#1) the concept is good! it's really good! i love stories that explore the effects of abuse and terrible experiences

[beevean]

I keep thinking of this interpretation of N!Hector (at the bottom). How, essentially, his growth revolved around his conception of love: how he's at his core a broken, love-starved man who had to learn how to let go out of selflessness.

They make some valid points. So I want to put together why the story still wastes a very intriguing concept and its morals are still disgusting.

Let's take N!Hector purely from this angle. His sloppy writing starts to make sense. N!Hector never warms up to Carmilla, because his last memory of Carmilla is her beating him up after she revealed that her apparent respect was a lie. Dracula is on thin ice: he was the first person who was nice to him, but he lied to N!Hector about his real plans, and most importantly, got convinced that he might have died if Dracula actually succeeded. (still doesn't stop him from wanting to resurrect him)

Lenore is "nice" to him. Lenore not only praised his voice, the strength of his character, etc., but she also has shown that she wants to be with him for no ulterior reason, and that she wants to protect him from mean Carmilla.

So N!Hector is totally fine with her. It's okay that she beat him that one time, because it was his fault (granted, an abused person might think like that...). It's okay that she made a sexual game out of taking him out with a leash: that's just how vampires are, right? It's okay that she used sex and took advantage of his feelings to put a trapping ring on him: it was with good intentions. It was for his sake. It was to protect him.

So, N!Hector falls in love with Lenore because she did everything in her power to keep him in a gilded cage, including resorting to rape by deception. Abuse is love. Selfishness is love. He, too, loves like a vampire, shown by the way he surrounded himself with pets magically compelled to be loyal to him, so the two have the same love languages.

This speaks of a profoundly ill mentality, the byproduct of a lifetime of abuse. It's a delicate topic that should be treated with the utmost respect.

exhibit a: respectful writing that truly gives trauma the gravitas it deserves.

After some more bonding over how similar Lenore and N!Hector are because no one loves them and they're just victims, they're so like each other fr fr, we get to S4E6. In a way, we can see N!Hector's actions here as a mirror to what Lenore has done to him: she used treachery to turn him into a tool and so "keeping him safe", and so he used treachery to cage her and protect her from N!Isaac destroying the entire life she built with the others. This is mercy for him. This is an act of love. Protect Lenore and stay close to her, but everyone else can die, even if it hurts her. I see the intention, I really do.

But add to this the fact that N!Hector's whole plan was for the sake of resurrecting Dracula, therefore risking another mass slaughter, for no other reason than to feel better about his mistakes, and we're starting to see a problem.

We're near the end of the show, and N!Hector hasn't grown one bit. Not morally, and not emotionally. He still has no empathy. He still loves like a vampire. He still has no self-respect. He went through unimaginable torture, and he's still the "manchild" we were supposed to laugh at in S2 - except now he's marginally cooler, I guess.

(also, is it really "love" if N!Hector genuinely thought N!Isaac would kill him and he accepted it? He didn't plan to stick around, he didn't plan to "keep" Lenore with him. So the point starts to fall apart.)

But then N!Isaac makes a speech to him about agency and the will to live, and a few episodes later, N!Hector has his "magnificent" growth. His sign of maturity is letting Lenore die. Not keeping her close, despite her being the kindest person to him (although I suppose N!Isaac will quickly replace her lol). Letting this woman, both a victim and an abuser, commit suicide on her own terms, the terms he never had, is N!Hector finally learning how to love.

All very nice and wholesome. On paper.

Lenore is forcibly made to be sympathetic in S4, to the point that it becomes blatant lying. Suddenly she has no sexual interest in N!Hector anymore, after all she did to him (and very interesting, that Lenore was only aroused when he was her prisoner - now that he has more freedom and seems to like her as a person, she doesn't care anymore). Suddenly her smug demeanour has vanished, treating him with almost real respect. Suddenly there's more focus on how alone she is, and how she and N!Hector can relate to each other and only have each other in the world. It's disingenuous, and all so that I could pity her, and believe that these two would care for each other, and be touched that N!Hector's big love gesture is allowing Lenore to find freedom from her unnatural existence, while in reality I'm just frustrated that this rapist got to find freedom from the consequences of her actions - she doesn't even feel bad for what she did, "I'm sorry for everything you went through", so much for growing to love him. It's not even framed as him being free of her, but her being free of herself, fuck that guy I guess. Hell, even her phrasing implies that the main reason she sunned herself was that she wasn't willing to live in a cage, even with Hector, basically throwing a tantrum because she didn't have power anymore. I get reading between the lines and connecting that what triggered her suicide was the realization that as a vampire she's inherently doomed to go insane with craving power, but she really painted herself in the worst light.

I can't even say that the show forgot about her previous behavior: it specifically calls out to Lenore "solving Hector's problem", but makes it a joke that is quickly brushed off. We are meant to be endeared at Lenore using sex as a tool of deception. Yeah, silly Lenore, that was awkward I guess. More seriously, Lenore neither had a solid change of heart/realization that she behaved like a monster in the name of her "good intentions", nor is she tragic enough compared to her actions - at most I can understand where part of her behavior is coming from, like her being happy to show her strength by beating N!Hector into the ground, but I don't feel sorry for her. The story had the chance to emphasize her conflict with her vampiric nature, if I was really meant to pity her hopeless existence, but it doesn't take it. So I have no reason to care about her, or think she's a good person for N!Hector. The fact that she is the kindest anyone has ever been to him doesn't mean that she is kind, just that this poor man has been spit on far too much.

And maybe N!Hector really is too broken to understand that being raped is bad. Maybe his abuser choosing to waste time around him feels like a banquet for someone as love starved as he is. But is that how he ends? Still not getting it? Still not feeling anything about the way he has been treated all this life? Is he really completely not conflicted about the two-faced way Lenore treated him?

And what about his relationship with humanity? Is writing a book about his mistakes really the best he can do? N!Isaac realized off screen that he wants to change the world for the better: what is, effectively, N!Hector's change in this aspect? Sure, maybe he won't keep resurrected pets anymore, but after jotting down how much he has fucked up in life, what does he want to do? What was his journey, made of nothing but suffering and mockery and the lesson "you are stupid for trusting", for?

If I am to read N!Hector as a victim of deep abuse, so damaging that he has lost all sorts of empathy, morals and self-worth... what is, then, the story told through him? He doesn't get better. He doesn't even get worse, in the same way Isaac did, for example - I proposed an ending where he snaps and sets the castle on fire as a bookend with his abusive childhood, which would have been tragic, but ofc it didn't happen. The climax of his journey is that he holds no resentment towards a woman who was both kind and cruel to him, and simply chose to forgive all the bad that was done to him without any struggle. He accepted the crumbs and lapped the plate.

The message: forgive the people who hurt you, if they think they are only helping you - in fact, don't even think about it. Not because it's unhealthy to let yourself be consumed by resentment. Because if they hurt you for your own good, then they are good people deep down.

Steven Universe became the internet's laughing stock for far less.

(it's not even that Lenore was his mother, or his long-time wife, someone that could be genuinely hard to distance yourself from if they abuse you. They knew each other for maybe two months.)

I cannot empathize with N!Hector, and I can't even sympathize with him, because this is not a character arc, this is a slop job. I don't think Lenore is so nice because she deigns to speak to him, and I don't think her wanting to protect N!Hector can make up for her disgusting behavior in S3. I have no reason to be happy that N!Hector is "free", because he's in the same position he started from in S2: cooped up in a castle, uninterested in getting closer with humankind, alone. And I have no reason to be sad that Lenore killed herself, because the story did a poor job of convincing me that she deserved to be happy with the man she treated like a pet before her character was disingenuously defanged.

I can assure you: Ellis did not have any intention of writing a story about how abuse warps your conception of love. He just liked kicking around a ball in the shape of a character, and then gave him a rushed "good" ending (that still feels bittersweet compared to all others) because of backlash. Trying to see a coherent arc here is like trying to squint to see an image on a magic eye poster, and the effort is not worth it. N!Hector deserved better, and abuse survivors deserve to be represented by characters written with love, not spite.

[thecoolerliauditore]

Hi. I'll bite. What's the Jimmy ecosystem?

(completely genuine, feel free to direct me to an older post if there is one, i just didn't find it)

oh my goodness, an excuse to explain one of my strange pidgin language-esque terms of convenience that I'm not quite sure anyone understands outside of one or two people. that tubbytarchia guy put it into words pretty well if you're looking for the short version.

long version below:

"jimmy ecosystem" is more or less a shorthand I started saying to refer to the social system that keeps jimmy in his role of being "the worst one" (the butt of the joke, the one who goes out first, the obstacle to be surmounted, so on and so forth).

on the CC side of things, I think the imp and skizz podcast episode with joel put it best on how this came to be: jimmy is good at the youtube thing, and happy to be mocked or humiliated for the sake of making content. He's your guy for any gag, there's no wonder why he plays the goofy antagonist for so many of the POVs in esmp2.

but this creates a. very strange and sad effect when you look in from the perspective of character interpretation. esmp2 jimmy, for example, by being the bad guy in so many people's stories (especially when he really hasn't done much at all to earn the mockery he gets) feels more upsetting when you're watching his POV and it seems like no matter where he goes he gets mocked and bullied.

it carries over to almost every series: life series jimmy specifically gets this very clearly shown through his knack for being out first.

in a way I almost see the ecosystem and its effect on Jimmy (and Jimmy's performance) as an alternative school of thought to the canary curse. Both are concepts that explore Jimmy's "badness" being something forced upon him rather than something innate or entirely his failings as a player/person. Except while the canary curse ascribes the blame to nebulous concepts like The Watchers, the ecosystem puts the blame squarely on the people surrounding Jimmy who work at keeping him down. (<-- not that people can't like both ofc)

I used the term "ecosystem" because 1. it sounded funny and 2. it was what I felt like was the most fitting term, since the ecosystem especially when applied to the life series isn't so much people poking jimmy for fun but rather that and using it directly to their advantage to life themselves up. If Jimmy isn't out first, someone else will be, it might even be you, and you wouldn't want that so it is genuinely incentivized for you to keep Jimmy down as much as possible. This part has always been a bit heavy on the headcanon territory since historically the worse performing players are the ones much kinder to Jimmy, but it's definitely something to look at case-by-case.

Outside of literally his performance in the life series, I and others have also used The Ecosystem quite a lot to refer to Jimmy's relationships, mostly those with other men. Since Jimmy loves to do flirty bits, it spawns a lot of romantic plotlines, and when conjoined with the aforementioned inescapable bullying bit it gets... Weird, when you write about the characters.

With the exception of Tango, all of Jimmy's popular ship partners frequently hit, berate, mock and humiliate him, but all in their own special and unique ways. But one thing that tends to stay the same is that their relationships are nearly always more built on what the partner desires to get out of Jimmy.

I could go on but essentially: the ecosystem acts to me as an exploration of the intersection of skill at the game and worth as a person, as well as the themes of masculinity and gayness that I've found tend to pop up again and again in Jimmy's story. If you choose to read it as a story, of course.

Those initiated into the Ecosystem (Joel, Scott, Martyn, Grian, Fwhip, Sausage) have an understanding that Jimmy plays a certain lowest rung role in their social order and work to maintain that order for their own benefit (NUANCE button may be pressed here especially re: those first three). Those outside of the Ecosystem view it as a natural order they shouldn't disturb, sometimes even catching onto certain beliefs, e.g. "Jimmy is worse than everyone else" and internalizing them (Etho is a good example with how he was more or less Jimmy-neutral at the start of the life series and by the time SL/WL was happening he very casually says stuff like "oh, it's just Jimmy,"), few are completely oblivious to it and the fact that bullying Jimmy is what they Should Do socially but still will join in when prompted (Tango and Scar are very good examples).

If you've noticed that I've only listed male players, that is very much on purpose since even though there are women very much aware and participating in the ecosystem -- lizzie being the biggest example -- their involvement is, at least to me, noticeably a different flavour compared to the guys. Which I suppose makes enough sense with how much of it feels like a pseudoscientific wolf pack macho dynamic (and it probably doesn't help that they are entirely immune to the gay bits). Women in the Jimmy ecosystem is probably an entire post on its own, Lizzie alone could probably get quite a few paragraphs out of me.

anyway. very funny also to me to imagine jimmy as some sort of amoeba.

[adventures-in-mangaland]

Dead Boy Detectives Fic Recs Part 6

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5

Sorry its been a while, last month was crazy! Not too crazy for my emotional support fandom, though! You guys are giving me life. So please have another fic rec list. :)

We two boys together clinging by Aliquis

Charles and Edwin explore their romantic and sexual hangups and also help Crystal search for Niko. This fic has everything: excellent writing, developing relationship, rituals, first time, Beltane, a hot priest. This is already a fandom classic and now I've finally read it, I can confirm it's very good! Read the rest of the series too!

The stranger the better by ghostinthelibrary

Everyone's alive and basically the supernatural version of the Men in Black. I love the whole series, but this installment has the boys' first meeting, Edwin insisting he doesn't need a new partner, office gossip and an intriguing case. The prequel also has palasaki and background catwin! Anyway, I'm obsessed with this AU.

Partridge in a Pear Tree by Vamillepudding

Cinderella AU! Charles is basically a Disney Princess and Edwin is Secretly The Prince, it's wonderful. I also loved the worldbuilding and nods to old school Cinderella lore, like the gift-giving tree. So charming, highly recommended.

Wunderkammer by dear_monday, two_ravens

Edwin and Charles (and later Crystal) are functionally immortal and running a magical museum. This fic has a fantastic sense of place (the Athenaeum is a character in its own right) and an intriguingly gothic horror vibe with its sentient exhibits, doors into other planes and unnerving nonchalance about disappearing staff and guests. I would probably die, but I would absolutely go there.

pinch me (I don't want this to be a dream) by shadowquill17

The pince-nez fic! Charles finds a pair of glasses that show him a person's desires. Then he looks at Edwin. It goes about as well as you'd expect. It was inspired by this wonderful comic by technically-human so check that out too!

Let Me Follow by LikeMmmCookies

Time loop fic! The boys get trapped in Crystal's mind, replaying the day of Charles' death. Only Edwin is the New Boy in school and he's alive... Fantastic concept, so intriguing. Plus Crystal being a badass, The Sandman crossovers and Niko!

Oaths of the Forsworn by e_va

Vampire AU! The boys meet while Charles is dying so Vampire!Edwin agrees to turn him. The story is ongoing, but so far it's been focusing on Charles coping with being a fledgling vampire. Compelling.

lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate by KiaraSayre

Edwin is in Hell. Or is he? Fabulous writing, Hell worldbuilding and gut-wrenching detail. Cw for body horror and torture.

'Cause You Cut Through All the Noise by DontOffendTheBees

Edwin doms Charles in a therapeutic and non-sexual way. That's it and it's great. I loved this for its exploration of intimacy, trust and kink.

Instructions on Being by thewritingotter

Everyone is Alive Modern AU based on an AITA post featuring Charles convincing himself he's homophobic when he realizes he hates Edwin dating other men. It sounds like a funny premise, but really brings the angst and poignancy.

in an alternate timeline's light by plentyghost

Charles finds comics!Edwin hiding in the office. Sweet.

Become So Numb by snowkatze

AU where the Night Nurse doesn't help Charles and Edwin spends another 50 years in Hell. Loved Edwin's mechanism for escape, kind-of-dark Charles and the angsty reunion.

unidentified affectionate object by lyres

Edwin is struck by a curse that manifests his feelings as random objects. Good thing Charles isn't also effected... Very cute with mild angst and a happy ending.

between you and me, suddenly something is on my mind by lolotr

Beach episode! A proper one. Just fun, friendship and emotional support. Plus Edwin in an Edwardian swimming costume, complete with a handy visual aid.

Other Types of Intimacy by Asidian

After a tough case, Edwin takes care of Orb!Charles. (Chorb? Is this chorbwin?) I guess I have a thing for non-sexual intimacy. Seriously, though, what could be more beautiful than someone cuddling your soul?

(black is the colour) of my true love's hair by ObsessedWithFandom

Charles has long hair: the fic. Interesting ghost lore with Charles' hair kind of working like his mood-ring polo and growing when he's happy. And this is an established relationship payneland fic, so lately he's been very happy. 😜 Honestly, as a child of the 80s, Charles deserves to have long hair. I need more fanart!

@ghostinthelibrarywrites @shadowquill17 @tumblerislovetumblerislife @lolotr @technically-human @dont-offend-the-bees @neurodivergent-fangirling @fishy-lava @many-gay-magpies @cordelia-noir @whatthehorsedoicallthisblog @shazziez @extremely-eager-reader @atariakana @tragedy-machine @guardianspirits13 @colourmornings @herebehunters @dearheartdont @avoiceofnerat @littlepocketuniverse @overlord-of-chaos @fairandfatalasfair @handwrittenhello @every-moment-a-different-sound

I've added some tags for people who left fun tags/comments on previous lists. Let me know if you'd like me to add you on the next one. :)

[puckpocketed]

Trying to absorb everything there is to know about ice hockey within the shortest amount of time possible really does strange things to a person. You come up against questions such as what do defensemen even do aside from skate backwards and do tummy time to protect their goalie? (Broadcasts aren’t the most informative) What the hell makes defensemen effective? What do the casters mean when they say “gap”? What are defensive details?

I love watching games back, I love trying to understand the game. I love hockey <3 But sometimes it’s nice to have help, and sometimes my favourite writers/podcasters collaborate!!

Here is part 1/3 of a podcast mini-series about defending, putting it here so I can have a copy of it in case it ever gets taken down + wanted to share with everyone some of my findings! (All episodes are available if anyone just wants to listen to them!) Transcript + edits done by me, all mistakes are mine.

Published 6th November 2024, Hockey IQ Podcast: Modern Defensemen (with Will Scouch) Ep #1 - by Hockey's Arsenal, hosted by Greg Revak (apple / spotify / youtube / bonus substack link)

part 2

[START Transcript]

Greg Revak: On the Hockey IQ Podcast today, we open up a new segment: we’re bringing back our favourite Will Scouch. If you’re on the Hockey IQ Newsletter you know his work by now.

Will, good morning. Earlier than most of us probably normally get up, but it’s a good day.

Will Scouch: Yeah, Greg, thanks for having me, it’s a lot of fun. Me and Greg go way back. We’re boys from years ago and I’m excited to hop on the show. I’m a keen listener, keen reader. 

[They exchange pleasantries]

GR: Beautiful. Well, today we’re gonna talk about three concepts. We’re gonna break it into three spots though, so everyone’s gotta come back next week and the week after that.

We’re gonna talk about defensemen, because everyone knows they’re important but how do we actually play the position well?

WS: Yeah, I mean, it’s a position that’s still, to me, being explored; both by, I’d say youth and junior coaches and pro coaches alike. There’s a lot of different ways that you can do it.

I mean, I watch a lot of hockey from around the world, all kinds of different levels. I’ve watched guys develop from 15 to 24 at this point, and just seeing how their games evolve and everything, and how effective various versions of this position is. And I think it’s a very interesting area that’s still being explored in a lot of really interesting ways, for sure.

GR: Yeah, I think back to David Savard; he comes out of the [QMJHL] as this high-flying offensive defenseman, and if we just forgot about the rest of his career and you just saw him today as this great shutdown, defense-first player, you’d be absolutely shocked.

I mean, you think about Rasmus Dahlin — kid didn’t even play full time defenseman until his actual draft year, he was still playing forward a ton. There’s so much to be explored here.

I feel like [to get a lot of] — for you NHL fans — to get a lot of value in the later rounds out of your defensemen, take those offensive players first, and we can find a lot of hidden gems later.

WS: Well, yeah. I mean, actually, I’ve said this a few times but your listeners probably don’t know, but I did a presentation during the pandemic at the Ottawa Hockey Analytics Conference about this topic exactly; how, when you look at the numbers and the defensive value of players in the NHL, I found that there were just as many in the top 50 defensive value of players in the NHL, there were just as many undrafted players as there were second round picks, second and third round picks combined.

So the draft isn’t really a great historical gauge on defensive ability. Offense is a different story from defensive players, which we could probably get into a little bit.

But I find, personally, that evaluating defensemen and projecting defense to the NHL is still really spotty and questionable. And I don’t know, in my line of work, watching a lot of defensemen, a lot of the ones who I think are some of the better defenders kind of go a little unheralded, because a lot of the time you don’t need to be particularly noticeable to be a good defenseman, but scouts are always looking for the noticeable guys.

So it’s a very interesting world and it’s a very interesting thing to pick through, but there’s definitely a lot of case studies you could dig into, and a lot of players you could look at as cases of, “Oh yeah, nobody was really paying a whole lot of attention to them!” or maybe people were thinking about them the wrong way. But if you think about things a little bit outside the box, you might be able to see something really interesting there.

GR: Yeah, so let's dive into why that may be. Classic example would be Lane Hutson, so maybe we'll pick on him a little bit, but I definitely want to talk about Rasmus Ristolainen, because he is an interesting case study that we wrote about on the newsletter.

So where I want to start with this is just modern day defending. How are defensemen defending today versus old times? A lot of times it was the big hit, separate the head from body. The puck’s somewhere, but let's separate the head from the body, and we’ll worry about the puck later — that is going bye-bye.

Every coach I talk to now, they prefer having the puck rather than having a head on a stake. So for me, it comes back to this old saying of, “position before possession.” We're gaining body positioning, we're not so much separating head from body, but puck from player.

All right, so we've got position before possession. It's super valuable in gaining the space that you need to have first whack in a puck or put the puck where you want it, or just push it to a teammate. Just having the idea of owning space and there's no better league at this and no league that values it more than the NHL. If you don't do this well in the NHL, sooner or later, you're going to find yourself out of a job making a heck of a lot less money in a league that probably no one really cares that much about. You want to be in the show, the big lights: you have to value this more than anything.

And this is actually the one thing that I noticed about Hunter McDonald. He's in the Flyers’ system now — he was an overager, but I was like, “This guy is unbelievable!” He’s a huge frame, you can’t miss him out there. He would just get the positioning before possession, and I was like, “Okay, that’s interesting, let me watch him further.”

And I feel like he’s going to be one of those bottom of the lineup guys who, unlikely, made it out of being an overager in the [United States Hockey League], going to college for a few years, but has those little details of a defenseman that you see in modern day play, which is positioning overall, which is an NHL trait to the nth degree.

WS: No, I know. I think I would definitely agree. Those are the players that are always really, really fascinating to me because you look at a guy like Hunter McDonald and the production just isn't amazing. But it doesn't — to me, when you look at defensemen, it almost doesn't really matter. That's kind of a very secondary-slash-bonus style of thing that comes with a player.

I see a lot of defenders every year and it seems like a thing where a lot of them, maybe at the lower levels, there is a little bit more of that “separate the head from the body”-type of player. And I think there are NHL scouts who still gravitate towards those guys but, at the end of the day when it all comes out in the wash, it's a lot of the time the guys that are kind of, I hate to say ”boring”, but just very effective, and just they're always in a good position.

The guy I always reference as a young defenseman who, I think, is just a really, really high-end defensive guy is Kaiden Guhle in Montreal. We're going to talk a little bit about Lane Hutson in a second, but Kaiden Guhle is a guy who, when he was in the junior level, just played such a great, balanced style of defense.

He was a good skater, but he had really good length. He was a guy who didn't just lay the body every single time, but he certainly could if he needed to. It was about his lateral mobility, it was about tracking rushes, keeping inside the dot lines, and preventing chances from inside and leading with his stick, but then finishing with the body if he had the opportunity or the need to do so. And he seemed to have a really good read of just how to do his job really, really well.

And so that's been a lesson for me for sure. He was a really interesting case study a few years ago, and he's become a pretty solid NHL defenseman. I mean, on a team this year that’s kind of struggling defensively I think he’s been one of the brighter spots on that defense group there, [he’s] doing a pretty good job at least suppressing chances against.

GR: I don’t watch as much as you do, prospects, but Guhle I did catch. For me, the play style wasn’t very good. He had elements of it, you could see the flashes, but he was just really brash. His decision making and his reads were quite poor. But the tools were there, and it was like, “Can he adjust?” Which I think he’s done a phenomenal job [of], and I think Montreal is probably the perfect place for him to develop a lot of that.

So I think you're spot on like, “Okay, how does he actually apply?“ Having assets is one thing, having the tools is one thing, but how do we properly apply those assets, those tools that you have in a good way? So I think another piece, for me, is if you do have the speed, is just making sure that you're controlling speed and then you're also keeping small gaps.

And just knowing with my high school team that no one knows what a gap is, let's define that real quick, which is: the difference in space between the forwards and the defensemen. So the space in between, “How much space are you [allowing]?” in hockey term slang. It's underneath you versus on the other side, which is above you or behind you. So, “How much space, what's that gap between D and O?”

(Editor’s note: He says O instead of F here, I assume because the person attacking isn’t always a forward. As in, “How much space between the defenseman and offenceman?”)

So you got the speed, shrink that gap as much as possible. Don't give them the space to operate or work in, or, I even call it the space to think, which [it often becomes] for forwards, especially unsophisticated ones.

WS: Yeah, I mean, that's really the bread and butter of a lot of the position. It's so much of this, like you said, gap control. I actually just did a bit of video work for a really high end player, [an] NHL draft pick playing in Sweden this year, who is producing really well.

But in terms of the defending side of the game, he's not the most incredible skater you've ever seen, he's not the biggest guy in the world. And a big thing that I noticed, that even at the professional level that was kind of a bit of a work in progress, was that gap management. Especially because the footwork wasn't amazing, [he was] keeping his feet a little too stationary, gliding backwards and sort of allowing that gap.

And when you watch the NHL that's the point of the whole exercise, watching the NHL and how they play. Forwards are fast and they're smart, largely. The guys who can score are the guys who know how to get through soft defensive pressure, the guys who know how to find lanes and cross up defensemen, and if you don't have the footwork or the mobility or the reach or all of it — all of the above — to track all that and manage it, then it's going to be a lot tougher to do your job.

But the interesting thing, though, is that there's a lot of different ways that you can get defensive jobs done. That's always been very interesting to me; seeing how different players approach the position in different ways and seeing the efficacy of that come out in the wash, and how their offense balances with their defensive ability. It's a very interesting world to dig into, for sure.

GR: Yeah, I think you've got a rabbit hole there. You just kind of opened up around defensive skating. What do clean feet look like? What does defensive posture look like, that actually allows you to have that kind of mobility?

So we'll leave that for another day. If anyone wants to go check it out on the Hockey IQ Newsletter, they can do so. Just look up defenseman skating development. We've got two good pieces there talking about building and maintaining defensive posture and keeping clean feet, which — actually massive base for anyone.

It allows you to have the proper gap that allows you to kill plays early, and ultimately, it's a lot about just controlling speed. You don't want McDavid building up to full speed. You don't want MacKinnon building up to full speed. You don't want anyone coming up to you at full speed. It's very hard to maintain that kind of speed going backwards [that we] even generate in the first place. 

How do you kill it early? How do you get a hand on someone? Or, my favorite example is just proper pivoting. A guy dumps a puck on you, how are you going back? What does that pivot look like?

I'll let you open that up because at the NHL it's almost too good, where you can't see what a bad example looks like, but you can see it's everywhere.

WS: Yeah, I mean, it's a make or break skill in the NHL. It's where a lot of defensemen die. I mean, it's a cliche at this point to talk about pucks in deep, to talk about [getting] pucks deep in the offensive zone, get below the goal line, dump and chase. People make fun of dump-and-chase kind of stuff. But if your team is built to do it, you can do it.

You can take advantage of defensemen in the NHL who just don't have the speed or the agility or the skating ability that some of your forwards might have. It is a lot easier to skate forwards than it is to skate backwards. That's just, you know, anecdotal, but also pretty factual — you're naturally going forwards.

I think an interesting trend that you're seeing a little bit more of [is] what they would call ‘scooting’. You're the coach; I don't know if that's exactly what the terminology would be, but [it’s getting] your defensemen in the neutral zone, kind of pinching a little bit more and having them skate forwards, tracking play towards the boards.

So it's not necessarily that they're doing their backwards crossovers, it's not necessarily that they're entirely skating backwards, but you see guys who are really talented skaters or do have a lot of quickness driving play to the boards in a more aggressive way than having the play in front of them. It's about them sort of tracking that play laterally, which is an interesting thing I think you're seeing more of now.

I think there are definitely coaches and systems that love to play their defensemen more that way, and the weak side defense can sort of fill between the dot lines for them and sort of leave the weaker side of the ice a little bit more open. That's kind of what I mean. There's a lot of different ways to achieve these kinds of goals, and I think you're seeing a lot of different things popping up to adapt to this. 

In situations where you have a dump and chase or something like that, or just getting pucks in deep or whatever you say, when you have a defenseman who has trouble with their footwork and turning around… Trust me, I'm a defenseman, when I play hockey, I strap on the skates — I play defense myself and that's where I fall apart, when I do fall apart. Which is often. But definitely, when play turns around and I’ve got to change directions or change my area of flow, it can be tricky. And in the NHL, I can only imagine how tricky it can be there. 

GR: Yeah. I mean, a good pivot you're looking at three steps total, like boom-boom-bam and you're there. You watch an amateur game and it could be like five, six, seven, eight chops before [they] finally get going and [it’s] looking like a proper forward stride again. [Or just] getting into a good defensive posture and positioning. It's total scramble mode.

A big one for me, too, is just the direction that you pivot. Do you wait for that offensive player to commit to their lane? It's just a great defensive habit in general, letting the offenceman make the first move. If you're making the first move, you're the one showing your cards. It's kind of like showing your cards first in Poker.

Let them make the decision and then you can pivot into them. Now you can get that position before possession, or at least get a chip on them, slow them down. You can either make it easier for yourself or your partner. So one, there's the clean footwork on the pivot, and two is making sure that we're controlling the speed and we're pivoting properly in the direction that we want to pivot.

There's a ton of times where I see, especially the lower levels, players coming up, they're in a bad spot, they're skating forward, defenseman skating backwards and they just chip it off the boards. And the defenseman is like a dog just following the puck and it ends up in the middle of the ice where the forward actually went. Again, the NHL is the best at this so it's really hard to see bad examples of pivoting into and controlling the space of the opponent.

WS: Yeah. I do a lot of work outside the NHL, and the biggest thing I notice is not necessarily the number of chops it takes, but the amount of time. You can see guys taking two seconds, maybe more, to get themselves turned around, tracking pucks below the goal line.

To me hockey is a game of milliseconds a lot of the time, right? I was working with someone years ago who really shared the idea with me that, in the NHL, generally goals are not scored if you have the puck on your stick for more than either half a second or a second.

I can't remember off the top of my head, but it's so fast in terms of; when you score goals in the NHL, it's when you touch the puck for a very short amount of time in the offensive zone and get a puck on net. And so, if you have guys who take too long — and “too long” might not be very long… If the difference is relatively short at the time you're making those pivots or those changes, but the [opponent has] got a lot more speed than you and you're [taking more] time to then start generating that speed to match the opponent, you're in trouble.

And in my opinion, I think that you want your defensemen to be more assertive. I always fall back on the strategy of; make them make a decision, make them commit. That might imply that you do the committing first, but that's where the importance of footwork and tactics come into question. 

You have to have strong support, whether it's from backchecking forwards or your partner. You want to be able to adapt to quick players who might fake one way, go another, and be able to use your stick or use your feet or both to be a factor regardless of what happens. 

It's very interesting to watch defensemen play. I find it really, really interesting to see the different approaches of different players and especially how they evolve and get into the NHL.

But yeah, I mean, [it’s so pivotal], the skating ability; defensemen who can skate, it unlocks so many doors for their career. If you're an elite level skating defenseman, it just unlocks so many doors that interest me. If you're not, and if that's not a strength of your game, then it can be a big struggle, especially against faster opponents. Even if you're big and physical and pretty good throwing the body or whatever, there's a lot more of the game in the NHL these days. Very, very interesting stuff. 

GR: I think that's actually the perfect segue into someone who, early in his career, threw the body too much and sold out too much on plays that he probably shouldn't: Rasmus Ristolainen.

Great case study, great case study from when [John Tortorella] started working with him to where he is now. Will, I'll send in the link here from the Hockey IQ newsletter so we can track a little bit better with each other. 

I found him to be a fascinating player. High draft pick, 8th overall in 2013. Really pretty, smooth skating, big body — has all of the tools that you would traditionally say, “Yep, that checks [out].” And then you looked at his stat profile and it was just abysmal. His micro stats were terrible. I think the only thing he was good at was D-Zone Retrievals, which, being able to take contact, it was kind of an easy thing for him.

WS: Yeah. I remember watching Ristolainen when he was in junior hockey, because that was the earliest years of me being kind of curious about that side of the game, and I did not really recall that being a premier area of his game.

I remember him being big, but pretty mobile, and has some skill to play around with. He did have a bit of a physical edge to him, but it feels like it was that tail end of an era in the NHL where those big, mean, physical guys were kind of in vogue, and people were kind of curious and needing guys like that. And I guess that's what Buffalo drafted him to be.

I remember being very surprised that he was in the NHL the year he was drafted. It just did not look like it was really working out there. And Buffalo just seems to have been not a great fit for him, they kind of turned him into something that he wasn't, but I do think that he's turned into some sort of serviceable defenseman.

But he, to me, is a great example of one that I always look back on and go, “Man, what if?” Like, what if things went a little bit differently for him? Because there was good stuff there, it's just I feel like the development was focused in the wrong areas.

To me, 65% of the work [is] scouting, and developing — the easy part is drafting good players, the hard part is developing them and bringing them along into being good NHL players.

So to me, if you can find the most amount of things that get in the way of that process being easy, then you're doing a really good job. And with Ristolainen, I feel like in his case they inserted more things to make that journey more difficult and sort of turned him into something that he wasn't, which is always a scary thing for me to think about doing to a player.

But it's not over for him, obviously. He figured it out. Obviously, Tortorella found something for him to do, and he has shown a little bit better. But yeah, he's always been a what-if guy for me.

GR: I always liked how Tortorella, after the 2022-2023 season, was doing his media stuff and he was like “Yeah, he's our most improved player.” You're a guy who's getting paid big bucks — I think he was making five million plus that year, still is, probably — and even him, he was like, “I was just bad the first half. And then around Christmas break, I started getting going. The second half was much better.”

Basically, the first half, they were just trying to rebuild his defensive game, and this is true for anything. Zach Benson's another good example of this. If you can't play defense in the NHL, you're going to be out quick. Benson can play defense despite being — I think they list them at five foot 10, but there's no way.

WS: Yeah, no, no. I know. He's a little guy, but he's another great example of a player where I, in my work, I do not care how big you are. I just care about how you play. Even in the NHL. And I feel like Benson's a really, really good example of that; a guy who, just forechecking alone is a really… The easiest way to defend is if he can cause turnovers in the opposing team's offensive zone, a guy like Zach Benson does that extremely well.

And if he needs to track guys through the neutral zone and backcheck, he'll do it, and he does it really well, and he does it at a speed that I found to be projectable to the NHL. And again, that's another one where I was a little surprised to see him in the NHL so fast, but he didn't really look out of place there.

He's had a bit of a slow start this season, but just a really, really talented player, and one where you kind of do look at and go, “Yeah, these smaller guys can definitely defend.” They just — the expectations are a little bit higher, and maybe for good reason, but he checks all the boxes for sure.

GR: Yeah. So for Rasmus (Ristolainen), there's two big things that, when I dug into this, that Torts was working at. At this point, I was so intrigued [that] I was tracking every single time Torts spoke and Rasmus spoke to the media. So I was like, “I wonder what they're actually doing?” Which, Torts can be tight-lipped, but he gives it away if you follow long enough.

The big one was just inside, like too much, he was finding himself, Rasmus was finding himself on the outside. So whether that be outside the dots, outside on bad ice, for whatever reason, or just finding yourself outside, like losing defensive side positioning to the offensive player.

If you finish contact, but now you're on the wall and your player's got to step to the net, that's trouble. There's a great, great clip the other night featuring, I think it was (Aliaksei) Protas [who] ended up scoring the goal and K’Andre Miller of the New York Islanders. So Caps — Rangers, not Islanders — Rangers… Where [Miller] went in soft, didn't really take positioning, got beat back to net, and Protas just put out a stick and just tapped it in, Igor Shesterkin never had a chance.

A similar idea of; okay, good, maybe you got some contact, you tried to make the stop, but you still need to maintain defensive side positioning. You still need to finish on the inside. So if you're doing contact, you can't overreach.

You just can't do that. You have to stay in good positioning.

And the second piece was just, finishing with contact to get stops, like stopping movement. Offensive play is a lot about movement, and defensive play is about stopping movement, AKA getting stops. So he would maybe make a play, or get a poke check, but the puck was still moving and could be easily on the other team's stick. 

So how do you make sure you're always staying in good positioning? Staying on the inside, as Torts put it. Or the other piece, which is getting stops, or finishing with contact — but smartly, not chasing the contact for contact’s sake? Being tactful in your play.

I feel like Risto really just learned how to play defense smartly. He was actually thinking and being intentional about what he was doing, rather than like, “I see a puck and a player, I'm going to go end that!” And then, boom, in the big scheme of things, it’s a net negative. Even though at the moment, it may have, especially to him — otherwise he wouldn't make the play — seemed like a positive, really it was a negative for the team.

WS: Well, that's the interesting thing too, going back to talking about junior players and the context in the draft and how defensive players might go a little bit underreported or undervalued in a sense.

I see this all the time, especially with North American defensemen, especially with Canadian ones, but there are definitely players who everybody talks about how good they are defensively, everybody talks about how solid they are. They're big, they're physical, they're mean, blah, blah, blah. But then when you watch things in detail, it's this sort of Ristolainen-style thing. You're talking about K’Andre Miller where it's like, they're along the boards, they're doing the thing along the boards, but they're losing.

They're allowing guys to get low on them, get through them, and even in the junior level, right? What good is it if you're trying to pin a guy against the boards and they give you a little shove, crouch down a little bit, chip the puck three feet out from you, you don't adapt to that, they get three feet of space on you, throw it out in front of the net, and boom, you got yourself a scoring chance, right? I see that all the time.

It's the focus on the body and not focus on the turnover, turning that possession back over, that really seems to be a tough lesson for a lot of defensemen to get over. I find that a lot of defensemen from the age of 18 to 23, in the grand scheme of things, their style of play doesn't drastically shift all that often.

And so, when I see things like that happening, I'm going, okay, I gotta either hope that this guy puts in the time in the gym and becomes, just, a strength nut, and pins that guy to the boards so they can't do anything, or they figure out a way to get into those situations, take a step back, chip at the puck. Really battle for the puck rather than focus on the guy.

Because I've seen it so many times with guys who are bigger and more physical, they apply it in a way where I feel like coaches will go, “Wow, look at you go, you're playing hard, you're playing the thing!” But then they escape, this opponent might escape, and create a little bit of space for themselves. And again, this is a game of inches, it's a game of a couple of feet, and every inch matters.

So in some cases, yeah, you get those situations where guys like Ristolainen, yeah, you're doing the thing, people clip the hits, people clip the physical play, but then five seconds later, someone's got some space on you and they generate a scoring chance. And so what do you really value, right? Personally, fewer scoring chances would be ideal.

GR: I love it. Last piece to wrap this up, because I think it'll go well into our next piece, which is point play. Shorting the zone.

I was able to find some phenomenal clips and do some photos of this for the newsletter. But the concept of; if you're watching a game in the NHL, if you can see all five of the people trying to break the puck out, low in the zone… A lot of it, you think about the NHL today, is like a swarm. We're going to do close support. I'm going to try to crowd the puck out.

A good way to respond to that is to short the zone, which basically means your defensemen, instead of hanging out at the blue line, are going to go into the offensive zone. And they're going to start with small gaps, they're going to be [at the] top of the circles, if not a little bit lower.

Tortorella is another big fan of this, so you can see it with the Flyers a lot, too. I would say [Sheldon] Keefe is another example of a coach who does this a ton. So you saw a lot in Toronto, now you'll see a lot more in New Jersey, which is  the perfect d-core to make all of this work. So I think Devils are going to be good for — that's going to be a great fit.

But just the idea of crowding in the space, setting small gaps, so when you do start defending, you can either cut a play off early — it's an easy pinch there if you don't have to go very far — you can cut it off. Or, 2; create a turnover in a much better spot than what is in your own zone. Why not make it in the o-zone? So from a positioning standpoint, phenomenal place to start, good way to kill plays early.

Before they can get going, before the team can build speed, and just being able to put yourself in a good spot to take advantage both from a defensive standpoint, but offensive standpoint.

WS: Yeah, I love when I see this being deployed. I think, again, I'm a geek, like I'm a math guy, and even just thinking about the numbers here, it makes such a difference if you think about it.

The offensive zone from blue line to goal line is 64 feet. So you're looking at the difference between a guy standing at the blue line being maybe 75 feet from the net or at the top of the face-off circle where you might be 20 feet closer, maybe 20, 25 feet closer. So you're cutting down the time at which you give the defense to adapt, the goaltender to adapt. You're cutting that time down by a third-ish, a quarter to a third. I'm ballparking here, but that automatically is just based on where you are on the ice.

If you can compress the offensive zone on your opponent, you're laughing. The second thing I wanted to mention here is this is, again, why skating ability and quickness and speed are so important to me. Because it is objectively a better position to be in when you're in that position — closer to the top of the face-off circles for your defensemen.

But if you do have a situation where the opponent has possession of the puck you have to get set up, you have to cover that gap, you have to cover for yourself, or you have to have some sort of system in place where a winger can cover for you if you're caught in the offensive zone. Ideally, you have your defensemen who can wheel up, get some speed going, get positioned well to counter that attack, and have a system that can swarm whoever has that puck in the offensive zone.

I think it's a really interesting trend for sure. It's a simple little thing, it's a concept that you see definitely a lot more now than you used to, but I'm all about it. It just makes sense mathematically, and it plays into exactly the styles of player that I always look for: guys who do pinch a little bit more aggressively, but have the mobility and the skating ability to cover for themselves.

I would rather have a player who tries something creative, or tries some sort of play that could lead to a high scoring chance, but may relinquish some space on the ice, but has the ability to cover for themselves.

And I can at least as a coach, rely on them — not that I'm a coach — but rely on them to cover for themselves. To go, okay, I can rely on them to try these things, because I know that if it doesn't maybe go their way, which happens in hockey all the time, I'm not going to be upset at this player, but I know that I want them to backcheck, cover for it, because I know they're capable of it.

I think that that's sort of the trade off that you have to live with, but I'm totally cool with it.

GR: All right, so we're going to call this end of the day on some modern day defending, and we'll pick up on point play in episode two.

[END Transcript.]

part 2 <- convenient link at the bottom <3

[suhmingo]

I, uh, don’t know how to actually preface this. It’s really just a mini rant/pseudo-analysis of chapter 167. Which was pretty crazy. But, I loved this chapter, and yes I’m typing this with two hands.

But first let me try and do some housekeeping.

It’s perfectly fine to have an emotional, even visceral reaction to 167. That’s the point

If you feel grossed out, betrayed, unnerved, dumbstruck, or any form of bamboozled by today’s chapter then good! That means the emotional weight of the scene is working, and that you are a proper, feeling human. The

The whole point of fiction is to explore themes that would be difficult, even dangerous to experience from a place of safety. To me that’s, like the entire reason I ever wanted to become a writer, one of the most unsung broke boy jobs in the history of the world. My desire for Denji to get better in a world that is dead set on making him fail is the entire reason I have an emotional investment in the first place. Stories are inherently about conflict and the struggle with resolving conflict, that should make you uncomfortable.

Say what you want about Chainsaw Man. I can take it, I’m a big boy. But one thing that it has always had since Chapter one is a well-defined through line about the complexity of our innate desire to find some type of love fighting against the pain-wrought pathway that it leads us down. In a good story, every chapter should have some way of showing the highs and lows of that theme, and I’m pretty confident when I say that 167 perfectly shows us that.

It’s bad. Don’t let people who brag about their trauma tolerance tell you otherwise. You are well within your right to feel. But I think it would behoove people to 1. Realize that this is fiction, and its effects, though evocatory, are ultimately abstract, and 2. Realize that exploring dark themes allows people, especially a 16-25 (Or whatever the target audience for CSM is) to grapple with and think on human concepts as all encompassing as love.

From a writing standpoint, one chapter has escalated the tension of the entire story more than anything that has happened in Part 2 so far. It’s admittedly a bit early to call it peak. But looking at it as a simple story beat, that’s a fantastic chapter as far as the medium goes.

Listen, the whole point of stories since, like, Mesopotamian times was the tension between wanting a character to achieve happiness vs the hardships and trauma that life happens in life. They’re supposed to put you in a sensitive state emulative of a tense environment. I’d argue that the prevalence of escapist fiction and fandom has changed how we emotionally digest fiction. But that’s a whole nother essay.

The events of 167 aren’t some horny non-sequitur. Everything that happened is entirely a logical, if graven, extension of how we know characters.

Denji is at the lowest point we have ever seen him at. He was literally dismembered and put back together less than 10 chapters ago. The last chapter literally had him groveling on his knees at a cauldron’s brew of his own weakness, immaturity, stupidity, and horniness. I think we can all understand why he would not be in a good mental state to just lose himself in the moment. You can’t even blame Denji in this situation. He was in an entirely vulnerable state that was exploited entirely by

Yoru. Who is the literal embodiment of war. If you think that someone who represents the human fear of war is going to play fair. Turn on the news for five minutes. Yoru is a character we are not supposed to like. She’s fun, because she’s a work of fiction, but she’s arguably less trustworthy than Fami. She’s a violent, exploitative being who possesses a dead teenager. There is no “too far” for her if it’s the fastest way on the road to conquest. Reminder that before she caught feelings, her plan was literally just to castrate Denji because she thought that would further her goals. The fact that it turned into kissing was actually sparing a worse fate. IMO that savior was all in the actions of Asa.

Asa. I genuinely believe that, subconsciously, Asa wanted to kiss Chainsaw Man. Not like how it happened. Never like how it happened, but her desire for Denji/Chainsaw Man's affection has always been evident. She gets irreparably upset when she’s stood up, she makes cringe poetry for Chainsaw Man, and her entire goal as of now is in some misguided desire to make him happy. I also don’t think Asa is actually demisexual, or averse to sex. She is afraid of intimacy, which stops her from ever acting on her urges. Notice that both times Yoru has kissed Denji, it was after the idea of sex and intimacy was explicitly brought to the conversation. To me that screams that Yoru is spurred on by her host’s innate desires. Hell, it’s been shown that in the same way that Yoru has made Asa more proactive of a human being, Asa has made her feel emotions. I don’t think it's a coincidence that Yoru is blushing while kissing Denji. None of that was part of her plan. That’s Asa’s emotional influence getting the better of her in what I predict to be a fantastic role reversal of their initial contract.

This is thematically in line with how Chainsaw Man presents love and sets up deeper themes.

��

Remember way back in Part One when Denji was just an initial horndog and everybody kinda hated him? I hated Denji back then! When I first heard of Chainsaw Man I genuinely thought it was going to be a mommy-kink fuelled power fantasy. But I was wrong. Wonderfully wrong. Fujimoto used the allure of that idea in Makima to present a story about how dangerous and manipulative the very idea of grooming is, and how damaging that can be to a person. The same way Denji’s desire to get the approval of Makima was poisonous to him is mirrored in his desire for vapid, instantly gratifying sex is being portrayed here. I genuinely think this chapter is going to age like fine wine, and I am absolutely willing to take egg on my face if I’m wrong.

[zookacestance]

My First Thoughts on Life is Strange: Double Exposure

(these are my opinions from the 1st Trailer, Reveal Stream, and clips they've posted)

1. The Style Swap:

I personally prefer the original, less realistic, style to the game. I think it sets Life is Strange apart and makes it look more unique than other games. I understand why they’re changing it up, and I don’t necessarily think it’s bad, it’s just that I prefer the original game style and visuals so far.

I'm also not a big fan of the clothing/styles they've given the new characters, especially Max. Each character in the first game had a unique style I felt suited them well, now everyone's clothing seems pretty bland and standard. I especially wish they had kept some of Max's original aesthetic, It feels really boring and plain now. Maybe that's not a popular opion, I'm not sure, but it's a first impression of mine so I'm writting it! (Also I am aware there are going to be outfit packs, but I don't any of them look like anything Max would've originally wore, or really even look good... personally I don't like them).

2. Game Play:

I like the sneak peak they gave us in the Reveal Stream, it looks fun! I think at the very least I’ll enjoy playing through the game even if I don’t enjoy the story. The university they made looks fun to explore and the concept of two parallel universes with two different versions of everyone you meet is extremely interesting!! ALTHOUGH I really dislike that they took away Max's rewind power, that was a big reason why I enjoyed the first game (getting to rewind and see all the diffrent options and dialoge) so I'm defenitly not a fan of that being taken.

3. Life is Strange Comics:

(Spoiler warning for the comics) One thing that confuses me is that the comics are known as non-canonical in the Life is Strange storyline, however will this game change that?? Max seems to have the same (or very similar) powers that she has in the comics in Double Exposure. Dose this mean the comics will be reconized as semi-canon or even fully canon for the first game now? Maybe Double Exposure will even connect the storyline of the comics and first game togther. Although personally, I hope not, while I enjoy the comics I think I'd enjoy them a lot less if they were canon lol.

4. Chloe:

So we know it follows either endings of the 1st game. Dose that mean Chloe is either dead or alive and broken up/no contact with Max (the girl that sacrificed a entire town for her)?? So far I’m confused on how that will work. As much as I've wanted Max and Chloe to get another game, if you’re just going to give Max one why not just have it take place in the bay over bae ending?? I think they can make this “both endings are canon” work, but the question is will they?

5. Can it Really Be a Standalone Game?:

When they revealed Double Exposure to be a standalone game I was honestly really disapointed because why even make a game with Max, and possibly Chloe, just to have it not connect with their original game and story that's already beloved by fans?? To me this is a big mistake when their original story is still so loved, unique, and respected, and I think alot of fans would've liked to see a sequel or continuation of their story. I honestly think this is what's going to make me dislike the game, we'll just have to wait and see, I'm optimistic for now, but I have a feeling the story and characters will seem disconnected from the original game because they want the game to be a standalone and not refer to the original. So I personally predict that this choice alone will really negativly effect what the game has to offer, but we'll just have to wait and see! Hopefully I'm wrong about this.

[toastandjamie]

Been thinking about Mat Cauthon again, not an abnormal occurrence, but here’s an essay about him.

I have to cut this up because of the word limit, so here’s part 1

Part 1: How To Traumatize Your Comedic Relief

So like, Mat’s paranoia and trust issues stem entirely from the events of the first book regarding the Shadar Logoth dagger. But like- I wanna talk meta about Mat’s story and the concepts of loss of innocence, the evils of man, and fear of being powerless and how that relates to his character arc and relationships in the story. So let’s put aside the lore explanation of “evil dagger doing evil dagger things”

So when we first meet not just Mat, but all three Ta’veren boys there’s this element of childlike innocence to them. Despite the fact that all three are eighteen at the start of the series, Emmonds Field is so isolated, safe and peaceful that the boys are actively noted as being exceptionally naive to the outside world. They’re practically toddlers being left alone in a grocery store when they get separated from the actual experienced adults. This is a feature not a bug mind you, when it comes to having protagonists to introduce a world to an audience with. Not to mention that sets up all of the Emmonds Fields kids(this is specifically barring Nynaeve) to have a “Loss of Innocence” character arc, and they all do, but what’s interesting is how each character handles this loss and how long it takes for them to accept this reality. Mat is actually the first of them to really experience the effects of this loss of innocence, due to previously mentioned dagger problems, but let’s ignore the curse and talk about what exactly happened in Shadar Logoth that shook Mat’s worldview so badly. Mat does not start the story as the cynical and sarcastic character we all know and love, he’s introduced to us as being genuinely kindhearted and trusting, like I know it’s easy to forget given EVERYTHING Mat does in the later books, but of the three Ta’veren boys he’s the one who trusts Morraine the most in the beginning. He doesn’t question her motives nor does he seem to have any innate hostility towards her being Aes Sedai like Rand does(though his hostility stems from a place of jealousy and protectiveness of Egwene rather than genuine prejudice). The same goes for Thom as well, Mat doesn’t know anything about this person but he trusts these seemingly well intentioned adults intrinsically. The only person Mat seems to even have the slightest hesitation about is Lan and that’s solely because he’s aloof and doesn’t show much emotion, something that Mat finds extremely off-putting as the type of person who always has Big Feelings, and takes a lot of self esteem in his ability to make others laugh. This makes sense, because at this point they’ve not encountered any darkfriends(that they knew of) so currently the only Evil they encountered has been literal shadowspawn monsters. The Emmonds Field kids have never met a person who had genuinely bad intentions, I’ll-tempered like Cenn Buie, or a bit disreputable like the Coplins and Congars but even these people were at their cores Good People. So why WOULD they distrust these people who say they have their best interests at heart. That’s when we get to Shadar Logoth, and Mat as the ADHD icon he is, immediately gets bored and wants to explore the abandoned city. Rand and Perrin, as the two more mature ones both rightfully call this a bad idea since they were told NOT to go exploring by themselves, but Mat only heard “Trolloks can’t come in here so it’s safe” and nothing else so he decides to go anyways. Rand and Perrin tag along mostly to make sure Mat doesn’t get hurt. And who do they meet except the most suspicious man ever who lures them into his white van- I mean treasure room with the promise of candy-I mean treasure. These boys have never heard of stranger danger in there lives and automatically trust this random man who lurks in alleyways. And wouldn’t you know it, but this guy was not trustworthy at all and tries to kill them resulting in the group getting separated.

Here’s the thing, this is the first time in Mat’s life that he’s ever experienced true man made evil. This wasn’t the dark ones doing, Mordreth was just a guy who had genuinely malicious intentions and took advantage of Mat and his friends. This alone is enough to make him cautious but then throughout their entire road trip to Camlyn they are constantly ambushed by dark friends, in fact after Whitebridge they don’t get any direct encounters with Shadowspawn, they see a few myrrdraal hunting them but they avoid them pretty easily, it’s the People that consistently hurt them; and they are EVERYWHERE. Darkfriends are practically popping up at every street corner and they could be literally anyone. Mat tells Rand at one point that he feels like everyone is out to get them and Rand assures him that not everyone is a darkfriend, but at the same time, I can SEE why Mat would come to that conclusion. I mean is it really paranoia if they actually are out to get you? It wasn’t even just darkfriends, which makes it’s objectively worse, throughout their road-trip May and Rand are constantly met with people who are selfish, greedy, rude and sometimes even outright cruel and a lot of them weren’t darkfriends. They interact with Whitecloaks who are supposed to be righteous and good but are just bullies in shiny armor and carrying around swords. They interact with merchants on the road who take active pleasure in nearly taking out Rand’s eye with whip because the two of them walked a little too close to a cart. An innkeeper who purposefully locked them in a small storage closet so that he could rob them in the middle of the night. Rand remains optimistic but by the time they reach Camlyn Mat had become completely pessimistic and despondent. He didn’t trust anyone, he believed wholeheartedly that everyone wanted to hurt him, everyone except of course Rand.

[ploppythespaceship]

Doctor Who Series 14 / Season 1 Review

Man, it feels good to be enjoying Doctor Who again. I haven't been keeping up with the show in years, but I caught up to see Tennant's return leading into Ncuti's run and I am so glad I did. This season is far from perfect, but it gets a lot of little things right and is consistently fun to watch, even if a lot of the details fall apart.

What I Liked

Ncuti Gatwa is simply phenomenal. He settles into the role so quickly and so easily, bringing such a fresh energy to the character. I love how distinct he feels, too -- when you're playing the fifteenth iteration of a character, it can be hard to find a new spin on things, but he's done it. He's also a fantastic actor, getting to show an incredibly wide range in just a few short episodes. I truly think he'll be remembered as one of the best Doctors.

Millie Gibson is also very good as Ruby, and her dynamic with the Doctor is a lot of fun. I appreciate having another Doctor/companion relationship that isn't romantic. They're just best friends, and it's very cute.

The show looks great. It's very clear that they've had a budget increase -- the costumes, effects, etc. are noticeably improved since RTD's first run.

Murray Gold's return as the composer is extremely welcome. His stuff isn't quite as bombastic as before (or maybe the episodes just have better sound mixing), but keeps a lot of the same leitmotifs. The result is a more subtle score that perfectly suits each scene.

Mel is so cool now. She was one of my least favorite classic companions, so seeing her worked into these storylines and feel more compelling is an unexpected delight.

What I Didn't Like

Ultimately, I think the season is just too short. Council of Geeks has an excellent YouTube video on this -- because there are only eight episodes, and a lot of them are going for bigger ideas and weirder premises, it feels like we don't really settle into a status quo.

The Doctor and Ruby's relationship also isn't as developed as much as I would like. If you pay close attention to the dialogue, there's actually a six month gap between "Space Babies" and "The Devil's Chord" -- we could have used another episode or two in that time period to really flesh out the beginnings of their friendship better. Instead the show jumps straight to them being best friends, without really showing us why that is.

I don't think the mystery box format of this season really worked. The mysteries were built up to such an extent that no answer could really be satisfying, and the finale really almost entirely on the big reveals that ultimately didn't amount to much. Ruby in particular feels like an underbaked companion, and I hope she gets more time to get properly developed.

Individual Episode Thoughts

Space Babies — This is easily the weakest episode of the season. It's not bad by any means, but it does remind me of some of the sillier episodes of RTD's first run. It felt like we were speedrunning the companion introduction, when things could have been slowed down and spread across a few episodes to feel more natural. The baby VFX also do not work and fall very firmly into uncanny valley territory.

The Devil's Chord — This one makes very little sense, but is entirely saved by Jinkx Monsoon being so iconic as Maestro. If you just go along for the ride, it's a ton of fun.

Boom — This episode is proof that Steven Moffat truly is at his best when he's writing self-contained stories under someone else's guidance. I don't think it's as iconic as Moffat's previous stories, and I felt like Ncuti was getting a lot of dialogue that better suited Matt Smith, but the entire concept was interesting and the execution was solid. Also, Ncuti acted his ass off without even being able to move.

73 Yards — Honestly, I'm mixed on this one. The setup is fantastic and eerie, and I enjoy the exploration of Ruby's character, solo from the Doctor. I like her experiencing this inexplicable thing, and deciding to find purpose in it to help others. But the story does fall apart for me at the end when it doesn't explain anything. I don't need every single thing handed to me, I understand the value of leaving things to the imagination, but the fact that the episode's last impression is "wait what?" does leave a bit of a sour taste. That being said, I do respect how weird and different this episode is, and how much discussion it prompted afterward.

Dot and Bubble — The trailers looked like a Black Mirror ripoff, and I was prepared for a shallow "social media bad" episode. Instead, we got something far more nuanced about the dangers of trapping yourself in a bubble of like-minded people and refusing to ever look beyond it. And the ending reveal that it's a society of white supremacists is so, so well-handled, because all the clues were there for you. If you're like me and didn't piece it together until the very end, it really challenges you to ask yourself why you didn't notice sooner. Also, another episode where Ncuti acts his ass off. My personal favorite episode of the season.

Rogue — Another with mixed feelings. Rogue himself is tons of fun, and I enjoy his dynamic with the Doctor, even if parts of it are pretty rushed. I really hope he comes back. The episode plot itself is serviceable but nothing special. My main complaint is the severe lack of Ruby. Her relationship with the Doctor doesn't feel sufficiently established, so the emotional beats don't really land.

The Legend of Ruby Sunday — This was an underwhelming finale, unfortunately. The first part barely even qualifies as an episode. It launches right into starting to answer the season's mysteries, but does so in an uncompelling and heavy-handed way. The Sutekh reveal is pretty epic in isolation, but...

Empire of Death — The Sutekh reveal doesn't really lead to anything satisfying. He doesn't have the presence of Toymaker or Maestro, he's just a CGI dog monster. This second part finally answers some questions, some of which are vaguely interesting, but it's happening in a plot so dull and so dry that I just can't bring myself to care. The episode is also just confusing? The plot points don't seem to flow naturally together, like multiple stories were smashed together with little rhyme or reason. The resolution is some of the most nonsensical nonsense that Doctor Who has ever come up with. Then we get to the reveal of Ruby's mother, which is so forced and it becomes clear in retrospect that things were added to seem more mysterious than they really were. And capping it all off is the Doctor's farewell to Ruby, which falls flat because, as I've said, their relationship is rather undercooked. It really does end the season on a downer, which is a shame because so many of the preceding episodes were pretty good.

[concerningwolves]

Hello! I hope this ask finds you well.

I’m planning a short story set in a vaguely fantasy world with early- to mid-1800s technology (so no hearing aids), in which an eight-year old girl gains deafness after an illness. The point of the short story is very simply her learning to accept that she’s deaf.

I would really love to do this story justice, and I was hoping you could help me out with a few things.

Would it be rude/offensive/inappropriate/misrepresentative in any way if:

1. I wrote this child’s first reaction upon hearing she’s deaf to [plan to] hide it from her family as part of a flight-or-fight instinct (as in, she’s afraid she will be isolated or alienated from her family if they know)?

2. she lost her speech due to self-consciousness about her voice sounding ‘weird’? (And later speaks verbally only, and rarely, around her immediate family after they are made aware?)

Hi Anon!

Before answering your questions, I just want to float the idea of ear trumpets at you:

These have varying levels of effectiveness (and from what I've read, weren't useful for profound to severe hearing loss), but people have been finding ways to aid their hearing since long, long before the advent of our modern conception of hearing aids. Depending on what fantasy elements you have and how this interacts with your world's technology, you might be able to come up with something helpful.

Now, onto your actual questions.

I wrote this child’s first reaction upon hearing she’s deaf to [plan to] hide it from her family as part of a flight-or-fight instinct (as in, she’s afraid she will be isolated or alienated from her family if they know)?

This sounds like a plausible thing for a child to do, but I think it's important to explore why she feels like she has to hide her deafness for fear of being alienated. Has her family expressed ableist views in the past? Or is she acting on assumptions based on wider social views towards disability? While it's an unfortunate truth that our society depicts and considers disability as inherently bad or tragic, the same doesn't necessarily have to be true of a fantasy society. When writers put ableism into their built societies/cultures simply because they're following the social frameworks of our real world (whether current or historical), it implies that ableism is somehow normal or inevitable.

I'm not saying to never include ableism, though! There are times when ableism makes narrative sense, so a big thing I'd like to encourage more SFF authors to think about is "does the ableism need to be here or am I including it because it's what I'm used to seeing?". In other words, is the ableism important to the narrative (i.e., does it in some way help you tell the story you want to tell), or is it Just There? The equally important corollary to this is "and if it makes narrative sense, have you continued to actually explore it in the narrative?".

A good case study of this issue is the treatment of homophobia compared to ableism in the world of George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire. Most (or all, iirc) of the cultures in the world of ASOIAF are ableist. This makes narrative sense because (a) themes of power struggles and power imbalance are crucial to the story's makeup, and (b) the world is closely modelled on the social and political climate of medieval Europe (albeit mapped onto a dark fantasy world). It just wouldn't be the same story if the built society wasn't ableist! (Overcoming internalised ableism is integral to Bran's character arc, for example, and you can't internalise something that isn't first coming from an external source). The narrative consistently and repeatedly shows us that the social pressures to conform to abled standards are harmful, and that the disabled characters are no less for their disabilities, even though they're often flawed people with complex relationships to their own disability. Despite other valid criticisms of the biases in Martin's worldbuilding for ASOIAF, the disabled representation is something I still really enjoy and appreciate.

Homophobia, on the other hand, is present but unexplored. It's been a few years since I read these books, and the fact I can remember the disabled characters but only have vague recollections of like one queer character who appears mostly (entirely?) off-page says a lot in itself. This doesn't mean the homophobia shouldn't have been there – it would be pretty odd if an intensely misogynistic and ableist society was accepting of queer people – but if Martin wanted to so blatantly showcase the queerphobia, then he should have given equal consideration to queer perspectives. Failure to do so implies that queer narratives are less important or less worthy of consideration, and betrays a heteronormative bias on the part of the author.

So in your case, Anon: yes, this could be a way to write your character reacting to her acquired deafness! It's not an insensitive idea, it's just one that I think is worth considering in the wider context of your story world and examining for any biases you might have.

she lost her speech due to self-consciousness about her voice sounding ‘weird’? (And later speaks verbally only, and rarely, around her immediate family after they are made aware?)

For this one, I think you'll need to do some research into loss of speech after acquired deafness. I've discussed the links between acquired deafness and language-learning in children in this ask, which sets up a similar scenario to yours. I don't know if an eight year old would lose speech, and depending on how well she could already speak, there may not be a massive difference in her speech quality after loss of hearing. This isn't something I can speak to from personal experience or from any kind of expert knowledge, though.

If she decides not to speak because she's self-conscious of how she sounds, that's another matter – and again, one that's not insensitive in itself, but needs sensitive thought put into it. The most important points are:

Let her find other ways to communicate (e.g., sign language) and portray these as equally valid as verbal speech.

Don't show her self-consciousness about her speech as normal or "correct" – difficulty and frustration with speech when you can't (fully) hear yourself is something many people struggle with, but not something that people should be made to feel ashamed about. If she's ashamed, try to find some way within the narrative to show that she doesn't need to be.

Don't conflate non-verbal or unclear verbal speech with a lack of intelligence.

I hope that gives you a good place to start!

Happy writing <3

[astrofiish]

hmm I wonder who I should ask you about /silly I am genuinely curious on your Barnham characterization thoughts

Pick a character I am likely to have Feelings/Opinions about and I will give and explain the top five ideas/concepts/etc that I believe are essential to accurately depicting them.

HEHEHEHEHE ZACH BARNNNN I love that guy so much. Hes been through so much shit and hes being so so so gaslighted but he genuinely thinks hes doing the right thing. Idk hes so so compelling to me I really do wish that his story was actually explored more in game- he has a character arc of someone who learns to go against the norm and figures out that what he is doing is not good and incredibly immoral, but because they bench him for case 4, he really doesn't have the resolution that I feel should have been given to his character.

1. One of the top concepts that I feel is essential to depicting this guy (especially post-PLvsPW) is regarding how he perceives his status as a person. Hes an authoritative figure (even though hes left out of the Storyteller and Eves conversations, he's still a prosecutor and has power over the townspeople) and hes also famous in his own special Barnham Way TM (the townspeople fucking love him), but regardless of his fame hes very much "I do this for the whole town, instead of doing things for his own personal gain". Post Case 3 Barnham is fascinating to me because hes taking down the wall of his perceived status and doubting the system that hes very much a cog in the machine with, but I also love really exploring how that effects his relationships with the townspeople and how he thinks of himself. Like- for example, I feel that he would have a shit ton of imposter syndrome, especially because for so long he was considered a celebrity and he was held in very high importance. Post case 3 Barnham would be an overthinker, whos morals and ideas are crashing into each other SO so frequently, giving him a sort of identity crisis (which also continues into post-PLvsPW Barnham's story, especially after Labrelum's experiments are shut down)

THEREFORE I feel that a crucial part of post-PLvsPW Zacharias Barnham is understanding the consequences of doing the work to deconstruct the monarchy that he's been under and a part of for all of these years. Now that he knows that he's been left out of SO many conversations with Eve and The Storyteller, as well as also being mind wiped like his fellow civilians, he deserves to be really really fucking angry. And ofc all Labryinthian civilians deserve to be fucking angry at the Storyteller, but I wouldn't be surprised if Barnham took it VERY personally, especially because his judgements that he was handing down to people was ALSO a cog in the machine that he did not understand to the extent that he should have. To be fair, I do feel like if he did know about what was actually going on, and wasn't mindwiped, he would have said fuck this shit im out a long time ago.

I do feel like post PLvsPW he would feel more of an obligation to stay, because everyone is getting their memories back after such a long time of not having them, and they all need a lot of support. Zach Barn, although he is an authoritative figure in his own special way, would definitely want to help with getting the townspeople back on their feet. However, I do very much headcanon that he does eventually leave several years in the future- he no longer has the authority that he had before, and honestly I dont think the connections he had with the townspeople (before and after) were incredibly strong given that he was perceived both with status as well as with a celebrity like guise. Sure, he stays in Labryinthia for a year after, but I do feel that he does eventually gets out of Labryinthia (it takes quite a while for him to do so, however. I'll talk about that later)

2. This man is so fucking uncultured. Labryinthian Culture is such a fascinating subset of English culture, especially given that they're living in a strange microcosm of British culture, which is, at the same time, entirely separate. Theres so many people from so many different places being put into this program, and of course we dont know the substats of how many people from how many different places are IN labryinthia, but based on accents, etc, they seem to be mostly British/French. However, BECAUSE of that, and also because they're being very mind wiped, Zacharias doesn't know shit about the outside world. This man has to be introduced to what English politics is, what different countries are, how different people interact with each other, etc. given that they have been all gaslighted that Labryinthia is its own separate thing and that there is NOTHING outside of the wall. I would also consider him really shit in regards to certain celebrities or historical figures- he wouldn't know, for example, who the Prime Minister is or who *insert famous singers are*, and would have to be told. Like I do think he GAINS knowledge about what things are over time, but learning about things and culture outside Labryinthia would be a learning curve for him.

I also love to HC that over time he loses his stupid lil knight "accent" (/affectionate) (also idk if its an accent but its certainly the knight like sentence structure) post-PLvsPW if he ever moves to outside Labryinthia, but when hes either stressed or angry it comes out. (but that's a smaller lil headcanon)

3. He has had a REALLY SHIT EDUCATION from this lady who has HORRIBLE ideas and genuinely all of her advice is shit. Therefore, I feel that whenever he goes back to average society, he'll have problems with mundane things that most other people wouldn't have problems with. I've always headcanoned that his sister is Rouge and that he was brought in with his sister because both of them were orphans of some way shape or form, and therefore (if Barnham was a baby), he would have all of his reading and writing skills taught by a lady that (arguably) does not know what shes doing (he also mentions that he was taught by her in the special episodes, but I also feel that its important to mention how young Barnham was when he moved to Labryinthia.) I also think that Arthur would also make the learning curriculum teach him how to specifically do things in a formal knight-like manner, which would also fuck up his vocabulary to a degree. Educationally, Barnham has soooo much to learn, simply just because of the way he grew up.

4. Also, on another side of this, I feel that he would get really really excited (and also really really nervous) when traveling. I dont feel that hes a guy that likes being outside of his comfort bubble (and for example, he went outside of his bubble when going against the storyteller) but once he gets his metaphorical feet wet into traveling his mind would be BLOWN with how much there is in the world. Hes been stuck in his lil Labryinthian-sized sphere for all of his life, and outside of that he really doesn't know much. The world is an intimidating thing, but also something that (when he learns and gets comfortable with it) he would be fascinated to learn more about. It'll take several years until he's at the point where he can travel, simply because he would be stressed out about the idea of going out of his social sphere. But eventually he'd get there!

5. He really needs therapy. This guy needs. so much therapy. Theres so much gaslighting that has gone on in his life and he needs so so much help and support post Labryinthia because (IMO) the feeling of your whole world falling apart at the seams (especially BECAUSE he decided to poke and prod at the idea that the Storyteller is a bad man) is not something that anyone should experience. Thankfully he has the support of some of his friends, and he definitely has his sister to talk to and get to know again but It'll definitely be a journey for him.

---

ANYWAYS IVE RAMBLED ENOUGH I hope this makes any lick of sense (Im writing this somewhat quickly- that last point wasn't as good but you have a whole essay to read so I'll let you read all of that). Most of this is all post plvspw stuff cause I find post plvspw barnham FASCINATING and I wanna go into that a lot more in the future- Before PLvsPW Barnham feels so consistent, but post PLvsPW is a whole ball of Barnham trying to figure out his whole life and his whole personality and status all over again from the beginnning.

[psihawaii]

ive finishied green vs red and i have no idea what i just watched. i know you said you dont need to watch any of the others but does it help?

but i did think it was funny and interesting, it has that fullmetal alchemist property where all the main characters are men but my favorite characters are the women. my favorite joke in the whole thing was the zoom in on lupins goofy ass grin in a mugshot with the subtitle ‘he’s always smart and cool’

I will say that me going ‘you dont have to know anything abt lupin iii at all going in 👍’ is moreso a personal thing abt me wanting to make the experience as confusing as possible, mostly if not entirely bc 1. I think it’s funny and 2. The film Also wants to make the experience of watching it as confusing as possible for plot reasons what with scenes being deliberately out of order + the movie never really explaining it’s main… Concept. I guess? I definitely don’t think it was the intended viewing experience (it was supposed to be a 40th anniversary special LMAO it is supposed to be a celebration of the franchise) but I just think it’s interesting to gauge ppls thoughts about what it could mean bc. In my opinion, green vs red’s larger Themes aren’t specific to lupin as much as they are abt any popular ‘morally grey’ male character/real. actual person/the effect media and fiction has on our real lives.

But to answer your question, i think knowing anything abt lupin iii only rlly helps with figuring out the preexisting characters relationship to lupin (which, sounds like a Big Thing, and i definitely do think knowing them a little makes for some Crazy implications with the concept of the film, but i think you get Enough context from what’s shown in the film + the thoughts and feelings of the gvr exclusive characters are more important, which do get explored thoroughly (or as thoroughly as the film can explain it)) and with all the lupin iii references (which are… obviously gonna be superfluous. theyre cute!! and i like em. but theyre not Needed to completely enjoy the flim). I feel like i’d be putting ‘Who Lupin Is. Like As A Person’ on this list, but again i feel like theres enough context within the film where you can figure it/what you Need to to watch it out. But of course im biased bc i watched green vs red pretty late into my lupin phase + i’ve watched it like five times in the past year.

BUT IM GLAD YOU LIKED IT!! It genuinely is one of my favorite movies of all time despite its problems. I think the idea of a really popular anime doing a non-linear metacommentary on itself as an anniversary film is Insane and whether or not you (the royal you. not you specifically syl) think it was executed well or a good celebration of the franchise its at least INTERESTING its a lot to think about… I really do like it as a commentary about legacy and idolizing problematic figures and how the media you consume/what you’re shown affects you as a person good and bad its… gaaahhhhhhh. I love media thats abt media.

And the thing abt lupin As A Whole really is that. It has really good women with crazy stories and roles and implications and it treats them HORRIBLYYYYYYYY like 85% of the time. the woman called fujiko mine (another artsy divisive examination of the franchise) is SUPPOSED to be more focused on its women (or woman. Singular.) and her role in the series and its…… interesting. good and bad. i would not say it centers women in a way thats tasteful or uhm… good as a narrative (at least towards the end) (and i feel like all of the Good interesting things it has to say that hold up by the end all have to do with the men!!!!!) (i almost wanna recommend twcfm to ppl as well but i have supremely Less authority on it and claim Less responsibility on the feelings anyone may or may not have abt it)

[mushroompone]

Hello! I really love your writing and with all the hype going with the mlp infection/zombie I was wondering how do you approach writing horror/gore? I mostly like to write slice of life, romantic, fluffy stories, so whenever I try to write something darker, a zombie apocalypse for example, the violence feels juvenile and the horror falls flat. Your stuff is absolutely terrifying and amazing, so I'm just sitting here wondering how?? I know that's a broad question, but I would appreciate a peek into your thought process for writing horror. Thank you and have a good day!!

Oh my gosh you're so kind!! First off, thank you! I have really enjoyed writing horror for this community for many years now, and it's been sorry cool to see this massive interest during of of nowhere for MLP horror content!

Second, definitely a broad question, but I can offer some broad tips in response:

(1) Work with what scares you. Horror actually comes naturally to most of us, you just have to be willing to explore some of the darker corners of yourself. Consume horror as much as possible and try not to shy away from what scares you. Most importantly, though, understand why you find it scary. This leads to step 2...

(2) Drill down to the core fear. There's a lot of creatures and things that pop up in horror again and again: ghosts, vampires, werewolves, and certainly zombies. But to work with these effectively we have to understand why they scare us. The answer is different for everyone! Let's take zombies as an example: for me, zombies are scary because they are infectious. I find plagues and diseases to be really really scary, even pre-covid lol. For others, it's more about loss of control - becoming a zombie means becoming an animal, or something else inhuman. Dig until you find the why. Then...

(3) Give someone the worst day possible. Picking your protagonist is critical. The monster has to be difficult for them to face! So think about what will play well off your core fear. If you've found zombies as your monster and distilled that to loss of control .. well, Luna would be a great choice! She's all about loss of control. That's super scary and very real for her. If you're going in more of an infectious disease direction, Twilight would make more sense - she would make a very believable germaphobe, yet still be driven to help those around her and find a cure. If you do it right, all you have to do is...

(4) Sit back and let it happen. It helps to have a destination in mind (even if it's as simple as "happy ending" or "real downer"), but if you've set yourself up this way you've got a concept and you're ready to let it rip. Start writing. Be gross. Scare yourself. Look over your shoulder and wonder who might be watching you. If you get stuck, ask yourself this: how could this possibly get any worse? Then do that. With pizzazz.

The details of writing prose that is gooey, gory, and chilling come from reading. You'll start to get a feel for where to linger, where to hold back, where to describe, and what to leave up to your reader's imagination. The hardest part is the balancing act - keep some things obscured. Leave some mystery while making it clear what is scary and why. However, once your audience knows the precise size and shape of what they're dealing with, it becomes a lot less scary! My rule of thumb is that I never want my audience to be able to plan a way around the danger. They should never be able to devise their own means of escape - something should always be left uncertain or shrouded in darkness.

I hope this helps!! If you'd ever like someone to look at what you're working on, I love beta-reading pony horror :) actually, come to think of it, I love beta-reading all horror!

Again, thank you! Your an earned my heart ❤️ I love hearing that my sacred are still scaring!

[fancy-rock-dove]

Chapter Head Art for Maybe Sprout Wings (Full set)

I have had just, So Much Fun working on these. This story really is built on such a great concept, and with such fantastic worldbuilding, and with action so thoroughly in tune with its themes that it really does reward digging into. @moorishflower's writing kills me in the best of ways (and in the sleep deprivation kind of ways but I have no regrets), and designing them was a great time. And on top of that, everyone here has been just, so lovely, so I'm very excited to post the full set of chapter head illustrations!

Stylistic consistency continues to elude me, but hopefully these look like a matched enough set regardless. Cursive titles are the chapter titles, block print is my own title for the illustration. Just for fun, and in tribute to the (probably truly unhinged) amount of time I spent thinking about Symbolism while making these, I'm including one selected Fun Fact relevant to my thoughts on some part of each of these at the bottom of this post in case that interests anyone!

Ch 1: Baobabs are some of the oldest living flowering plants on the planet and can live up to two millennia. I have a lot of feelings about the sheer volume of life these trees can contain (both spatially and in time) and what that means for how we look at them.

Ch 2: If Abel were looking to avoid anachronism, he could still absolutely have left out books that were machine-printed with moveable type, but they'd probably have to have been in Chinese or Korean, from somewhere that had already widely adopted the technology by the 14th century.

Ch 3: Homer's works contain what is believed to be the first written mention of apples in Ancient Greece. Its writing is about as many centuries removed from the events of the Odyssey as the events of this chapter are from the first recorded mention of apples in England.

Ch 4: An ink quill is definitely more aesthetic, but graphite had actually been discovered in England and pencils invented in the decades prior to Shakespeare's first writings. It's entirely possible he could've been jotting down quick notes with a pencil like any stagehand today.

Ch 5: Though Corinthian style architecture is named for the Greek city of Corinth, with which it's associated, its inventor Callimachus is actually thought to be Athenian. The spiny, curling acanthus leaves used in its motifs are generally associated with long life, immortality, and rebirth. Go figure.

Ch 6: Symbolically, clovers are a sign that others are thinking of you. They're associated with good fortune, and apparently also male energy, and seen as a sign of protection. Excellent Fiddler's Green groundcover here.

Ch 7: Three-masted, fully-rigged ships became common in Europe by the 16th or 17th centuries during the Age of Sail because the extra space for sails became more necessary with the increase in open-ocean voyages. Making them the go-to type of vessel for both trade and exploration.

Ch 8: The simple but effective design of drop spindles is largely unchanged from their first documented use in the first century CE. there's evidence of their use for spinning (making a single, stronger thread from many disparate fibers) dating back at least to the advent of agriculture, some 10,000 years ago. Definitely what I picture Clotho using.

Ch 9: The fractal, branching structures of roots, lightning, and Lichtenberg figures are all self-similar: you can get much closer and they'll still appear very similar or identical to the way they were at a distance.

Ch 10: The throne room scenes of Sandman were shot in Guildford Cathedral. The Dreaming's Castle was intentionally designed to be a mashup of a whole ton of architectural styles, but the facade and throne room definitely feel gothic or neo-gothic. It's been a classic for centuries and the gothic-style window is definitely the kind I picture Hob's room having, at least on days the castle's feeling a bit fancy.

Ch 11: The item at the front left there is a weaving shuttle. According to Artemidorus, while dreaming of most kinds of looms indicates that you should expect rest, dreaming of a warp-weighted loom -- the kind which was common in bronze-age Greece and enables multiple people to work together on the weaving -- indicates an upcoming journey.

Ch 12: I feel like I've already talked about the symbolism of this one elsewhere, so for this one, instead of a fact, a comment (that I found fun): The binding circle in this only shows up in areas covered by the puddle of the Dreaming Sea, the means by which the nature of the "gilded ring" was elucidated. :)

Ch 13: Greek ships often had eyes on their bow, which among other things, was intended to imbue them with some will and ability to avoid obstacles. The Argo famously had eyes and also some innate awareness/intelligence, and could actually speak to the crew.

Ch 14: While Calliope, muse of epic poetry and eloquence (and the one invoked at the beginning of the Odyssey) is associated with a book, scroll, or tablet, Erato, muse of romantic poetry and love stories, is depicted in crowns of rose and myrtle. My title for this one was very nearly just (Invocation pt. ii). Also, I have a headcanon that Dream has only seen very bad performances of the Odysseyif ( he's seen any at all) since antiquity. Any show that literally begins by calling his ex is something he's not gonna stay for unless he's really sure she won't actually show up.

Whew! thanks to anyone who actually read to the end of my rambling here! Clearly this whole story has been really, really fun to just turn over in my mind. Cool stuff just keeps falling out of it! Since I would literally be two photos under Tumblr's limit on this post otherwise, how about a couple bonus alternate versions at the end here? Because why not?? I added some red accents to a couple of these for fun, and though it doesn't fit the for the chapter headings, I do think it looks cool!

[best-underrated-anime]

Best Underrated Anime Group K Round 1: #K2 vs #K7

#K2: A show where any universe/plot is possible

The series is based on a manhua where the main characters are drawn as stick figures, so they can be placed in any situation, essentially making different AUs canon while any genre is possible. Some of these stories have overarching plots (they’re sort of like actors), some are more slice-of-life, and some have more hard-hitting moments of angst or occasionally cute, romantic stories between the leads: the mild-mannered Beryl (Green) and the easily-embarrassed Sapphire (Blue).

In this show where each episode is set in a different world, how would they encounter each other time and again?

#K7: A story of children who want to be acknowledged

Painted in red, the word "VON" is all that is left behind after a terrorist attack on a nuclear facility in Japan. The government is shattered by their inability to act, and the police are left frantically searching for ways to crack down the perpetrators. The public are clueless—until, six months later, a strange video makes its way onto the internet. In it, two teenage boys who identify themselves only as "Sphinx" directly challenge the police, threatening to cause destruction and mayhem across Tokyo. Unable to stop the mass panic quickly spreading through the city and desperate for any leads in their investigation, the police struggle to act effectively against these terrorists, with Detective Kenjirou Shibazaki caught in the middle of it all.

Titles, propagandas, trailers, and poll under the cut!

#K2: Beryl and Sapphire (Xiaolü He Xiaolan)

Propaganda:

It’s genuinely just such a cool concept! Getting to see these characters in practically any story/setting while still featuring the (usually same) main characters means you still get attached to the main cast, but you really get a diverse range of plots and ideas.

You may find yourself getting super attached to one (as I did for the Robo-Beryl arc, because I liked the character of Robo-Beryl but I also found Sapphire’s shyness/crushing adorable), and many of even the shortest ones are really interesting.

The OP even features them as actors and the title cards are film clapboards, which is such a cool way to tie in the main set-up!

Plus, because the manhua features them as stick figures, Ocarina (the original creator of Beryl and Sapphire) has way more room to explore deep ideas or just silly jokes; the flexibility of stick figures means we get lots of deep, philosophical writing/dialogue, and the donghua adapts that quite well.

Beryl is fun and Sapphire is super cute, and I love seeing how they interact in different universes/stories (and yes, they are very shippable!). Their default design is technically male, but sometimes they’re female too.

Some of the storylines are also super creative and really really do just punch you in the gut with feels. I don’t think I’ll ever forget some of the more tragic arcs…

Yet at the end of the day, Beryl and Sapphire is a really cute donghua, with a lot of feel-good stories to it! It even finally came back after like 4 years with season 2, which focuses on one of the over-arching arcs (the Demon King Beryl one), and we’re still getting discussions of deeper ideas alongside comedy, and Beryl and Sapphire are as cute as ever!

The new art style is quite pretty and hey, if you’re a fan of the playful, teasing (yet still can be rather emotionally reserved) type and the easily blushy type, Beryl and Sapphire may just be for you! 😉

Trigger Warnings: None.

#K7: Terror in Resonance (Zankyou no Terror)

Propaganda:

The big thing to this show is that the directors are Shinichirō Watanabe and Yoko Kanno, aka the team behind Cowboy Bebop. But in all seriousness, the show still haunts me and the music can still bring tears to my eyes. The art is incredible, and the characters are tragic. The story is partially about hope and largely about kids wanting their pain to be acknowledged.

Trigger Warnings: Child Abuse, Suicide

If you’re reblogging and adding your own propaganda, please tag me @best-underrated-anime so that I’ll be sure to see it.

[tacticalfiend]

okay so I have one more ep left to watch of the Fallout tv series and while my opinion of the show has improved somewhat, I still think it's pretty mediocre.

I see a lot of people reeeaaally love Cooper, seen many people say he "steals the show," but he is easily my least favorite part of this series. Usually his character archetype is one I really like, but in Cooper's case he's missing a certain something. Not quite sure what it is yet. I also am really bothered by the new ghoul serum thing. The concept on it's own is fine I guess, but I can't help but wonder how this serum is being manufactured. What is it made out of? Who's manufacturing it? It seems like some ghouls need quite a lot of it to prevent themselves from going feral, but considering how persecuted and feared ghouls are I struggle to see WHO would be willing to do this besides a good samaritan or another ghoul. However, ep 4 seemed to suggest this whole serum business is a business. Like these two random humans just run this supposedly profitable business selling serum to ghouls, which is weird to me. I just don't buy that this would actually make them bank or be sustainable (literally see NO OTHER GHOULS until ep 4!?!?!). I will acknowledge this is something that won't bother someone who isn't a world building/lore obsessed pervert like myself. My questions may also be answered in the next season or whatever too, I'm simply not sure they will be able to provide an explanation I'll find satisfactory.

I also do not have much to say about Lucy or Maximus. Both of them had similar issues to Cooper for me. I see the foundation for good, fun characters, but they fall short of really sticking the landing. I like Lucy the most out of the three of them, I think. Part of what holds Maximus back for me does have to do with the BoS though. I am... not a fan of the direction they took in this show. They seem so interchangeable with every other like overly militaristic, power hungry faction in any other story that has one. They kinda remind me of ceasar's legion, but lacking the way they neatly fit into FONV's overarching themes (desire to return/inability to move on from an idyllic past). The BoS were interesting in Fallout 1 and New Vegas because they weren't just the obvious "bad guys" or whatever. They were kind of mysterious in Fallout 1 initially. They were a little weird, isolationist, and ultimately rather selfish and distrustful of humanity. While they were very effective fighters, they weren't really militaristic... atleast not from what I remember. They weren't "the good guys," but they weren't villains either. Regardless of what you, the player, felt about them they were at least interesting and memorable. The version we get from the TV series is so fucking passe imo. So forgettable, so unimaginative, and it naturally rubs off on Maximus. It makes him less interesting by extension. It would have been cool to see a version of Maximus that did grow up in a BoS more akin to what we see in Fallout 1 and New Vegas. It would give a point of commonality between Lucy and him as well. Both being out of touch with the wasteland due to their isolated upbringings, but in different ways/varying degrees.

Speaking of the wasteland, it feels so empty. Maybe "compartmentalized" is the better word, though, none of the locations we visit feel interconnected. Funnily enough, it feels very "video gamey," like we're going from one hub/level to the next rather than exploring a vast wasteland. I think this problem stands out for me so much because I am not particularly invested in any of the characters, and by extension the narrative, so everything surrounding them just becomes even more distracting. idk, this post is getting way too long. I have a lot of other thoughts I'll probably share later. Need to watch the last ep too.

[yakool-foolio]

I’ve seen your concept for Death Knight Yakou, and I am absolutely ecstatic to see how it will go! I am curious on a few things:

1. Will the Mystery Labyrinths Yakou encounter be the same as in the game, or will they be different this time? And will the other Detectives still be able to enter the Mystery Labyrinth, or nah?

2. Does Yuma still stay with Yakou on his sub, or does he get his own hotel room like the other Master Detectives? And how will their relationship be besides being sort-of memory loss buddies?

In regards to the overall mysteries and the culprits themselves, chapters 1-3 would remain pretty much the same. Chapter 0 and especially 4 is where it would get tricky. I obviously haven't gotten to reaching that stage of development to really hone in on the mysteries and the drastic changes of chapter 4, but I'm definitely leaning towards Yakou getting proper justice against Yomi. Perhaps Yomi decides to kill Huesca on his own (maybe even with Yakou unknowingly helping him in some form to keep with the underlying plot of the chapter), which is the once in a lifetime opportunity for Yakou is unravel the mystery of his wife's death alongside the current murder. It's as much of a work in progress as ya can get, but it's a start.

As for whether the buddy system of Yuma's story will be kept in a similar vein in this AU, I'm leaning towards yes. Yakou often utilizes Yuma to provide him assistance by using Coalescence to pass the power they're sharing from one source to the next. It definitely comes as a shock when the first assistant can still move as time freezes, completely unaware of Coalescence's side effect beforehand. Neither does Yuma know, so the little guy can't be blamed. Because of how much Yakou relies on Yuma, tension may arise from the strain on Coalescence.

2. Yuma sometimes stays overnight on the submarine, but there are nights where he'll switch spots with Vivia since the ghost detective hardly uses his room. His relationship with Yakou is rooted in a father-son dynamic, but kept open enough to the overarching idea of Yakou's overprotectiveness of his support system. With Yakou's need to stick close to Yuma, they grow to understand each other more, but at the same time, it puts an intense pressure on the small detective. He knows he needs to be of use, but having his Forte be put to its limit causes him great stress. Yakou walks a fine line of pursuing his own truths at the expense of others' wellbeing. Giving up the ability to take advantage of the powers he'll never have on his own, and instead rely on his own deduction skills he's honed over the years, is important to this AU. The themes of chapter 4 in the actual game are something I really want to explore and expand upon. Yakou doesn't need supernatural powers to be a good detective. What he really needs is the companionship of his found family to gift him the love he was missing for four years. Their support is his motivation.