closed at the end.

TVA Archives, TVA cafeteria

Mobius picked up those files so smoothly I had to re-watch it.

Their position reflected what they were talking about - when Loki thinks it’s his individual contribution, he’s walking separately to Mobius, but they meet up when working together. I loved the blocking in that little moment.

I seriously thought that Loki was unconscious when I first saw him asleep around Mobius. I’ll admit it, it felt out-of-character for someone with such bad trust issues. Both of them seem pretty tired tho.

It’s the Jet Ski conversation comrades!

I’m beaming. Mobius talking about Jet Skis was the only time I’ve really remembered it’s Owen Wilson talking. It’s such a fun line to think about!

Loki’s smile. Adorable.

Just go watch the scene, it’ll give you good brain juices.

Mobius does it all for the Jet Skis and nothing else. I don’t make the rules, the Time Keepers do.

“My own glorious purpose.” This is a recurring theme in the season. Ultimately, I think that Loki is going to run for as long as it brings in money/until Loki gets killed again. However, I do like to think that in following seasons we’ll move beyond setting up Phase 4 Marvel stuff and just get deep dives into Loki’s character, though it may happen in the later eps or not be as interesting. Part of what made this show so interesting is the new setting in the Marvel universe but it’s hard to make predictions as to whether it will last in a show featuring the God of Mischief. Whatever happens, I’m happy that we got to see Loki’s existential crisis together, lads.

The music picks up, signalling that this quiet moment is about to end.

“No one bad is ever truly bad. And no one good is every truly good.”

“Scared little boy.”

These lines mean a lot to me. Loki perceives Mobius as an equal, similar to himself but not completely identical. The TVA’s whole aesthetic is Kafkaesque (Disney+ used that word), the imperfections keeping the place from looking mechanical and orderly like what the TVA promotes itself to be. Loki wants Mobius to acknowledge it, but Mobius is in the past, not addressing what’s right in front of him, surrounding him. That’s probably because Mobius doesn’t believe, he accepts what he’s been told though Loki wants to change that. He’s still focused on his job, the variant. I don’t think Mobius will struggle against change in the ‘belief’ part as long as things are rational.

Kate Herron (director) said that the Kablooie scene was improv which makes me wish we had more B roll of Owen and Tom. They seem so professional, invested and fun on set.

“No wonder you’re so bitter.” I’m sorry Mobius you sound as salty as your salad.

‘Artificially flavoured chewing gum’ Has something happened causing artificial flavouring to be preferred?

‘Blue’ has canonically changed to ‘Bloo’ by 2050 in America in the MCU. I blame capitalism.

Why does Mobius look so tiny? I say that like Owen Wilson wouldn’t look like a giant next to me lol.

Owen Wilson is 3.5 inches (9 centimetres) shorter than Tom Hiddleston. Yet he is dwarfed as Mobius. I need to stop talking about this and move on.

There’s no ‘variance energy detected’ line in the report.

“You’re gonna take my job if I’m not careful.” Loki looks so chuffed.

One day, I’ll properly address my thoughts on the shipping. Until then, I just want no one to die.

“Yeah, he’s doing great.” Mobius is so hyped. Good for him.

Owen Wilson has dimples.

Ravonna’s screen doesn’t show the timeline like it does later.

Ravonna is the done mom friend. Sane, undeserving of this, please give her a jet ski moment.

Buckle up folks because the last twenty minutes of this episode are my favourite so far.

At 34 minutes in, we get the music fading in with “Okay. But Mobius...” and a transition to my favourite composition so far. Natalie Holt outdid herself. The soundtrack is nearly constant, there’s no break for a moment of clarity anymore. The progression of events is inevitable, tying the bow on a plot line created in an hour and a half. The little embellishment from the strings (possibly) as Mobius and Loki exit is perfect. Combined with Loki’s raised fist leading to a pan to the ceiling, it prepared the audience for everything being turned upside down.

The changing camera angles and shot lengths (the continuous shot when B-15 takes the knives, the circling behind as the briefing occurs) keep viewers on their toes. The continuous shot is fluid, B-15 doesn’t look at Loki or Mobius, her reaction is natural and that just proves that the timing on that scene was impeccable. The circling behind reminded me of Loki positioning himself behind Mobius as he did earlier, but now he’s on the same side, part of the team though he continues to distinguish between himself and the variant. The building sensation that change is coming is met by the incredible swell in the music as we watch the picturesque Haven Hills get destroyed by modern technology and face the terrifying reality that is the Roxxcart store. There’s a close up on the Roxxcart storefront with school buses with the words ‘Evacuation shuttle’ in the background as we see the TVA’s minutemen come out reinforcing that even when the end is nigh, large corporations will loom over. A storm is raging with worse to come. I can go on and on, but you get the point.

2050 Roxxcart Disaster

I love that y’all are calling this the Alabama supermarket breakup. Makes me chuckle, that’s for sure.

I too hate when people can hear my footsteps. Someone that gets the struggle.

Sylvie places the TVA Samsung over a Roxxcart Security manual. She’s overridden both and is in control.

The date is 03/15/2050.

I think that the way the Hunters and minutemen hold their baton things is so that they don’t get yeeted. Neat.

As always, the beats are slick yo.

I hope the Azaleas guy gets some Azaleas wherever he ended up.

I love the way Loki says “In this storm.” It’s so satisfying for no real reason.

The wonderful Wunmi Mosaku does not get the recognition she deserves for this scene. She switched from B-15 to Sylvie so effortlessly. They’re two distinct characters, her facial expressions, body language everything changed in that instant. Even from the one line, “No, they usually survive,” her delivery had changed in a way that was noticeable. It’s uncanny, exactly what was needed when facing a foe that remained unseen. And the smile? It’s before we know the variant as Sylvie, so naturally it’s that signature Loki smile with a hint of malice we associate with the variant. Damn y’all, Wunmi’s incredible! I really hope she’s recognised for being so talented in this series, if not in all her other work!

Mobius really cares about those people. I really want his redemption (?) arc.

It’s been pointed out that even in those conditions, Roxxcart were selling blankets and water. I think it means that by 2050, cash would be defunct. If only electronic payment existed, as long as there’s electricity they can run a business. Chew on that.

If the man they speak to is 50 to 60, he was a 90s kid.

There must be a difference in the reprogramming or kind of variant selected to be a hunter as compared to an analyst. The Hunters look after their own, but the analysts (or Mobius) go as far as empathising with variants.

C-20 is sitting in front of safety standards.

“A bit amateurish.” Loki knows that the variant isn’t as skilled with magic as he is.

As Loki and the possessed people walk, the lighting becomes brighter. He’s moving out of the shadows.

Me too Loki, I’m worried about B-15 too.

Sylvie unironically saying bless is hilarious.

Randy must be hella tall.

There’s a low angle shot as Loki and Randy face off with the flickering light above with a sign hanging above them like a sword of Damocles and a physical separation. Terror is nearly constant in Loki's life now, but he responds by letting go of his drive to survive.

The subtle swells in the music just add to my rising blood pressure.

C-20’s voice over is sad lads.

“I wanna go home,” we know she’s not referring to the TVA.

Mobius seems like a caring person.

When B-15 sits up and searches the room, I think it’s her realisation. Her shiver was from fear and shock, the music wasn’t about her not seeing Loki, it was about the TVA and what had happened to her.

The head snap and the score timing matching. So satisfying.

“I would never treat me like this. Hi.” I think that’s Loki realising that his foe is not willing to talk their way through conflict.

This fight scene contradicts all the magic we see later ik, but if he didn’t want to hurt anyone and was trying to draw out the real enemy it made sense.

Some of Sylvie’s powers must come into the people she possesses. The guy punched a glass screen and didn’t even bleed.

“I have shit to do.” Sylvie wasn’t raised with court etiquette (from what we know) and her lexical choice reflects that.

Dell computers survive into 2050 in the MCU. So do those robot dogs and Roombas. I am only happy about the Roombas. Where did the real dogs go? :(

“Mobius.”

“Where is he?”

“I lost him.”

“What happened?”

“I...”

Until now, B-15’s delivery has felt slightly rhythmic, like she was used to having the same arguments, particularly with Mobius. When she trails off however, I think it’s her trying to rationalise what she’s been through with Sylvie’s possession. Her devotion to the TVA was rooted in the fact that she wasn’t a variant, her life had a purpose and it was intentional. This must have rocked her, I’m invested in where she’ll go.

THE CUT TO BLACK OH GOOD GOSH.

Sylvie, my queen. I’d roll off a cliff for her.

The person with the moustache (you know the one) has pure fear on his face.

Ravonna knows what’s up.

And so do you, yes it’s the music, go listen to it.

THE RED LIGHTING

The zoom out to that incredible hallway shot and then stopping behind the time door. It was never about him after all, he was in the background of her plans.

Sylvie’s wave in Roxxcart vs. Loki’s on the train. Discuss.

The blackout, thunder and Loki’s pause under the flickering red and white light, do y’all really want me to talk about the s y m b o l i s m????

He’s conflicted, you know it, I know it, Mobius knows it.

Speaking of Mobius, there he is, we cut back to Loki and see him make his decision, zooming back in on him.

And with that final flourish in the score, we are done with episode 2!

Cue the most amazing end credits score you’ll ever hear.

Do yourself a favour, listen to all of it, including the part after the main credits, both are Works. Of. Art.

Ep 2 review

In case you didn’t notice, this is my favourite episode so far. There are parts I didn’t take to as much, but details from the previous episode being used in the plot as well as others being explained by Sylvie in episode 3. Rewatching it was easier than episode 1 though it left me wanting more. It will get more interesting from here, but until then, that was a fun romp.

See y'all next time. I hope whoever's reading this has a wonderful day!

Part 1, Episode 1 extend review link:

#spoilers #loki review #Loki spoilers #my respect for people that write scripts/analysis of any kind has increased immensely.#opinion #things i've noticed #sorry if they're not original #b-15 deserves love #the analysts (mobius) the hunters the minutemen casey every one of them deserves love #here's to everyone who worked so hard and put so much into this series #WUNMI MOSAKU IS AMAZING #I love Ravonna #It's great

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starbuck · 5 years

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Terror Notes: “Go For Broke”

well… I guess I’m really doing this! Some proper, bullet-pointed notes for each episode of The Terror, starting with ep 1: Go For Broke!

I wrote these out last night (and edited them this morning to make them readable - you’re welcome!) so I hope that y’all enjoy my thoughts and assorted nonsense! I tried to save my comments for points I actually wanted to make because I feel like they bring something to the table but I still ended up writing A Lot lol

I love that Crozier couldn’t even be bothered to be present in welcoming Sir John and Fitzjames onto Terror, making Little and Hodgson do it by themselves. One could argue that he had important captain-y things to be doing at that time or something but I’m not 100% sure that wasn’t the case.

idk if it’s just the angle, but I paused the episode just as the shot of the officer’s mess is coming in from above and Hodgson’s hands make me so uncomfortable. They look so bone-y and weird. (Just what you came here for, I know. Hand commentary.)

Cannot tell you how uncomfortable it is, after many rewatches, to listen to Fitzjames recounting in a casual, lighthearted manner 1) shooting people 2) people catching fire (and burning to death), and 3) their burning flesh smelling “like roast duck” (so, like something edible) and it’s even more uncomfortable to have the closeup be on Hodgson’s face as he laughs at the ‘roast duck’ comparison.

On a lighter note: I love that Fitzjames felt the need to remind everyone what size cherries are by illustrating it with his fingers. In case they forgot, I guess? As someone who occasionally speaks unnecessarily with my hands, big mood tbh.

I LOVE it when Fitzjames gives Little that affirmative tap on the arm after he compares Fitzjames’s injury to Lord Nelson’s. My friend Eli and I refer to it as The Fitzjames Arm Tap. I would like a Fitzjames Arm Tap, pretty please.

God, Sir John loudly setting his hands on the table to try to dispel the tension from the ‘birdshit island’ debacle as he attempts to change the subject is so funny. I’m gonna stop just pointing out things I find funny soon, I swear, but I just cannot handle this scene.

Between Hodgson looking horrifically embarrassed by Crozier’s outburst at Fitzjames and Little looking nervous when Crozier shoots him a look as Sir John says that there’s no reason to be concerned about the ice, it really does seem that they were having to ‘manage’ him even back in ep 1 when his alcoholism wasn’t completely out of hand.

Personal sidenote about this: My Pop-pop is often rude to workers in stores and restaurants (he doesn’t drink thank goodness but he has Alzheimer’s coming on which has worsened his temper) so I very much understand the feeling of being on-edge that an outburst is going to occur and trying to deal with the fallout when it does. Just going by my own experience, I can imagine Little apologizing to Fitzjames for Crozier’s rudeness as soon as they were out of Crozier’s earshot (not that anything Little could say would heal the deep psychological wound that Crozier created but hey, it’s something).

The way that Sir John brushes aside Dr. MacDonald’s and Crozier’s concerns about moving Young when he’s in such bad shape never fails to upset me but also ~foreshadowing for hauling the ill on boats oooohhh~

I said I was done pointing out random things that amuse me but the speed and agility with which Des Voeux pops out of the hatch and onto the deck after Orren falls into the water is just so funny. I could watch that two second clip on repeat all day. Might gif it so I actually can.

Is this a good time to point out that there’s also a scene in Moby-Dick where someone falls from high up on a mast and drowns? It’s in a chapter all about bad omens experienced by the crew of the Pequod and The Terror definitely has some similar vibes going on with the sun dogs displayed in the establishing shot of Erebus in that scene and David Young, a “warning of things to come,” on his way over.

The second(?) time I watched the part where Young tells Stanley that he didn’t think anything of getting headaches since he’s always gotten them, I had this thought pass through my head that was like “oh god, I had chronic migraines for years so I’d never have known if I had lead poisoning either!” but then I realized that this probably was not a relevant concern I should have.

Not sure I have any deep commentary on this but as Gore informs Sir John and Fitzjames about the blocked propeller, he’s standing in the same spot, in the same room as Goodsir will stand next episode to tell them about his death.

Also regarding this scene, I love how Gore waits for Fitzjames to give him the go-ahead to leave before actually going. I know that Fitzjames is his superior officer too but, since Sir John already dismissed him, it seems like waiting for Fitzjames’s approval isn’t really necessary, yet a nice thing to do. Perhaps this is a legitimate formality, but something similar happens later in this episode in the command meeting when Crozier asks Gore how many sun dogs he’s seen; he looks to Fitzjames and waits for his nod before answering Crozier. He doesn’t look to Sir John, he looks to Fitzjames. I know that we know essentially nothing about Gore but like.. underrated ship???? Just saying…

Ten nights ago, I was unable to get to sleep for at least an hour because I started thinking about David Young’s saying “I want to go to my grave as I am” and, of course, that ultimately doesn’t happen for him but also, this, like all things about him, is a “warning of things to come.” I’m pretty sure that no one else was properly buried until, arguably, Fitzjames and ironically, that was explicitly not what he wanted done with his body (and, since his grave was later looted by Hickey, similar to the way that Young’s autopsy ultimately achieved nothing, it didn’t really matter anyway).

I know that this happened exactly ten days ago because I forced myself to wake up and write it down in my notes app, lest I forget, which only prolonged my sleeplessness. I suffer for my analysis.

Ah yesssss Tozer’s lesbian haircut. We love it! Why does my hair not look like that when I take a hat off? I’d like to file a complaint.

Was just thinking the other day about how Hartnell being the one to notice that there was something up with the ice in ep 1 is followed up on with Blanky complimenting Hartnell’s ability to read the ice to Crozier in ep 7. I wonder if Blanky ever gave him like. ice-reading lessons after becoming aware of his interest and natural talent at it in ep 1? That makes me happy to think about.

The two people who we’re shown awoken by Young’s screaming are Sgt. Bryant and Morfin and like. Do I even have to explain why that’s an Oof?

The way that Goodsir hesitates before knocking on Stanley’s door and Stanley irritatedly closing his book before answering the knock in an exasperated voice would be comedic in any other context. If I’m being honest, it still makes me laugh. As does Stanley’s “As if that weren’t plain.”

I’ve pointed this out before but mmmmm... that shot of Stanley in profile with the open candle flame in the background… the foreshadowing in this ep is thicker than the smoke at… Oh alright, I’ll stop.

God, the autopsy/dive scene…. Collins being lowered down and entering the water paralleled with Goodsir’s initial cutting into Young’s corpse, the breaking up of the ice paralleled with the cutting of the bone-saw. But most significant to me is the parallel of what is seen/not seen and the long-term effect that this has. Collins sees Orren’s corpse (and then presumably never tells anyone about it), reinforcing his guilt over Orren’s death, the beginning of his mental health decline. Goodsir doesn’t see the cause of Young’s death in his autopsy and this not knowing about the lead poisoning until it’s too late to do anything about it is the cause of many of Goodsir’s later problems as well. And, to finish it all off, both the autopsy and Collins’ dive were ultimately for nothing (considering a spinning propeller is useless when your ships are frozen in).

Crozier and Blanky’s simultaneous face journeys as Sir John rambles on about how there’s nothing to worry about and they’ll find the passage any day now are truly legendary.

I wrote some pretty extensive tags on this already but man… Crozier’s comment about how not all of Sir John’s men returned from one of his previous arctic expeditions is just so nasty and awful. Like, yes, Sir John is wrong to undersell the danger they’re in and Crozier is advocating for the correct position here, but that was completely uncalled for and horrible to say, particularly in a command meeting, in front of so many people. And Sir John looks legitimately upset by it too. He gets over it quickly, at least on the outside, but I still feel really bad for him (and I NEVER feel bad for Sir John so this is weird for me).

“But of course we will not be abandoning Erebus, or Terror…” Let’s check back in six episodes and see how that’s going!

Crozier slamming his fist on the table to prove he’s not being melodramatic reminds me of this one post (that I sadly can’t find rn) about Jesus Christ Superstar that’s like “‘CUT OUT THE DRAMATICS’ Judas hollered dramatically.” It’s such an Overall Mood.

I don’t have a developed commentary on this at the moment but it’s an interesting reverse-parallel that Sir John had no concern for Young’s well-being when he was alive, ignoring Crozier’s concerns about moving him from ship-to-ship when he was in such poor health, yet now that he’s dead, Sir John is the one to recommend that Young be buried which Crozier is surprised by, and seems to feel is unnecessary.

There’s been so much amazing commentary already made about Young’s burial scene so I’ll skip it except to say that Hickey’s irritated sigh when he hears footsteps coming towards the grave is SO funny. That’s exactly how I feel when I know that someone is about to tell me something that will annoy me.

Goodsir was really getting into the emotion of Sir John’s “eulogy”/motivational speech before he remembered the promise he made about Young’s ring. Also, what triggered his memory was Sir John saying “We shall earn our loved one’s cheers and embraces,” so no doubt a reminder of the traumatic “Your loved ones will be there in Heaven to welcome you! :)” “I never knew my mother or father” exchange (or maybe just a reminder of the fact that he was supposed to get Young’s ring to his sister but just let me scrape a little humor out of this. God knows I need it).

The shot of Bryant praying in his hammock the night before they get completely frozen-in is honestly deeply upsetting to me. Especially considering he’s a marine so he Did Not Ask To Be Here, yet there he’ll die.

According to Melville, ship’s compasses occasionally spun round-and-round when a ship was caught in a severe storm and this was an incredibly upsetting thing to behold because of how disorienting it was. So, considering that, Fitzjames keeps his composure pretty well but he clearly has some reservations about how things are going and Sir John has no comforting-sounding remark about ‘Magnetic North’ to offer him now.

The bit where Sir John “sees” Crozier, on Terror, turn away from him with a half-smirk on his face is interesting because there’s no way he could have possibly seen Crozier’s expression at that distance and I’m doubtful that he’d even have been able to make out the identity of anyone he might have been able to see on Terror’s deck. So really, it speaks mostly to Sir John’s mental state; his seeing their getting frozen in as a loss against Crozier and imagining that Crozier would see it as a victory for himself.

Ugh the final shot is making me think about @catilinas’s post comparing a shot of the two ships stuck in to the shot of the ink drops from ep 3 and I am LOSING IT but I was losing it anyway because it’s 2AM now and my entire body feels like gelatin.

THANK YOU AND GOODNIGHT!

SEE YOU NEXT TIME!

#the terror #i'm REALLY proud of these!! this was so fun to do!#i definitely intend to do this for each episode #no promises for the timing on that but i legitimately have nothing better to do so lol hopefully ep 2 will happen soon!#hope y'all enjoyyyyyyyy #feel free to add comments if you like or you don't have to! whatever is good - i just appreciate anybody slogging through this lol

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fizzingwizard · 5 years

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kizuna countdown part 2! yup i just did them all in one go, everyone who’s doing it day by day, have fun! See y’all on Friday!

Favorite Chosen Child-Digimon bond

... uh... so I guess I already answered this in the last question XD I think it's because it's so difficult to think about the Digimon without thinking a lot about the relationship they have with their partners. So I'll just let this one lie, I guess.

Favorite Chosen Children friendship

I pretty much like any relationship dynamic that involves Taichi.

Taichi & Yamato show the most growth, both in themselves and in their appreciation and respect for each other. Taich comes at Yamato expecting to make friends just by being himself as always. Yamato's built up walls to keep himself from getting hurt, plus there's a side to him that wants to be as free Taichi, and he winds up feeling jealous. Then there are ways in which they are legit different which adds even more friction. Their friendship comes out on top because both of them are extremely loyal to their friends at their core. They rock. I loved them in Tri too, when Taichi was acharacteristically waffling around and Yamato was even more concerned about it than the confused viewers hahahaha.

Taichi & Koushirou because they're the opposite of him and Yamato, their friendship is steady and strong throughout. They already respect each other from day one. Taichi puts a lot of faith and trust in Koushirou's abilities and relies on him to get him out of a pickle, even one he's made on his own. Koushirou is a bit shy and not exactly afraid to speak up, but not 100% convinced that his contribution is valued. Taichi helps him see his own worth. And Koushirou believes in Taichi :')

I also love him and Sora and Hikari. For friendships that don't include Taichi, my favs are:

Takeru & Hikari because they're really POWERFUL when they're together (teasing Daisuke for example)

Sora & Koushirou Managing Things, Somehow

Koushirou & Mimi driving each other crazy while really valuing each other

Daisuke & Miyako ^ similar dynamic

Ken & Miyako, I know it becomes a romance, but I loved it when they were kids and it was like Ken and Hikari were off being angsty together and Miyako's like I FEEL LEFT OUT and whines about and then kicks their butts to make the sun shine

Favorite Adventure series villain

Etemon! just kidding. Though the Etemon arc was so great for Taichi that I really enjoy it XD

I'd definitely pick the Dark Masters. Devimon was your typical RPG villain, then Etemon was nonsense run amok. Myotismon was the most fun storyline, what with going back to the human world and the search for the eighth child... I especially loved the chaos when the kids are all separated throughout the city.

But yeah, it'd be the Dark Masters, mostly because I loved how much the kids' resolve got tested when they had to decide for themselves to go to the digital world instead of just being thrown in there. The only one who's had to do that before was Taichi. They fought and they lost a lot of friends, and their team splintered and we saw new sides to everyone. It was harsh. About the villains themselves, MetalSeadramon was whatever, but Puppetmon with his envy and vulnerability and weird relationship with Cherrymon was so interesting to me. Machinedramon was downright terrifying. And then Piedmon playing everyone like marionettes and taking down the trump card as soon as it appeared on the scene... it all led to my favorite moment when the kids are running away one by one and sacrifice themselves to save each other. Sora's moment saving Takeru and Hikari while grabbing Yamato's doll was absolutely epic.

Favorite non-partnered Digimon

Piximon! I loved and wanted more of his training sessions. Wish he'd been like Rafiki and just followed Taichi around smacking him on the head with his stick.

Does Gennai count? He's not a Digimon so I guess not, but I loved Gennai too. He was useful. And also useless. I mostly liked it when he was useless xD

Also Whamon. Traveling in the belly of a whale is awesome. And I was so upset when he got killed.

Also Leomon & Ogremon should count as one of my favorite friendships.

Favorite ship / OTP

So, my number one Digimon OTP is Joumi. Always has been. I like it for a lot of similar reasons that people like Koumi, I guess. But the reason I glued onto Joumi mainly happened in Dark Masters when they were traveling just the two of them for a while. Mimi is positive and outspoken and caring despite being a bit self-absorbed. Jou is reliable, steady, and protective, even though he's also perpetually stressed out. They can both be panicky, but they grow out of it a lot. I think they're pretty realistc in personality and that's one reason I like them together: no one's unusually adept at something or other, they're just kids. They confide in each other about their struggles and they pick each other up. (I loved Ketsui for those moments! Such gifts)

Other ships I really enjoy are Taishiro, Taito, Miyakari, Daiken, Takari, and Daikeru. I also love one-sided Taidai and Mimiyako!

A friendship you'd like to see developed

Honestly? Sora and Miyako. The 02 kids inherited the Adventure team's crests, and each seemed to have a slightly stronger bond with one predecessor than the other. Daisuke had interesting dynamics with both Taichi and Yamato, so that was okay. Iori seemed to have more significant moments with Jou than Koushirou, I think because the sort of knowledge that Iori quests for is a different kind. Miyako is really, really similar to Mimi, her passions are just more hard sciences than artsy-fartsy. But Miyako really never gets any moments with Sora at all? There's that one when she's panicking about being a Chosen in like episode 2, and I can't think of any after that. I would love to see Sora big sister-ing Mimi, helpig her bring out her sensible side, since Mimi's got the eccentric covered.

I'd ALSO like to see Hikari & Sora have a great friendship. One that isn't entirely based on worrying about Taichi x'D

Favorite Kizuna character profile

Takeru's because I just love that he's in a children's lit club!

Favorite Kizuna promotional art

I... haven't been paying attention, so this isn't a real answer, but that one with the boys eating ramen I guess. I even wrote a ficlet for it lol.

Favorite Tri. installment

Kokuhaku!!!! That destroyed any reservations I still had about Tri. It was epic. Somewhat undercut by the fact that we all knew the Digimon would wind up getting their memories back eventually, but I was okay with just enjoying the ride until we got to that point. It was great. I loved the sacrifice the Digimon were willing to make, I loved the secret farewells each partner took, I loved Takeru's protectiveness, Koushirou's breakdown, and Tentomon's strength. Like seriously, he gets all the MVP awards.

Favorite non-Tri. Adventure movie

Our War Game. It's just classic. Plus, Bolero.

Favorite character besides the 12 kids & their partners

Oh, I guess now I could pick Gennai if I want. But I think I'd pick Meiko. I was so not feeling her when Tri came out because I expected her to be the Typical Anime Movie Newbie, who's almost always a girl, bland and uninteresting, eating up valuable screen time from the characters we actually want to see, magically saves everyone and then never appears again.

Meiko did not end up being that girl. Her shyness and awkwardness might have been annoying if they hadn't been tempered by her personal journey through the six movies, and I ended up really liking having a shy girl on the cast. It was refreshing and it was beautifully cast against Mimi. Mimi/Meiko FTW. And she hd real female relationships - with both Sora and Mimi. Her protectiveness of Meicoomon, but also her selfishness, and the terrible decisions she had to make, the way she struggled with self-pity and real honest grief... it ended up really moving me. I think she became very well-rounded and added a lot to Tri.

If Tri had been just one movie, like those anime movies I was expecting, I think she would have been That Girl, but fortunately with six we had plenty of time to get to know her.

(Bonus) Freebie! Talk about something we didn't cover :)

Well, we did lots of favs, so how about a "least fav"?

Of course I don't have a least favorite Chosen, or Digimon. In fact the only thing I'd really pin as a big disappointment happened in Tri. I love Tri but it's certainly got its holes, and for me, Himekawa Maki is a big one. I hate that we just left her wandering in the dark ocean. I hate that were wasn't more expansion on the original Chosen team. I remember when I was a kid and we found out in the last ep or so of Adventure that there had been kids before Taichi and co, I was annoyed, I'd wanted them to be the first.

But I was also curious. With Tri, we finally found out some about that... but only scraps. Who were the others on the team? Where are they now? What's their relationship with Digimon, and if they don't have one anymore, why? What would they say about Daigo's death and Maki's disappearance? Honestly I didn't want to dedicate more time to them at that point (even with six movies they couldn't cram everything in - much as I love Ketsui, I think it should have been a bit different, and moved the plot along faster). But I also hate that we finally learned some stuff about them and in the end were just left with even more questions.

#digimon #kizuna countdown

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long-arm-stapler · 4 years

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EP 1: Sayuri

[00:14]

Maira: Hi! Um my name is Maira and this is the very first episode of Long Arm Stapler, which is a podcast about zines. And this is my guest, you can introduce yourself.

Sayuri: Hi, my name is Sayuri. I am a zinester who works in Oakland and I’m really glad to be here and talking about zines, and Ara today. Um, so yeah I guess, you know.

Maira: Yeah, um, so today is December 2nd, which is a very somber day in the Bay Area. Um, a year ago we lost 36 artists, creative people, weirdos, um, and one of the people we lost was Ara Jo. Who was basically the patron saint of zines in the Bay Area and probably other places too. Her reach was just super, super everywhere. Um, and we are gonna honor her with this episode.

Sayuri: Yeah

Maira: So, a little bit about how I got into zines. So, back tracking to zines in general. I got into zines through my friend Kristen, we run Queer Anxiety Babiez Distro with our friend Ali. We’re based out of the East Bay, um, we focus on gender, mental health, and queerness. And we publish zines by other people, we publish zines by ourselves, we travel around, we get the word out, and make friends along the way.

Maira: And how did you get into zines?

Sayuri: I formally got into zines when I moved to the Bay. But before that I was always making little books and little magazines without knowing there was an entire like, scene that did that. So when I came to the Bay it was really awesome because I was like “Oh my god, other people are doing this weird thing that I thought only I was doing, publishing little books, or making little fake tabloid magazines, that’s what I always did as a kid-

Maira: Yeah!

Sayuri: And then when I moved up here, my roommate Anjelica, she runs Lemon Drop Press, which is a small risograph printing press out of our garage. So we just, I sort of just got into the zine scene because of her. Yeah.

Maira: That’s awesome. Where are you from?

Sayuri: I’m from LA-

Maira: Okay

Sayuri: So there’s a pretty strong zine scene there too, which is awesome.

Maira: There is, I have witnessed it firsthand.

Sayuri: Yeah.

Maira: Yeah, uh, it’s really cool. I’m from the Bay Area originally, but it’s really cool to talk to people from outside of the Bay who have like moved here about just how different the scenes are, but at the same time they’re both very communal and welcoming and warm. That’s what I like about the Southern California zine scene is, like, I’ve made friends with the organizers of Long Beach Zine Fest, they’re amazing. Shout out to all of them! Um, the LA Zine Fest people are really nice. My friend Alan runs a queer zine fest down there called Zine Queens. There’ just so much going on and everyone is so excited to see you. And that’s why zine fests down there, even if I’m not from down there, it feels like “coming home.” It feels very nice.

Sayuri: Yeah, LA’s pretty interesting because, growing up there, I just felt like there’s so much, it’s so huge. LA’s a huge place, so it does take some work to find like, your people. Or your community. But I feel like the LA zine scene is really strong and you know when I found it, I was like “this is awesome, how come I didn’t know about it?” And it’s because LA is so huge so I’m really glad that there are these pockets of people just making books and it’s really important.

Maira: Yeah, that’s kind of how I felt in the Bay too. Because like, so I’m from the East Bay, I moved to San Francisco for 7 years, and now I’m back in the East Bay, and when I was growing up it was kind of a similar situation where I would just make stuff all the time and I didn’t really know what to do with it, or like know other people who made stuff. Um, so I just had a bunch of like, weird little pocket books, full of stuff. And I would collect like, the Pocket Guide to the Spice Girls, and all those little like, mini zines basically. Um, and I would write all the time, but I didn’t really have a community around it, and then when I moved to San Francisco, I met Kristen, who actually lived in the East Bay, we met through tumblr, and … tea break…

Maira: They got me into zines, and they were like, yeah it’s this really cool thing where you basically have total control over like, what you’re putting out. And I was like “woah, that’s awesome! Um, yeah. And it’s been a wild, amazing ride ever since.

Sayuri: Yeah, zines are really important. I think, like, a lot of modern day like society especially in America is very capitalist, so this is a way for artists and creative people to get around that and make stories and share stories that are really, um, not about, you know, making money or the bottom line. And it’s kind of very far removed from the whole, you know, publishing world, which is-

Maira: I feel like publishing is like, I don’t know, I’m kind of trying to get into publishing. But I feel like independent publishing is what you’re saying, is very removed but it’s got some of the same aspects, but like, I don’t know I find it way more accessible.

Sayuri: Yeah, yeah, I think accessibility is like a huge part, and like never before has everyone’s stories in the world been so accessible. I mean here we are, just chatting zines and sharing with the world, so it’s like we’re living in a really critical time where we can share stories in a powerful way, so it feels really good to be here.

Maira: Yeah! Um, so, how did you meet Ara?

Sayuri: How did I, well, ok-

Maira: That wasn’t a smooth transition at all

[both laugh]

Sayuri: How did I meet Ara? I met Ara, the first time I met Ara was at 2015 EBABZ, so the East Bay zine fest

Maira: If you’re watching, you can see my shirt, but if you’re not watching you can’t see my shirt.

Sayuri: Shout out to EBABZ.

Sayuri: Yeah, so, the first time I met her I was helping my roommate set up her booth, she had the flu that day so I was like “dude I’ll help you,” uh we were setting up our table and I think we were on the second floor and Ara was on the third floor and we just hear this voice like [shouting] HEY EVERYONE!

Sayuri: And I was like “woah, what’s that?” It was Ara just telling everyone like, what to do and how we’re going to have a great time and like, thanking everyone for supporting. And at that moment I was just like “wow, this is a really powerful person.” So that’s how I met Ara, was through a zine event, and it was just really, you know, magical seeing her doing her thing and this project she had been working on for so long come to fruition. Through EBABZ, that’s kind of indirectly how we met?

Maira: Yeah

Sayuri: Because if I didn’t know, so, after the-

Maira: Six degrees of separation

Sayuri: After the Ghost Ship fire, it happened about a week before EBABZ

Maira: Literally a week before, and I’ll get into that later. That was a wild, rough week.

Sayuri: Yeah that was a really crazy week, and the fire happened and I was thinking “oh my god, what’s gonna happen with EBABZ?” And there were a bunch of volunteers that met up at Sgraffito, where Ara lived and was a gallery manager, so I went there, there was a very last minute – of course, because that was the best we could do – and everyone sort of got together “ok well we have a bunch of construction paper, let’s make signs, and do whatever we can,” I met my friend Lani there, who was one the volunteers, and Lani knows Maira, so [laughing] that’s how we got here today.

Maira: Yeah, um, we met at, we had a picnic for EBABZ this year as a lead up event. EBABZ is next week, December 9th, by the way, shout out. Um, and we were like “we both like making buttons, we both like making zines, we both love Ara, let’s do this.” I met Ara in a very similar way, actually, at 2014 EBABZ, which was my very first tabling event ever. I had just started making zines, and my friend Kristen, who I mentioned earlier, invited me to table with them and I said okay, and I saw this, this person, this like force of a person. And it was Ara. And I remember just beaming the entire time I was at the fest because it was so exciting and such a wonderful way to get myself out there and meet people and share ideas. And I went up to buy a t-shirt at the merch table, which is the t-shirt I am wearing right now, and I was like “Hey! This is amazing!” And I was just talking to her and Tricia, one of the other organizers that year, and telling them how included I felt, for someone who was coming in from the outside. Ara was very excited about that, and this was the very last bright orange t-shirt and I felt really special that I got it. And I just kept telling Ara that I felt amazing being there, and she was really stoked on that. I didn’t really interact with her again until 2015 EBABZ, so like, um, initially our friendship was really just in passing at zine stuff, but one memory that I have of meeting her outside of a zine event was I saw her on BART. I was going to Oakland and I was just like “shit, that person looks so cool.” Ara dressed so cool, she had the best clothes, like, and the best style. I just remember being on BART with her and looking over at her and being like “she looks so cool. Oh, that’s one of the EBABZ organizers, okay!” So later I was riding my bike and we like crossed paths way later down the street. And she was like, “Hey! You’re in Queer Anxiety Babiez!” I had an “Oh my god, you know who I am?” moment

[both laughing]

Sayuri: Celebrity crush.

Maira: Celebrity crush, oh yeah. For sure. So I had that moment with her, and I was like, “Yeah, I’m about to go to a reading,” and she was like, “cool!” We chatted for a little bit, and that’s when I was like, “I really want to be friends with Ara Jo.” She had that kind of magnetic personality that really made you feel loved and included and welcome even if you had known each other for 5 seconds.

Sayuri: Yeah, I felt like she really embodied the zine spirit, of you know, how- why zines are there.

Maira: Community. Like, Ara Jo was zine community.

Sayuri: Yeah, yeah yeah. After the fire, I just, because of her, I met so many other people. Even like after she left this world she’s still making connections between people. I feel like she’s still here. So, doing this for you Ara baby.

Maira: Um

[Sayuri laughs]

Maira: I just want to talk about Ara! Like, she was just, last night I was on BART and I was getting really sad because of this weekend, and I was coming home and just like, crying, but not necessarily sad, just “I can’t believe I got to exist at the same time as her?” And like I can’t believe, I mean I can believe, because it happened, but it’s just amazing that I got to meet her, and be friends with her, and spend time with her, because she was just such a powerful, booming, bright force of energy.

Sayuri: Yep

Maira: I’m going to cry on this podcast!

[both laugh]

[both]: But in a good way.

Maira: Yeah, like, organizing EBABZ, so last year was my first organizing EBABZ – the East Bay Alternative Book and Zine Fest – because I had been, honestly I signed up to organize so I could hang out with Ara. Like that was my-

[Sayuri laughs]

Maira: I love zines, but I also really want to befriend this person. So last year I started organizing, and the week leading up to the fest was one of the most intense weeks of my life. Because you know, we had a group chat on Facebook with all the organizers, and I remember waking up on the 3rd, so last year’s Saturday, today last year.

Sayuri: That was a very confusing time.

Maira: Yeah I remember waking up to a message from Tricia that was just saying “Hey Ara, please just let us know you’re okay.” Um, and I was really confused. And then I looked up what was happening and was like “woah,” the group chat got very somber very fast, with all of us just trying to find Ara. We were calling Ara, um, she had been in the hospital for like a, she had a really bad cold a few weeks before, so we had already lost contact with her for like a week, so we were like “oh, is this the same thing?” So we just couldn’t get ahold of her, um, and then when we found out that she was gone, we scrambled. Um, we found out that the venue we thought we put a deposit on, we hadn’t put a deposit on. We found out we didn’t really have anything aside from like, a hundred tablers, we had no space anymore. And so, that week really brought the community together, to just, make EBABZ happen. And last year was one of my favorites, no, it was my favorite, zine fests of all time. And I’ve been to a lot of zine fests, and I love EBABZ with all my heart, but last year was magical.

[both] Yeah

Sayuri: I remember that whole week, from the fire til EBABZ was just, so confusing. I mean, I just felt so, I didn’t know where I was, I didn’t know what I was seeing, I didn’t, I just felt so disconnected. And then I remember at EBABZ, it was the first time everything felt okay, or there was a moment of calm. I just remember everyone there, not just me, it was just the first moment that it felt okay. Things were alright for just a second, was at that zine fest.

Maira: There were like three thousand people there.

Sayuri: Yeah it was crazy packed, too.

Maira: We had to turn people away.

Sayuri: Oh really? That’s pretty awesome.

Maira: Because of the space constraints of the venue, not because we didn’t want people. We, yeah, it was the first time a lot of us had been in the same room together in general, but also a lot of us as friends and community members since the fire, and it felt very… warm. And it was a very cold, rainy day, um, and it felt very safe. I was running around crying the entire fest. Like, I was like, asking people if they needed anything, breaks, and yeah I was just sobbing the entire fest. When I was at my table, [fake crying] “Here you go.” Just hanging people zines and I was running around with my organizer hat crying and people were telling me how great the fest was going and I was just kind of like, collapsing and saying “Thank you.” Like, I think last year we just all really wanted to make Ara proud. Of like, the fest. And I mean this year, obviously, we want to make Ara proud every fest from last year on. That’s my goal with EBABZ, as an organizer.

Sayuri: Yeah, I’ve been doing a lot of just like, reflection on Ara’s legacy, I guess I knew her in the context of zines, I guess our relationship was more formal. We were just like, you know, hang out and do zine stuff together. I was just thinking about her legacy, and I think it’s really important that artists just continue making stuff, and just sort of like, plow through the sadness that we get a lot. Our community isn’t supported by mainstream people, governmental institutions, so we really have to be there for each other. You know, for ourselves and I’ve just been thinking a lot about like, self-love and loving your friends and showing up for your friends and um, making projects happen. And not being afraid of a failure. Or thinking that your work is not good enough or that someone is cooler than you. I always thought Ara was super cool, like way cooler than me, and like the first time we hung out she was cutting my hair and she was like “We’re going to make you look like Kristi Yamaguchi!” And I was like damn, you’re so cool. Like ohm y god and you’re cutting my hair?

Maira: That was such a good Ara impression.

[both laugh]

Sayuri: She was like, “We’re going to cut your bangs like this,” you know, and like in that moment, I was like she’s really awesome, and she barely knew me. You know, I think that same warmth is really important, um, and that’s why I love the zine community, there is always that warmth, and it never feels cold or unpopulated, so that’s why I’m in it.

Maira: That’s also why I’m in it! Um, it’s been a really good way to make friends, and meet people, and share ideas. Um, I, and it’s cool because I see the same warmth and welcoming in other zine communities too. Like, for example, I went to Omaha Zine Fest, not the middle of nowhere, but like, Nebraska. And I live in California, so that’s like, quite a ways away. I had never been there before, and I went to the very first one and the organizers were like, “Yeah, come stay at our house! We’ll take you out to breakfast and show you all the sights of Omaha,” which was really just like, every location every mentioned in a Bright Eyes or Desaparecidos song.

[Sayuri laughs]

Maira: Um, that’s really what it was. The tour of Saddle Creek. And, I feel that spirit in every single zine community I’ve ever witnessed. You know, I’ve been up and down the West Coast to fests, I’ve been to Chicago Zine Fest, Omaha Zine Fest, and I feel like I’m just name dropping at this point, but, I just want to shout out everyone who has ever put on a zine fest or has like, welcomed strangers into their home for a zine fest, because that’s really cool.

Sayuri: Yeah, yeah. Kudos to you. I mean I could not organize a zine fest, that is insane.

Maira: It’s-

[Sayuri laughs]

Sayuri: I make the zines.

Maira: Yeah, the zines! I was so inspired by EBABZ 2016, last year, that I founded my own zine fest. The Bay Area Queer Zine Fest, which was on June 17th. It was amazing, and it was a labor of love. And it was for Ara, like that’s what it was. You know, it was an idea that we had talked about, just as a very far out “Hey wouldn’t it be cool if we had a queer zine fest?” And then I made it happen with the help of a lot of other people. And it felt really good, and I felt like she would have been proud of that too. Um, as far as your zines go…

Sayuri: Okay-

Maira: We’re going to talk about you a little bit.

Sayuri: Yeah let’s uh, okay, well, I brought a few zines that I’ve made in the past. I don’t know, I think I want to start with the one that is not finished yet. But it will be or EBABZ which is next weekend on-

[both exclaim]: December 9th!

Maira: At the Omni Commons, I don’t have the address, but-

Sayuri: You should put the info up.

Maira: I’ll link it.

Sayuri: Um, so, every year I make an end of the year zine, so it’s pretty much in a comic book format and I look at the year’s, the past year. I wasn’t able to find my 2016 one, but I found my 2015 abridged tale, so this is kind of what I make every year. So even if I make one zine, it will be this.

Maira: If you’re just listening, this zine looks amazing. It looks very detailed and very professional.

[Sayuri laughs]

Maira: And I’m a little intimidated.

Sayuri: Don’t be! This year I was kind of crazy, like, I’ve got to make it look so professional. The ones now are like, less manicured than this, but I was pretty proud of this one. So I just like, review my year in a positive way, and it’s just, I feel like it’s really good for me to get out of my head, and be like, “Okay, well what good happened this year?” And I think like a lot of artists, I get depressed, and I get sad, and it’s hard for me to see the positive.

Maira: [sarcastically] What’s that? What’s depression? And artists?

Sayuri: I get sad sometimes, and I forget how amazing my friends and family are. I’ve been making these for the past five years, so I’m making my 2017 one, so hopefully that will be at EBABZ. Um, another project that I’m also trying to get done for EBABZ is this book, it’s not done yet, but I printed out the cover. Yeah, so this is the cover, it’s called “Ritual.”

Maira: That looks amazing.

Sayuri: It’s going to be great. So, this zine has been in the works for about a year. And so, this is just the cover art, and it features nine artists, healers in the Bay who submitted their rituals. There’s a banish the patriarchy ritual, there is a safe space ritual, I contributed, uh, I actually contributed a ritual that I did for Ara. After the fire happened, so this was a ritual that I organized with some friends and um, we, it was pretty much to help Ara’s spirit move, um, to the next wherever she is now. But this was really good for the participants because it helped us cope with our grieving in a communal way, um, but yeah. So my upcoming zine is going to be a magic zine, so it is about magical rituals and how to heal ourselves and our friends in dark times. And I’m really excited to finally have it done because I feel like, I mean I’m sure you get this too, where it’s like, “It’s not done yet! It’s not done yet!” Or like, “I started that how many months ago?”

Maira: Forever ago!

Sayuri: What’s going on with that? So, this is a zine that I’ve been sitting on for a while. But I actually don’t feel too bad about it now.

Maira: Nice! I hope that… I’m kind of doing that, I’m working on a King of the Hill zine right now, a follow up Zine of the Hill 2, this time it’s about feelings is the subtitle. I’ve been working on it for a while, and I don’t think it’s going to be done for EBABZ, but if it is, it will be a miracle and I’ll feel so good.

Sayuri: But if not that’s fine too.

Maira: But if not it’s fine too! I’ll release it first thing next year, and, because I don’t want to, I don’t know, with zines, sometimes I want to just like, get the product out if I’m feeling rushed before a zine fest and that’s usually if it’s a really personal one. And I’ll just have this like, creative flash and I’ll just only work on that for a week straight and I’ll just put it out there. But then, with other zines, you’ve got to sit with them, you’ve just got to let it happen naturally and organically.

Sayuri: Yeah, I like that, that resonates a lot with me. I think a lot of the time, I’m pretty like, I don’t like to categorize people but I’m Type A for sure, and so I’m always like, rushing to finish things, “How am I going to get this done if I’m not moving? I’m not doing anything!” So it’s, I’m actually coming to terms with like, the zine I am making might take a year, but maybe because of that it will be better because I didn’t-

Both: Rush it.

Sayuri: Yeah, so, don’t rush it.

Maira: I like to think of zines as, I reference this a lot but I took a history of rock and roll class in community college, and we had a week on Prince and a week on Michael Jackson.

Sayuri: Wait, what?

Maira: It was history of rock and roll since the 70’s, we went over like every genre of music, but where I’m going with this was, Prince was very “I’m going to make a million things and just put them out there, whether or not they’re polished.” And Michael Jackson was very, “I’m going to release a few things and they’re going to be super, super polished.” And yeah, super polished. And it’s not in a rivalry way, but in a like, production way if that makes sense.

Sayuri: Yeah, yeah. Creative process.

Maira: Yeah, creative process way. So, I think about that a lot when I’m making zines.

Sayuri: Yeah, I like that analogy, I’ve never thought about Prince and Michael Jackson like that. But now I am!

Maira: Shout out to that professor I had!

[Sayuri laughs]

Maira: Don’t remember your name, sorry! Your class was great.

Sayuri: I actually brought a Prince button.

Maira: I just got a Prince tattoo, too.

Sayuri: It’s funny because, I was, so Maira has a button maker. I make buttons. So I hung out with you, was it last week?

Maira: A couple days ago.

Sayuri: It was really recent, and they were like, “What’s up with that podcast?”

[Sayuri laughs]

Both: So here we are!

Sayuri: This is great.

Maira: So, I had just gotten my Prince tattoo, and Sayuri came over and was like, “Yeah I’m making Prince buttons!” And I was just like, I lifted up my sleeve, because I got Prince’s eyes.

Sayuri: His beautiful eyes.

Maira: And my hair is purple, and everything felt very… puzzle pieces.

Both: Yeah, yeah.

Maira: And so here we are, in this podcast.

Sayuri: Yeah, I think magic is definitely in the air, and we’ve got to pay attention to the weird things that the universe is telling us, if it’s, you know, a Prince tattoo and a Prince button and your hair is purple, that makes sense!

Maira: Like, we’ve both got orange on today, which we did not talk about.

Sayuri: Yeah, we didn’t plan the orange, orange, and then orange up here.

Maira: No. Oh, yeah, Sayuri made this “What Would Ara Do?” by the way. Do you want to, I know if you’re listening to this you can’t see it, but I’ll probably, I’ll link a photo of it-

Sayuri: Okay.

Maira: When I post the podcast. But do you want to talk about the art?

Sayuri: Yeah, should I grab it? It’s, there’s a lot of symbolism in it. So, this is the poster I made of Ara, it says, “What Would Ara Do?” um, and she is standing between two pillars. So, when I made this illustration, I was working on a tarot project, so I was thinking about the High Priestess a lot, and the High Priestess in the Rider-Wait deck, the classic Rider-Wait deck, has the High Priestess standing between two pillars of light and dark, and I thought a lot about Ara as the High Priestess. And I put her on Lady Guadalupe’s body. Um, I think Ara was from LA, too-

Maira: Yeah.

Sayuri: Yeah, Ara was from LA, because her grave is in San Dimas, which is where I used to work.

Maira: Oh really?

Sayuri: Yeah.

Maira: I’m going down for New Years and I’m going to try to visit it.

Sayuri: Yeah, I mean her metal plaque-

Maira: It’s got a photo of her.

Sayuri: Yeah and my roommate actually made the artwork that is now on her plaque on her grave.

Maira: Oh yeah, because it’s that poster, I have that in my room.

Sayuri: Yeah, so my roommate and I both make Ara posters. Um, but yeah so, she is embodied as the Lady Guadalupe, whom I love, and she’s standing behind a crescent moon. And um, the moon in a lot of cultures has to deal with death, and in a lot of cultures they believe when you die you go, you return to the moon. We’re from the moon, we’re like, weird space creatures. I kind of like that idea. And then, at the bottom, there’s a little baby kewpie, I love kewpie and-

Maira: Ara fucking loved kewpies.

Sayuri: She loved kewpies, kewpie’s here, you know, with its wings, supporting everyone, and then there’s little rainbows and clouds. Ara was a huge supporter of the queer community, and that was, I think, really amazing. Um, and this is my interpretation… And actually, if you look closely, there are 36 stars, for the 36 people who died in that fire. So, there’s lots of little tricks in there. But yeah so, this I will have at EBABZ. So, I’ll have this at EBABZ, and you can get one for free, or you can donate, get one for a donation, and I’ll give all the money, 100% of the proceeds to EBABZ. So that they can get their space for next year. So, you know, if you like art, if you like EBABZ, um, pick up a poster, throw a few bucks my way, and um yeah, get some cool art. And support the zine community.

Maira: Yeah, um.

[36:35, indistinguishable]

Sayuri: I got it, I got it.

Maira: It’s just been moving up and down all day and I’m totally okay with it.

Sayuri: It’s okay.

Maira: I, so we’re currently sitting at my kitchen table, which is a 6 by 3 folding table, commonly used at zine fests, um, because I moved and we didn’t have a lot of money for a new table, but I was like, “Multi-purpose! Let’s get a zine table!” So this is where I do most of my crafting, and I have this poster that I just have above my craft table that um, because I like to think of, “What Would Ara Do?” when I’m making stuff. Um, I made a zine about her, um, Sgraffito opened the Ara Jo Zine Library a few months ago, um, and they were like, “If you have zines about Ara, if you have zines for Ara, bring them to this space.” And it was really cool, and…

Sayuri: Lani is here!

Maira: Lani? Hey, Lani.

Sayuri: Hi Lani!

Maira: Hey, everybody.

Sayuri: Oh, hey everyone, hey Gabby.

Maira: For everybody watching, Meredith and Jackie and Charissa.

Sayuri: Hi everyone, thanks for joining us.

Maira: Um, and we went and I made a zine about Ara, and one of the things I wrote about… So I wrote the zine using this pen that Ara gave me for my birthday. Hey, Poliana! And, it’s one of those pens where you can change the ink color, and when my own house burned down earlier this year, two of the things that I made sure I grabbed when we were allowed back in the house after everything was soaked were my pin, my Ara pin that I made for the memorial, um, right after the fire, and then pen that she gave me. And I do most of my special zine projects with that pen, and I hold it very, very close to my heart. Um, yeah she gave me a pen for my birthday and she made the next EBABZ planning meeting like an unofficial birthday party for me and we had ice cream for breakfast and she was all, “I’ve always wanted to have a party with ice cream for breakfast!” Yeah, she was very stoked.

[Sayuri laughs]

Maira: And she just pumped me full of ice cream at like, ten AM. Um, because that’s just who Ara was… amazing, that’s who Ara was, just amazing.

Sayuri: Mhm

[Maira sighs]

Maira: So if you’re not doing anything today, and even if you are, think about your friends, and think about how much you love them, and tell them you love them, and hold them close. And think about all the amazing things that you can create together. Um, yeah.

Sayuri: Yeah, yeah that’s great.

[Sayuri laughs]

Maira: Those are my words of wisdom. Um, yeah, I’m probably, I actually live near Ghost Ship now, where Ghost Ship was, and I’m probably going to go by today. I’ve never been but I’ve looked for it, obviously not very hard because I didn’t find it, but I think I’m ready today to go, and I’m just going to pay my respects. We lost 36 really amazing, amazing creative people in that fire, and while, you know, we focused on one of them today, there’s thirty five other beautiful, beautiful, creative – I keep saying that – but you know it was freaks and weirdos in the best possible way.

Sayuri: It was, yeah, it was.

Maira: Um, do you have anything that you’d like to plug?

Sayuri: Um, no. Well, EBABZ. Everyone should come to EBABZ, I know there’s a lot of stuff going on that weekend, there is Magic Makers happening, which is the queer healing fest, which is happening at the Humanist Hall-

Maira: December 9th and 10th, so Saturday and Sunday.

Sayuri: There’s EBAB happening on the 9th.

Maira: On the 9th.

Sayuri: And there’s also-

Maira: Max’s Garage Print Sale?

Sayuri: Yeah, there’s also… Ok Gabby, I’ll plug my zine too. Um, there’s also Max’s Garage Print Sale happening in Berkeley on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. I think it’s the first time they’re doing all three days, so it’s a really great… I’ll have some of my prints there too, but it’s a really great place to pick up really affordable, great art, by artists living in the Bay. So go support your community, get your friends some art this year. One last plug, you should check out Ritual once it’s done at EBABZ. I’m also going to try to do some relatials with my friend Gabby Lala, and she’s giving me a lot of good feedback right now, thanks Gabby. Gabby and I are going to team up, she’s probably going to play some sitar… Gabby? Maybe some sitar? Yes?

Maira: I see some hearts.

Sayuri: So, there’s going to be some sitar music, I might lead a little ritual, and I’ll be selling these zines. So, come support your local artists, and um, the zine community. And I guess, I hope that everyone can be really kind and loving and compassionate today, well every day, but especially today.

Maira: Especially today and the next few days.

Sayuri: Yeah.

Maira: One last memory I have of last year is um, the big memorial at Lake Merritt.

Sayuri: Mhm, yep.

Maira: One thing that really stuck out… I pass Lake Merritt a lot because I live in Oakland. But every time I pass by, I don’t know what that area is called, with the pillars and stuff.

Sayuri: I don’t know what it’s called, but I know what it is, with the pillars.

Maira: Yeah, the pillared area at Lake Merritt, if you’re familiar, they had a bunch of glow sticks in the trees. And every time I see a glow stick now, I think of Ara and I think of that night and everyone just kind of like, coming together and crying together and hoping that this never happens again. And you know, like, I don’t know, people coming together. I’m starting to cry. Community is so important to zines and friendship and art, and I really want to stress that focus on these things, find these things, find your community, find your freaks and weirdos, and stick by them, and tell them you love them, a lot, all the time, because you never know what’s going to happen.

Sayuri: We love you everyone who joined us.

Maira: So we recorded this live on Facebook, and-

Sayuri: Why don’t you tell people where they can find the podcast.

Maira: Yeah, so podcast is going to be up on Libsyn, and I think it’s going to go up on Spotify and iTunes, I’m going to post a bunch of links, Gabby Lala you are totally correct, we should not wait for bad stuff to happen to come together.

Sayuri: Yeah.

Maira: And I think people take that for granted, until bad stuff happens, and then we come together and we’re like, “Ah, never again!” So hopefully this time it sticks. East Bay Alternative Book and Zine Fest, next Saturday, um, I’ll actually be recording the podcast live, probably not broadcasting live, but recording the podcast at the fest, and releasing it a couple days later. So look out for the next episode of Long Arm Stapler.

Sayuri: Yay!

Both: Signing off.

Maira: Bye everybody!

Sayuri: Bye!

#podcast #transcript #full transcript #zines #oakland #diy #ebabz

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daggerzine · 6 years

Text

HOLIDAY FLYER: Quiet was the new loud- the band talk about their beginnings, the end and the forthcoming reissues of their first two records!

John and Katie, the early years.

Holiday Flyer were truly something special in their 1990’s heyday. Hailing from Sacramento, but even in a scene that boasted bands like Tiger Trap and Rocketship, Holiday Flyer seemed to be off on their own island doin’ their own thing. Formed in the early 90’s by sibling John and Katie Conley (now Katie Haley), they released four LPs and several EPs and singles before calling it a day (and forming their next bands, California Orange for John and Sinking Ships for Katie,….now those bands are John’s Desario and Katie’s Soft Science).

I still remember them driving a few hours from Sacramento to Santa Rosa, where I was living and booking shows (circa 1994-’95) and introducing themselves to me at a show I had put together (I think it was Codeine) and telling me about their band, which got me immediately interested. The music was soft, spare and pretty….not quite folk music but close (with decidedly non-flowery lyrics). As the band went on and they added band members the sound got a bit denser but no less personal and still very melodic.

This year the Darla label is reissuing the first two albums, 1995’s Try Not To Worry and 1997’s The Rainbow Confection on limited edition vinyl (500 copies each). It’s the first time on vinyl for both and the download for each one includes several extra unreleased tracks.

So, here a few weeks before their 2/14/19 release date, I shot John and Katie some questions re: the origins of the band and what they’re doing now.

Quiet was the new loud.

Did you guys grow up in Sacramento or nearby?

John: We grew up in Rocklin and Roseville. In my early 20s I moved to downtown Sacramento. I have lived in or around the area ever since. Currently, I live in West Sacramento. I’m still really close to the downtown/midtown area of Sacramento which I like. I still try to go to as many shows as I can here in town.

Katie: So the Rocklin/ Roseville area is about 20 miles northeast of downtown Sacramento. It has grown a lot in the last several years with a major expansion of business and residential development. When we were young and growing up there the area still had a small town feel and some parts of the community were considered pretty rural – including our backyard ;-). I too eventually made it downtown and stayed for many years while I finished college. I still live in the Sacramento area.

What did you get into first…punk rock? New wave? Something else? What was the progression like?

John: The first genre of music I got into was Metal. The first album I ever bought was Blizzard of Ozz - Ozzy Osbourne. I met Mike Yoas (Holiday Flyer, Desario) in 1985. He introduced me to Punk and New Wave. One of my favorite bands he turned me on to was Naked Raygun. They are still a favorite. Around 87 or 88 Katie and I started to listen to similar bands. We both loved The Smiths, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Echo and the Bunnymen etc. When she turned 15, our parents would let her go to shows with me, which was cool. Looking back now, she was pretty lucky. She got to see some killer show. A venue in Sacramento called the Cattle Club booked some amazing bands in the 90’s. We saw Ride, Lush, Slowdive and Nirvana there, just to name a few.

Katie: Yep, as little sister, John pretty much always had an influence on my musical taste. He's got great taste so why not follow! But I have to say I never really got into the punk rock. As a young child I really loved Olivia Newton-John, Pat Benatar, Fleetwood Mac, and Madonna (I must confess). Later The Bangles and the Go-Go’s were pretty big in my world. By my mid-teens is when John and I really started seeing eye to eye again regarding music. We watched a lot of 120 Minutes on MTV together. I remember that the first music posters on my bedroom wall in high school were Depeche Mode, The Cure, The Smiths and R.E.M. Those bands pretty much sum up the start for me. And yes, I was seriously lucky my big brother didn't mind taking his little sister with him to shows. The Ocean Blue and The Mighty Lemon Drops in San Francisco is one of the stand out shows John let me tag along on that comes immediately to mind.

Was it pretty early on that you and Katie began making music together?

John: Katie was always singing, even when she little. I started playing guitar when I was 13. I had a band my last year of high school and Katie would occasionally sing with us. We didn't start playing together until after Katie graduated from High School.

Please tell me about the early days of Holiday Flyer? Was it pretty easy to make music with your sister or did it take some coaxing?

John: After High School, I had a couple of bands that didn't last very long. I kind of lost interest in playing music for about 6 or 8 months afterwards. I didn't stop listening though. I think one of the records that got me to pick the guitar back up was Today by Galaxie 500. There was something so different and special about that album for me. I started writing songs again and Katie would just come into my room and start sing with me. That was sort of the beginning of Holiday Flyer.

Katie: Yep, I pretty much forced my way in with harmonies that were not asked for.

John, still rocking it today.

What kind of stuff were you guys listening to at the time the band started?

John: I was really into a lot of shoegaze stuff. Ride, Lush, Slowdive. I think the band Moose had a huge influence on our writing. I had the early Moose EPs and remember buying an import copy of their first album. It was so different from the EPs, not shoegaze at all. It was really 70s folk influenced but still dreampop. At that time we were also really into some unfashionable 70s soft rock like Al Stewart, Bread, early Chicago, early Bee Gees ( Katie learned to play the snare/ride cymbal set-up playing along to Chicago and Carpenters records).

Katie: Bands I recall listening to quite a bit during the early days of Holiday Flyer, include The Red House Painters and Belly. Looking at both of our lists, I think its clear that the bands we regularly listened to at the time were quite different that what we were. We never really set out to replicate a sound. If anything I think the influence or take away we always had from whatever we were listening to was melodies, lyrics, and song structure. This was put through our filters and out came HF songs.

Had either of you been in bands before or was Holiday Flyer your first band? At what point did Verna come into the picture? Who else was in the band other than the two of you?

John: I had a short lived punk band in High School. After that I had a band for a couple years called The Boon with Mike Yoas (Desario), and then another short-lived band called Ellie. There was a band called Light Iris that Katie and I were in with Jim Rivas ( Rocketship, Holiday Flyer, Desario). Katie and I both felt we were better able to achieve what we wanted to do musically as a duo so we left. Jim went on to play in Rocketship. That's how we met Verna. We played shows with Rocketship and Dustin Reske engineered all of the early Holiday Flyer recordings. Katie and I worked as duo for the first year. The early recordings are layered guitars and Katie and I singing. We didn't play live that often at first. In fact, we didn't play a show until after we started sending out demos. We got asked to play a showcase for Alias Records in LA, and I had to wrangle a show at a cafe just to make sure we could pull off the songs before we went to LA. We continued to played shows as a duo (electric guitar and vocals). Katie added the snare drum and cymbal after we released our first 7". When Rocketship broke up we asked Verna to play bass with us. This was the core band for most of Holiday Flyer. We had guests on most of the records. Our friend Toby Marshall played lead guitar on the Sweet and Sour EP. Ross Levine (Soft Science) played trombone on "The Rainbow Confection". Mike Yoas played bass and Matt Levine (Soft Science) played guitar on "You Make Us Go". For "I Hope", we expanded to a full band with Jim Rivas on drums, Mike Yoas on bass.

Katie singing with Soft Science.

When did it feel like a real band? When the first record came out or even before that?

John: It started feeling like a real band after we released "Try Not To Worry". We were getting good reviews for the album and doing fanzine interviews. We were also playing shows in San Francisco and LA and opening shows for Red House Painters, America Music Club, Low and Smog.

Lyrically were there any specific themes you were exploring?

Katie: Looking back at the lyrics, some of them I really love, and a few of them I think oh no...can't listen. They are lyrics only 19 year old me could have written. But overall, I think the HF lyrics are really just kids trying to make sense of it all in a somewhat sweet naive way. I think that might be part of the appeal? They are very honest.

John: I agree with Katie, I think most of the lyrics, especially on the early recording and first couple of records were us just writing what we knew. Some of it is difficult to listen to now, for numerous reasons. Ha Ha! That being said, I'm really proud of what we did in Holiday Flyer.

Katie: Me too.

When and why did the band break up?

Katie: Oh boy, why do you have to bring up old shite? Ha, Ha.

John: Well, it was my decision to end Holiday Flyer. It was just a good place to stop. We had made our most polished album, I Hope and I wanted to do something different. Verna and I had already released the first California Oranges album with our friend Ross Levine on drums. After a couple of show as a trio, we added Ross's twin brother Matt on lead guitar and started working on our 2nd album "Oranges and Pineapples". During that time Katie and Verna started recording a record with Ross and Matt which ended up being The Sinking Ships. About a year later we decided to merge the two bands and Katie joined California Oranges.

Soft Science blowin’ minds.

Sacramento is kind of a low-key city but has always had a great indie rock/pop scene throughout the years with all of your bands plus Rocketship, Tiger Trap, etc. Why do you think that is? Something in the water?

Katie: Perhaps the area somehow cultivates shut-ins? Ha, Ha.

John: Not really sure it's big enough to call it a scene (ha ha). I think there might be a one degree of separation for most of the indie bands from Sacramento.

Please tell me about the reissues that Darla Records is doing?

John: James Agren at Darla has been wanting to reissue Try Not to Worry and The Rainbow Confection for a long time. Both albums were originally released on Silver Girl Records and have been out of print/unavailable for many years. With these reissues the entire HF catalog will now be available through Darla Records. About a year ago James was finally able to get me to start the process. I felt it was a good time to reissue them. It took us awhile to gather all the miscellaneous tracks which will be included with the digital downloads of each record. I'm looking forward to them being available on vinyl for the first time. Both albums have been remastered by Mike Yoas along with all the bonus material including demos and songs we recorded for compilations. I'm really happy with how it turned out. The LPs sound really good. I think people who like the records will be happy with them. I designed new sleeves for both records too, which was fun. They also have liner notes written by Jack Rabid and Dave Heaton, which is super cool.

The new covers for the reissues.

Katie: Yes, we really appreciate everyone who helped make the reissues happen! Even our friend Scott Cymbala from Fingepaint Records (the label that released the first HF 7”- also Beck’s first 10”) dug through boxes at his house to find original copies of old songs that were remastered and are included with the bonus material.

Will the band be (or have you been?) playing any gigs for the reissues?

Katie: I love singing with John it is a special experience that I really appreciate now that I have more perspective on what we did. But, we will have to see. We are both pretty busy with our other projects right now.

John: Katie and I played a few show over the last few years. One was opening for Mark Eitzel which was cool. We played a show with Mike Yoas on bass and Jim Rivas on drums for a local Summer concert series last year. Our current bands come first at this point, but if the right opportunity came up I'm sure we'd make it work.

What are you two doing musically these days?

John: I've been in Desario now for going on 15 years, which seems crazy. It's not as easy to find time for music like when we were younger, but I'm glad to still be playing. Desario are going to start recording a new album in January and hopefully play some shows out of the Sacramento area next year.

Katie: I am in Soft Science. Our 3rd album Maps came out in June of 2018. It was released through Test Pattern Records which Ross and Matt Levine run, and I help here and there on occasion. John does most of the graphic design for the Test Pattern releases as well. We are all very fortunate for that! This last year was a pretty amazing year for Soft Science. A couple highlights include playing Paris Popfest and traveling to Michigan to play at the Kalamashoegazer fest. I enjoyed seeing you there Tim! I also enjoyed seeing my old pen pal from the HF days, the wonderful Janice Headley, who created the Copacetic zine in the early 1990s. I had not gotten to see her in many moons so that was fantastic. She was there playing in Tears Run Rings so that was an extra treat! For 2019 Soft Science will just be doing whatever we can with the current momentum we have. All in consideration of our normal lives of course ;-). But we all love it so, new songs, and more live shows are in the works!

Desario bring the noise.

What are some current Sacramento bands that we might not know about but need to?

Katie: Soft Science played with Rosemother this year and I thought they were quite good!

John: Arts & Leisure are working on a new record, which I'm excited about. Two other Sacramento bands I really like are Ghostplay and The Surrounded. Ghostplay has and EP out now, and The Surrounded are working on an LP or EP.

Any final thoughts? Closing comments? Anything you wanted to mention that I didn’t ask?

John: Thanks Tim for all the support and interest over the years for our music. I'm also thankful to still be playing and look forward recording and playing live in 2019.

Katie: Just thanks for asking us to do the interview! We are thrilled there is interest in the reissues of our old HF albums. There is an overwhelming amount of music out there so when anyone listens and likes you it is best to be grateful. That we are!

Please visit the links below both for the reissues as well as what John and Katie are doing today.

https://darla.com/products/holiday-flyer-the-rainbow-confection

https://darla.com/products/holiday-flyer-try-not-to-worry

www.testpatternrecords.com

https://www.facebook.com/desarioband

https://www.facebook.com/softsciencemusic

More more more Desario.

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occupyvenus · 7 years

Text

I don’t buy it - Jon isn’t “a northern fool”

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!! SPOILERS FOR LEAKED EP 6 AHEAD !!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I just don’t buy it. I still believe that Jon is playing Danielle (btw we are using this name so it won’t show up in the search, not as an insult), going “undercover” as he did with the wildlings, to ensure she helps against the white walkers. Want to know why? Keep reading, but I warn you this got ... very, very, very long.

This turned, more or less, into an analysis of the entire Jon x Danielle interaction over season 7 somehow, even though it wasn’t really supposed to be that. Just to be clear about this: If you are a hardcore j0nerys shipper who doesn’t like people having different opinions.... you better stop reading right now. All nasty comments will be deleted without exception. If you see things differently and are open for a civil conversation, well don’t let me stop you. I’m not trying to “hate” on somebody else’s ship here, but as a fan of the series I can analyze and interpret the things happening. J0nery is one of the things happening right now.

They way I see it, there are three key issues to their relationships that can be seen both as motivation for them working and being together, and as distinct sources of conflict. Both internally for each character and in their interpersonal relationship. 1. the personal aspect | their personal feelings for each other, generally and specifically romantic 2. the political aspect | Jon��s duty to stand for an independent North vs Danielle's desire to rule over all Seven Kingdoms 3. the ... “end of the world” aspect | the looming threat that will end them all

At the beginning of ep3 Jon and Danielle were opposed on everyone of those issues: They didn’t know or particularly like each other, they both are relentless about their political decision, Danielle doesn’t believe him about the WW’s and/or is only ready to help under certain conditions.

At the end of ep6 these three issues seem to perfectly align, all conflict seems to be resolved: They are clearly, if not in direct words, admitting their love for each other, Jon has given up his claim on the Northern Crown, Danielle has decided to destroy the night king and his army.

This could be the natural progression of the story. My question is whether this resolution, despite being rushed, was properly portrayed, developed and flashed out over those 3 episodes. Whether the last interaction between Jon and Danielle was earned, whether Douchebag&Dumbass (they earned those nicknames by butchering Arya’s and Jaime’s character, btw) used their limited screen time to build up to this moment. After all, the (supposed) J0nerys romance is clearly meant to be the “emotional climax” of this season.

Now when you look at all their interactions over the season you notice that something is missing. Something very important when developing an intimate personal relationship such as a romance. There is no real human bonding moment for them. Though I supposed that’s not completely true. Danielle does share a few personal issues with Jon, but we never hear Jon talk about anything personal and/or private with her.

This starts in their first interaction when Danielle talks about her hardships, while Jon keeps shut about his and when she later talks about their dead brothers and Jon doesn’t really respond to the topic. This pattern persists when she asks for his advice on the beach, clearly indicating that she came to value and respect his opinion, while he is resisting to give her a clear answer, responding only with a vague statement praising her previous achievements and alluding to her potential. He doesn’t just outright says what he thinks, as he has f If he was sure about Danielle having a “good heart” and trusts her, wouldn’t he feel free to just speak his mind? But it seems he’s afraid of saying the wrong thing, worried about alienating or offending her. Which makes sense, he is in a very vulnerable position right now, basically her prisoner, and needs her to be on his side. Pissing her off is the last things he would need.

The interesting thing about the cave scene is that while it is shot as the most “romantic” scene for those two characters - the location, the lighting, the dramatic music score, EC’s line reading - they don’t really talk about anything personal in it. Not really. Their shared appreciation of the locations historical significance makes for a bit of a human connection, I guess, Danielle is definitely guilty of some heart-eyes, Jon puts on a more sympathetic face as well, but despite what EC’s voice is trying to tell you: The topic of this conversation is neither personal nor romantic. It ends with their thus far unresolved conflict: To kneel or not to kneel, that is the question.

The dragon petting session was definitely a moving moment for Danielle and finally Jon being a secret targ means ... something. But Jon makes it pretty clear that his targ-blood doesn’t immediately make him regard dragons as cute pets. When his statement about them offends Danielle, he corrects himself and calls them “gorgeous beasts”. Again, she is sharing something personal and important - her connection to her dragons - but Jon doesn’t respond with an equally meaningful story. It’s obvious that he doesn’t approve of her actions - wait until he finds out about the Tarlys - so their one-on-one conversation ends on a conflicted note. I’m pretty sure that Jorah views heartthrob Jon Snow as a potential love rival (what man wouldn’t?), but I don’t think that Jon looks jealous at all. Mostly confused about the weird, old, know slaver that just showed up.

When Bran’s letter arrives, Danielle is trying to strike a more personal tone by telling Jon she’s happy for him, but Jon is going straight back into politics and EotW territory. This would have been a perfect opportunity for Jon to show his “human” side a little bit more. Forgetting about everything else for a minute, sharing ... something, just something about his long lost siblings with the supposed love of his life. But nothing, straight back to White Walker talk. Danielle is obviously worried about Jon going on this stupid ass mission, I have no doubt in my mind that she is head over heels for him at this point. But Jon? He calls her a stranger. He asserts his position as king (Y’all are disappointing Tywin this season) and makes it clear that she can’t force him to stay on this island. Danielle is obviously in too deep to care about it anymore. (It’s a shame Dickon never had a chance to seduce her... ).

Last, but not least their farewell scene She states that she has grown fond of him, while Jon is keeping the conversation proper and formal. While Danielle is longingly looking after him, Jon doesn’t turn around. This fact is even more emphasized by Jorah’s presence who does take a last long look at the woman he loves, whom he might never see again. Why not have Jon do the same? Why not have Jorah turning around only to see them two exchange a long meaningful look, causing some love-triangle tension? Don’t tell me that Douchebag & Dumbass would be “above” this.

Compare it to Jon meeting Gendry. They talk about their fathers (why Gendry has come to care so much for his sperm donor is anybody’s guess, btw), joke a bit and connect. Jorah and Jon have a similar conversation about their fathers in ep6. We have an interaction like this for most, if not all characters who are forced to or decide to work together. We see this with Tyrion & Jorah, Sansa & Bran, Bronn & Jaime, Tormund & the Hound, Brienne & Arya etc etc. Because in order for us to care about the bond two people share, we need to see that bond being formed. We need characters to tell each other about their feelings, experiences, opinions, families, traumas, etc. for us to get emotionally involved with their relationship. We simply have no interaction between them where they connect as human beings. Especially Jon never brings up any private issues. We never see them actually getting know each other as people. Which is so so odd. If their love story and relationship was this important to the overall story, wouldn’t they want to make sure we get emotionally involved in it?

They could have easily written in Jon telling Danielle about his “father”. This is a difficult topic for them, considering the rebellion and stuff, but he brings up good old Ned to almost every single person he talks to. Jon has some serious daddy-issues and it would make sense for him to defend his father to Danielle. To make her see that he wasn’t the kind of man who sends assassin after newborn children. But not once do we see him go “I can’t speak to Robert and you might not want to hear this, but my father was the most honorable dudebro in all the seven kingdoms, blah blah.” Btw, why did Varys never tell her that Ned quit his job because he didn’t agree with Robert? He could have chimed in, overhearing them “by accident” and tell that story. Them having a conversation about Danielle’s father, the rebellion, this conflict and tension between their houses would have given real depth to their relationship. I would even consider them sorting out these issues a key requirement for them to even have a healthy, mutually loving relationship. Why were they never brought up? Why do we never see Jon talk about anything that matters to him as a person, other than the threat beyond the Wall and his duties as king?

What I’m trying to say is that their personal interactions are biased toward Danielle. She has made obvious heart eyes, talked about personal issues and showed that she gained trust in Jon. I’m not saying that Jon isn’t attracted to her or dislikes her completely. But, at least everyone should be able to admit that up until their goodbye in episode 5 Danielle looks a lot, like a hella lot, more love-struck than Jon. Even if one could argue that Jon has his moments where he shoots her a tender look, the disparity is pretty apparent.

But then in ep6 immediately after Jon wakes up on Danielle’s ship (btw, at least Jon didn’t decide to ditch WF for KL by his own choice. Of course Douchebag&Dumbass had to put him straight on a boat, because as so many people - me included - pointed out: It makes no sense for him to want to go. He should have want to go to WF by all means, home to his family and his people, preparing them for the threat that is getting really fucking close), he basically hands her everything she wants on a silver platter, without any coaxing from Danielle whatsoever.

Don’t you think that’s at least a very drastic, sudden shift in his behaviour? Even if we assume that he has changed his mind about Northern Independence eg he’s willing to kneel in exchange of her help, even if we assume that he has developed serious feelings for her, why would he be the one to bring this up? Why would he be so direct about it all of a sudden? Why not wait until Danielle mentions the whole kneeling issue, hoping that maybe she’s ready to put the political struggle aside now that she’s seen the enemy with her own two eyes - as was Jon’s original plan - but still being ready to give in should she press on about it? I wouldn’t begrudge Jon for doing so, but just giving up the north by his own choosing, proclaiming her “his queen” -ugh- stands in direct contrast to his convictions so far.

What has changed? Seriously, what happened between the end of e5 and the end of ep6 that could have made Jon do a literal 180 on this topic? . Let’s look at the conversations Jon has with his suicide squad companions, shall we?

Jon talks to Tormund in Eastwatch | It’s interesting that Jon doesn’t try to distinguish between Cersei and Danielle in any way. When Tormund asks which queen he has to convince, he simply says “both”. Though I was under the impression that Danielle already believed him - maybe still a bit unaware about the true extent of the issue - and this was first and foremost to get Cersei on board. He could have said “Danielle won’t risk sending her armies north until Cersei is convinced” or something like that. If he was already in love with her and believes her to be “his queen” -ugh- wouldn’t he come to her defense? Wouldn’t he try to put the “blame” for this stupid, stupid, stupid idea firmly on Cersei?

Jon talks to the Brotherhood without Banners in their Cells | The one thing to notice here is that Jon makes it clear that nothing else matters anymore, everyone who still breathes is on the same side. We have to work with people we neither like, nor trust because all of these squabbles don’t matter anymore. The only thing that counts is defeating the Night King.

Jon talks to Jorah | This would have been the perfect opportunity to bring up Danielle. Seriously, when I saw them starting talking I was already shielding myself for some “isn’t she just amazeballs”-comments from Jorah and maybe even Jon. Simply because ... well it’s Jorah’s favourite subject in the whole world and if Jon really was jealous he could have asked some side-eyes question about his relationship with her. Jorah himself could have pulled a Tyrion a la “Kh*leesi is the most wonderful person in this world, you will see that and then call her your queen -ugh- too.” Have Jon say something a la “D*enerys, she is quite an impressive woman.”. He’s talking to someone who knows the woman he supposedly loves very well, why isn’t he prying for some information? But she isn’t a topic of conversation between them at all. Similar to many of the things mentioned above, while this scene doesn’t necessarily refute any potential romantic feelings from Jon’s side, it is clearly a missed opportunity to shift our focus on them.

Jon talks to Tormund | Danielle comes up, but again not in a personal context. Another missed opportunity to mention the emotional aspect of their relationship. Since, you know, this is Tormund. They could have easily written in a comment a la “What does a fucking dragon queen look like?” or something like this. If you need a shameless character who doesn’t care about personal boundaries and just outright asks inappropriate questions, Tormund is your man. Hell, it wouldn’t have been out of character for him to straight out ask whether “Jon’s little pecker got happy with the dragon queen while he was south. Is that why he took so long?” or something alike. But no. He only asks “so you’ve met that dragon queen?” and Jon takes the conversation into the political direction. He brings up that she’ll only help if he bends the knee and Tormund this train of thought by highlighting the Jon/Mance parallels in this situation once again.

Jon talks to Beric | His talk to Beric revolves around the whole Lord-of-light, brought-back-from-the-dead, what-are-we-fighting-for issue. Beric states that they are not fighting for some king or queen, but for life itself. Weird that Jon would proclaim a woman “his queen” -ugh- not 30 min later. Jon rehashes a line from his night’s watch vows: The shield that guards the realms of men. This is a call-back to his conversation with Half-Hand back in season 2(?), who reminded him that “we are the watcher’s on the wall” before he died and told Jon “to do what needs to be done.” Does anyone remember how Jon infiltrating the Wildlings went down?

Looking back at the three big issues surrounding the relationship between Jon and Danielle, only two of them were brought up in their time apart: The impending threat from the dead, how fighting them is all that truly matters and Jon’s dilemma of bending the knee to get Danielle’s help. She is never mentioned as a love-interest. The personal side of this equation is not addressed between him leaving DSt and him being saved by her.

Which is weird, because ... a bunch of dudebros alone in the wilderness, some of them even talk about ladies and sex and dicks (emmy nominated writing, folks), would have been a great opportunity to bring this up. But instead the theme of Jon’s conversations seem to be “proud men and their downfalls”. Something that has been mentioned many, many times over the season.

His conversation with Jorah (like he didn’t talk about Danielle with Jorah -kh*lessi loving- fucking mormont.) also revolves around the topic that honorable men don’t always get what they deserve. Jorah’s father was killed by his own men, Ned was executed. Plus the Mance dilemma is connected to this as well. “Pride” and “honor” are more or less the same thing when you think about it. This plays back into the “Northern fool” narrative the season has been setting up since episode one. We here about three men who found their untimely death because, or despite of, their own kind of honor. Jon has been warned by Sansa not make those same mistakes and Jon himself has admitted to coming to close to doing just that. But more on this later.

All of Jons interactions and seeing how effective the dragons truly are explain why he has made the decision to bend the knee, at least why he’s ready to give in to her demands, not why he would actively give it up. But there were no conversations that would allude to his growing feelings for Danielle. At all. If that was the “emotional climax” of the episode, shouldn’t they put in a few things hinting at it?

I would also like to mention how very odd his behaviour after waking up was. The first thing he said wasn’t “where am I?”, it wasn’t about his uncle who just died to save him (which I would assume would be the first thing that comes to mind). It wasn’t Danielle asking him “How did you get out of there??!! We all thought you were dead.”. Before Danielle could say anything, he tells her how sorry he is about Viserions death. I’m not trying to be insensitive here, I know that her dragons are immensely important to her but to Jon? His uncle was just killed in front of his eyes, shouldn’t that be the thing he is heartbroken about? He didn’t even build any kind of personal connection to Viserion specifically. He should have started this conversation with many other things, but he very deliberately chose to start with that.

If I’m allowed to put this in colloquial terms, he is sucking up to Danielle. Just as he’s been doing in ep4 when she asks for his advice, just as he did in ep5 when he didn’t think “beautiful” was the right word to describe her “children”. This is before Danielle promises to destroy the night king with him, it seems to me that he is doing what he’s been doing for the entire season: Catering to Danielle’s feelings and wishes. Soothing her temper. Not saying the wrong words as not to alienate her. Rather than holding his tongue or beating around the bush, as he has done before, he actively says exactly what she wants to hear. And that’s exactly how that interaction progresses.

Jon establishing physical contact to create an intimate atmosphere, “using” her obvious crush on him, going a bit further by inventing a fun nickname for her, him calling her “my queen” -uuughhhh-, giving up the North and saying that what the Northern Lords want doesn’t matter because they’ll change their mind once they see how amazeballs she is. This entire conversation revolves around her, Jon only talks about things that are supposed to make her feel good. Again, there is no mention to how Jon survived. Jon apologizes for going on the dumb wight hunt ... when it wasn’t even really his idea?! Tyrion came up with the plan of catching a dead and bringing it to cersei. Why is he taking all the blame for this bullshit plot?

Danielle isn’t taking at least some part of the blame herself “if only I had believed you, all of this wouldn’t have happened. Viserion would still be alive”. The next comment might be fueled by a bit of salt and left-over range from yesterday, so don’t take it too seriously, but “you have to see it to believe it.” sounded almost like an excuse. “Don’t apologize, it’s good this happened, this isn’t your fault. But it isn’t mine either, because how could I know?” This would be consistent with her characterisation so far. She is not willing to admit any mistakes, not even to herself. If I look back, I’m lost. But Jon doesn’t point any fingers either, not even in the most subtle way “we had to do it to convince you and cersei”... which is odd. As said above take this last paragraph with a grain of salt, because it was written with an ounce of salt.

Why would he just call her “D*ny” all of the sudden? He hasn’t called her anything but “Your Grace” until now. This comes out of nowhere. It’s pretty easy to create a narrative leading up to this moment, btw. Why not have Danielle offer to address each other on a first-name-basis? Do it on the beach when they say their farewells, Jon calls her “Your Grace” and she answers with “Daenerys is alright.” Jon only nods and turns away. At first Jon declines because of the whole (potential) political, I-can’t-love-you-because-THA-NORTH, so-I-have-to-stay-formal thingy, but after she saves his ass he calls her D*enerys for the first time. She smiles, obviously moved by this and he jokingly says “or maybe D*ny?” and the show can take it from there. Sounds a lot more romantic and a lot less random, right? It would take two lines of dialogue to make this seem a lot more natural and a lot less suspicious and ooc.

Side-note: After Danielle leaves the room and Jon opens his eyes (did he only pretend to sleep?) he looks exhausted, exasperated. Not like a man who just shared a very intimate moment with the woman he loves. It just doesn’t add up. Why is Danielle lovingly looking at his sleeping face not the last shot?

Altogether, their “romantic relationship” is still as one-sided as it was before, only now Jon is actively pushing for it to be that way. All in all his behaviour is way over the top. It sounds like a man who’s simply trying to woo a woman for one reason or another. If they had taken it down just a nudge I would have believed it. If they had shown some restraint to either the romantic tones or the kneeling issue, I would have taken it as Jon’s genuine feelings. But this way? It’s too much, too sudden, without having a proper build up to it. It’s just not how “Jon” would act.

This is mostly what if comes down to: the romantic hints over the season were really, really on the nose - dramatic, emotional scores and line reading that do not match the tone of conversation (cave scene), or third characters spilling it out for the audience (davos), or moving deep into soap opera territory (boat scene) - but just as superficial. All these hints are thrown into our faces without properly being set up or developed. There were countless possibilities to give it some real depth and as little trust as I have in Dickheads&Douchebags writing abilities I don’t understand why they wouldn’t use them. As much as I disagree with a lot of their choices I can contemplate why they are doing stupid. The whole stupid arya vs sansa subplot is there to create some tension and drama in WF. I get it. It’s stupid as hell but I at least understand where the stupid is coming from. I know what they are trying to achieve with that stupid. But this? Half-assing the big love story of the show? The only explanation that makes some sense to me is that Jonnearrris is a red herring.

A really well executed one, btw. Make sure the audience can’t miss it, but also prevent them from forming a real emotional connection to it. After all it is supposed to distract from the real storyline (I’m going to assume jonsa & targbowl) not compete against it. You want the audience to be shocked, but not hate you for ruining the most amazing, emotionally involving love story you’ve ever seen.

This leads me to my final conclusion: There are only two options here.

a) Dickhead & Dipshit missed out several obvious opportunities to flash out Jon’s feelings, because ... just because, and fucked up to effectively use their limited screen time to develop the grand love story of GoT. The cave scene, for all it’s romantic lighting, background music and line reading, concludes on the very political issue of northern independence. Dragon petting could have been used for Jon to make a personal statement (I have a direwolf I love and miss very much - as does the audience, btw - I wouldn’t call him “my child” but I got the connection you have going on with those lizards), instead Jon isn’t to keen of the fire breathing lizards and their conversation ends with him not being to sure what to think about her victory on the field of fire. Their goodbye scene could have been used to have them throw a last longing glance at each other, instead Danielle looks on while Jon has his back turned and doesn’t look back. Jon’s conversation with Jorah could have been used to cause and highlight some tension between them since they are “in love” with the same woman, instead it revolves around honorable, upright men and their deaths. His conversation with Tormund could have been used for some light-hearted guy-talk, as is Tormunds speciality, but instead it’s about the lives Mance could have saved if he had let go of his pride (and honor) and knelt. Again, there isn’t much in the season that would outright refute any romantic feelings from Jon’s side, he at least seems attracted to her and perhaps a bit intrigued (she is beautiful and a very fascinating woman if nothing else), but I can see missed opportunities to have Jon’s feelings mentioned or emphasized left and right. So many that it’s hard to believe Dumbass & Douchebag aren’t aware of it. If the entire season was building up to this “revelation” in ep6 and the following boatbang in ep7 wouldn’t they have used everything they got to actually build up to it? If this truly is where the show is headed, they did a very very lousy job. And don’t tell me that all the things I mentioned above would be “too cheesy” because the last Danielle / Jon scene in ep6 was fucking cheesy as hell. Btw, maybe my Jonsa-shipping-goggles make me a bit “immune” to all this, but if that’s the case, jonnearis-shipping-goggles make people overly perceptive to it as well. This accusation goes both ways.

Which leads me to the second option:

b) They didn’t mention the personal aspects of this plot point because they don’t really matter. Because things are not as they seem. They emphasize the political and “end of the world” issues in Jon’s story line and his relationship to danielle because those are the things influencing his behaviour, most importantly the drastic shift in his behaviour between leaving DSt and reuniting with Danielle on the boat on their way to the stupid stupid dragon pit meeting: He is giving up on his political agenda and uses all means possible to make sure Danielle helps them. He has learned from his predecessors mistakes (Mance not kneeling - and dying, Ned being to trustworthy - and dying, Robb falling in love with a foreign woman - losing his people - and dying) and is now using that knowledge for his advantage. There are only three possible payoffs to the “Northern fool” narrative: 1. Jon is making the same mistakes as the men he’s compared to and will suffer similar consequences (unlikely, since he is aware of that and has already broken with his mance-persona), 2. he does the same mistakes without it backlashing because Danielle is just so amazing (very unsatisfying storytelling) 3. he learned from it and doesn’t make the same mistakes. He goes along with everything she wants, tries to win her over by all means possible because what he said is true “D*enerys is their last hope”. Not only in this specific event of stupidly getting trapped by the Army of the Dead in the middle of a frozen lake because ~someone~ thought it was a great idea to go on a fucking idiotic wight hunt, without horses, adequate manpower or any real plan, but also in the grander scheme of things. If Danielle doesn’t help them (what if she refuses to go back north after one of her dragons was killed there?) they are fucked. That’s why Jon went to DSt in the first place, later admitting that is was a stupid idea, that’s why he went beyond the wall to catch a fucking wight, even though that was a really bad idea. All his actions this season were motivated by defeating the threat to the north. All of them (except for choking Littlefinger, *cough*). Even reuniting with Bran and Arya had to take a backseat to this issue. Is it really that far-fetched that his ooc-behaviour at the end of ep6 is the same? If you consider all the things mentioned above? He can’t risk her bailing on him, so he does everything he can to cater to her feelings and desires voluntarily and up-front, to make sure she fights the WW’s, to make sure she doesn’t have any excuse to leave them high and dry.

I would also like to mention that this theory doesn’t even need to implement any possible dark!dany or targbowl or just general endgame speculations. Except for one paragraph, this is solely based on what happened on screen this season. This isn’t about me being a salty shipper either. It’s no secret that I’m not a fan of any j0nerys romance really, but the big pay off in e6 was simply unearned. Either Dickhead & Dipshit fucked up writing a romance or they are presenting us with a wonderfully crafted red herring. Being the optimist I am, I’ll believe in the second until proven wrong.

I teased to write a “little something” about this issue, but it turned into a “fucking big something” instead. Thanks for sticking with me until the end!

#jonsa #e6 leaks #anti-jonerys #got spoilers #my stuff #got s7 #meta #ish #long post #I didn't proofread this one more time because writing this already took so long

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empty-dream · 7 years

Text

Me Watching Fate/Apocrypha ep 19

Come up with a plan crazier than “We will attack an ancient Babylonian flying fortress with Boeing 737s” I’ll wait

Astolfo: “I wanna be the pilot!” Fiore: “We prioritize safety above everything.” Astolfo: “Booo.”

Astolfo: “Man I wish I can remember my noble phantasm’s true name then it’d be all easy peasy we’d win right away” Literally everyone: “I have never heard a sentence more irresponsible than the one just coming out of your mouth."

Haha Astolfo be like “C’mon it’s not like I’m so hopeless at least I know the conditions to trigger my memory” and then everybody’s like “What are you? A self-aware amnesiac?"

Mordred is so cool resting her arm on Kairi’s shoulder such a proud child

Ah the culmination of Forvedge arc!!!! It’s also one of my favorite parts of the novels!

Fiore: “Caules goddamnit stop making me panic I’m screaming inside already” Caules: “If you’re already screaming inside with just me reciting everything that’s against us then you’re not fit to work under pressure.” Fiore: “You little shit.”

“Nee-san, choose. Become a cinnamon roll, or a sinnamon roll. You can’t be both.” -Caules

Wow that’s an incredibly humane answer from Fiore.

I like how Caules’s voice goes from cold to soft in 0.1 second

“Well you’re a rare 100% kind, normal sister in Nasuverse. I’d rather kill anyone than to let you stop being like that.” -Caules

And the mood is suddenly changed by the appearance of naked Astolfo and his man part.

“SHE HAS A DICCCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK” -Jeanne D’Arc, The Maid of Orleans, on discovering a trap

Jeanne, my girl, I think you just have been… TRAPPED!

The castle of Yddgmillennia had never been shook so hard as it had been by Jeanne’s scream

Astolfo: “GYAHAHA she thinks I’m a girl all along! It’s hilarious!” Sieg: “Say that to the hundred of people who check on your typemoon wiki page because they don’t believe you’re a guy.”

In the novel Astolfo is annoyingly lavish he just buys anything he sees on street and Sieg regrets everything

WoW Mordred that’s a ton of food you’re eating

Mood: Mordred frowning at people while still munching a steak

I don’t understand why Jeanne is not in this room? Like, she helps a lot in this scene in the novel as well??

I think Gordes is also in this room too in the novel but let’s face it, it’s Gordes

Dude c’mon it’s not like she’s only there to brood over Sieg and Laeticia I’m disappointed

She guides Caules in his painful magic operation thing and lent him a holy shroud to ease the pain in the novel BITCH THAT’S A LOT TO DO.

Also I’ve always been curious at the shroud is that too much to ask :(

Chiron: “Usually this kind of thing is done little by little.” Caules: “Ever heard the stories of students finishing 8 essays in a single night? If they can cram that much, so can I.”

You know, I like this transfer ritual scene that happens in Caules’ mind so much. It’s like it so much when he says “I was there too.” I like it so much when little!Fiore hands him the leash of the dog, symbolising her passing the responsibility to him, and him accepting the burden of it.

Like, literally this transfer ritual does not have anything to do with the need of power up, family tradition, magic superiority and shits like that. It’s treated as accepting responsibility and all the pain that comes from it.

Tho I wish this scene has a flash back of little!Caules too haha

Fiore: “U ok?” Caules: “I aM FiNE bELiEVe mE” Chiron: “That doesn’t sound like fine. Here, drink this medicine.” Caules: “nO I aM a MaN I dO nOT TaKE mEDiCiNe” Fiore: “…Think maybe we botched it?”

“You said I’m a rare 100% kind Nasuverse sister. You’re also a rare 100% kind, normal Nasuverse brother. So I’m damn proud of you.” -Fiore

Astolfo be like “I appreciate you’re buying me a pie, Master, but still I don’t want to eat anything even my pie in front of this punk ass gluton”

Sieg: “What do you think of human?” Mordred: “Slightly cleverer than animals. Usually driven by lust, greed, or a mixture of two. Mostly they just do whatever they want. So yeah, slightly cleverer animals."

Mood #2: Astolfo frowning when slurping his entire orange juice.

Hm I think this cafe scene is way more tense in the novel and it makes way more sense than this but that’s just me I think?

Astolfo: “So you wanna be good king or bad king?” Mordred: “Good king, of course.” Astolfo: “THAT’S IT I KNOW YOU’RE EV- Wait what?”

I love how with just a glance we know that it is not Jeanne but Laeticia, their body languages is way too different.

Astolfo: “Sure you’re not hiding anything?” Laeticia: “Huh I don’t, what do you mean, of course I don’t hide anything” Astolfo: “Swear to God?” Laeticia: “Ugh that’s cheating”

“Well, I know you like Sieg, but since I too want to bang him, and you’re not even Jeanne in the first place, you won’t get much support from me” -Astolfo

Sieg be like “Hm since when you two are very touchey feely? Are you trying to make a new ship?”

I know someone somwhere is shipping Jeanne and Astolfo don’t lie to me

Hm I don’t know what to make out this they don’t make it clear that it is Laeticia whereas Sieg even addressees her with her name instead of Jeanne’s.

I just feel so blessed watching the Forvedge siblings bond it’s so beautiful and pure

Look at them they are both so similar to each other so stubborn.

Hm I kinda feel annoyed that they don’t state that Caules is also providing Chiron prana which makes him technically his master too but whatever.

Fiore: “You’re the one who taught Caules the cinnamon-sinnamon speech, aren’t you?” Chiron: “Well it’s the easiest way to make him understand your condition.”

Fiore: “I don’t have the guts to be a magus, huh?” Chiron: “You treated me as a human being. If it’s any consolation, the rest of black faction’s masters barring your bro did exactly the opposite. 4 died, 1 became a long running humiliating joke. So you did the right thing.”

OH MY GOD CHIRON IS SO SWEET FIORE YOU ARE SO LUCKY

Chiron don’t apologize pretty sure men today don’t have half of your courtesy so

If that scene with Fran and Caules does not make it to the screen I’ll rage quit- OH MY A FLOWER PETAL

SCRATCH THAT THIS IS ALSO SAD :(

The storytelling in the novel was incredibly sad but the anime take on is also clenching my heart

Tho I’d like the scene of Fran throwing the flowers while Caules looks from the windows that’d be so beautiful

But I’ll settle with this holy shit he’s like that it’s like she never goes anywhere all these times like ugh my heart

Caules goes from “I dunno man, I don’t even want to do a war” to “I’ll go through this war until the end, even if there is no business left for me in it”

Brooding Jeanne.

Jeanne that’s called “being in love” get over it.

Mordred be like “Damn that trap and that fake saber they give me contagious existential crisis”

Mordred: “I have no idea how to surpass the King of Knights.” Me: First, don’t have a clone of yourself. Or tens of clones, for that matter.

Kairi: “I know you both love and hate your dad.” Mordred: “WHAT- THE FUCK ARE YOU SAYING?” Kairi: “C’mon, your noble phantasm is literally named after your dad. Nobody names their treasure after the name of someone they hate.”

Kairi, for the 50th time, being a better dad to Mordred than Artoria ever was.

…I DIDN’T EXPECT AN ATALANTA AND ACHILLES SCENE HOLY SHIT

I don’t think he manages to console her in the novel? At least not onscreen. THIS IS MUCH APPRECIATED.

He looks very concerned of her :((

Well makes sense. He just gave her a disappointing answer. Probably noticed she is already corrupted too. And he can do jack shit about it.

Oh Karna if looks could kill yours would kill anyone a thousand times

Shakespeare is literally anyone who’s been working on something overnight: “MORNING HAS COME. THE LAST MORNING HAS COME. IT ALL ENDS HERE.”

Semiramis chilling in her garden, probably missing Shirou. Most likely.

While everybody has a scene in this ‘dawn before the last battle’, Shirou is nowhere to be seen

I’ll bet my money he’s still hijacking the system of the grail, with Rihanna singing ‘Work Work Work Work Work’ in the background

Mordred’s idea to name a plane is “Saber” in red paint. Now who’s going to tell her that there is another red Saber with the same exact face as her?

Personally I think this episode doesn’t really convey the intensity of both Forvedge Magic Transfer arc and Last Dawn arc like there are so many things that I love from the intensity itself that isn’t present in the anime but you know, novel > screen adaptation is a given.

Still mad Jeanne isn’t present at the magic transfer and only spends time brooding.

NEXT: Remember that crazy plane vs flying fortress? Let’s do it.

#fate apocrypha #random saying #fate apocomment

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asrafarel · 7 years

Text

On Shiro’s and Sendak’s similarities (or maybe I’m just seeing double)

(art by me) ************this is S3 spoiler free************* I haven’t even watched the last trailer yet. warning: long post It always pains me to see how most of the fandom is depicting Sendak as a bossy motherfucker with a short temper acting like a brutal fighter and enjoying non-con relationships. Seriously, have we seen the same show? Ok, Sendak is a villain (with a high potential for a redemption arc, please Dreamworks don’t let me down on this), but that doesn’t automatically make him an horrid asshole.

Yes, Sendak is a nasty opponent but he still has a lot of common points with Shiro and both stand on an equal foot in terms of leadership and fighting abilities (though I think that if Sendak had a less heavy and bothersome prosthetic he’d move better and thus maybe the result wouldn’t be the same, but I have nothing to support this theory). Actually, they have so many similarities they are literally mirroring each other.

First, let’s make a list of things we know about their shared past :

Shiro was detained on Sendak’s ship (along with the Red Lion)

=> Sendak is Zarkon’s first Commander, the emperor trained him personally. Sendak is loyal to death to the Galras (not to Zarkon, let’s double check this*) and trusted. He was given the responsibility to watch over a lion and the should-have-been-their-greatest-weapon-dude (I guess his name was Shiro or something).

They both had the Druids experimenting on them (although Sendak was willing)

=> We know (from his official bio) that Sendak lost his eye and his arm during his time on the frontlines (meaning quite some time ago, since that was before he was promoted in the hierarchy - only low ranks soldiers fight on the frontlines -, it also means Sendak rose up from the very bottom and earned his title through merit just like Shiro who started out as a cadet in the garrison) and volunteered to get a bionic prosthetic. Shiro stated that the Druids took his hand (yeah, hand, makes you wonder how much is actually missing).

Shiro has hallucinations about Sendak

=> Crystal venom is probably my favorite episode so far and it drops so many bombs about them, it’s impossible to think they never talked to each other before. The way Shiro provokes Sendak and the fact he’s getting a reaction from it tends to hint they had this conversation once, but reversed.

So far nobody got under Shiro’s skin like Sendak did (not even Zarkon)

=> Seriously no one else did. This is (flashbacks aside) the only time Shiro panicked for real, like he completely lost his shit. Not Zarkon, not Haggar impersonating him or being stranded on a foreign planet wounded with angry animal on his tracks got him desperate like Sendak did. I know Shiro was hallucinating, but to him it was real and it was probably just a replay of past events (though I can’t prove this yet).

Now a list of their common points:

First in command of their respective boss (aka Zarkon and Allura)

Leadership skills (also charisma)

Lost an arm (opposite of each other)

Were Druids’ toys at some point **

Scar on face

Tacticians (have a good look at Sendak’s last sentries, they’re all half-broken and he managed to pull out a working plan with just 2 guys and 5 nearly out-of-order robots)

Composed demeanor (Sendak is more composed than Shiro tbh)

Matched in terms of fighting abilities, twice a draw (epic fist bump + last blow and in both situations they do have exactly the same stance, still the most epic fight to me)

Dedicated to their cause, never giving up even in desperate situations

Supportive and/or encouraging (Sendak praised Haxus easily)

“Climbing from the bottom to the top” career path (then falling into disgrace)

Both are the strongest around in their own group

(also they like to get lost in space)

(both names starts with an S *ba dum tss!*)

That makes 12 (14), but the core similarity is much more global. It encompasses all of this and is more like the general idea of their characters. Sendak is dark!Shiro in a way. They both have the same role and rank in their respective organisation, the same way of handling stuff coming their way with a seemingly cool and composed attitude, not letting their anger get the best of them.

Sendak broke loose only when Pidge cut his arm off, crushing all hopes of winning and despite this he kept on fighting until he was trapped. Ironically, Sendak was made prisoner and detained on the Castle of Lions just like Shiro had been on his own ship. Reversing position and situation again.

They both are doing the same kind of choices (avoiding a fight if necessary, prioritizing tactics over frontal assault, giving everybody a role and benefiting from other teammate's skills -Sendak is the Commander/fighter/tactician and Haxus is the com tech/hacker/mechanic and their skills don’t overlap- etc..) and handling things in a similar way (they don’t give up, face desperate situation with determination, fight mental battles, etc..). It’s pretty fascinating because they are very different but at the time they’re totally similar.

Another thing that I realized while doing this analysis is that they have exactly the same career path. They started small and proved their worth. Sendak was named first Commander and Shiro is recognized as the best pilot on Earth. Then shit happens (Sendak lose to the Paladins and Shiro is framed for pilot error) and they both fall into disgrace.

Also, I’d like to pinpoint something in order to annihilate brutal-bloodthirsty-fanon-Sendak. During ep.4 (The fall of the Castle of Lions), when Sendak and Haxus are marching on the castle with their damaged sentries and Shiro opposes them, Sendak actually asks Shiro to let them through.

*then fight starts*

(Kinda dubious dialog out of context… Dirty jokes aside, it could have been foreshadowing for Crystal Venom: Sendak actually got into Shiro’s mind.)

What’s important here is that Sendak had no intention to fight Shiro if it could be avoided. He’s no bloodrager on the loose. He fights when it’s needed, avoid unnecessary troubles and is dedicated to accomplish his mission. Just like, guess who? Yeah, Shiro.

The choice of words is also very interesting. Sendak didn’t ask Shiro to get out of his way or to get down or to go away, he asked him to “stand aside” as in to stay out of the matter, to not butt in, to let him do his work. Maybe I’m stretching this but that’s not exactly what you ask an enemy and when Shiro rejects the option, only then, Sendak goes for the kill. What’s funny is that he didn’t kill him when he had the opportunity later. He didn’t even knock him out, he just tied him (while Lance, who wasn’t considered a threat wasn’t even tied). To me it’s more like the way you treat a former ally (maybe ally is a bit too much).

I really really really hope Sendak is going to get some screen time in S3 and that the veil on their common past is going to be lifted. The character has so much potential and also the ability to drive Shiro insane (not the same insane as Slav tho).

I still might update this at some point with the upcoming seasons.

Hope you enjoyed it!

----------------------------------------

Notes:

* Actually, the reason I think Sendak’s loyalty is to the Galras rather than to Zarkon comes from his first appearance. His very first quote is : "I fight for the empire. I conquer in the name of Galra. No foe has ever stood in my way and none ever will. Vrepit sa!" Maybe I'm stretching things too far, but to me it could be some sort of foreshadowing of Sendak turning against Zarkon (most likely Lotor) because he goes against the Galras as people. Remember, Ulaz said to the Paladins that Galras supported the empire because it would bring them stability, there was something genuinely desperate and hopeful there (incidentally hope is exactly what Shiro is to Ulaz). After all, their home planet had been destroyed, thus making them homeless too. Also, in S1e1 Zarkon refers to the Alteans as a foul race and that Voltron is rightfully theirs. We know nothing about the “dark history of the Paladins”. Galras probably have a very different opinion on who’s the bad guy. In S1e3, when Haggar asks Zarkon if Sendak can be trusted he doesn't say "yes, he just said he trained him and that only victory or death would stop him. So, I kinda fancy the idea of Sendak having certain aspirations for the empire and turning against whoever fails to reach said aspirations. Be it a Galra prince or whatnot.

And last thing but not least; Zarkon didn’t seem really forgiving regarding defeat/failure (that’s the fastest way to be demoted -cf. Morvok and the Kerberos commander- and in the Galra meritocracy that must means something huge), during S1e3 Sendak himself said: “Emperor Zarkon challenged us to rise from the mud”. That’s a cute way to say atone for failing him, but now that the emperor himself failed… what is Sendak going to do? How is he going to react?

** This is what Sendak is implying by saying: “I see you spent some time with the Druids, they do love to experiment.” Meaning they used the first Commander as a pet project and probably not too long before he set foot on Arus since it’s implied Shiro got his prosthetic just a few days before being released by Ulaz. In any case, it’s less than a year ago meaning that Shiro probably met Sendak equipped with a less advanced prosthetic (or maybe no prosthetic at all). Also, and that’s very interesting, Sendak seems to discover Shiro’s prosthetic during the battle, which means the last time Sendak saw Shiro he still had his organic arm. @ferretfam thank you soooooooooo much for your help @canadarama here you go! Pssst! Sendak’s fans, give me your thoughts on this if you’d like @vrepit-sa @deception-and-disgrace @candyfoxdraws @ograndsovereign

#voltron #analysis #galralogy #sendak #shiro #vld #shiro (voltron)#sendak (voltron)#i love them #i love this show #meta #metal too #i spent some time on this #glad i had a super nice beta to help me

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violetemerald · 7 years

Note

Oliver Queen?

This is an answer for: http://luvtheheaven.tumblr.com/post/164336916472/send-me-a-character-and-ill-answer-these

1: sexuality headcanon - heterosexual, but romantic orientation-wise he’s on the aro spectrum, I don’t know where. Details on some of my rough thoughts there:http://luvtheheaven.tumblr.com/post/159752574632/headcanon-oliver-queen-as-aromantic-spectrum and basically I’m convinced that multiple aro-spec interpretations make sense, not at once but depending on your interpretation. (I also shared this same exact thing on AO3 http://archiveofourown.org/works/10705410 )

2: otp - Felicity (Olicity), although starting seeing the series wth 1x07 had me kinda hugely supporting Helena/Oliver for a bit. I’ve since pretty much forgotten that was once an OTP of mine on this show though. I’m a huge fan of exploring the dynamic between Oliver&Sara or even Oliver&Laurel, but… it’s complicated. Not really the hugest Olicity shipper, but they are my otp for both of their characters.

(more below cut)

3: brotp - I’m not a fan of this term although the more all of fandom uses it, the more I’m worn down and i don’t hate it the way i once did i guess. It still feels really weird to me as encompassing of all platonic bonds, even family? Even with huge age differences? Even when “bro” would be the last thing out of either character’s mouth?

Ok so my answer. Hmm. Idk I really really love a lot of platonic bonds Oliver has, and my level of love for each kinda shifts through the seasons. I loved Tommy&Oliver a ton in season 1, especially for what it would mean to Tommy, actually. More than for Oliver. The conversations Barry and Oliver have seem to get more special to me each crossover ep, they have a really interesting and enlightening dynamic *especially* where Oliver is concerned and it’s slowly grown on me. I definitely love Oliver&Diggle, that is intense and deep found family brotherhood in canon and they are everything. I think my love for Thea/Oliver has dwindled a bit over the seasons. I also love Oliver&Quentin more than ever since Laurel’s death. I think they might be my favorite dynamic to look at throughout every single season of the show, perhaps tied with Oliver&Diggle because both are so complex and have so many scenes, so much story to work with, so much footage to vid with, etc. I’ve never seen Quentin/Oliver vidded actually (hmm… ideas…)

4: notp - I like this term more. I think Laurel/Oliver have zero sexually charged chemistry to me but mainly it’s the Oliver slash ships that I just can’t see, especially Barry/Oliver? Or god, I’m still scarred from my first ever? forray into Arrow fanfiction confronting me with Thea/Oliver as a sexual ship?? NOO why people.

5: first headcanon that pops into my head - well I don’t have many of these most of the time but two I’m thinking might be 1) that he never intended to have children, probably decided he didn’t want kids at some point before finding out about William but I’m not sure if it’d be before or during or after the island. And 2) before the island he drank a lot of alcohol ans a lot of coffee. After the island he only drinks rarely at special occasions and only a tiny amount, and doesn’t need caffeine at all, thinks it messes up his perception of his surroundings so basically avoids coffee. Is this disproven by any scenes in the show? Probably. I don’t know. I’ll look when I finally rewatch.

6: favorite line from this character - Not really something I have memorized lol. I don’t just “have” a favorite line but. When I was recently trying to vid an Oliver character study I noticed this line he said to Laurel at the end of season 1 and I love whay it says in general to tie together pre-island and post-island Oliver:“Those five years didn’t change me. They just they scraped away all the things that I wasn’t and revealed the person I always was, which is the person– That’s who you always saw. I don’t know how you saw it, but you did.”Also though I just was looking on a page of Oliver Queen quotes to see if something inspired me as a fave and idk, I do like from season 4:“I need to believe that no matter what happens in our lives, no matter how much darkness infects us, I need to believe we can come back from that!”7: one way in which I relate to this character - this is a tough one for me, I love him and care about him but he’s so different from me. But probably that he doesn’t really feel like an adult/ start getting his life together until older than average is a pretty good way the two of us are similar. And also maybe that he’s had experience with people having stronger feelings for him than he has had back and not knowing how to deal with it (somewhat related to my aro headcanon).

8: thing that gives me second hand embarrassment about this character - um... Idk. It's pretty bad when he is telling his mom he got a girl pregnant and oh, it's not laurel, and again later awkward when he has to talk about that mistake of his to team Arrow, etc... a moment like when Thea points out to him that he might be The Hood because the souvenir he brought her back from the island was indeed an arrowhead is also a contender.

9: cinnamon roll or problematic fave? - i don't think of him, typically, as really that problematic, but he is a murderer and tortures people and i guess that makes him closer to that side of the spectrum. He's not really a bubbly cinnamon-y type of guy anyway lol. The way the show handles the topic of suicide or PTSD, or maybe even grief itself, when it comes to him is also pretty messy and a little problematic but that's not "his" fault either, it's not problematic from a standpoint of the character's choices or motivations, just perhaps problematic circumstances/ reactions in terms of what it is teaching viewers? Idk.

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syncogon · 7 years

Text

Some Chinese Cartoons

[Disclaimer: this was addressed to one specific person. I’ll make a better post one day.]

One day I’ll add pics and make this actually formal and stuff. But for now...

我为歌狂/Music Up:

Summary: Two musically talented, insanely popular high school guys - but that’s about all they have in common. In fact, they hate each other’s guts. And yet, through complicated circumstances, they and two others join to form a four-man band, “OPEN.” Both individually and as a band, they face a variety of problems: financial, academic, familial, romantic, and everything in between, in order to pursue their dreams. (52 eps)

Commentary: This is set in modern(ish) day, real world. Made in 2001, so keep that mind when considering the animation quality. They do have a lot of good songs, since this IS a show about singers and pop bands. Overall the tone is pretty light. Some things are a lot more dramatic than they need to be but that’s fantastic. And a lot of the problems are highly relatable. Development of characters and relationships is def one of the selling points. HUGELY nostalgic for me and a lot of Chinese people it seems haha

Links: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLkMLYnt73g the second opening.

战龙四驱/Go For Speed:

Summary: Two years ago, the genius high schooler Fei won the minicar (4WD) racing Nationals. But only shortly afterward, he disappeared, with only a short note hinting at why. Now, his younger brother Dragon follows in his footsteps, designing and creating his own minicars to compete in the tournaments and steadily working his way up through the rankings. Along the way, he meets many people, makes friends and enemies, and struggles to find Fei and his reason for leaving. (64 eps)

Commentary: Modern/slightly future-day, real world (Shanghai!!). Okay so this show is based around like the gimmick of “minicar racing” - not sure what to really call it. The races are surprisingly fun to watch actually imo, with the technological abilities of the minicars, interactions between players, and obstacles to pass... but you’d probably have to decide that for yourself. For me, the biggest draw was probably the surprising number of subplots, which explore the complex relationships between all the characters - literally every single side character is well established and developed. Family and familial relationships play a pretty big role. Revenge and forgiveness are there too. I got hooked into this show when it was airing on TV solely because of one character haha. Caveat that it starts slow, I don’t know how much you’d actually like this, there needs to be some suspension of disbelief, and the animation quality isn’t fantastic… rip

Links: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gb0tHRbyaek&index=30&list=PLQukwpGC9a0wfDv0ymEgGX-LydTKbZY_s (a trailer, in english for some reason even though i’ve never found an english dubbed version of this and don’t want to. It mostly focuses on the racing aspect, but as before, don’t let that fool you, it’s surprisingly deep. Come for the races, stay for the chars)

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQukwpGC9a0zqrmIGCXOW1QVlfh6svY7y since when was this on youtube?? :o WAIT HOLY SHIT SINCE WHEN DOES THIS HAVE ENGLISH SUBS THIS IS A GAME CHANGER AAAAA NOW LIKE I MIGHT GO REWATCH THIS - just kidding, only the first episode. Man what a letdown

弹珠传说/Danzhu Legend:

Summary: This is a world where people have Danzhu battles: competitions involving channeling your magic energy into Shooters to launch marble-like Danzhu at targets. These objects have great power, but, so far, no one has decided to take advantage of it… until now. One day, a young boy who has always dreamed of becoming a Danzhu battler is chosen by one of the five Legendary Shooters. He journeys into the mountains to seek training from the Danzhu Master, where he meets the other four Legendary wielders and learns that their job is to stop the evil threatening to take over their world. (52 eps)

Commentary: Fantasy world. So this is like your pretty standard “boy discovers power and works to save the world” story, but still enjoyable in its own right. The gimmick of this are the aforementioned Danzhu. The Guardians are also very important; all Shooters are linked to a spiritual animal/creature/something that’s the basis of power. The battles are all very cool! Quick disclaimer: for various reasons I am more familiar with this show than maybe any other of the ones here. This fact made me appreciate how much potential this story had, but also made me realize all of its flaws. There are a lot of things it could have done better - character development jumps to mind, because aside from the MC and one of the antagonists, most of them don’t change all that much. Also there’s lots of recycled animation. Just keep these caveats in mind. However, I still found the adventure/plot/magic very exciting to watch, a healthy dose of idealism and humor as well as tension/smarts/raw courage, so if you’re interested in that aspect more, I’d recommend this!

Links: ALL THE EPISODES ARE ON YOUTUBE ONCE MORE PRAISE this is very helpful for me because when i needed them to be on youtube, someone had like taken all of them down, which was very upsetting, but now they are back again, glorious

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvQUvsPwKA0&list=PLZKi4aAqJS8dbVOUrKnDqNU4F4rnm8Ott playlist isn’t in order but you should watch the opening theme to get a feel for it - if you want even more of a feel, watch to 4:50, which is kinda like a prologue and a better summary of what I said above lol

开心宝贝/Happy Heroes:

Summary: Just read what’s on tvtropes tbh haha (link below) (Ongoing, 10 seasons, 52 eps each (except season 8 which was 40 eps) )

Commentary: Imo the best seasons were 3, 5, 6, and 8. After 8 the animation style changed a bit and the humor quality kinda went down…well, that might just be me, though. Either way, though, there are so many amazing earlier episodes, and I’ve gotten really attached to all the characters. It being a kids show, there’s no super deep plot or lasting impact of anything (aside from the last arc of season 7, heh. I remember watching when it came out in 2014 and flipping out bc I did NOT expect that, knowing HH) but it’s still thoroughly enjoyable. There are also two movies: the second movie is kinda confusing and meh but the first movie is pretty good and I think you can find it on youtube. In fact I believe all the episodes are on youtube, but I imagine you have those links already

Links: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKA3CuHXUxHflv9KAgEJyKQ is the channel with everything. Watch the trailer for season 8! It’s v epic and got me hyped when it released.

Tvtropes: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Animation/HappyHeroes

Movie 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUiA3nue22Y. (there are english subs too! haha)

Movie 2 isn’t worth watching trust me

星游记/Rainbow Sea:

Summary: Years ago, a man dressed in all red made a declaration to the universe: behind the largest black hole was a mysterious place called Rainbow Sea, a place where any dream could be fulfilled. Enchanted by the stories, people from across the universe joined the man in red in his journey. Unfortunately, no one ever returned. Rainbow Sea was scoffed at as a myth and a lie. The man in red was cursed, nicknamed by people as the Red Demon. The sinister organization known as the Galactic Eyes quietly gained control of the Solar System and numerous other star systems, sealing off the planet where the Red Demon had come from, Earth, and forbidding any ships from entering or leaving. Now, ten years later, the Red Demon's son Maidang has reached adolescence and is determined to fulfill the pinky promise made to his father before he left: to reunite with him at Rainbow Sea.

Commentary: Quality stuff right here. Best part is the backstories of all these characters, there’s some really moving stuff. The characters are p great - Maidang is so inspiring, Gudong is highly relatable, Diya is awesome... The art style (esp for their eyes) is really nice. ...Not much else to say off the top of my head, esp since the story is far from over, but even if it starts off slow, this is definitely worth your time!

Links: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SiB_oZBdi7k&list=PLF068DA90359EDE0D all the episodes. The opening theme/sequence was what got me hooked, you should def watch it (up to like 1:20 or whatever, then if you want like a prologue watch to like 3:07)

26 eps so far. Season 2 and after are apparently going to be “web movies” instead of episodes, something like 60 minutes each, and will cost money (rip) but I’m sure they’ll show up for free somewhere eventually. Fingers crossed this’ll be soon. Wanna join me in hiatus hell :DD

神魄/Zinba:

Summary: Kan is happily chatting with his closest friend on an ordinary school day when, all of a sudden, he finds himself pulled into an alternate fantasy world. This world is filled with Zinba, large and powerful creatures that may form bonds with select humans, called Linkers, for immense battle power. After becoming a Linker with one of the strongest Zinba ever to exist, Kan joins the peacekeeping Dux force of the kingdom of Toria and fights against the various evils threatening the land, all while trying to find his way back to his own world. (52 eps)

Commentary: Okay, so you know, I wouldn’t recommend this as much as some of the others on this list, esp since it’s the most recent Chinese show I actually watched, but it made enough of an impact on me to have it worth talking about. I started watching bc a) it showed up as recommended for me on youtube, b) the opening is SICK as HECK, and c) the protag of this is voiced by the same person as the protag of DZL, and generally looks/acts kinda similar haha. Anyway, overall thoughts: basically, it had a lot of unrealized potential. The world and the character designs are AMAZING. I liked the animation. The plot is interesting, with a surprising number of plot twists as to who’s the real ultimate villain. But there could have been So Much More development – we could’ve gotten more thorough backstories for the main crew, for example, or seen more of the world/magic/tech, but instead a lot of the people as well as Zinba just… exist, as static and boring entities. There were like two interesting characters total (Kan’s aforementioned “normal” friend being one of them heh). Kan himself was suuuuper annoying, esp at the beginning. (can you tell I really appreciate/prioritize the characters of a show?) However, some moments were quite well done and epic, and I wrote some fanfiction and commentary on basically every episode, so it holds a place in my heart. Also, there is a full English dub lmaooo (the voices suck but the translations for names/places/etc are interesting) (episode 1 has 318k views??? That’s a TON for a chinese cartoon)

Links: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9G83STZ9xcc the opening which is good and worth watching, https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQukwpGC9a0xatMI-KGO9SILZ5sSWfWXX full playlist, syncogon.tumblr.com/tagged/zinba lol

#mine #rainbow sea #zinba #music up #happy heroes #danzhu legend #go for speed

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