#A: can they get that out of there and B: does the cd player even work and they just DIDN'T tell me/my dad?????

[threadmonster]

I think a (potentially) generation defining thing is how you feel about the phasing out of internal optical/DVD/CD (however you say it) readers in laptops.

I do not want to have to buy an extra external device that has to be plugged in. That (in my opinion) is way more inconvenient than a laptop that's heavier.

I have plenty of physical media I still want to enjoy! (I also want to collect more before things disappear.) I already own them!! so, I'm sorry, the only way I'm experiencing it digitally is if I can rip it or if I download it by other means.

[lexkent]

clex fic rec part 1:

Identical Series by Lanning (400,450 words)

summary: Lex loses everything, and finds something better.

If He Would Fall by sabershadowkat (5,291 words)

summary: Lex realizes Clark will always catch him.

Most Regretted by Tallihensia (5,062 words)

summary: A meteor mutant shows Clark what he will most regret in his future. Will Clark learn from it?

Reconcilable Differences by astolat (38,799 words)

summary: Luthor Family Values.

Soothing out the Hurts by Tallihensia (4,977 words)

summary: If one learns to harm people, one must also learn to heal. Superman accidentally hurts Lex and decides he has to make up for it.

The Perfect Life by A_Fallen_Sister (9,042 words)

summary: A little Thanksgiving tale. Lex and Clark have been angst-free for years, but life is not entirely without problems.

To Legends by Tallihensia (655 words)

summary: A final toast to legends.

Ants And Other Higher Lifeforms by Dayspring (3,123 words)

summary: He really didn't want to come back as an ant.

Escape Velocity by Bagheera (7,119 words)

summary: What if the meteor rocks had given Lex super speed?

Two Halves by Dolimir (31,254 words)

summary: A 'what if' Lex found Clark before the Kents did story.

Lex and Clark: the New Adventures of Superman by arysteia (16,816 words)

summary: Evil-doers have seized control of the Daily Planet building. Can Clark save the day, rescue Lois, Perry and Jimmy, and reconcile with Lex, all without revealing his secret identity?

Of Gods and Men by Lenore (17,176 words)

summary: What does it mean to be great?

i think that possibly maybe i'm falling for you by Nicnac (3,058 words)

summary: After the incident with Duncan, Lex is quietly asked to transfer to a different school. Lionel decides to send him to Smallville High as punishment for his misconduct, and Lex is chosen as that year's Scarecrow. Luckily, he's saved by local college student and unofficial town hero, Clark Kent.

Sealed with a Kiss by laceymcbain (28,613 words)

summary: Pete: "We're standing in Lex's office with Lana serving coffee right outside and I'm waiting for you to kiss me so we can see if you poison me or not. That's weird, Clark--even by Smallville standards."

Not a Villain by Tallihensia (156,782 words)

summary: When Clark makes a discovery about Conner, honor forces him to tell Lex. Lex comes by to see for himself.

Dancing at The Purple Parrot by laceymcbain (17,965 words)

summary: Lex couldn’t believe it, but the man seemed to be blushing. An awkward stripper in plaid who was blushing. “Oh, no,” Lex murmured to himself. “Oh God, no.”

Fixing Things by Tallihensia (45,049 words)

summary: Lex Luthor is his father's fix-it man for failing companies. But when Lex unexpectedly comes across Clark Kent again, can he fix what went wrong between them eight years ago? And will Clark let him? Through the meteor mutants trying to kill them, Clark and Lex try to find their way again.

Someone To Watch Over Me by Dolimir (22,034 words)

summary: What if the government had stepped in and collected people affected by the meteors when Clark was still a toddler?

Lover's Choice by Tallihensia (3,383 words)

summary: Lex's old lover wants him back in her cold embrace. Clark doesn't want to let him go.

Catharsis by arysteia (4,285 words)

summary: Aristotle says that tragedy purges the negative emotions of the audience. Can angsty porn purge the negative emotions of the Smallville audience? Let's give it a shot. Lex finally calls Clark on a few things.

Devil's Deal by Bagheera (29,560 words)

summary: Lex sells his soul to the devil to bring his son back from the dead. Can Clark get it back for him? 

Cookie Dough & Candy Hearts by Dayspring (3,853 words)

summary: Lex, liquor, and Martha Kent make for an interesting Valentine's Day.

iHero by I I B N F (iibnf) (80,571 words)

summary: Bitten by a radioactive CD player, Lex gets super powers and just about everything he ever wanted, not that he'd ever admit he wanted what he gets.

Cooking Considered As One Of The Fine Arts by Caro (thestarsexist) (2,906 words)

summary: Sometimes part of being a good mother is knowing the best chocolate chip cookie recipe.

Manifest Destiny by Liviapenn (24,180 words)

summary: Giant robots and things exploding.

The Lost Soul by tasabian (4,975 words)

summary: When a malicious act of magic separates Clark's soul from his body, only one person realizes how to help him.

Run by Dayspring (31,667 words)

summary: "The castle blew up right after I dragged him from the shower. We've…we've been running ever since." 

The Reset by tasabian (4,764 words)

summary: An unexpected portal opening in Smallville causes Lex Luthor from 2002 to trade places with Lex Luthor from 2018. How will it change the timeline as we know it?

Purple by Dayspring (13,922 words)

summary: Martha doesn't need an advanced degree in Art to figure it out, but Jonathan might.

Shadows & Stone: Smallville Stories by laceymcbain (83,680 words)

summary: Lex's evening has scored particularly high on the Luthor Scale of Tragic Dates. When he confesses to Toby that he thinks he's destined to be alone, an eavesdropping Clark is determined to change his mind.

Pheromones by Tallihensia (4,009 words)

summary: Lex and Batman take on the Bee Queen. It doesn't quite end up the way they planned and Superman has to step in to save Lex.

Time and Chance by Dayspring (111,267 words)

summary: Lex is pregnant. Nobody's happy. This is an mpreg (male pregnancy story). But this isn't one of those funny, life-is-great mpregs. It's full of bad days and sad days and people being ordinary pain-in-the-butts.

A Mad Season by Dolimir (22,683 words)

summary: An AU look at what might have happened if all of Lex's Smallville memories had been erased when Lionel ordered electroshock therapy.

Golden by CJAndre, Noelle (28,676 words)

summary: Lex smirked at his wishful thinking, but he knew that whatever the situation, he could handle it.

Then, confronted with the sight in front of him, he realized that maybe he couldn't handle it at all.

Memoirs Of An Alien Who Fell To Earth by Dayspring (10,566 words)

summary: See the title. FUTUREFIC.

Feel free to message me if you'd like trigger warnings on any specific fic listed. There's some very dark content here and not all is tagged.

Also @clarklexlois has an excellent clex fic rec list with descriptions, and it's actually what got me into fanfic!💖

[billgetsmewet]

i will save your life…

request : HELLLOOOO so like- what if uh Bill x reader but like they do it while listening to deftones?? (Ex: Risk from the dimond eyes album or something) idk i feel like that would be a good short story idk 🫶🏻

warnings : p in v, smut, handjob, sub!bill, petnames (ex princess/slut etc.)

Bill has been on tour foreverrr.. he was supposed to come back today, you were telling all of your friends about it. It was a big thing, considering hes been all over europe in the past few weeks, not even stepping a foot in your hometown.

He calls you up out of nowhere saying the bus broke down, great. - you think to yourself as you sigh, making him hear on the other end of the phone. I wish i could be there with you already.. - he mumbles, but you can barely hear him.

The music in the background blurs his voice but so does the fact that he barely has any signal.

I cant hear you.. -you chuckle- are you listening to deftones in the bus?.. -you ask, making him focus on the music for a second.

Oh im not the one who put it on, it was Gustav - he chuckles aswell, before getting a bit startled by someone next to him.

The bus is fixed! - he yells out. Were gonna be there soon!

You feel your mouth rounding up into a cheeky smile as he says that, you both know what youre gonna do together when he gets home..

You get a ring at your doorbell, you get shivers down your spine as you rush downstairs to unlock the door for him.

You open the door and hug him, not even letting him enter before you do.

Is that.. deftones? - he laughs, hearing the CD player bursting deftones in your room at max volume. yeah.. i thought youd like it - you reply nervously. yeah! i dont mind it, if you know what i mean - he laughs, almost laughing off the fact that you tried to impress him.

You invite him upstairs into your room, as you always do, trying to “enjoy some time with him”. you sit down on your bed, just as he does, right next to you.

The music is blurring out any sound you might hear in your room or anywhere in your house, basically its hella fucking loud, eardrums hurting type of loud.

You look at Bill, trying to tell you something you just cant hear, with lust in his eyes, his lips glossy and his look begging for you.

You didnt even have to read his lips to know what he wanted, you felt it straight up.

You smile at him, before standing up to lower the music a bit so youd be able to hear his moans.

Next thing you know hes in his boxers and youre palming him, hes rock hard, whining for you to do something about it.. what a slut.

B-bmhh.. baby.. mhh! please! please! -he moans pathetically, begging you to fuck him.

Be patient now, wont you? you made me wait too.. you didnt visit me for weeks for some stupid tour, isnt that true, hm? -you argue.

He just keeps whining and moaning like a dog, his eyes tearing up. Baby it hurts.. p-please it hurts.. -he cries, yet you let him cry, you keep palming him and teasing him. You feel his precum leaking from his boxers, “god..” you thought to yourself, trying to hold yourself back, not letting him win.

Eventually he did win, no matter how hard you tried, you couldnt resist his puppy eyes. The music is still blasting in your ears as you hear a big moan from him, louder than the music, he has managed to rip the boxers… how? i dont know, you tell me.. It was a sign to jerk him off, or atleast you took it that way.

You started slowly pumping him from the bottom with one hand , while you tease his red, swollen tip with the other. His precum has already coated both of your palms. A-Ah!.. Ah!! please.. faster..mmh! -he moans, how cute. You do as he tells you and you start pumping him faster, now with both hands.

His mouth hangs agape, moaning and crying submissively.

Please.. please.. mommy.. please.. let me cum..-he whimpers. Do you think you deserve it, Billy? Have you been a good boy? -you ask in reply. Yes! mh..mhm! mhm.. please! yes!

He just wouldnt shut up, would he?…

A-hhmm..ah! mommy.. i cant take it anymore-mmh.. im gonna cum.. mmh.. - he moans, before comming all over your hands.

Now this wasnt acceptable, what a dirty little whore. Cant even listen to his own girlfriend.

Oh look at what youve done.. this dirty boy needs punishing, doesnt he? look at you.. - you say, degrading him. I-i.. i didnt mean to, im sorry.. i couldnt hold it back.. Nuh-uh! This dirty slut needs punishing after this.

You unbuckle your belt, letting your pants fall down, making a clinking sound as the belts hit the hardwood floor. You get ontop of him, grabbing his waist, sitting down on his lap, teasing him before you actually begin.

Oh look at you now.. already hard again.. -you say, seeing his boner become more and more intense. What a slut for mommy, arent you?

You take off your lingerie, making him stare at your bare pussy, this time, he was even harder.

You get ontop of him, bouncingyourself up and down, relaxing into the music and ignoring his requests and moans.

A-Ah! please slow down, it hurts.. mmh..-he was so sensitive, what a submissive boy.

Mhm?.. ah.. fuck.. Bill.. arent you a dirty little sensitive slut for mama, hm? -you groan, trying to hold back your whimpers and cries, he was big, you couldnt lie.

You started bouncing faster, not caring about his high but about your own, he was already a spoiled little boy anyways.

Mama.. mh.. i cant take it anymore im gonna cum again…-he cries, coincidentally right before you reach your climax, cumming all over his abdomen, making him not able to finish.

Fuck.. -you breathe heavily as you get off him. But.. But mommy… -he whines.

Bad boys dont get to finish, darling…

———————————————————————

Ps: i wrote this in school it took me like two hours and why tf is it so short… anyways the coffee thay im drinking rn is hitting diff ughhh, i think its mocha or something

[pochqmqri]

A few months ago, my copy of the "Limited Edition" Samurai Flamenco Complete Series Collection shipped from the UK, a release by Anime Limited.

As they are a UK-based anime distributor, their Blu-Ray discs are region locked to region code "B," which encompasses Europe. As such, I have a Blu-Ray player that is modified to be region-free, playing discs from anywhere in the world. I recommend buying one from this site, as you can get the best deals here.

Going over the product, despite the fact that it's labeled "Limited Edition," the release is pretty bare bones. It was also initially released back in October of 2021, and still remains available to purchase two years later.

Like most of Anime Limited's Collector's Editions, the release comes in a rigid slipcase illustrated with official artwork. The 22-episode anime is contained across 4 discs, evenly divided into two disc cases. Each case has a reversible slipcover illustrated with characters on both sides.

So let's talk about the contents of the discs. Although it doesn't say on the official website, there are three ways to watch the anime on this release: the French dub, the original Japanese with French subs, and the original Japanese with English subs (subtitles are the same as streaming, no subbed OPs/EDs/insert songs). These are a nice variety of options, but it would have been nice for a few more accessibility options for those who want it, such as the French dub having (dub-accurate) subtitles, and subtitles for those who are deaf or blind, as included with Anime Limited's release of "Looking for Magical Doremi" that I purchased earlier last year. There are a few extras on the discs, but those are just noncredit/blank versions of both opening and both ending themes.

Regarding the visuals, it should be noted that, when Samurai Flamenco aired on TV, it looked quite rough animation-wise. For the home media release in Japan, they made significant touchups here and there in each episode. From what I recall, the version that used to stream on Crunchyroll (before they removed it) was the original broadcast, while the one that streams/ed(?) on Funimation has the corrections. As there were quite a lot of corrections, I will link this post that does a in-depth look episode-by-episode of what changed between the two versions. Going back to Anime Limited's release, based on what I have seen and compared, I can safely say that this release uses the corrected footage, which I think most people can say is quite the plus.

I also want to clarify that this release does not contain any of the extras included with the Japanese home media release, such as the character drama CDs, soundtrack CDs, etc. All you're getting is a slipcase, the discs themselves, and creditless OPs and EDs. That's it.

To wrap it all up, despite the fact that this is a bare bones release, it is still a serviceable way to watch Samurai Flamenco. The anime has been taken off streaming services in the past few years, Netflix and Crunchyroll specifically, and as Manglobe went bankrupt years ago, the anime's future on streaming is bleak and uncertain. Anime Limited managed to secure a home release deal with Manglobe before they went under, so I've heard. Therefore, I definitely recommend owning a physical way to watch this underrated gem. Even so, Anime Limited has noted on their website that, as a limited edition release, they only have a limited number of stock, and once that runs out, they are not sure if they'll restock. So while it's been around for two years now, who can say for sure if it'll be around for any longer. On their website, it currently sells for £35 (approx $44.50 USD), but last year, Anime Limited held two sales that included this release, where in one sale, it went for as low as £8.33 (approx $10.50 USD). So, I also recommend you wait until their end-of-year holiday sale, I think it'll still be around then.

Anime Limited does ship internationally, but I want to warn you that there is a hefty international shipping charge attached. As I live in the US, it costs £25 (approx $32 USD), but I imagine that to more distant countries, it will cost a lot more.

[blysse-and-blunder]

in lieu of a halloween party

~ 10pm, sunday, oct 29, 2023

if i listen really closely i can hear the quiet snoozy breathing of the sweet black cat who now lives in my room! oh, now she is purring.

(contains minor mention of the study of death/dead bodies, but also cat pictures, classical music, and minor spoilers for the end of the most recent season of star trek: strange new worlds)

reading more victoria goddard (blackcurrant fool is somehow *even* *more* for medievalist academics, they visit fantasy university and then the main character saves the day through the power of his dissertation research for crying out loud), some assorted libby holds from jenny odell and amitav ghosh, some kj charles inspired by the medieval mlm romance i finished a few weeks ago (which was great but i was so taken with the idea of posting a whole historical assessment that i scared myself out of talking about it, so maybe next time).

but the book that's been the biggest presence in my life lately has been the audio book version of mary roach's stiff: the curious lives of human cadavers, which i picked up because it had a little Moment back when it came out and i remember thinking that an approachable, sympathetic look at this kind of medical history would be fascinating. and it is! it is just as full of interesting information and humorous, humanizing turns of phrase as you'd like! roach doesn't hesitate to ask, like, intense questions of the people she interviews, nor does she ignore or downplay various gruesome topics, but the audiobook narrator has a hint of a southern accent and gets the mix of tones of voice (from ironic to earnest and back) really nicely. and also, sometimes i'm glad i'm listening to it as an audio book so i don't have to consciously continue turning pages, it'll keep playing even if i stop listening or need to disengage, because there's no shortage of actually quite challenging material. not for the faint of heart, but also, i can't regret reading it.

watching the new season of ghosts from the bbc! the second season of ofmd of course, both because it was fun and because i had to out of self-defense; uhhhh what else this month has been so long and also so fast! the musical episode of strange new worlds which was GREAT. how good were some of those songs!! like on their own, i would listen to nyota and christine and la'an's songs-- reminded me of the mix CD a friend made me for a birthday one year that mixed, like, barenaked ladies with some songs from the buffy musical episode. then the finale of this season which (minor spoilers here) i found actually so compelling, like, i've been mildly ehh about a lot of the gorn stuff (not la'an, but the concept of the gorn always feels very old-school scifi and the more serious they try to play it, the worse that effect usually) but then the monster design and movement when they finally appear on screen? excellent.

though to be entirely honest, the thing i've come back to and watched/listened to most consistently has been the new series of dimension 20, burrow's end. i managed to tune in as a campaign was starting, and actually more or less keep up! huge for me. the bear in ep 2 was all-to-close to some of the body horror i'd just been reading about with stiff, so this month has been 'so you'd like to get better about dealing with body horror?' for me in a way. unintentionally. i think i am appreciating this series more than i would have if i hadn't read and enjoyed watership down a few years back, but the added edge of, like, for-real magic from the d&d elements makes it even more fun. i love the new (to me) players, i love seeing the old ones in their new roles, i love that while the conceit seems to be 'humans are like eldritch horrors to woodland creatures' on the surface, there's also clearly something (or things?) else going on.

listening checking in on my spotify daylist lately to see what moods i've been assigned (soul-crushing once, which was wild to see as a genre, but goblincore also so. whatever i guess!) paper writing lockdown included more autoheart, more yws gwynedd, and like a 24-hour lockdown on @lessthansix's 'deferring panic' playlist, from which i share the following track as a thank-you:

playing tuned into dnd as a virtual player tonight so that i could stay home and supervise the NEW BABY aka this little (large) black dumpling of a cat who i cannot quite believe is my very own. playing such classics as 'ribbon on a string' and 'this is a ball that makes food come out when you play with it, ooooooh' and 'i hope my eyes feel normal again after i stop putting my face directly on you so much and i have not somehow developed an allergy to cat dander in the six weeks since we last had a cat come visit'. playing the classic game, 'so you think you can be responsible for another life form! and are you willing to risk an increase in your experience for loss in order to gain an increase in your experience of love?' (also while we're here: why is naming the hardest part of any endeavor. naming wifi networks, naming pokemon, and now this, a real live creature! who i want to treat with love and also humor, while showing wit and personality at the same time. hell.)

making fixed up a sweater my housemate was going to get rid of. i am not, habitually, a fibercrafter (though not for want of opportunity or, even, interest sometimes), but this made me want to find other easy and quick things to do with yarn.

before: big fuck off hole between the cowl and neck line

after: used some yarn of a similar weight /softness that i already had, so it doesn't match but it's not like you see it. hidden little necklace of pearls.

working on writing a paper for my first ever 30-min conference presentation, which is also going to be the first time i submit a paper ahead of time for someone (a professor i do not usually work with, but whose work and career and writing i admire) to read and give real comments on. this is fine. i am simultaneously trying to use this as an opportunity to squish an entire chapter's worth of notes and observations and ideas into a single presentation, and trying to not do that. but i want her take on all of it! i also...do need to write all of it. but getting a chance to slow down and take a bit of extra time with it was also very welcome. gave a guest lecture this week on a subject only vaguely related to my own work, which required a lot of extra reading (not even to know what to say, but just to be confident that i wasn't missing anything massive), and also did organize my department's halloween party, so. it's been a busy last ten days, and i'm excited to wrap some of this up.

bonus: cat pictures! thank you for reading this far, i think we will be going with luna? her grace, lunette st. cat, first marquise of dumplingdom. something.

[quincyhorst]

Misc Trivia: François Deschamps

Original info post here.

I think he'd be into very obscure french music. In his little room he has a music player brought from home that plays some of his favorite CDs. If you're curious on his music taste... He listens to Mikado.

With the other EuroB coaches... He's on good terms with Gretchen, I guess. While a completely new face leading Germany caught him off guard, after spectating her in action he soon got an idea why. For now, he keeps an eye on her, specially even before the FR vs GER match.

With Julio he does have a clearer idea of who he is as a coach, granted he kept an eye on his plays back at both the Spain Community Cup and the posterior tournaments. However, after seeing who he is as a person... Yeah, he is not very amused.

I've mentioned he has a family on his original post, but not that they've also followed him into Liocott. When the team is on free time, he does sneak up and have fancy dinner dates with his wife, although he tries to cover himself from media and his own players.

Because he's always training at the team's field, he actually doesn't know well what his daughter does behind his back. She could easily encounter any of RG's players while hanging around the area, and he would not even be aware (????)

Michel is a character that is very fond of François. Long story short, since his childhood the gardener wanted to play as a forward; but everytime he got to play the other kids wanted him either on the goal or defense due to his body type. Michel tried to stand up all he could, but people kept stigmatizing him even around the FFI era. However, upon telling this to the RG coach, François decided to look outside the box, and let Michel play on his dream position. However what was at first a weird choice turned into a delight, as the new forward proved to be himself to be as capable as anyone else; no matter how he looked. Thanks to his Moreau appreciates the coach deeply, and wants to help unite him and his teammates better. François doesn't mind, really, but he's happy to help. As the father of a non-verbal girl, there's nothing he despises more than discrimination.

RG and KOQ might not have the best relationship all the time, but both François and Aaron are in quite good terms, considering each other rivals both in the FFI and in the professional soccer leagues. Who knows, they might have gone to a cafe together at some point (?

...François doesn't speak it out much, but as he warmed up to RG he started to appreciate more his player's skills outside soccer. He enjoys Claude's baked bread, Ladji's beautiful art, Stephane's talented singing voice, etc.

When the FFI was over, Fran returned to his normal life, although without the contact of any of the RG players. This is NOT the case in the Ogre timeline. IN FACT, Fran's story on the Ogre is more crude. After the mess that was the final Block B match, he had to retire temporally from soccer as he had been ridiculed intensely by the media. He eventually came back to soccer thanks to his efforts, but the event left a huge stain on his previous records both for him AND even for his daughter. Poor girl was often reminded over how much her father flopped during the FFI :(

Nonetheless, the same way the RG players connected with each other after such a low point in life, the Deschamps family would also be able to join this group.

---

Extra info for the Deschamps family.

Isabelle Jacquet met Fran for over 20 years, yet things are still as good as they were. She has a job of her own too as a french teacher, mostly focusing her work into helping the children of newly arrived migrants get used to their new home/language properly. She is also learning French Sign Language as to communicate with Suzette, though she's aware that the written word at times can be more easier to use and understand.

As for Suzie, she's into collecting magazines, specially fashion ones. When recognizing few of the recurrent faces appearing on dad's soccer team, she became ecstatic to meet them in person. Finding out François' ban ended up being quite dissappointing for her, though she's aware she can't do much about it. At least going by herself in the french area, she gets to meet and make some friendships of her own.

[alantea87]

Two weeks in with a Nokia flip phone and no social media...

And I'm feeling better. Honestly, though. I do not miss social media. Especially the control it had over my emotions, lol. However, I do deeply miss memes. Memes were my oxygen. And I do miss the casual interactions with old and new friends on Insta. Facebook has been permanently deleted and my Instagram has been deactivated - not sure what next. But I am indeed enjoying my low-tech life using a Nokia flip.

New toy (pictured: Sennheiser HD599, affordable audiophile open-back wired headphones)...

How am I filling my time? MUSIC. Like the good old days. Like, listening to music in lossless with a wired head set kind of old days. These HD599s are a cult fave in the audiophile community for their accurate audio presentation, wide soundstage and resolution. Got them for £157, RRP £199. Basically it's like listening to your fave artists in the studio with them, as long as you feed them a decent source (I'm using Apple Music, lossless + hi ress lossless). Technically I'm not using a proper DAC, just Apple's lighting to 3.5mm adapter (a secret DAC by Apple) for my iPad Pro to drive these HD599s. The sound is out of this world. I'm hearing things in tracks I've not heard before. My current fave artist for about two years now is Zach Bryan (alt-country, americana - https://www.zachbryan.com/music). He's the only artist who can currently make me cry and that says alot.

Note-taking with pen and paper...

I have now resorted to my mini Muji notebook and pen jot down to dos, shopping lists and ideas. My Nokia doesn't have a note taking app, but it does have a simple calendar that I really like. My handwriting is awful, though. Over ten years of smartphone use would do that to a person.

My current EDC (every day carry) is as follows...

a) Nokia 2660 Flip, b) iPad, AirPods Pro 2, c) Muji notepad + gel pen, d) Kindle, e) on gym days... Apple Watch SE (for music)

SMS...

You'd think texting is horrendous on a feature phone, but suprisingly I would say it's very doable. Especially if predictive text is available, which it is on the Nokie 2660 Flip. Fine, you can't type quickly but the tactility of the keypad is lovely. It really feels like you're putting in more effort in your messages than a touch screen.

Less 'digital blur'...

I know such a term is used in the photo-editing world, but now I use it to describe my experience when I am presented with too much choice on streaming services or other digital media. Everything is blurring into one digital blob. With the exception of music streaming (I love the choice and I go through phases of liking certain genres/artists), I really do miss CDs and Blu-rays. I've now reconnected my 10 year old Blu-ray player to my 1080p projector to tap back into my Blu-ray collection. Thankfully, it's a good time to get back into them, as you can buy preowned Blu-rays for a couple quid on eBay including postage. You can't beat the picture quality and bitrate. Not to mention actually owning a physical copy no streaming service can take away from you, lol.

Less noise...

As I've deleted WhatsApp (the Nokia 2660 isn't compatible with WhatsApp, only the US version of it aka 2680 Flip), I've not been in any group chats for over two weeks and it's been bliss. Yes, that also includes my family ones. I do not miss them. The total lack of noifications on my Nokia (apart from calls, SMS and calendar events) has contributed to lower levels of general anxiety and distractions. I am now able to fully concentrate during a TV show or even when listening to an album. I am fully present and immersed. Even my conversations with real people have improved greatly; I am more patient and empathetic. Mainly because I am not half-scrolling on my phone anymore. Gosh, smartphones have really killed off real human connection.

Do I miss my iPhone...?

I think if you can have a healthy relationship with a smarthphone (not using social media, no doom scrolling etc), I think they pose as a vital tool in the modern world. But as I do not have that level of self control, my Nokia was the intervention I needed. Two weeks in I don't actually miss it. I miss how it was a tool to allow me to self-soothe (not in a healthy way). So breaking up with my smartphone was probably for the best. It's made me get comfortable with being uncomfortable. Awkward silences, quiet stares into space, being one with your thoughts. Just like the good old days.

Where is my iPhone?

It's tucked away in my drawer, fully charged with £5 loaded onto a seperate sim inserted in it to be used PAYG. It is only to be used in emergencies or when I am travelling to new distant lands e.g. South London, lol. Literally it just has Google Maps, Uber and email. Not even music. I don't want to see my iPhone as an entertainment device (I am not against digital entertainment, but I am against small smartphone devices that hijack your attention all day/night).

Am I bored?

Yes and no. Yes, because I loved the short-form media that exists on Instagram (spending sometimes hours per evening consuming it). And keeping up with my favourite meme accounts, musicians and rugby teams on there, too. But no, because I've just gone back to classic ways on keeping oneself entertained... music and movies.

Who am I texting?

Literally, just three close friends I've known for over 15 years. No body else.

Will I keep using my Nokia 2660 Flip?

Yes, for the time being. I think I found a compromise with using smart tech. Just not using a smartphone has been crucial to this compromise, as it has literally improved my mental health in only two weeks. All this extra time and energy has allowed me to focus on therapy (I have an amazing therapist I speak to weekly) and addressing key life challanges I have been avoiding for so long.

-

More posts to come,

Love, Alan. x

[my-music-1460]

Deliver My Tune: A Disruptive Force in Music Distribution

The music industry has undergone a massive transformation in recent years, particularly in the realm of distribution. Independent artists now have more control over how their music reaches global audiences, thanks to platforms like TuneCore, CD Baby, and DistroKid. However, a new contender has emerged, offering an artist-first approach that is beginning to disrupt the established norm. Enter Deliver My Tune, a platform tailored to the specific needs of musicians looking to maximize their revenue, gain more localized reach, and enjoy personalized support. But how does Deliver My Tune differ from other music distribution services like TuneCore, CD Baby, and DistroKid? In this article, we’ll explore the unique features of Deliver My Tune that set it apart and why it’s quickly becoming a go-to choice for independent musicians around the world.

1. Revenue Model: 100% Royalty Retention

One of the most significant advantages Deliver My Tune offers over its competitors is its 100% royalty retention model. Unlike CD Baby, which takes a percentage of your earnings from each sale, or DistroKid, which charges a recurring annual fee, Deliver My Tune ensures that all the revenue generated from music streams and sales goes directly to the artist. This straightforward and transparent model is designed to empower musicians, especially those who are just starting and cannot afford to lose a chunk of their earnings.

For many artists, this feature is a game-changer. Keeping 100% of the royalties allows them to reinvest in their music career, whether it's for better recording equipment, marketing efforts, or future projects. For musicians who value financial independence, this alone makes Deliver My Tune an attractive option.

2. Global Distribution with a Focus on Emerging Markets

While major platforms like TuneCore and DistroKid provide worldwide distribution, Deliver My Tune has an added focus on emerging markets like India, Southeast Asia, and other parts of Asia, which are currently experiencing a massive growth in music streaming. This region-specific expertise allows artists to tap into these markets more effectively.

Deliver My Tune not only distributes music to popular platforms like Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon Music but also includes smaller, regional streaming services that may be overlooked by larger platforms. This is crucial for independent artists aiming to grow their fanbase in non-Western markets, where there is less competition but a rapidly increasing demand for new music. In contrast, TuneCore, CD Baby, and DistroKid have more of a global, one-size-fits-all distribution strategy, missing out on these niche opportunities.

3. Tailored Artist Support

For independent musicians, it’s not just about getting your music onto platforms—it’s about navigating the complexities of promotion and distribution. This is where Deliver My Tune excels compared to its competitors. Unlike the largely automated support systems offered by TuneCore, CD Baby, and DistroKid, Deliver My Tune provides personalized artist support throughout the entire distribution process.

The platform helps with everything from setting up pre-release campaigns, securing playlist placements, and even crafting marketing strategies tailored to an artist's unique goals. This level of hands-on assistance is rare in the distribution world and is especially valuable for independent musicians who may not have the resources to hire separate marketing or PR teams. Deliver My Tune essentially doubles as a distribution and promotion platform, a feature missing from the more established players in the market.

4. User-Friendly Interface and Seamless Process

When it comes to user experience, simplicity can make all the difference. Deliver My Tune’s platform is designed with ease of use in mind, allowing even the most technically inexperienced musicians to upload and distribute their tracks effortlessly. While TuneCore and CD Baby provide detailed dashboards, they can often feel overwhelming, especially for new artists unfamiliar with the more complex settings.

Deliver My Tune simplifies the process without sacrificing control, offering intuitive navigation that enables artists to distribute music quickly and efficiently. The platform walks users through each step, ensuring that their music is uploaded, metadata is filled out correctly, and promotional tools are utilized. This ease of use saves time and reduces the risk of errors that could delay a release.

5. Marketing and Promotion Tools

Marketing is crucial for independent artists looking to make a mark in the highly competitive music landscape. While platforms like TuneCore and DistroKid offer basic promotional tools, they don’t delve deep into artist development strategies. Deliver My Tune, however, integrates marketing features like playlist pitching, social media marketing, and PR strategies into its core offering.

This additional support can help an artist’s music stand out in a saturated market, making it easier to secure spots on curated playlists and generate buzz around a new release. These tools are vital for artists who don’t have a dedicated marketing team and need a little extra help to boost their presence. Deliver My Tune provides artists with these resources at no additional cost, setting it apart from other platforms that charge for similar services.

6. Flexible Pricing Plans

Pricing is often the deciding factor for many musicians when choosing a distribution service. TuneCore and DistroKid both operate on a subscription model, requiring artists to pay an annual fee. If the artist misses a payment, their music could be removed from streaming platforms. Deliver My Tune offers a different approach, where artists can pay a one-time fee for distribution, with no need to worry about recurring payments.

This pricing model is ideal for independent musicians with limited budgets. It also means that once your music is out there, you don’t have to worry about it being taken down due to missed payments, which is a real risk with subscription-based services.

Conclusion: Deliver My Tune stands out in the crowded field of music distribution services, offering independent musicians a blend of affordability, personalized support, and a focus on emerging markets. By retaining 100% of royalties, providing marketing tools, and offering seamless global distribution, this platform is a breath of fresh air in an industry dominated by heavyweights like TuneCore, CD Baby, and DistroKid. So, how does Deliver My Tune differ from other music distribution services like TuneCore, CD Baby, and DistroKid? It delivers a unique artist-first approach that prioritizes the musician’s growth, financial success, and creative freedom. For artists seeking more than just basic distribution, Deliver My Tune is an option well worth considering.

[nuevafracasa]

Reblogging again to add that

A) read your terms of service! There are some pretty hefty caveats on a lot of digital media (thinking specifically of e-books but I’m sure it applies to many hosted services) where even if you purchase a digital copy and it’s “yours” the service can revoke your access at any time if they so choose! And even if they DON’T so choose, you’re relying on them to continue providing the access anyway - if there’s a blackout, the company folds, whatever, your access is suspended or ended. Money down the drain. Don’t even get me STARTED on X-as-a-service - not only do artists normally receive next to nothing on the dollar (looking at you, SPOTIFY.) but if you stop paying your subscription fee, access is gone and whatever you created in the context of that access (playlists, essays/art saved to the cloud) is also gone.

B) Physical media is cool! I’ve seen someone else point out that we’re losing all the joys of things like DVD-only Easter Eggs or special edition releases. This is true! Not to mention beautiful cover art, printed notes from the creators… we’re seeing a little bit of this coming back around in vinyl records, but man. It’s fun to have all those little connections to the people making your media, for everyone involved!

C) If you’re even a little bit tech savvy, (or search-engine savvy) and you agree that physical media is cool, you’re not limited to making an exact duplicate of something that already exists. You can make your own physical media that never existed before! If you’re an elder gen-z and up, this might seem like an obvious statement in some ways (burn your own cd and sharpie a love letter on that bitch!) but the younger ones among us were literally digital first. My partner’s whole ass hobby is taking digital media and making some edits (I.e. all episodes of a mini-series into a movie with custom title scenes) then putting that version on VHS! They make custom VHS boxes (if you can find just one VHS box and pull it flat, you can make a template!) and share with an enthusiast group. There are movies that were never released on VHS, or even on DVD, that you can now pop in a VCR player :) and that’s pretty sweet!

D) Not only does this give you something fun to do and neat to have, but you are literally saving media from extinction. In a digital only world focused on planned obsolescence, we are losing access to games, movies, what have you because there’s simply no way to consume them anymore or the last copy has disappeared. If there’s some indie music you love or a game that never got much attention that’s important to you, do yourself a favor and get what you need to keep playing it. Who knows - one day, you might be the person with the last copy.

you guys know you can get USB connectable CD, dvd, and blu-ray players right. and you can buy external hard drives with crazy amounts of space for an amount of money that would make the average person from 2009’s head explode bc of how cheap it is. and if you do this and get ripping software such as handbrake for CDs and DVDs and makeMKV for blurays you can both own a physical copy of whatever media you want and make it accessible to yourself no matter where you are. do you guys know this

[nemirambles]

Why Sonic CD Isn't Actually an Exploration Game

I am writing this down so whenever people tell me that this game is simply exploration based or that I don't get it I can kindly redirect them to this so I'm not repeating myself 100000000 times and everything can be neatly contained here.

Lets get something out of the way first, Sonic CD is a linear game. Have you seen the level design? It's.... really straight. It feels like it has the same design philosophy of Sonic 2 when it comes to prioritizing speed. The difference is that CD levels are a tad bit larger than levels in 2.

They don't feel as bare as Sonic 2 levels due to them having gimmicks but they still aren't to where Sonic 3 would be. But that makes sense! These games were more or less designed in parallel so they would be addressing the same criticisms although in different ways. The obvious elephant in the room is the time travel and locating objects in the past, obviously the game cannot be linear if you have to explore around, right?

Something being linear has the implication that you're going to just be going from point A to B without much in-between. CD has an issue where the past signs are kind of hard to come by and to meaningfully use. When you find a good spot to time travel, unless there's a better spot, you're gonna be using that one. Once you do finally actually get to the past though, do you know where you're going? You're going to the same exact spots each and every time to destroy what you need to in order to make a good future.

Sure, you had to explore to find the past sign and the polluters of the past, but then after that, you solved the puzzle. There is nothing further to actually explore. But I'd be stupid to not mention that Sonic CD technically holds the most levels of any classic Sonic game. There are three different layouts for each regular act in the game. Their past, present and future variants. You will never wanna go to the future.

The game actively punishes you for going to the future since it prevents you from getting the good ending and past signs become quite difficult to find along with finding good spots to even time travel. I hope you don't land slightly wrong without even really losing speed when you have a trail going or else you'll lose the ability to time travel and you'll need to find another sign. The game knows the future is a hazard too since these signs to travel there are super inconveniently placed in order to fuck you over and swap out your past sign.

Now you'll need to tip toe around because if you go too fast and accidentally do a speed building set piece, you are fucked, the future is now. So alright you don't wanna travel to the future, so what about the present? You're only going to be in the present to go to the past. Once your job there is up, you'll basically never go back. And then once you do get to the past, you're just going to find what you need to blow up and then book it to the finish line.

You see the problem here?

This is different than an actual exploration based game like Sonic 3. There are several locations for the big rings and you'll need to find them while also optimizing your routes. You have choices. Real genuine choices that you need to decide on. In CD you don't have choices. Going to the future is of no benefit, the present brings no benefit except being able to go to the past, the past is all that matters. An entire 2/3rds of the game does not matter.

You know how in Sonic Mania you can like plant little weird Venus flytraps in Stardust Speedway in order to get to new places? That's the sort of thing that Sonic CD needs. These parts in time do not interact. What you do in the past in one act won't really affect what you can do in the future. Players should've been going between each time period freely and easily to make interactions happen and to truly take advantage of the butterfly effect.

The game has things like this in play. There are areas you just can't access without going to another point in time, but it'll always be the past and these areas won't matter when compared to the generators. But this all ignores the thing that knocks all of this over.

What kind of game centered around exploration gives you the option to totally ignore that and just do a mini game to get the good ending? Dude like... imagine if in SA2 you could just... get 50 rings and do a mini game to skip a treasure hunting stage. That would spit in the face of the entire point of the level. But alas, that is the life Sonic CD lives. It is a game of conflicting designs.

It wants you to time travel but discourages it if you don't do it in a specific way, it wants you to go fast due to it still more or less having straight line level design while encouraging you to not let there be a bad future, it asks you to explore but then hands you an infinitely less time consuming alternative. This game quite frankly doesn't really know what it wants. It looks good, it sounds good, it's fun to just thrown on and play brainlessly but it is in no way a well designed game.

"It's a game about exploration!" Then why is it so bad at that very thing?

[ajentmm]

Aug '23 Refine Review

Oh boy, this is nice. Link to my theorycraft

Seliph is crazy. He now gets TD = Atk 15%, Null C-Disrupt and heals 8 HP per hit, meaning 16, 24, or 32 Hp healed in combat, assuming his At War's End II triggers, and the foe doesn't die to the first hit. He got the Miracle I predicted, but only on enemy phase, when he's in 3 tiles of an ally, and is above 50% HP. With the new healing, he needs to hit the foe three times to loop miracle, but it doesn't matter, cuz he is restricted to doing so once per turn. Thankful, you don't need to trigger it more than once, since he has 80% DR vs Mages/Staff, and 40% vs the rest (Excluding AoE specials). This DR is conditional on if he initiates or there is a foe in 3 tiles. If he get him to 4 or more HP, and then he just needs to tap twice to get above 50% HP, or if he's on 12 or more, the one counterattack is fine.

Freyja definitely got an update, but will it be enough, now that we have 3 new goats running a muck? As I mentioned in my theorycraft, Freyja has both DC for enemy phase, the old beast transformation in player phase, and [Dodge] and a Foe Buff stealer effect in both phase. This mix phase form of spd tanking would be good on an infantry, but not a gen 4 calvary, and obviously, all the conditions were solo condition. She's now getting the Special CD-1 and NFU like I predicted, and the new Cavalry Beast Transformation effect like everyone predicted. She's also getting [Canto (Rem. +1)] since her B slot is taken by her perf skill. She can now reach 58% damage reduction with her weapon, and 74% when including Spd Smoke's effect. So, is all of this enough to make her top tier? Probably not. For the role she is playing as a jack-of-all-trades combat light mythic hero, she does well, but that role doesn't get you put on the team. I didn't even mention her lack of supportive abilities that mythic live and die on. All Freyja as is a counter to Buffed up foes, something any cavalry beast can do thanks to Arcane Nihility. I really think, due to DC in her weapon, she can't be a killer queen, nor an unkillable tank. Oh well, she's going to be fine.

Spring Est is something else. She has the supportive ability to apply Def/Res-6 and [Exposure] on nearest foes and foes within 2 spaces of those foes, which gives her and her allies 16 more damage delt. She also gets [Canto (1)], which is great for warping, guaranteed follow-up (which was better than my NFU as her speed wasn't up to snuff) and if the foe has [Penalty], the foe cannot counterattack. This is great.

Mareeta's Sword got a refine that does make her different from her two other alts. Null Guard, NFU, Lull Spd/Def, is all there, but the TD = 10% of her Spd, and the applying "Deadeye" to any Special is what makes her unique. We didn't get the brave sword I expected, but this makes her a God Sword Slayer like As!Fir.

Ced's WInds of Silesse is not the support tome I imagined. It's very much like Forsetii, but it uses [Bonuses] to get that effect. Atk/Spd+6, [Desperation], and [Sp Charge +1] is all there to make him a nuke, but the cherry on top is the penalty on foe's Spd Res equal to 20% of his Spd. Out of the box, that's -8, but at max investment, it's -10. Epic.

Echidna? What happen? You got +8 all stats, 30% DR on first hit, that transfers to TD on your next hit, then heal 7 HP after combat. You then have Unity and Sp Charge +1. Like, that's amazing, what did you do to bribe I.S.? I think Ross is jealous.

Travant got flyer effectiveness negation? I didn't think wyvern generals got that in Thracia but okay. He also get to lower foe's attack by 15% of his Def stat, so -6 to -8 Atk penalties. After that, he's just has +8 all stats with Special fighter and guaranteed follow-up. Overall, very nice.

I also want to add, we got new versions of Desperation in new banner, Desperation 4, which adds "Spd-4 on foe" and the condition of moving 2 or more spaces to initiate, and Flow Desperation, that takes Desperation 4 and add "Def-4 on foe" and Half-NFU like the other flow skills. I might as well change up my Frenzy 4 theorycraft to match the change.

Frenzy 4: Inflicts Spd/Def-4 on foe during combat. If a skill compares unit's Spd to foe or ally's Spd, treats unit's Spd as if granted +7. If unit's Spd > foe's Spd, reduces damage from attacks during combat and from area-of-effect Specials (excluding Røkkr area-of-effect Specials) by percentage = difference between stats × 5 (max 50%). At start of combat, if unit's HP ≤ 75% and unit initiates combat, or number of spaces from unit's start position to end position ≥ 2 and unit initiates combat, unit can make a follow-up attack before foe can counterattack.

Lysithia also got a new perf A-slot, which makes theorycrafting her original version's refine a lot easier. I will get to that banner . . . eventually.

[president-alpine]

Through sheer brute force, the Autobots and Decepticons are now an Esports team.

Reading this title, you have to wonder how this happened. So, here is my silly idea.

So, I can imagine after a long time in the war the mechs are feeling a little bored. Constant war and little options to have fun isn't ideal.

But one thing they notice is that humans buy these little computers with colorful designs and play games on them. Some are small to carry in your pocket and others are big enough to be the size of textbooks.

They take in how some humans prefer one device over another, some buying small cases with a CD or tiny cartridge inside, and even how some humans become excited over a new device, CD/cartridge, or just a new color for the device.

Curious at what they are, the Autobots ask Spike.

Spike: “Colorful computers? Oh! You mean video game consoles?”

Optimus: “Yes, why do you humans buy them? Are they powerful computers like Teletraan 1?”

Spike: “No, they’re just little computers designed to play games.”

The Autobots (and Decepticons spying on the conversation) become excited at the idea of games

Finally! Something fun to play!

One problem is that game consoles are built for humans to play with. So, they’re tiny.

The Decepticon solution to this?

Ripping off the roof of the poor game studio’s office building and demand that they make consoles for them. Which goes about as well as you expect.

After wrestling Megatron and the cons away from the poor humans and consoling them (and fixing the roof…), the humans make consoles for them.

Mostly because they do not want to risk having Megatron or any cons barging in.

As well as gift them a few games to start with.

To their surprise, the mechs are really good. Like worryingly good.

So good in fact, they are bulldozing through online matches and are ranking super high on leaderboards! But, the reality is...

Spike: "So how did you guys do that?"

Optimus: "Do what?"

Spike: "Get so good at the game? I mean, it was only a few days ago since you got the game."

Optimus: "We are good at the game???"

Spike: "Have you guys not seen your scores?"

Optimus: "Oh no! We've just been playing the game and having fun!"

Confused, Spike decided to watch one of their matches to see what's going on.

He realizes that the mechs have no idea what they're doing during game matches and are just activating skills with no rhyme or reason. But yet, somehow, someway, they are destroying some of the most high-ranking players within a match.

Their chaotic playstyle is allowing them to Win!

Even with some of their worst characters or items, they pull it off.

Which does get some salty players to call them out on their, "Cheating" and "Hacking". Or that because they're robots that these wins shouldn't count.

So, Spike decides to show those salty players that these are not cheats or hacks, but their own chaotic play by livestreaming both the Autobots and Decepticons matches.

Which does draw in the viewership and people can see for themselves that yes, they have no idea what they're doing.

What makes it worse is that it reveals the Decepticons' style of gameplay is them trying to screw over each other. But, somehow ending up on higher ranks because well,

A) There is no friendly fire, meaning attacks and skills harmlessly phase through teammates and strike the enemy who accidentally get in the way.

B) Thanks to their attempts to screw each other over, they make the matches that much harder for the enemy team to play since now there is a bunch of traps, attacks flying everywhere, and so much more. Meaning every second or so there is a high chance that a trap will set off or Starscream's many attempts to attack Megatron's character will harmlessly phase through and hit the enemy instead for the 5th time this match.

Plus, the bots and cons' character builds make them have more unpredictable than ever.

Which brings more salt XD

However, thanks to this livestream people love seeing the absolute chaos these two armies bring to the matches. Bringing in hundreds if not thousands of people to watch and see.

As well as the eyes of many Esports teams and brands.

The Autobots and Decepticons were even invited to some local and large-scale tournaments, since "Giant robots playing video games" is amazing tagline.

However, they're going to need a coach, team names, registration, and everything.

Bumblebee: "How are we going to do that?"

Starscream: "That's easy! We just need a human!"

Prowl: "A human?"

Megatron: *Picks up Spike* "This one! The one who introduced us to the video games! He will be the coach!"

Optimus: "Great idea Megatron."

Spike: "Wait, what." o.o

So, Spike has to do all the paperwork, be the coach, register, and everything.

But hey! The Autobots and Decepticons are now official esports!

Under the name of "Autobots" and "Decepticons"

But now, they're having fun, playing in esports as well as official teams, even if they have no idea what they're doing.

[forbidding-souda]

Drv2 boys with a black s/o (fem) :] ?

SDR2 boys with a black fem S/O

I don't know if anyone has read the first one or not, but I'm assuming no, so I'll repeat : I am not black!!

continuing on,,,

currently listening: dead prudence by siouxsie and the banshees

-Mod Souda

Twogami

❤ He is definitely the oddest person you have ever met. Sometimes, he is gone for days, and other times he is the only person you are around.

❤ He'll play old american 90s r&b on this little cd player he has, and it's what you hear before you unlock the front door, and it's the thing that signals the fact that he's home.

❤ He enjoys the trips to America that the two of you go on. America holds so much diversity, and he feels more of a citizen there than he does in Japan, because in Japan, where he lives, he knows he could pretend to be anyone - but here, there are so many different ethnicities and cultures that he couldn't even pretend to be apart of.

❤ He likes trying to experience places through your eyes. The two of you have such different views on things, and he tends to think yours is the correct view.

❤ Things like food, music, or movies. It's if my girlfriend doesn't like it, then it must be bad.

❤ So, he gets into a lot of things that are iconic to black culture.

.

Teruteru Hanamura

❤ He loves cooking for you and your family. He enjoys the way they become impressed: as if he was incapable of cooking food that they'd like.

❤ He also likes visited places that have rich foods, like Louisiana specifically, his heart belongs in New Orleans (so you better bet your ass that he's going to take you there like . all the time). So there will be a lot of dates going on ghost tours and horse carriages.

❤ His mother is so homey to you, too. She is an absolute angel who cares for you as if you were her own daughter.

❤ His siblings are different, however, with the way they keep trying to seduce you, but that much you can ignore.

.

Kazuichi Souda

❤ You had fallen in love with his laugh more than anything. He always had something funny to say, and no matter how down you were, he would be there so lighten the mood.

❤ The moment he fell in love with you was when he was in his front yard, face in the hood of a car as the sun beat down on him. He was sweating like crazy. He didn't notice it until he saw, in the corner of his eye, you walking up the driveway. Your skin was glowing, and you looked at him as if he was the only boy in the world.

❤ Suddenly, he felt insecure.

❤ Ever since then, every time he sees you in the sun, it reminds him of when he had fallen for you.

❤ Anyway, on a more goofy note, imagine him rapping.

.

Gundham Tanaka

❤ You'll have to correct him on some of the language he uses. The words voodoo and hoodoo needed to be exiled from his vocabulary. He practices neither of those practices, but he liked using the words, which you quickly shut down.

❤ He had gone on his own and researched his own about what the magicks was, and when he did, he was so amazed by the culture surrounding it. That and he found a new celebrity crush: gothic Screamin Jay Hawkins

❤ He'd probably get a septum piercing to be more like him.

❤ I can also see him quoting I put a spell on you in a more literal setting, as when he is flirting with you, he'll talk about how he used spellwork to make you fall in love.

.

Hajime Hinata

❤ He loves introducing you to new games that he plays, which is his way of warming you up to the idea of cuddling time consisting of him also playing games simultaneously.

❤ Him gaming in public makes him unaware of the amount of times you get stared at, especially when you and him and doing something like sitting too close or when your hands are around his arm.

❤ He is blunt enough to call them out, asking what rather rudely, and addressing them as if they are a menace (which they are).

❤ When people come up to you in public asking for a picture, he'll simply go, "no, she's okay." and grab your arm and walk away with you.

❤ He is very protective over you about things like that. He doesn't enjoy being the center of attention, so he can imagine what it's like for you. Whether you mind it or not, he certainly doesn't.

❤ Even if you tell him it's okay, and "you don't need to get so worked up" - he's not going to take your advice. Protective boyfriend mode is always activated.

.

Fuyuhiko Kuzuryuu

❤ He loves gifting you silver, shiny jewelry. The way you sparkle with it on is something he never gets over.

❤ And he loves your hair and the ways you style it. Growing up, he was never a picture person, but being with you made him love the photos that people took (whether consensually or not). Being next to you makes him feel special. How could someone so beautiful chose to be with someone like me?

❤ He'd probably get you a purse dog just to make you so much more like a 'princess'.

❤ If you have locs, he's getting you a bunch of those small silver loc beads. He literally just loves you in silver.

❤ And even if you don't prefer to wear all the dresses he gets for you, that's perfectly okay with him, and he'll go out with you no matter what clothes you decide to wear.

❤ He is just your perfect little malewife.

.

Nekomaru Nidai

❤ Takes you to a lot of his games, with his players. So just know that your free time on nights is probably going to be in the cold air as he screams next to you for like 4 hours.

❤ Other than that, he'll teach you how to play games like soccer or basketball, just so the two of you could have something shared in interest. He probably has one of those street basketball hoop things. (It definitely wouldn't be absolutely cute to imagine him saving it for his future kids).

❤ He likes picking you up and tossing you into the air, which is something that you absolutely hate when he sneaks up behind you and does it.

❤ Whenever he goes to school dances, he always makes sure to take you, and the two of you have the cutest matching accessories. The main reason he got you matching stuff is because when you used to go together, nobody knew that you two were dating. It made him very mad. He wanted people to know that he belonged to you: you are perfect to him, why wouldn't he?

❤ The amount of questions he gets about being with you makes him both flattered to be able to talk to you, as well as annoyed because everyone asks the same thing.

.

Nagito Komaeda

❤ His 'friends' (classmates) make comments about when your hair is natural, the two of you almost match. There have been moments where people go to touch your hair and he grabs their wrists, smiling at them and telling them not to do that before you even have the opportunity to react.

❤ He likes seeing you stand up for him, too, because it reminds him that you are actually into it. Sometimes his mind convinces him that you don't genuinely care about him, but it's the way that you go out of your way to stop people from bullying him that reminds him of the truth.

❤ He wears bonnets to sleep because of you. His hair always gets the most uncomfortable when he wakes up, and now, that feeling is only a memory.

❤ If you get your nails done, he will go with you, and the two of you can sit together in your little stations as he experiences getting his nails taken care of for the first time.

❤ A lot of the things you do, he wants to share the time with you. If you wear makeup, he'll want you to do his. He wants to go shopping with you, listen to music with you, and dance with you.

❤ He has never had someone be as close to him as you are.

❤ He will listen to anything you say, and he pays attention to even the smallest things about you. You'll mention a food you don't like and several months later he'll be like, "yeah and I know you don't like ___" and you'll be like wait a minute.

[3wisellamas]

Giant Sweet Cap’n Cakes Headcanon Masterpost!

(Fun fact, I thought most of these up while on one REALLY long hike.  ^^;  You can tell I fell for these three pretty hard.)

Music:

-I like the idea that, while the three all share a love of hip hop, glitch hop, electronic music in general, and a little lo-fi for chill times, they all have different tastes outside of those.  (Meaning if you pass them the aux cord, they WILL argue!)

-Sweet's actually the biggest audiophile of the group, with by far the most eclectic tastes; he will literally put together playlists that go from dubstep to heavy metal to classical to rap to vaporwave to even country.  The others don't really get it, but they're cool with whatever he puts on, and learn a lot of new music from him!

-He also owns an electric guitar, which he just plugs into himself to use as an amp and plays early in the morning to wake the others up if needed (he's the early riser and the other two are night owls...)

-Cap'n's definitely got a more narrow focus than the other two; he likes rap and also R&B, jazz, and even a little swing/electro swing.  He's also been caught more than once listening to cheesy romantic pop songs, claiming he's just into them for their potential madamoizel-attracting uses but really he's just a sappy romantic.

-He can also rap, very well in fact, and gets Sweet to beatbox while he freestyles. 

-Heck, he's just got a good singing voice in general, helped by having a built-in autotune, and dominates at karaoke!

-K_K also has a really broad range, but stays more towards the electronic end of the spectrum -- melodic dubstep, synthpop, disco, trance, chiptune, DnB, even occasionally puts on straight-up ambient spa music to chill out to (the only genre the other two will NOT tolerate.)

-K_K has also, in the past, set up entire mini-raves just by themselves, complete with glowsticks and everything, while Cap'n and Sweet were out doing whatever.  They were...not pleased, when they got back, mostly because they weren't invited.  All three got to have one together eventually though.  

-Physical media is king in their shop; if it's not on a CD, cassette tape, or a vinyl record (or an 8-track, though they have to dig out their old player for it), they will refuse to play it, and might even ask you to leave.  "MP3" is an extremely dirty word to them.

-(In fact, they don't get along too well with the MP3 player-headed robots elsewhere in the city.)

-They are indeed always listening to music on physical media as well -- K_K and Cap'n are their own CD players (though Cap'n's one of those models that's also got a built-in FM radio), while Sweet has a straight-up Walkman.    

-(He's also the group's cassette champion, claiming his media of choice is superior to CDs because you can record music on BOTH sides of the tape!  The other two just don't have the heart to point out that each side only holds half as much music as a CD, and you don't even have to rewind those...)

-Jury's still out on Hit Clips.  Cap'n and Sweet think they're just toys, but K_K genuinely collects and appreciates them and treats them like actual music (it helps that they are only around four seconds long!)

-Believe it or not, the headphones are only decoration, all three actually just...listen to their music entirely within their own heads, though they can also switch to playing it externally on their speakers as well.  Perks of being robots!  Though, sometimes K_K has his internal volume up too high, and misses things that other people say because of it.

-Sweet also has an input port, and connects himself to his turntable to act as the speakers!  The other two are WAY too embarrassed to ask if they can use it as well.

-Sweet can play almost any instrument you throw at him, as long as it's not a woodwind (Surprisingly, he can do brass, since those work on vibration rather than air!).  He prefers his guitar or violin when he isn't spinning records on his turntable.  Where the other two just enjoy music, he's the actual trained musician.

Voice headcanons:

-Sweet:  Kind of deep, bass-y, lots of reverb, a slight tinny audio distortion to it like a low-quality recording that becomes much more pronounced when he gets upset or starts shouting.  And since he's a speaker, you can literally feel the vibrations he makes when he's speaking!

-Cap'n:  Scout from TF2.  I am sorry, but I absolutely cannot get that out of my head for him.  XD  However, he's actually putting that voice on as an "accent" of sorts, his real voice is actually super autotune-y like K_K's, and it comes out whenever he gets flustered, his pitch only getting higher and higher as it gets worse...

-K_K:  Pure autotune, he can just do whatever the hell he wants with his voice -- pitch, tone, whatever, and while he tends to keep it a little higher he can and does change it to fit his mood!  He often has a completely different voice every day, but the others are used to it.  He also just straight-up vocalizes sound effects (like, the kind that make you go "How did you just make that sound with your mouth?!") and can mimic other people perfectly (though the slight mechanical distortion does give it away).  There are absolutely no rules when it comes to K_K's voice.

-They harmonize perfectly whenever they sing together! 

Sweet:

-I like to think Sweet's actually the brains of the group; like, not SMART, he just holds their one collective braincell most often.  He does any technical work when they're building stuff, like soldering circuits or the occasional programming, and even handles a lot of the actual business operations and pays the bills.  The other two also like to follow his lead when it comes to rebellion plans, even if he’s not the official leader.

-That said, though?  It's balanced out by him being rather hotheaded and having the shortest temper by a lot.  There are REASONS why he's not usually out selling bagels with the others -- he's unfortunately prone to some more "extreme" sales tactics, like hurling half their stock at random passersby until they finally agree to buy some.  On the plus side, he's always the first to step up to defend the gang from anything that dares to harm them, and is always on guard.

-He can also hold a heck of a grudge -- don't ever get on his bad side!  Cap'n and K_K are mostly immune to this though, if he gets upset with them he works through it by the end of the day.  It helps that they can all hug it out.

-He's a bit of a perfectionist, often working overtime to try and get everything they build exactly right.  He can get really frustrated when things don't work out the way he plans, or when he can't make sense of a problem, or when Cap'n and K_K are goofing off instead of doing their part, and needs to go blast some loud music and blow off steam.

-He does have a really tough time keeping his balance, since his head is a bit heavier than the rest of his body, but he takes tripping over his own feet constantly in stride.  The biggest problem he has is with dancing -- while he'll join in with the others on occasion, he can't match their more acrobatic moves and sticks more to actually PLAYING the music they're dancing to.

-He's also really, really unlucky, just in general.  He actually considers the other two his good luck charms, since they help him out whenever he trips or gets into a bad spot!

-He's the fashionista of the group, surprisingly.  It's difficult for him to find clothes that fit his body, so he tends to get a little creative with it and has a whole closet full of different stuff!  And since Cap'n is roughly the same size they'll occasionally swap jackets.

Cap’n:

-Cap'n actually has managed to score a handful of dates with girls in the past!  However, NONE of them went well, and only one actually made it to the second date (only to break up right in the middle of it), so he always ends up returning home heartbroken and in tears.  Sweet and K_K, by this point just ready for it whenever they hear that he's going out that night, always dry him off before he shorts himself out, take him to bed and cuddle with him (platonically, I don't see them as brothers but I also don't see them as having that conversation until Cap'n's ready, which he clearly is NOT), remind him that it doesn't hurt forever and he isn't unlovable and that he'll find someone eventually, etc.

-They have sat him down multiple times to try and gently suggest to Cap'n that he might just not be into women?  And that he’s actually turning them off by trying so hard?  To which he's always just like "No, of course not.  I'm straight.  Love the ladies.  Totally.  Oh no they didn't catch me checkin' out that one dude earlier did they?  Is that what this is about?!"

-(Basically, Cap'n is just a hopeless romantic in love with the idea of being in love, but is absolutely clueless as to how it works or what he actually wants, and his best buds are always there to catch him when he falls.  ;v; )

-The glasses are prescription -- he's SUPER nearsighted, a hardware glitch he refuses to fix.  Sometimes when he's working on something close up he'll take them off, panicking when he can't find them afterwards, only to have the others point out that they're just on his head.  He’s also got non-tinted glasses, but you will not catch him DEAD wearing those unless it’s an absolute emergency.

-This dude is SUPREMELY insecure with himself.  Like, his rather questionable fixation on romance aside, he basically runs off of others' validation, the "cool" persona he's spent much of his life building up being how he hides the fact that he isn't really sure who he is, or what he wants to do with his life, or what he's even good for -- the others have learned to check on him now and then whenever he hides away in the back of the shop, since he can slip into some pretty dark places when left alone to sulk.  It took a long time for him to open up even to them to share his feelings, and sometimes still has doubts about whether they or anyone else really care about him as more than just The Smooth One...

-He's the only one of the three to actually enjoy the occasional silence, especially when he's trying to think, or whenever he's upset.  So, his headphones also serve a dual purpose -- they're noise-cancelling!

-He's the video guy, carrying around a small camcorder and constantly trying to record the group's activities, to put together into music videos!  He also just likes to record himself doing stupid stunts for posterity, though K_K just takes these and makes (affectionate) blooper reels.

-Cap'n is not his real name, similar to K_K.  However, unlike K_K, he refuses to say what it is, just that it's embarrassing.

K_K:

-K_K has a bad habit of just completely zoning out when he gets into his music, getting completely lost in the groove and needing to be pulled back to reality.  It's not a bad thing during jam sessions, but at work, or in the middle of a battle...not so much.

-He kind of needs to have some kind of music going at all times -- silence drives him absolutely CRAZY!  Though, because he gets distracted by his own music, he then misses out on entire conversations, only tuning back in towards the end.  Sometimes the other two have to repeat or summarize what they just said for him.

-He knows sign language, and taught the others to use it.  They're able to communicate reasonably well no matter how loud their shop gets, or on days when K_K isn't able to form words properly (he's just shy, and even when he isn't he gets tongue-tied a LOT).

-He's easily the best dancer of the three, and uses his extendable body to get really creative with his moves!  He even knows a little ballroom, somehow, which he'll pull out sometimes to make the others laugh.

-(Seriously, K_K CANNOT stand to see Sweet or Cap'n not smiling.  He'll do anything to keep the group's spirits up, usually cracking jokes during a scrap project or doing little favors, and they appreciate all his efforts!)

-K_K has the WORST sleep cycle, ever.  If you let him, he will stay up all night working or partying, finally going to bed at 6AM, and will then sleep until 6PM if the others don't wake him up at some point.  If they know he was up really late they'll let him sleep in a little, but he's often pretty sleep-deprived and running solely on sugar and caffeine, which doesn't help his natural loopiness.  

-He is a VERY physical guy.  Seriously, he will just scoop up and hold Sweet or Cap'n like a cat every five minutes; at first they were just like "Oh.  Okay.  We're hugging now I guess," but after a while they got more used to it and even anticipate when K_K is going to do it.  And he also initiates tons of snuggles and gives piggyback rides whenever one of his bandmates (usually Sweet) requests.  

-K_K actually scrapbooks, collecting pictures and little mementos of places he and the others have gone and things they've done.  After the library fountain is sealed, he pulls them out to show everyone else from Cyber City and reminisce about home.

-It's very hard to make K_K angry, since he tends to stay super chill and brushes off almost everything.  But, on those very, very rare occasions when something does get under his metal outer casing, he'll go full-on silent treatment, not speaking to anyone for up to a week as he sulks and stomps around the junk shop, and even refuses to play any music!  And no amount of sweets or hugs or cheering up will bring him out of it, either; the other two have learned to just wait him out and let him have his space, letting him come to them when he's finally ready to talk about it.

Misc:

-Though all three love everything sweet, K_K's the only one who really goes overboard with it, making whole meals out of candy.  Sweet, ironically enough, actually prefers more salty/savory snacks, while the less is said about Cap'n's hot sauce addiction, the better.

-Okay, actually, I will say more about it.  Cap'n loves spicy food in general, and literally drinks tabasco sauce right from the bottle.  However, he's got a bad habit of daring himself to eat hotter and hotter stuff, ESPECIALLY if someone is watching, and can easily get in WAY over his head before begging for milk.

-They also all totally drink battery acid like Queen.

-Heck, being both Darkners and robots, they can really eat literally anything.  Normal food, milk, oil, batteries, gallons of pure sugar, toothpaste, moss, glitter (NEVER let K_K get hold of any though, he gets lost in the sauce), broken glass, etc, and of course their own deep-fried CDs.  Only thing they can't do is water, since, you know, robots.

-With a lot of the aesthetics of Cyber City being close to turn-of-the millennium and early 2000s (CDs and boomboxes, popup ads, wired mice, Queen theorized to be one of those see-through iMacs, EVERYTHING about Spamton), I like the idea that the boys DO NOT have smartphones, and if you handed them one they'd have no clue how to use it or what to do with it.  But they do have cell phones:  Sweet's got an old flip phone covered in stickers (courtesy of K_K), Cap'n splurged for one of those that slide open and with a camera (he set his background to a tiny, grainy photo of the three of them!), and K_K has one of those indestructible Nokia bricks, that Sweet got him after he kept breaking all his other ones.  They can all text, but that's about as high-tech as they get.

-Same with tablets or newer computers in general, they might share one tiny netbook at most.  Cap’n never remembers to log out of his Dark World dating profile, so the others will snoop or post embarrassing things to it.

-They're really, really durable, even without milk -- they're made of 90s plastic and electronics, so it takes a LOT to take one of them down!  Plus, they regularly repair each other back at the shop (it took a LONG time for them to gain enough trust to physically open and work on each other), so as long as at least one's left to drag the other two to safety they'll be just fine.

-However, if they get splashed with water, caught in the rain, or worse, drowned, they will short out, or shut down on the spot to prevent damage.  Once they completely dry out, though, they'll start right back up, no worse for wear.  When only one of them gets waterlogged the other two will break out the hair dryers to dry them out faster, or even pop them into the oven in a pan of rice like an iPod that got dropped in the toilet...

Finally, backstory?

-Cap'n and K_K met first -- maybe both as new recruits to another, much less savory gang of music equipment robots, and bonded as a result of being put upon by the more established members (Cap'n probably even had to defend K_K more than once when his inattentiveness got him into trouble!)  But, they both had enough one day, and decided to break off and form their own thing, making music and selling CD bagels to support themselves.

-Sweet, meanwhile, has the complete opposite background, coming from a rich and important family of musicians in Cyber City who regularly entertained Queen in her mansion (hence why he always used to get sweets from her!)  But, he was kind of the black sheep, preferring his own style of music, and decided to strike out on his own as a street musician instead.

-They met when Cap'n and K_K accidentally set up to sell bagels on Sweet's usual corner, and he battled them to reclaim his turf.  But, they were evenly-matched (even two-to-one; Sweet's definitely the strongest of the trio!), and impressed each other with both their fighting and musical skills, so Sweet decided to join their tiny group, and thus Sweet Cap'n Cakes was formed.  

-After the whole situation with Queen is resolved, SCC turns their rebellion into an anti-DRM kind of thing?  Nobody can hold back the music, man!

[milk--loaf]

original script of The 10th Kingdom: A Forgotten Fantasy MASTERPIECE. check out the video

So, I want to grant you the gift of a perfect fantasy movie series I can almost guarantee none of you have ever heard of. In fact, this series is probably older than a few of you, which blows my mind, and frankly I don’t want to think about that too long. 

When I consider the various film epics we’ve come to love dearly, the iconic fantasy series which we consider cultural touchstones, what comes to mind are the obvious—Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Star Wars, and dare I say it, even the Twilight franchise.

But what if I told you that there exists a perfectly-formulated five-movie fantasy franchise based around the secret world of fairytales? Does that interest you at all? Then let me tell you about The 10th Kingdom.

The 10th Kingdom, categorically speaking, is actually considered a mini-series rather than a franchise or saga, but each episode rounds out to be approximately an hour and a half long, and they all contain their own separate story beats united under a complex overarching plot, not unlike, say, Star Wars.

As a side tangent, I remember the first time I watched Lord of the Ring’s Fellowship of the Ring, I was under the impression that Frodo and his friends would reach Mordor by the end of that first movie, and the rest of the series would explore other plots not focused on this ring business. 

But no, obviously it’s a task that requires an entire trilogy to complete, and The 10th Kingdom has a similar expansive goal in the sense that our main characters are trying to get from point A to point B, except there are all of these detours which impede their progress along the way.

After the first leg of the series, or the first movie, our cast of characters from New York are thrust into a fantasy world made up of nine kingdoms, all of which used to be run by the famous women in Grimm’s stories—Rapunzel, Snow White, Little Red Riding Hood, Sleeping Beauty, etc.,

After stepping into this world, every enemy they face and every town they visit are all in an effort to find a magical traveling mirror, which will, in so few words, allow them to return to New York City, where the people are normal and they’re not trying to be killed off by trolls and evil queens. But I’m jumping ahead of myself.

To pull back, The 10th Kingdom first aired on NBC in February of the year 2000, and I remember my mom actually had the box set of this series on VHS. After a few years I managed to get my grubby little hands on the tapes, and when I was a kid all the way into my teen years, I’d play them on my shitty little cube of a TV, the kind with the built-in VHS player and the thick backside. I wore those tapes out.

I think my mom also had the companion novelization of the film, but I never put in the effort to read it, and still haven’t. From what Wikipedia tells me, when the film was airing, during commercial breaks they would advertise a toll-free number where you could order the package deal of the movies, the book, and the CD all as one. I don’t recall our family having the CD, but we had everything else.

I haven’t asked her about it, but I can just imagine my mom—hi mom—calling in and ordering it as soon as the series concluded, or maybe she got it as a gift, I don’t know. She’s super into fantasy series and either scenario makes total sense in my eyes. Regardless, I love that I now know about this series, because it’s secretly like forty percent of my personality.

So! When it comes to how I’ll be structuring this video, I do want to challenge myself to not spoil every plot detail from beginning to end. However, in order to have a coherent discussion about the series at all, I do need to lay a basic groundwork for the characters and the premise. 

For this reason, the very first point of discussion on my fancy numbered list will be a review of the first two hours of the series. You might say, two hours? That’s a lot! But rest assured, I’m still glossing over a lot of material within those two hours, and in the grand scheme of the series, that’s only about a quarter of the watch-time.

Even still, I’ll be providing various checkpoints for you to pause this video in case you haven’t seen the show and you find yourself intrigued. As a big positive, this series is available on YouTube for free, so there’s literally nothing stopping you from typing it in the search bar above me right now. 

So without further adieu, let’s jump into point number one, which I have lovingly titled:

#1: WHY THE HELL IS EVERYONE RUNNING AROUND?

So I’m moving around a few details, but the plot really kicks off when we see a shot of a fancy carriage traveling across an ambiguous but idyllic landscape. Inside this carriage is the first of this movie’s four main characters, and arguably the least relevant when considering character development and focus. However, without him, though, the entire plot would never have started rolling in the first place, so he’s still pretty pivotal.

I’ll dive into the mysterious fantasy world we are witnessing in just a moment, but for now, what you need to know is that this is Prince Wendell. In so few words, he is the grandson of Snow White herself, who, after the happy ending of her fairytale as we know it, lived on to rule her own kingdom, which will plainly be called “the fourth kingdom.”

Of what we’re told by Wendell’s assistant, he is traveling to an outer province of his kingdom, a small village called as Beantown, to meet his people and collect the gift of a throne for his upcoming coronation. See, not only is Snow White long dead, but Prince Wendell’s parents—the king and queen—have also been dead for, I think, seven years. 

Where Snow White died after a long and successful reign, Wendell’s parents were poisoned and killed by a very important woman in the story who us viewers will simply know as “the Queen.” I’m not sure how the Queen gained that title—at one point Wendell does call her “stepmother,” but we never hear about the drama of their family ties. It’s not the point of this story.

But we know the Queen killed the actual king and queen, and she’d planned to poison Wendell as well so she could wrest control of the fourth kingdom. Luckily, she was caught in time and imprisoned indefinitely. 

As it so happens, Wendell and his assistant, before visiting Beantown, are set to make a detour to the Snow White Memorial Prison to pay the Queen a visit and deny her plea for parole. 

But things aren’t so honky-dory in the prison right now. Not long before the prince’s arrival, we meet an ugly creature known as the Troll King. The Troll King, as far as I know, isn’t aware that Prince Wendell is also on his way into the prison, it mostly seems like a very lucky coincidence. See, the Troll King is sneaking his way into the prison in order to rescue his three idiot children.

I’m gonna talk about the troll children later, because they’re positively the funniest part of the entire series—or at least, they have the most obvious jokes and gimmicks in the series. They’ll have their time in the sun when I talk about him later. 

Also, second side note, the Troll King uses a series of very fun magic accessories and items to sneak into the prison unannounced. The nine kingdoms is absolutely riddled with random mystical energy, and spells, and magical objects, to the point that me trying to give shape to the complex magic system, sort of like a Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings, is absolutely useless.

In short, he has two tool at his side: one being troll dust, which is this magic pink dust that can knock people out in a pinch for days, and the second being a pair of magic shoes which can make him invisible for a limited amount of time. Surprisingly, despite his brutishness, the Troll King does not strong-arm his way into the prison. 

The Troll King does in fact run an entire kingdom on his own, and has an entire army to back him up, but I don’t know, I guess he wanted to keep this low-key. So, having successfully rescued his children and knocked out the entire staff with troll dust, you’d think they’d leave, but no.

The Queen, who is locked away in a very high-security wing of the prison, magically calls out through the ether to the Troll King, and essentially bewitches him to her. In so few words, he lets her out of her cell and strikes up a deal that, if she follows through with a plan she wants to carry out, she can offer him half of Prince Wendell’s kingdom. Big stuff, I know.

So back to Wendell, he enters the prison to find himself captured by the evil Queen and the Troll family. Now, here’s one of the most integral pieces of magics to play into the story line:

For whatever reason, I guess years prior, the Queen requested to have a pet dog, and don’t. ask me why the prison would allow her to have one, but they do. It’s this really pretty golden retriever, and you see him very consistently throughout the series, and oh my god, he is such a good boy.

When everyone is in a room together and the Trolls are holding Prince still, the Queen sics her dogs at him, and when they make contact, they switch bodies. So from part one to part five, Prince Wendell is just running around with our gang of misfits as happy puppy who very slowly loses his marbles.

The Queen’s plan is to then kill the prince-turned-dog and keep the dog-turned-prince as a puppet which she can rule behind—or at least, at first. I always found this particular scene very strange because the Queen knows she wants to kill Wendell immediately in dog form, but as she’s teasing him, she like, turns away completely? And that allows Wendell to flee the scene.

So the queen sends the Troll Children to chase the dog, but the dog, running into the basement, knocks over another very important piece of magic—a magic mirror. You’ll notice, by the way, most forms of magic in this universe don’t typically have special names, so we’re gonna hear a lot about magic rings and magic combs and magic fish, without much differentiation. The word magic is going to get old real quick.

So Prince Wendell knows the trolls are quickly on his tail, and when he knocks over this mirror, he opens a portal to what we see is New York City, specifically Central Park. The Prince has no other option in front of him, so he jumps inside, and here ensues a very magical, very fun teleporting graphic.

Are you with me still? Okay. Well, here is where we meet our main character: Virginia Lewis, a disillusioned young girl in her mid-twenties, who lives on the edge of the park with her dad in a shitty apartment, working as a waitress to make ends meet. 

Virginia is easily the most complex character in the series, and I have a lot of, like, “end game” analysis I really want to get to regarding her character growth and the challenges she faces, but you’ll have to stick with me to the end of the video to really hear my thoughts on character.

But for now, what you should know about Virginia is she believes she’s going to live a boring life. She considers that she might have a husband some day, and dare I say it, move out from her dad’s place, but all things considered, Virginia has resigned herself to mediocrity. Some of her first dialogue is in narrative form, and she states plainly, 

“I guess you get to a certain age and you realize nothing exciting is ever going to happen to you. And maybe that’s just the way it is. You know, maybe some people just have quiet lives.” 

And right as she thinks that to the audience, Prince jumps through the portal and collides with Virginia’s bike path, making them both crash to the ground. For better or for worse, Prince has now made a detour to the tenth kingdom, New York City.

It turns out, Virginia was actually biking to her waitress gig, and because she can’t miss her shift, she walks her bent bike to the restaurant with Prince following behind her. She tries to get rid of him, but he won’t leave her alone. For now, I’m going to put a pin on the Virginia story thread, because we need to go back and introduce one more absolutely key character.

So if we’re thinking back to the evil guys, the Queen and the Troll King have forged an alliance, where the Troll King puts his trust in the Queen to cause some shenanigans and take over the fourth kingdom. But in order to succeed, she needs to have the Troll children follow her orders, and as faithful to the Queen as they may be, she knows she needs someone more substantially on her side. Someone who isn’t faithful to the Troll king.

So even though the Troll children are on the prince’s tail, pun intended, the Queen releases another prisoner—a character who we will know by the name of Wolf—to also follow the Prince.

And oh my god, I love Wolf. For many reasons, I love Wolf. He’s just a spunky, mischievous little guy. If the name didn’t give it away, Wolf is actually part werewolf, though the most we see of a wolf-form from the guy is a fluffy tail, yellow eyes, and riled-up hair.

If you’re wondering what his real name is, it is actually Wolf. Which is a little confusing, because Wolf isn’t the only werewolf in their world, so it sorta feels like when someone names their son Guy. At one point in part three he does use the fake name Warren Wolfson, so it’s like, is his name Warren? No.

But Wolf is easily the second most complex character in the series. In the very beginning, having been imprisoned for who-knows-how-long, Wolf is positively pent up with energy. And by energy, I mean he’s incredibly hungry for a good meal and he’s incredibly… frisky, to put it best. Later, when he’s more mellow, he explains to Virginia that, quote, 

"Putting a wolf into a prison cell with nowhere to bound, only able to stare at the sky through bars, now that's inhuman."

What Wolf deals with throughout the entire series is the compromise between his wolfish tendencies and his human ones. He never seeks to overrule or mask one half of himself, it’s more a matter of striking the appropriate balance, because denying his wolfish side would be to deny half of his existence. And he’s all the better for it, because he’s an absolute goofball. I’d go so far as to say that Wolf holds many of the traits of a himbo—he’s handsome, he can be dumb at times, and he’s very kind.

To give away a bit of Wolf’s character which we’ll get to in a moment, yes, he’s tailing Prince Wendell, and by circumstance, Virginia too, but the moment he sets sights on Virginia, he’s fallen head over heels in love with her, and forgets about the Queen’s instruction completely. 

He doesn’t know how to handle his love for her, and in fact goes about it in very inappropriate ways in the first episode, and this is a testament to the fact that he can’t control his wolfish side. But I want to set it into stone now—Wolf’s motivation throughout the entirety of the series is: do right by Virginia.  

Love her, care for her, accommodate to her. Virginia markedly doesn’t love him in the first half of the story, so he takes it upon himself to show Virginia what kind of man he can be, and prove they’re soulmates. This means striking that balance between wolf and human, and calm down those raging energies being in jail left him with. See how it all comes full circle?

So the Queen releases him from prison. But before he leaves her sight, she places upon him this invisible magic: the magic of the Queen’s evil will. Whenever the Queen is in one of these sinister modes, you’re always going to here very haunting female vocals and like, a glittery noise. 

Submitting to the Queen’s will, in short, essentially means she can call upon him from afar, invading his mind so she can communicate with him and enforce her desires. Because he’s so one-track minded in the beginning, and frankly, a bit stupid, he says yes and goes on his merry way, following Prince and the Troll children through the magic portal in the basement.

The last of the four main characters, and the one I probably need to give the least bit of explanation to, is Tony. Tony is Virginia’s father, the one she lives with, and he’s a janitor for the building they live in touching Central Park, which is the only reason they’re able to afford their apartment.

Tony, to spare myself the need to monologue about him, is the bumbling buffoon of the series, but that’s perhaps giving him too little credit. He’s the Zeppo—he’s the one who constantly has bad things happen to him, whether it’s his own doing or the world itself punching down on him. 

In trying to describe Tony, I’d say he’s fairly conservative-minded. Not politically conservative, I mean— the series isn’t remotely political, but I mean he’s conservative in the sense that he doesn’t think outside the box a lot. He has good ideas on occasion and plays a mean hand of Old Maid, but his faults often overshadow his positive qualities, and unfairly so.

A few things we know about Tony: he’s long divorced, he’s overworked and underpaid, he ruined a once-thriving business he upstarted through a bad investment, and when prompted to make a few magical wishes, he makes selfish and poor decisions. There’s a fair few other disasters that Tony initiates later in the series, but this is what we know going in.

But the thing about Tony is that he’s sincerely undervalued, especially by Virginia, but also in part by the other main characters as they travel through the nine kingdoms. And when they realize that at the end of the series, Tony as well, it’s only then that Tony receives his flowers. Otherwise, Tony’s character growth is pretty static from start to finish.

Now, indulge me for a bit while I recount some of the shenanigans that go on in the tenth kingdom. The rest of the story after what I’m introducing to you, you can reliably count on the fact that all four of our heroes stick together and are attempting to a reach a semi-agreeable goal. And if they’re apart, they’re still trotting along in the same general direction.

But part one sticks out because it does all the heavy lifting in terms of defining the characters—they scramble around on their own without an exact goal in mind, simply goofing off or trying to solve smaller problems. The latter is very true for Virginia, who doesn’t know what to do with this dog she found, and is getting harassed all around the city. Let me explain.

When Virginia finally gets to work, she keeps Prince in the storage room. Also, this scene—where she first shows up to work, I have no idea why nobody protests or scoffs that someone walked a dog into a room where they’re preparing food. 

But it’s fine, I guess. When he’s eventually in the storage room, nobody goes back there, and only Virginia has the key to the door for some reason. She tries to do her job, but hears Prince barking back there, and has to pause work to go make him quiet.

But look at this—when she walks in, Prince has left a message for her. She thinks it’s a prank, but through testing out Prince’s intelligence, she freaks out when she realizes the dog is responding to her with one bark yes, two barks no. By indicating she’s in danger, Wendell convinces Virginia that they must leave, and she travels back home.

Meanwhile, the troll lchildren are around, but they aren’t making much progress. Like I said before, they’re idiots, like, verified doofuses, so even though they possess the physical strength to apprehend and kill a dog, they have absolutely none of the wits. 

One of the best bits in the series is that, while they’re hunting in central park, they pointlessly assault a couple sitting on a bench and steal their stereo, believing it to possess some kind of magic simply because it plays “Night Fever” by the Bee Gees. They take this stereo back with them when they return home, and when the stereo eventually dies, they’re relegated to singing of this magical folklore instead. It lasts even into part five.

But Wolf, on the other hand, is on the hunt. At first, he’s so hungry that he completely forgets about Prince Wendell entirely, and when he’s in New York, he’s overwhelmed by the smell of meat and follows his nose to, very coincidentally, Virginia’s workplace at the edge of the park. But then, good news:

“I smell dog! Would you believe it? Work and pleasure combined.”

So when he’s sitting down as a guest of the restaurant, he talks with one of Virginia’s coworkers and remembers to ask about the dog. She spills the beans that Virginia is holding onto a golden retriever, and believing Virginia to still be at work, the coworker leads Wolf to the kitchen.

And this scene confuses me, because when she realizes Virginia’s gone, Wolf is like, give me her address, and then she’s like “no,” and then things get weirdly sexual? Nothing is shown of the restaurant or the girl after this scene, but it is confirmed later that Wolf obtained Virginia’s address, so I’m like… how did he accomplish that? Did he eat the blonde girl? 

Wolf, after all, is known to conflate hunger with sex or sexuality simply because of his wolfish nature, and the last shot we see of the two of them is when they’re standing very suggestively close to one another, in the private back room. Even weirder, the next scene Wolf is in, he’s calmed down remarkably. 

His lucidity and charismatic persona always appear more present and refined when his hunger is sated, and after this story beat, that hunger is less insistent. He’s still obsessive over food and love, but it’s not messing with his head so dramatically.

If you’re wondering, by the way, Wolf was not imprisoned for eating people. He later describes his crime was, quote, “sheep worrying,” so he caused nothing more than mischief. Overall, wolves in this series are alluded to having eat humans at some point in history, but wolves also face serious discrimination within the nine kingdoms in the present day, so it’s possible this is just some disparaging folklore. 

In that same breath, I believe in part three, Wolf describes his parents to be especially ravenous, and that this was the cause of their persecution on a burning pyre. Whether their crimes were legitimate or not, remains unexplained. Which is all to say, I really don’t know if he ate that girl. But he had to have sated his hunger somehow.

Virginia returns home with Wendell, but when they arrive, Virginia discovers that her place—infact, her entire apartment floor—has been ransacked, and various neighbors of hers are knocked out on the floor covered in troll dust. Tony, even, is conked out ina  recliner when she walks through her front door.

Yeah, the trolls found her apartment. But only through brute force—in the beginning, they managed to find Virginia’s missing wallet and a patch of dog fur on the bike path, which eventually led them to her door after threatening a New Yorker to commute them.

As much as I like them, they’re mostly a distraction, so I’ll leave this scene by saying that the trolls try to catch Virginia and Wendell, but she manages to trick them by trapping them in a broken elevator and fleeing with Wendell to her grandmother’s house. She leaves Tony behind, because even though he’s unconscious, he’s relatively safe.

And here is probably my favorite sequence of events that occurs in the first episode, and part of the reason why I went through the effort of chronicling everything thus far. Virginia stays at her grandmother’s decked-out apartment overnight, and the next morning, having learned of where Virginia is staying, Wolf makes a visit.

He poses as Virginia’s rich suitor and fiancé so that grandma lets him in the door, and after that… [video no audio of grandma being seasoned] well, he gets a bit distracted. But when Virginia wakes up, Wolf does what any sane fairytale wolf would do and dresses up as grandmother and hides in her bed.

At this point, you don’t really know what he’s trying to do? Like, you know he’s infatuated with Virginia, because prior to this scene, he visited Tony’s apartment and obtained an image of Virginia, who he now finds to be the most beautiful woman in all the kingdoms. Whether that means he wants to start a happy family with her or turn her into dinner, remains to be clarified

But he doesn’t even try to capture Prince.  Instead, well… [what big teeth you have, etc.]

Instead, when Virginia realizes it’s a strange man in her grandmother’s bed, she naturally treats him like an intruder and tries to fight him off. Meanwhile, Wolf is waxing very manic poetic about his feeling for her, which really, at this point, is just very exaggerated infatuation.

“Now that I’ve seen you, eating you is out of the question! Not even on the menu! Now, I know this is going to come out of the blue, but—how about a date?”

Luckily, Virginia manages to toss him out of, like, her grandmother’s second story window. The way Wolf feels about her remains very conflicted even after their first confrontation, because not long after, in a very inconsequential scene with a French therapist, he laments about his feelings—

“Doc, I met this terrific girl and I really, really, really like her, but the thing is that… I’m not sure whether I want to love her or eat her.”

Moving on, though, I can skip a lot of the subplots in this episode, specifically involving Tony, because, functionally speaking, yes they help build his character, but plot-wise it’s very inconsequential. In short, Tony has harnessed the power of six wishes, all of which he completely wastes on selfish, questionably immoral things. And they all come back to bite him in the ass.

The crux of this episode is when Virginia leaves her grandmother’s house with Wendell, she takes him back to central park and tries to leave him where she found him, because she’s tired of being chased by weird trolls and sexually ravenous home intruders.

Just to pause, when I first wrote that line, “sexually ravenous home intruder,” it sounded awful. I’m describing Wolf, and I can’t say that I’m describing him incorrectly, but a thing about Wolf is that, while yes, he’s very riled up, he also feels very innocent. 

Sort of like a puppy who doesn’t know how to play correctly yet, like if you left him alone in the house for a while, you’d come home to find all your couch cushions torn open and stuffing everywhere.  You’d punish him, but you also might think, “ah, that little rascal.”

In that way, I think a viewer can rationally suspend disbelief on the questionable behavior of Wolf, simply because of his wolfish hormones.  But in the same breath, I also think that unfairly absolves him from his ogling and infatuated monologuing. 

It’s played off for laughs fairly well, I think, but at the end of the day I still think a viewer should interrogate those flaws in Wolf’s writing.

The point beyond that critique is, in attempting to drop off Wendell in the park, we experience a confluence of all the character in New York. Tony, because of his own shenanigans, is running from the cops in the park [it’s funnier if I don’t explain why], meanwhile Wolf is on their tail and the trolls have escaped from the elevator.

Tony meets up with his daughter and Wendell, and the only good wish Tony ever makes (which is also his last one) is that he wants to understand the dog. This is very important—Tony becomes the only individual in the series who can understand Wendell, who seemingly telepathically talks to Tony.

Which, thank god they never try to animate the actual dog’s mouth. Such a good visual effects decision. After that point, Wendell leads them back through the portal in central park to escape the cops. And so concludes our time in the tenth kingdom. Even though it’s the title of the series.

Rest assured, Wolf and the trolls do make their way back through the portal in their own time, and then the magic mirror portal is closed, keeping out the rest of their real world.

Remember, now, that the mirror itself is stored in the basement of the Snow White Memorial Prison, so they’re not exactly freely walking in the country. They have a bit of time before the bad guys catch up with them, so they walk through the prison and find that all the guards are still knocked out with troll dust.

Wendell takes the opportunity here to describe the nine kingdoms to them, and all the politics involved, but I’m going to wait to explore those elements in point number two, which is right around the corner. After the exposition, instead of immediately escaping, the three of them inspect the Queen’s prison cell.

Which, don’t ask me why. This ends up screwing them over because the trolls find them. And because they’re incompetent, instead of capturing the dog like they’re supposed to, they close the cell door on Tony and Prince, meanwhile they knock out Virginia and steal her, fleeing thereafter to the Troll kingdom.

[shrug] I really don’t know why they couldn’t just do their job. Blabberwart, the sister, says it’s because the troll dust on the guards will wear off any moment and they have to act fast, but it’s still an incomprehensible decision. They think Virginia’s a witch because of the elevator debacle, but that’s about all we get in terms of real motivation.

So Tony and Prince are for-real imprisoned when the guards wake up and find them, and the troll children flee to the troll kingdom with Virginia over their back. I’m not covering the prison arc. I actually think it’s quite boring and unremarkable. Like, can you imagine your first foray into a magical dimension was in a prison? Ugh.

Instead, we’re going to follow Virginia as she’s taken to the troll castle and tied up. She’s going to be tortured for information because the trolls believe she’s some big-league conspirator for what they dub the tenth kingdom, which is NYC itself, and want to know who its king is.

But here’s the rub: Wolf comes in and saves her, using the troll’s stupidity against them. The troll king is out on the town and planning shit out with the evil Queen, so for whatever reason, he’s left his magical shoes on display in the troll’s shoe collection. It’s this big weird feet joke, it’s really not that important.

What is important is, on her way out, Virginia nabs the shoes without Wolf knowing. By the way, she absolutely does not trust Wolf and plans to escape his side as soon as she’s able by wearing the shoes, but she never gets far because Wolf knows her scent and can follow her anywhere. It’s very romantic.

The shoes are very weird—as they’re escaping through Jack’s beanstalk forest of all places, Virginia is constantly enthralled by the shoes, practically drunk on their power, or potential power. But the shoes, unlike most magics, has a battery life, and must recharge for hours on end, so in large part if she’s not wearing them, Virginia is fawning over them.

There’s a really nice character beat for Wolf here, because it’s brief switch in their lucidity—Wolf is now in his element in the nine kingdoms, and maintains a fairly level head, meanwhile Virginia, when Wolf is holding the shoes, tries to seduce Wolf while under their enthrall, trying to get them back.

One of the reasons I really like Wolf is that he doesn’t play into Virginia’s weird sexual advances because he knows they’re hollow. Instead he continuously rebuffs her until she finally drops the act and returns to her usual self.

And here’s the first scene where the two of them really actually bond for the first time. I’d say this is important because, if they were not allowed this moment to hide from the troll’s hunting party, they likely wouldn’t have stuck together through the rest of the story.

Virginia, understandably, finally asks Wolf why he was involved in the chase, and intuits that he, too, was a prisoner set free, but doesn’t actually ask who set him free. That’s left out of their conversation. He explains what put him in jail, but then the conversation shifts to something very vulnerable—Wolf’s tail.

The thing is, this scene has some very present sexual innuendo attached to. In parts three and five, this innuendo is played up again in different ways, so it’s not exactly an accident on the writer’s part. Wolf’s tail, in so few words, is regarded as a fairly intimate erogenous zone, which Wolf himself roughly equates to breasts in terms of… acceptability of exposure, I guess?

And I don’t know, I guess it’s testament to the fact that I first watched this series as a kid, but I never considered this scene very sexual, despite the writer’s heavily leaning into it. What I see in this scene is that Wolf’s tail is a very corporeal representation of Wolf’s immediate decision to be open and vulnerable for Virginia.

Once he’s able to calm down significantly and join Virginia’s side, he really does come to terms with the fact that he loves her and wants to be with her, and he never shies away from showing her every aspect of who he is, both the good and bad.

Knowing that wolf-kind are actively discriminated against, persecuted, and in many cases killed in the fourth kingdom, including his parents, Wolf allowing Virginia to even see his tail, let alone give it a pet, shows he’s not trying to hide from her, even if it’s dangerous.

We’re nearly at the end of my opening review. The plan at this point is to return to the prison, use the shoes to sneak in and release both Tony and Wendell, and then find the mirror to go home.

But the prison’s been up to some shenanigans. After the guards wake up, they determine that the basement was disturbed or ransacked while they were sleeping, and thus cast suspicion on all the antiques stored down there. So they set up a trash boat outside the prison walls and throw all the junk on it to later be moved away. This includes the mirror.

On his own, Tony discovers that his prison-mates have painstakingly been carving away a tunnel to the outside for years, and he convinces then to let them escape as well. Luckily, Wolf and Virginia find Wendell and escape as well, so now the entire cast is unified as a group, finally.

Unfortunately, Acorn, one of Tony’s prison mates (that’s played by Warwick Davis of all people), takes the trash barge with the mirror and travels off to god-knows-where while Tony isn’t looking. And so initiates the much less complicated journey our characters will embark on to find the mirror and go home, and in the same breath, so ends this introductory review

I’ve alluded to it already, but nearly every character in this foursome, besides Virginia and Tony, have different goals in terms of what they seek to accomplish. Of course Virginia and Tony want to go home, but Wolf’s single desire is to make Virginia fall in love with him, or rather, make Virginia realize she’s already in love with him. 

There’s no literal point A and point B for Wolf, but if assisting with Virginia’s adventures means he can get closer to her, then he’s on board.

Meanwhile, Prince Wendell’s prerogative is entirely different. He, of course, wants to be turned human again so he can resume his coronation, become king, and probably get revenge on the evil Queen. To do so, he forcibly enlists Tony, who is the only person can understand him, to be his manservant, much to Tony’s disagreement.

He’s not seeking the mirror, and in fact regularly complains that Tony shouldn’t be looking for the mirror because he should be helping Wendell instead. I like that Prince has entirely separate motivations, but I also feel like the writers didn’t take these conflicting motivations far enough.

Seemingly against Prince’s personal goal, Wendell will often assist in Virginia and the team’s schemes to find and obtain the magic mirror, even though he has virtually no incentive to do so. I think I would’ve liked to see a bit more conflict in that regard, but Wendell, for the most part, is relegated to having the least complex character arc among the main cast, so his use as a pawn largely goes unchallenged.

With all the characters and the main adventure set up, let’s finally move onto point number two:

#2: WHERE THE HELL ARE WE? 

So, I’ve described that the tenth kingdom is New York City, and I’ve talked about the fact that the fourth kingdom is run by the lineage of Snow White, so what else do we know? Well, in part one, when our characters have just entered through the portal and all the guards in the prison are still asleep, we see a map of the nine kingdoms.

Prince Wendell describes to Tony that the stories we learned of Snow White, Cinderella, and all the other great fairytales occurred about 200 years prior, and the audience can reasonably deduce through this explanation and the map that the other great women went on to run their own kingdoms. This gets later validated when Wolf explains the lore of the five great women who changed history—

“She became a great queen. One of the five women who changed history.” 

Virginia: “Five women?” 

“Snow White, Cinderella, Queen Riding Hood, Gretel the Great, and the Lady Rapunzel. They formed the first five kingdoms, brought peace to all the lands. But they’re all dead now. Some say Cinderella’s still alive, but no one’s seen her in public in nearly forty years. She would be nearly 200 years old. The days of ‘happy ever after’ are gone. These are dark times.”

Also apparently Sleeping Beauty is still around, but if you look at [this really blurry map] of the nine kingdoms, she wasn’t even a great ruler, she actually appears to just be a citizen of Cinderella’s kingdom, so that’s sucks, she got demoted, and for what? We don’t know.

So you might be thinking, “this is so exciting! We get to explore the nine kingdoms, I can’t wait to see a little bit of everything!” Well I hate to break it you, but we don’t. Like, we see nearly none of them. We stay in the fourth kingdom for virtually the entire series except for two story beats. 

One of these deviations is near the beginning, with the Troll Kingdom, also known as the Third Kingdom, and the second instance is in the fourth movie, when our characters unwittingly trespass into the mines of the ninth kingdom. But this kingdom doesn’t even have a great queen! It’s just run by dwarves who make magic mirrors in an underground cave system.

They appear to be some derivative lineage of dwarves from Snow White’s story, and this proves to be more legitimate of an idea because Snow White’s grave is magically hidden in one of the fancier caves, but other than that, there’s absolutely no glamor or intrigue. It’s an important pit stop, but in the grand scheme of things, a very disappointing end.

However, the final chapter does give us a glimpse of what all the various royal lines look like. We see the descendants of Red Riding Hood, we see some elves and ice queens, and there’s even a special cameo from the only living great queen, Cinderella, so it’s a fair enough consolation prize. I just think it was a completely wasted opportunity

That said, the fourth kingdom does have a diverse series of towns, bogs, and castles for our main characters to travel through. Among the various sets our characters visit, we have Little Lamb Village, Kissing Town, the Palace of White, the Disenchanted Forest. Evenly dispersed along the way, we also encounter various iconic locations from Snow White’s story. 

The fourth kingdom itself, to refer to that map again, is situated in the very center of the fairytale world, with most of the other nations bordering it. Its location is highly coveted by the other kingdoms because of that strategic central location, and while it’s not commented on more than once, the other kingdoms are essentially nipping at the fourth kingdom’s heels to gain its territory.

Beyond that, not much is known about the other kingdoms. In reading the wiki a little bit, there are actually some interesting descriptions about the other kingdoms, and I’m assuming these come straight from the book, but they also read like it could be complete fanfiction.

As a regular peruser of these “wikia” pages across various fandoms and titles, I’m aware of the fact there’s very little fact checking and revision which goes into them. 

I would say, correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m rebuking that. Yes, big franchises will probably have highly scrutinized wikia pages, but the same can’t be said for any title that even remotely falls into obscurity... Wikia is the real wild west Wikipedia we were warned about in high school. 

And that about sums it up for my second point! Yeah, these other points, we’re probably going to run through them much faster.

So, to move onto point number three!

#3: MAGICAL OBJECTS, SPELLS, AND OTHER RANDOM CRAP

So, as we’ve already partially observed, the nine kingdoms are absolutely riddled with various magics, mystical energies, and generally fantastical creatures that can help or hurt Virginia and the team on their quest.

As I was viewing the series I made sure to take note of every consequential piece of magic which affects the plot, regardless of whether it’s incredibly important, such as the magic traveling mirror, or it’s the mere aura of magic, lightly nudging a character along.

I knew, going into this, that I could simply review the magic like I do everything else, but because I’ve done that enough with the plot itself, what I want to do, instead, is a tier list.

[Off-the-cuff, unscripted tier list of magic objects, spells, etc. I did not transcribe this.]

Moving onto point number four:

#4: ALL THE BIG BADS

I really just wanted to spotlight them, and give them their flowers before moving onto the rest of the video. 

Let’s start with the trolls. The troll king is arguably the most boring antagonist the heroes have to face, and that’s saying something because the way he’s just really cruel and nasty is still kinda fun to watch. And the more I think about, I’m pretty sure the heroes never actually have to face him. The Troll king essentially sells out his children to the queen, yes, and the children are a nuisance to Virginia nad her crew, but the troll king serves an entirely separate purpose in the story.

So he lets the queen out of her prison cell, right?  They make a tentative alliance to keep the circumstances of the queen’s escape secret (AKA the whole dog prince thing) so she can take over the fourth kingdom. For helping her escape, as well as the use of his kids, she tells the Troll king she’ll give him half of the fourth kingdom, just not the half with the castle.

But the troll king is impatient, and as we obviously know, the troll children fail to find and kill Prince Wendell, much less capture him, so there’s some rising ill will between both parties. In addition to that, in order for the fake dog prince to take the throne during his coronation, the Queen herself must train him to stop acting like a dog.

I’d say those scenes are some of the weakest in the series because the plights of this poor dog turned into man are very sad, and they use a little bit of gross humor, which I’m not a fan of. At one point you see him lift his leg to pee against a pillar, and then you see the pee on the ground, as if that wasn’t enough.

And then there’s another even more dramatic scene with the poor dog when he’s so tired of behaving like a human that he threatens to hang himself in front of the queen. The dog’s hanging attempt is laughably foiled, but it leaves a sour taste in my mouth. Maybe that’s the point, but it takes all the whimsy out of what could’ve been an interesting half of the story.

Anyway, the training of the new prince s taking far too long for the troll king’s liking, so in the meantime, instead of laying low and letting the queen enact her plan, he useless starts pillaging and terrorizing some of the outer provinces, such as Beantown. 

He does this because he knows the real prince is incapacitated, and let’s just say this sets up a big hurdle for the queen. In many ways, the troll king is an antagonist and a substantial distraction for her and not Virginia. She has to be doing something interesting before the climax of the series, after all, and this makes enough sense.

Then there are the troll children, and honestly, I really love these guys. They’re the comedic release of the series, which is saying something, because it’s not exactly a super tense series the whole way through. There are plenty of other light and funny moments. 

Blabberwart, Burly, and Bluebell are basically bumbling idiots throughout the series, and on rare occasion, whenever the characters get too comfortable, the Troll children will pop up and terrify them, and spur them onto the next big set piece.

The only criticism I have for the trolls is that, one, they’re the ones who name New York City the tenth kingdom, and they make some feeble attempts to maybe raid the tenth kingdom with a troll army, I guess, but by the end of the series, that motivation’s been completely nuked.

The other is that there is no conclusion for the trolls. I feel comfortable saying that because the final conflict between the trolls and our heroes is a very simple fight before the climax, and they lose, and are knocked out. And that’s the last we see or hear from them.

Which I understand on some level, because they were just entertaining time filler, but in a series that otherwise feels very tightly knit, they’re a loose thread, in my opinion.

The last enemy I’ll talk about is, essentially, a weapon working under the Queen. Unlike Wolf, who the Queen tries to vest control over, the huntsman works willingly. Where the trolls have some levity to them, and their threat is downplayed significantly, the huntsman represents a very legitimate mortal threat.

We learn of him in part three, and I’d say I really like his entrance because he’s an important figure between the Queen and Virginia. Virginia is often made parallel to Snow White through her behavior, and like the original story, Virginia at one point faces the huntsmen individually.

The huntsmen serves as the perfect middle man from the Snow White fairytale. In that story, at least the Disney iteration, we know the huntsmen to serve the evil Queen, and she sends him out to kill Snow White because she’s the fairest of them all. But as he raises his axe over her, he falters and instead lets her flee into the forest, keeping it a secret from the queen.

The interesting difference with this huntsmen, however, is that he’s become disillusioned, and it’s made fairly obvious when Virginia first meets him that he’s not one to turn over a new leaf. A large theme in the world of the nine kingdoms is that, understanding we are 200 years out from those iconic tales, the world has sobered up.

Wolf, at one point even, says that “happily ever after” didn’t last as long as we’d hoped, and the huntsmen represents the downward descent of their world into villainy. We talked about it briefly in the tier list, but the huntsmen possesses this magical crossbow, which, when fired, cannot stop until it hits the heart of the living being.

Don’t ask me how the logic works, but when the huntsmen was still a normal dude cutting trees in the forest, the evil queen comes by and offers him this crossbow, but only if he shoots it in a direction he chooses. He takes up that offer, takes position, and shoots off the arrow.

The thing is, the arrow hit his son, presumably hundreds of feet away, and kills him instantly. When the axeman pulls the arrow from his son’s chest, somehow that confirms that he is now the queen’s personal huntsmen, and he accepts the role willingly. End of story

Don’t ask me how that works, it obviously sounds like backwards logic to me. But in the same breath, I kinda like how backward it is, because it reminds me of those old fairytales where characters make very bad but very symbolic decisions. 

Fairytales, historically, aren’t inherently moralistic stories, because we know that they weren’t initially targeted towards children, much less teaching them a lesson. But obviously with newer iterations and the shifting of the fairytale paradigm into our modern-day understanding, leaving out a moral is virtually impossible. Heroes now make rational decisions because they represent models of good character, which children are meant to aspire to.

But the huntsmen’s tale, despite how briefly it enters the story, represents some of those more ambiguous stories without a proper lesson. The huntsmen’s story is about destiny, sure, but a kind of destiny that’s incomprehensible to our main characters because he isn’t following human logic. He’s following the contrary conventions of the oral tale. When Virginia hears that story, she calls him crazy because he doesn’t understand it.

And finally, there is the queen. She is the main antagonist in the series, and as things develop, she becomes Virginia’s opposite, even though they don’t meet until the finale.

And here is where I have a major, major spoiler for the final chapter of the series, which you may have already guessed if you watched the movies up to the point, but I don’ know, I just recommend pausing for a while if you’re still watching the movies. 

In light of telling the story’s big twist, I think this is a good time as any to say that I’m going to analyze some of Virginia and Wolf’s big character arcs later down the line. This means character conflicts, story beats, and the conclusion at the end of the series, all of which are massive spoilers.

So… [pause]

Okay, are we all back? Are we one board for spoilers?

Alright, so the grand reveal we get near the end of part four is that the Queen, who we’ve only vaguely known as the queen, is Virginia’s long-lost mother. I know.

It was impossible to really talk about the queen because, if we’re looking at her origins, it’s directly tied to her history in New York. In the first wave of being enlightened in part five, we understand the Queen, who once went by Christine, fled her home for some unknown reason.

Virginia doesn’t know, Tony hasn’t said anything, but she’s fled in distress to Central Park. From what I can glean, she had some sort of emotional break, but I don’t feel comfortable assigning any other kind of mentality to her. It just doesn’t seem appropriate. We just know she’s not well in the head

So as she’s fleeing in distress, she receives a call from a distant voice, an elderly woman’s voice, and suddenly we see a floating, amorphous portal, with an old hag on the other side, coaxing her in. This is the original witch, the original stepmother to Snow White herself.

In the nine kingdoms, the iteration of the story they go with is that Snow White wins out of the queen, and she marries the king and they live a happy life. But t he evil queen, as punishment, was forced to wear white-hot iron slippers on Snow White’s wedding day and dance for them.

I find this interesting, because when Virginia is first captured by the troll’s children in part two, before Wolf saves her, they prepare the same kind of white-hot slippers to torture her. In terms of parallels, this is interesting, given that Virginia is parallel to Snow White and not her mother. 

Maybe it’s a retrospective comment on lineage and shared traits, or maybe it’s just a clever way for the writer’s to insert the imagery much earlier into the story. Whatever the case, after “dancing” for Snow White, the queen is able to drag herself out to a bog, and she calls upon Christine from the other dimension to pick up the mantle of being evil.

The old queen essentially teaches the new queen all of her evil magicks, and bestows all her magic mirrors upon her in the hopes that Christine will destroy the house of White in revenge. Hence the later killing of Wendell’s parents.

In the grand scheme of things, this coincidence of lineage entering the nine kingdoms must be fate, right? Everything that occurs happens because destiny calls for it. I do like the idea of destiny in this story, as it sort of validates the truth that Virginia has something to offer the world around her, lifting her out of the mediocrity she feels relegated to. We’ll get to that comment later.

But it also feels restricting in that same way, in how it takes away one’s personal choice, and the idea of miraculous circumstances taking place due to the whimsy of story, rather than it being ordained by fate. I want Virginia to feel like she has something to offer the world—not because of a magically-enforced coincidence, but because she takes it by storm.

Back to the queen, after the issue with the troll king has been resolved and she’s able to focus more on the dog-turned-prince, I do start to wonder why exactly she turns her sights on Virginia’s crowd. She’s never able to see Virginia or Tony through her spying mirrors because Snow White has placed a magical veil over them both,

what we do know is she becomes informed of these two through the huntsmen, who previously captured and lost Virginia, and through Wolf, who  never so much as claims Virginia is out to stop the Queen. In fact, the Queen is barely on the team’s radar for the first half of the series, if not longer.

The only reason the Queen and Virginia are even forced to be in proximity to one another is because Virginia learns Christine has one of the traveling mirrors which can lead her back home. At some point along the way, Christine just designates Virginia as a threat without much explanation or reasoning.

I think as an audience member we can rationally assume that Christine has gained some foresight on Virginia without knowing the details. She learned of Snow White’s veil magic and assumes this strange girl must be a key threat to her, she just doesn’t know how or why.

Near the end of the story, the troll children do, in fact, capture Wendell the dog and bring him to the Queen, but at the point she’s like, “I don’t need this guy anymore, I need that girl, and I need her dead.” And it’s like, do you even know why yet?

Beyond that, there are some traumatic experiences which unfold between Christine and Virginia, both from the past and in the present, but I’ll get to those in the moment.

In light of nearing some of my more thorough analyses on Virginia and Wolf, I want to make a pit stop at point number five:

#5: THE TENTH KINGDOM: OUT OF CONTEXT

Instead of just describing all the random bits and quotes that I love to you, I put together this compilation for you guys to enjoy and perhaps convince you to watch the show, so please enjoy.

[compilation of favorite funny clips]

That was nice, wasn’t it? So moving onto point number six,

#6: A RETURN TO OUR MAIN CHARACTERS

We’re nearing the end of the video, and now that we’ve gotten past the point where I had to skirt around spoilers, I really wanted to dive into who Virginia is, and who Wolf is. I don’t think I properly gave them their dues when introducing the series, and that’s because you can only say so much without giving everything away.

To start slightly smaller, I want to give focus to Wolf, who uniquely straddles the line between good and… well, it’s difficult to call him bad, because even at the one point where you think he may make a downward descent into evil, it’s never because he actively wants to become evil. 

On all other accounts, Wolf is just “some guy: who just happens to be tagging along with the gang because he wants to. As I described previously in the video, Wolf’s motivation in the series isn’t to find the mirror and help Virginia home.

Rather, his ultimate desire is to make Virginia realize he’s the one for her, and make her see that she loves him. Wolf begins the series in this manic state, so when he first encounters Virginia, he’s very wild, and he confuses his attraction for her with his desire to capture prey. He’s mostly just hungry, in every sense of the word. He wants to be sated and comforted, and to feel full—both with food and love.

It's only after he’s been out of jail for a while and he’s able to loose all this manic energy that he starts to think more rationally. It’s here that you may wonder as an audience member, is Wolf going to forget about his infatuation with Virginia and do something more in line with the Queen’s will?

After all, she was the reason he’d been released. He effectively owes a magical debt to her, and in the meantime, he has to pay the price of that debt by getting harassed by the Queen as her face shows up in the moon, or sticks out of a water trough. It’s weird.

But no, he doesn’t abandon Virginia. And I think what’s so bizarre and interesting about Wolf is that, once he sets his sights on Virginia, even while he was trying to eat her grandmother, he recognized something real and powerful within himself: love. 

Wolves in the nine kingdoms have an innate sensitivity. Mostly this is just to make them aware of scents nearby or when someone’s feeling a certain way. But I think it also gives them a very powerful sense of intuition, to trust in one’s instincts and their aspiring will. In effect, this makes Wolf the master of his own emotions.

But we also learn that Wolf has never been in love. It seems like hat’s the norm for people of wolfkind—that once they meet their first lover, that’s it for them. They become mates for life and live happily ever after, or as he describes, they die of terrible causes. 

The thing is, with Wolf, he lays all his feelings out on the table, even when those feelings aren’t fully developed. It allows for honest and open communication, like when you’re excited after a first date and can’t help but text the other person like five times in a row. 

Wolf sees what he wants, and he isn’t afraid of revealing that fact, even if it makes him vulnerable, and he shrugs at what other people might feel ashamed in admitting so plainly.

While this may be called honesty, I’d also call this naivete, which may partially be because he’s never connected to a girl like this before. And this holds fairly strong repercussions for Wolf and Virginia down the line, when these emotions become more serious and Wolf receives the first sign of mutual affection.

So let’s enter the story around the time our heroes enters Kissing Town. By this time Wolf and Virginia have bonded platonically together on various occasions, and Virginia has allowed herself to trust Wolf. Wolf, on the other hand, is continuing to express his desires for Virginia romantically, but this behavior slowly becomes more restrained as they travel along.

I would say entering Kissing Town is something of an unfair advantage for Wolf when it comes to his and Virginia’s budding relationship. Kissing Town seems to pump this aphrodisiac of love through the air to all of its citizens and tourists, and what we know is that no two people can start falling for each other in this town unless seeds of romance are already in place.

But I’d say that visiting Kissing Town runs the risk of advancing affections way too quickly. In a way, as a viewer I’m a bit uncomfortable at the idea that I could swoon under circumstances I wouldn’t usually swoon. So I want to say, yes, the way Virginia is treating Wolf is genuine. But her responses and affections seem provoked in a way that, in retrospect, makes me side eye the entire town.

I also want to give Wolf the benefit of the doubt, because while he leans into these exaggerating emotions, I don’t think he’s pushing Virginia along intentionally. This is just the way their world works, and both of them are aware of the magic in the air, so they effectively consent. But when Wolf can see a potentially romantic happily-ever-after on the horizon, things go awry.

So let’s back up again. Virginia’s big goal in this series is to get home, no matter what. Wolf’s, however, is that he simply wants to “win” the girl of his dreams. Previous to this section of the plot, their motivations coincide because Wolf can simply assist Virginia in her plans.

Consider also: there’s this running gag during their travels that Wolf is reading a seemingly endless pile of self-help books he stole from a book fair in New York City, all which focus on self-improvement and winning the girl of his dreams.

Their entrance into Kissing Town perfectly coincides with Wolf reading the last page of the last book, and with their guidance, he feels equipped to moderate himself, and reign in this off-putting carnal behavior to become a better man. 

Previously he’s uselessly, openly pined for Virginia, but there hasn’t been much emotional heft or maturity to it, so Virginia ignores it or looks past it. But finishing that last book propels Wolf into finally stepping up and making a move on Virginia, and this is where their motivations noticeably begin to split.

In short, the rift plays out in very ugly fashion once Virginia realizes Wolf is acting selfishly. Let’s bring in some context to set the scene:

The reason they are in Kissing Town in the first place is to obtain their magic mirror. However, its magic is discovered while it’s being stored at an auction house, and the mirror is appraised at 5,000 Wendells, which is the currency in the fourth kingdom. And that’s way too expensive.

In an effort to make up that money before the auction, the team divides their measly thirty Wendells amongst the three humans and they split up at a casino, aiming to hit it big. Tony and Virginia separately fail, but Wolf ends up winning ten thousand gold Wendells while no one is watching.

Instead of giving Virginia this money or even telling her about it, he dreams up a plan to woo her and convince Virginia to marry him. Following through with that plan entails spending a ludicrous amount of money on a carriage ride, a luxurious nine-course meal, and an anthropomorphized engagement ring that speaks in rhyme. This also leaves him with nothing to spend on the auction.

What you can evidently observe of Wolf’s behavior is that he fails to take into account the reality of who Virginia really is, and prioritizes the idea of loving her and living happily together rather than the reality of what she wants and values: to get home.

Self-help books and written advice can of course teach us how to improves ourselves, genuinely, but in Wolf’s case, many of these books are laughably superficial, and lack substance compared to real human connection. Devouring a book called “How to Marry the Girl of Your Dreams” isn’t going to help when Virginia’s first goal isn’t to fall in love.

So while he may be learning to hold in his panting tongue and act like a trained pup, he isn’t considering either person involved—not Virginia’s wants and needs, nor the person inside himself who needs to grow up a little rather than curb a few surface-level mannerisms.

In a situation such as this, Wolf’s understanding of love is portrayed as sickly sweet, idyllic—their arrival in Kissing Town, where gentle music is playing and heart-shaped fireworks shoot off, bolster this idea, is no coincidence. Wolf’s definition of love is confronted as false when his actions betray Virginia entirely—revealing it as superficial, hollow, and more than anything else, selfish.

He may love Virginia, but more than that, he childishly loves the idea of being in love, and that ultimately leads him to not having Virginia at all. They lose the auction, they lose the mirror, and Wolf wasted their one chance of getting home. So they break up.

This is when he looks in a mirror and the Queen tempts him to join the dark side, and he tearfully, silently accepts. So let’s put a pin in Wolf for a second and shift our discussion to Virginia.

The problem Virginia faces on a character level works twofold within the overarching narrative: first, she’s complacent in her personal world; she feels stuck, permanently relegated to mediocrity, destined to live a boring life. 

As we remember, she lives with her dad in a run-down apartment and works as a waitress. As far as we know, she has no professional or romantic prospects, and what we do see is that she faces her world with a concerningly ambivalent disposition—it leaves her no room to grow, only to dwell in what she already has, and has lost.

Expanding on this, Virginia has some compelling narration lines in part one before Prince runs into her: 

“I guess you get to a certain age and you realize nothing exciting is ever going to happen to you. And maybe that’s just the way it is. You know, maybe some people just have quiet lives.” 

It’s kind of sad. The second half of that fold is Virginia is also angry at her world for being this way, and angry about the circumstances that led her here, allegedly—the loss of her mother, affecting her potential, and the ineptitude of her father, making her feel stuck in place.

In effect, Virginia feels a loss of power, or more accurately: a complete lack of agency, and she blames it on everyone without attempting to make change. Whether that judgment is fair or accurate gets confronted in the story itself, but this is where she begins. 

Virginia feels the circumstances of her world are out of her control because they are not perfect, so she effectively resigns herself to leading this boring life to spare herself from the possibility of trying her hardest and experiencing failure, heartbreak, or loss.

Later, in Kissing Town, when she starts falling for Wolf, Virginia even admits to him this exact sentiment before kissing him, which just goes to show how much effort she put into letting down her emotional walls: 

“I have hard time trusting people. I just never wanna jump unless… I’m sure somebody’s gonna catch me.”

This ties in especially well with a line from Wolf in part three, where we see how a full moon dramatically affects his disposition, making him mean, and at certain points, brutally honest:

“You’re pretending to live, Virginia! You’re doing everything but actually living! You’re driving me crazy!”

Lastly, and I’d say the first time this anger is revealed, comes in part two, when Virginia is having her fortune told by an enchantress, and the enchantress plainly states Virginia never forgave her mother for leaving them. 

At that point, it was shocking to the viewer, because up until then, we mostly understood Virginia to be this meek character, who shies away from the harsh reality of a progressing world so she can relegate herself to mediocrity and avoid the risk of trying her damnedest. In many ways, the nine kingdoms is just an active, lived-world confrontation of her own mental baggage.

To continue that though, in a larger sense, we can consider Virginia’s goal throughout the story—to get home—is, in large part, motivated by her need to return to that boring world, to try less again, to be unchallenged.

We can safely say that this anger is a plot point which survives into the end of the series, but the complacency and lack of agency is confronted earlier, in part three, not long after Wolf angrily yells at her that she isn’t living.

I won’t dive too much into this section because it involves a very good mystery I don’t want to spoil, but at one point, in order to obtain the mirror, Virginia has to dress up like a shepherdess in order to… well, win a shepherdess competition.

Virginia initially protests and wants to say no to the idea, but knows she has to take extreme action to reach her goal. Instead of employing shady tactics like stealing the mirror under everyone’s noses, Virginia finally, confidently leans into her world’s fantastical circumstances. She approaches the competition in full shepherdess regalia and faces her opponents with a head held high.

I think this hurdle she faces is truly overcome when she sings a farm animal rendition of Queen’s “We Will Rock You,” creatively re-titled “We Will Shear You,” which for copyright reasons I have to leave out entirely. I’ll leave that whole half of the arc there.

The other half, this anger, which we know is primarily aimed at her mother, is really only confronted in the final act of the story when Virginia must be in proximity of Christine.

For context, Virginia, Tony, and Wendell are trying to locate a new traveling mirror, and learn that it resides in the Palace of White, which, coincidentally, is the same place the Queen is currently staying. Previously, the Queen has been hiding in the dog-prince’s coattails as he prepares for his coronation, and he’s just recently arrived at the castle after a long disappearance.

But where did they learn this information? You might ask. Well, Virginia learned it from Snow White. Like, actual Snow White, which the story has confirmed to be dead for quite a while. 

To spare you the details, Virginia, without the presence of her father, encounters Snow White’s final resting place, which is a snowy cave deep in the underground of the ninth kingdom. Snow White appears out of a flurry of white, to help impart some wisdom and assistance to Virginia on her journey.

Snow White really is the bad bitch that calls out Virginia on all the shit she’s been repressing since her childhood. Snow White reveals that she, in her new role as pseudo-fairy godmother, has been the one to veil the queen from the image of Virginia and Tony. But Snow White warns Virginia that now is the time to see and be seen. 

This is calling back the dregs of Virginia’s complacency and lack of agency in the world, and it’s obvious that despite her evident growth within the story, idealistically, she’s still clutching onto her old ways, hoping uselessly that the status quo can return once she reaches New York. But Snow White effectively says that’s impossible:

“That is why you must now take charge. He needs you to save his kingdom, we all do.”

Virginia: “Me? No, I think you have the wrong person.”

“I have the right person. I’ve been waiting for you, Virginia.”

And here is where Snow White imparts her own story, her very own fairytale and the embedded moral therein, to Virginia. She describes being antagonized by the queen, nearly killed by the huntsmen, and soon protected and cared for by the seven dwarves.

Then there’s the part where the wicked queen attempts to visit her and kill her, which I really don’t think I can paraphrase well without losing some of the gravity of the story, so I’ll just play the excerpt now:

“Her mirrors found me eventually. She dressed as an older peddler and climbed over the seven hills to my house. Twice she came, once with a corset to crush my ribs, and then with a poison comb to drug me. But the last time she came, she brought the most beautiful basket of apples that I ever saw. And this time she stayed to watch me die. And to be sure, she held me in her arms until I died in front of her choking on a piece of poison apple.

“And I often think, ‘Why did I let her in? Didn’t I know she was bad?’ I did. Of course I did. But I also knew that I couldn’t keep the door closed all my life, just because it was dangerous, just because there was a chance that I might get hurt.”

The way I respond to Snow White’s version of the fairy tale is complex. My first response, because I like to put faith in the good intentions of the screenwriters, is that I really like it. This does apply to Virginia’s narrative in a very integral way. 

Again, Virginia’s problem is that she thinks she’s stuck in mediocrity, and she’s fearful of what could happen if she tried to live life fully and failed at it. In that respect, Virginia’s personal growth is largely about taking charge of one’s own story, and taking those risks for the betterment of one’s self. 

Moving past complacency, for better or for worse. In this way, Snow White’s advice is really moving, because it’s general life advice.

But more practically speaking within the series’ overarching narrative, it’s only at the end of part four that we truly see how Virginia’s character development will be put to the test. When Virginia, Tony and Wendell escape the ninth kingdom’s mines, Virginia learns that the evil Queen at large is her mother, the one who ran out on her family when Virginia was a child.

So thinking back now, when watching Snow White’s scene for the first time, the lesson for Virginia in the caves understandably wouldn’t or shouldn’t be perceived as literal guidance. It exists more as an allegory which Virginia could potentially apply to her character and gradually learn from. 

But now it’s become a very one-to-one narrative between evil queen and daughter, and at that point you really have to turn back to Snow White and interrogate her story less as a floating moral and, perhaps partially, as a piece of concrete instruction.

In that sense, Snow White’s direct advice to Virginia is that she needs to face someone who once abused her, controlled her, and ultimately neglected her. Virginia doesn’t remember that she was a victim of abuse because she’s repressed those memories, but Snow White, being a magic fairy godmother, likely possesses some knowledge of Virginia and the Queen’s past. 

She’s advocating for Virginia to risk her health and safety, and even in a magical universe with fantastical circumstances, that doesn’t sit right with me.

So sure, face your metaphorical demons, learn about yourself from intense self-reflection and grab life by the horns. But my second response is that maybe this is completely out of pocket. Snow White fully died, at least temporarily, in her retelling of the fairytale, so what are the moral implications in advising Virginia to allow the same (or similar) to happen to her?  

Previous to this, I haven’t really touched on this reveal of abuse either, because I felt it was a touch early. But we have talked about how Christine ran out to Central Park in a flashback, in distress and clearly having some kind of emotional break.

And that’s because, just prior to this, Christine is giving Virginia a bath while Tony is at work. Virginia is stated to be only seven in this scene. The water appears to be near boiling, and when she’s in the bath, Christine ends up trying to drown Virginia.

The only reason Virginia even survived is because Tony came home and caught Christine in the act, and presumably feeling ashamed and erratic, Christine flees. Obviously there’s no excuse for this violence, but we never properly get an explanation for what provoked this behavior in Christine.

At the end of the day, I get it—that detail isn’t important. What’s important is Virginia, and how this affected her life moving. But it still leaves me with a lot of questions. This abuse turns out to be a reveal to Virginia because she repressed the memory, so all she’s left with is both admiration and unplaced anger for her mother.

Now, Snow White had given Virginia a small hand mirror to ask a single question, and to answer, the mirror reveals the face of the Queen, Christine, who senses someone is watching her. This is what spurs on this recollection of resentment and childhood trauma. Tony can’t hold off the truth from Virginia because they need to get to the bottom of this.

And honestly, up to this point, yes, this series is iconic for me because of its world building, its magic, its comedy and it funny characters. But seemingly out of nowhere, as a culmination of all these more series scenes, we get a genuinely compelling monologue from Virginia, where she finally opens the floodgates:

“Well I knew she'd come back 'cause she'd left all her clothes, you know, she loved her clothes more than anything in the world. And I kept going into her room and checking on them. And then after a few months you suddenly said that we had to get rid of them all, so…

“I remember folding them all very neatly, and I kept hoping that there was going to be a, you know, a secret note or something that would be written for me, you know, just to me, telling me that she loved me and explaining the secret magical reason why she had to go, you know?

“... and I miss her. And I hate her. And I miss her. And I feel like I was on a train and it crashed or something, and no one came and rescued me.”

I think the power and value of this scene extends far past the confines of the magical world the story itself works within. When I previously heard Tony describing that a younger Virginia only wanted to hear the good things about her mother, I think, “Oh, that naïve-sounding behavior seems to contradict all the anger we heard about previously,” but this monologue from Virginia really lays out all of her feelings in a complex, human way.

The thing is, real human emotion is often complex and contradictory and, in that way, can feel incomprehensible to a person, and the feelings themselves often feel irreconcilable within one’s self. How are you supposed to feel when a person who was supposed to love and care for you more than anyone else in the world up and leaves without reason? How do you negotiate feeling hatred for a person who you so desperately want love and validation and connection from? 

One of the strongest lines in this monologue, I think, is the simple repetition of, “I miss her, and I hate her, and I miss her.” These feeling work in tandem, and this brief mantra actually reveals the fact that what Virginia is feeling isn’t incomprehensible or irreconcilable. 

She hates her because she misses her, and what’s left behind is scorn and scars which affect how Virginia approaches the world. 

You can only really feel loss and betrayal and hurt when it’s about a person that really means something to you, and having to learn that lesson in such a concrete way might make you never put your trust in other people ever again. The possibility of feeling that same hurt is worse than just living your life without passion or genuine connection.

So I get why Virginia acts the way she does, and as a viewer, I’m able to rationally and empathetically reconcile how someone can come across as meek and hopeful, while also coming across as disillusioned to the world and resentful of the people in it. It’s not a reveal or a twist in the traditional sense, but part five of this story really gives you the catharsis necessary to understand and connect to the characters. 

Being honest here, if you’ve ever come from a broken home, or struggled from a sense of abandonment, following Virginia’s story and being hit with this surprisingly honest narrative really helps to put in perspective one’s own emotions, and I’m really grateful to the series—I’d say it’s one of the main reasons I keep it close to my heart.

After this point, all we really have left is our team’s travel to the Palace of White, where the coronation is set to happen on the same evening they plan to enter the building and use the mirror, sort of like a cover.

I’ll keep the rest of Wolf’s narrative vague simply because I can, but along the way to the castle, Virginia and Tony are saved by Wolf, and he rejoins their last leg of the journey. Yes, the last we saw, Wolf submitted to the Queen’s will, and you can keep that in your back pocket. 

But for all intents and purposes, Wolf is a good man. He’s taken time to reflect, and he’s matured, and he’s there for Virginia in her time of need, supporting her because he loves her, rather than thinking selfishly.

Virginia still has an impending battle she must face, but just before the climax, the two truly make a proper reunion, and having learned a lot about herself with the help of Snow White, Virginia is ready to let go of her unnecessary precautions. The two of them are able to face each other as honest equals, and they consummate their relationship in the woods outside the castle. 

In moving onto the real finale of the series, I hesitate in addressing Virginia’s actual confrontation with her mother. Virginia has effectively grown, fully, as a character, and mostly needs closure on this relationship she came to resent so much.

It’s more interesting, I think, to take the perspective Christine with the last few moments, because in finally seeing Virginia in front of her, her reactions range from cruelty to denial to, at least by the queen’s standards, a kind of empathy.

In their first meeting, it’s when our team of heroes is first caught on the palace grounds. At this point, the Queen has taken over the castle from the inside, having threatened the entire staff into silence and submission. So they’re brought to the Queen pretty quickly, and Christine receives a flashback of Virginia, of bathing her.

She starts in a place of complete denial, thinking Virginia is using some strange magic to trick her memory, but it’s interesting after that. Without even a visual indicator of revelation, once Virginia starts asking the Queen questions about their history, she immediately claims that past as her own, but twists it. 

Virginia: “Why did you leave me?”

Queen: “You were unwanted. That’s plain to see. Haven’t you always known that? Secretly? That you were the ugly duckling? The sad thing is, your little quest has given you delusions of grandeur. You started to think you’re capable of great things. You were right in the first place—you’re plain. Plain, and ugly.”

She makes herself out to be a proper one-note antagonist, rather than the complex human person she really was, and still is. She was legitimately abusive and mentally unwell, but in the same breath, there was a part of Christine that really loved Virginia. I think that’s the toughest part of the entire series, the way abuse and love are consistently interwoven.

Instead of confronting that complexity, Christine uses their past as a weapon to separate herself even further from Virginia. Living in this world and becoming the evil Queen effectively works as a mechanism for Christine to distance herself from the responsibility of her actions, from her humanity and the faults of being human. 

In many ways, Christine’s disposition mirrors previous commentary I’ve observed about Faith from the Buffy series, who takes the route of evil as a means of repression and deflection. In that same scene, Christine deludes herself so greatly that she tries to kill Virginia, but when Virginia successfully defends herself, instead of properly going on the offensive, she stays vulnerable.

This is where Virginia’s new lesson, of trying your damnedest despite the possibility of failure, really shines through. She asks her mother, very simply, “In your whole life, did you ever love me?” Knowing that she could be hurt again, knowing that she could be rebuffed.

This, in effect, triggers the flashback of a younger Christine running away in central park, and the memory effects Christine:

“Oh, that’s not me!”

She looks almost repentant, but the expression fades away when the huntsman approaches and brings her back. 

After that scene, and feeling conflicted enough, Christine doesn’t kill her. Instead, she tells the Huntsman to lock her up with Tony. That in itself is the empathy Christine shows, I think. It’s the bare minimum—letting Virginia live—but it’s nothing a truly evil Queen would’ve allowed.

I’ll spare you the political conclusion to the story with Wendell, because I think it’s fun and also, Wendell’s story of personal growth is pretty simple, so I don’t feel the need to explore it in depth. It’s better to watch and feel thrilled than hear me dryly explain it away.

But midway through that arc’s conclusion, we do receive our final scene with Virginia and with the Queen. She and Tony have escaped from the prison cell, but yet again, Virginia is caught and brought to the Queen by the Huntsmen. 

Again, instead of opting to have Virginia killed, the Queen makes an uncharacteristically sympathetic decision and decides to let Virginia go:

V: “Are you gonna kill me as well?” Q: “I was going to let you go. I don’t know why—” V: “You know why.” Q: “Go. Leave me, get out while you can.” V: “No.”

This objection from Virginia is a reflection on her character growth. To try and love despite the possibility of heartbreak. Christine can’t handle it, and tries to deny her more blatantly:

Q: “You were nothing but an accident! You should have been killed at birth.”

[Virginia takes charge and slaps her..]

V: “How dare you. How dare you speak to me like that.”

I think that final slap really shows in practe how Virginia has taken to being an active participant in the world. She’s able to express vulnerability, she has an emboldened sense of agency, and she’s able to stand up against her abuser.

I’m going to spoil the last big plot twist of the series. So take that as your warning, pause now. That means you, Cheyenne.

After she slaps Christine, they get into a tousle, and the Queen tries to strangle Virginia. But do you remember that poisonous comb we briefly mentioned in the tier list? Christine is wearing that in her hair as a fascinator, and both women know that it’s laced with a deadly poison.

In order to, you know, not die of asphyxiation, Virginia takes the single opportunity available to her and grabs the comb, and lightly scratches Christine on the cheek. But it’s enough to do damage:

[Scene where Queen walks away and collapses]

“It’s too late… don’t cry, my little girl. My little girl… I gave away my soul.”

Oh yeah, and not to disparage this scene, but I recently spotted the lace on this damn wig, and oh my god, it’s so bad. Not to ruin the mood or anything.

So yeah, Virginia kills her own mother. The evil is dead, and Christine, in the last moment of her life, is able to be the woman she once was—or at least, the good part of her, the loving part of her, no matter how small or tucked away it was.

And that’s all I wanted to analyze in terms of the plot. Feel free to sit back, take a breather, and resonate in the emotional moment of the climax. Because we’re moving onto the end pretty quickly.

So! Point number seven:

#7: MY IDEAS FOR A SEQUEL

In the denouement of the series, we see Wolf and Virginia return to New York City to live out their life in peace. Tony, in the end, did not go with them because Wendell offered him a very integral role in his royal cabinet, so our two lovebirds are on their own. Here is the very last monologue we receive from Virginia:

“But that’s not this story. This story is done. And, when you live every day with all your heart, then you can be happy ever after, even if it’s only for a short time. My name is Virginia, and I live on the edge of the forest… and this is the end of the first book of the tenth kingdom.”

Did you hear that? Did you hear that little bit about the first book of the tenth kingdom? I know I did when I was like, seven. And also when I was twelve, and fifteen, and twenty-two, and today. Basically, any time I ever watched this series. And every time, I hoped that there was some sort of sequel in the works. 

But no! It never happens! However! If you look up Simon Moore, the creator and writer of the 10th Kingdom and find his AngelFire site page, you can see he did have plans, or at least a plot synopsis, for a part two of the series. I assume it was stuck in development hell or NBC and Hallmark never really gave it a shot.

Apparently it would be called House of Wolves, and it was set to take place in the kingdom of little red riding hood, the second kingdom. Wolf and Virginia happily run a restaurant together, and they have small a wolf baby, and Virginia wants to place a charm or something on her baby to make it look human. I don’t know.

Anyway, besides that, the second kingdom has intensive prejudices against wolves, which makes sense given the original fairytale, and there’s a school for young ladies, and Virginia and Wolf are set to get married under a full moon. There’s a lot of working parts, and it all sounds very exciting, but without a proper plot breakdown from Moore, it sounds like a big jumble

But I don’t know! I have faith in the guy. I think the story he crafted the first time around is incredibly memorable.

That said, when I think about how much time has passed since the series originally launched, naturally, much of the cast may not want to take part because they’ve moved onto other projects, and the cast that remains likely looks markedly old. 

And while they could recast the main characters and continue on with this story as-is, I can’t help but excitedly dwell on the alternatives.

My fantasy sequel would be that we get the main cast back, but given it’s been twenty-two years since the premier, we accept that twenty-two years have passed in-universe rather than a six-month time skip. Maybe it’s selfish, but I want to see what a fully-grown adult raised by Virginia and Wolf looks like.

To continue with this idea, maybe this son of theirs has never been able to visit the nine kingdoms since he was a child, and the entire family has effectively been cut off from the other dimension for unknown reasons. After all, the New York portal is amorphous and temporary, and is only available when engaged with on the opposite end. 

Before I move on to the rest of my idea, I did take notes throughout my original viewing of the series of loose threads or details that I find interesting and want to bring back around for a sequel.

We know that three traveling mirrors exist. The first was accidentally destroyed by Tony in Kissing Town, and the second one is now pristinely taken care of in the Palace of White. We learn through an anthropomorphic, all-knowing mirror that a third traveling mirror exists in their world, but it’s been long-lost in the great Northern Sea, sitting on a bed of barnacles.

The troll children are still alive. We don’t know what happens to them, but last we see, they are knocked out by Tony in the basement of the palace. However, there’s never any news that they’ve been apprehended, so we can safely assume all three escaped.

When Virginia is talking with Snow White in the cave, Snow White says this very vague line: “You will be a great adviser to other lost girls.” Who are those lost girls? We don’t know. That could be a throwaway line, but for our sake, that’s sequel bait.

Prince Wendell pardons all wolves in the nation. And while this is nice, this mostly seems like a hollow gesture, and something that would be difficult for their nation of people to accept. Knowing now what Simon Moore’s plans were for a sequel series, we can roughly say this is in line with his ideas.

Wendell hires Tony to singlehandedly bring upon an industrial revolution in the fourth kingdom. I’m not exactly a superfan of steampunk, but what I can get behind is steampunk with a magical twist.

So if we’re thinking back to our version of the sequel, I’m going to say that, unbeknownst to Wolf, Virginia, and their unnamed son, (let’s just call him Andrew, for simplicity’s sake) the second mirror that was pristinely kept by the palace of White has been destroyed by unknown insurgents.

Having been cut off from their world, Wolf, Virginia, and Andrew don’t receive any communication for years on end. That is, until they receive a trans-dimensional message from Tony, who indicates he is in trouble, and needs their help. But the message is fairly vague.

At the same time, Central Park inexplicably floods with oceanwater, and overlooking the scene from the now-refurbished apartment Virginia once lived in with Tony, our family understands that something miraculous has occurred: the ocean portal has been opened.

I’m not exactly a screenwriter, so I don’t have a fully fleshed-out idea on how they accomplish this yet, but I want them to travel through the portal and get shot out on the other end, finding themselves in the open ocean, trapped in the fishing net of some swashbuckling pirate trolls, along with the barnacle mirror.

Through hijinks, once they’re collected on board, I want there to be a separation of Virginia from Wolf and their son. Maybe they negotiate their freedom so long as one person stays behind, and taking responsibility, Virginia volunteers herself, much to the others’ dismay. In the aftermath, Wolf and Andrew are abandoned on the shores of the second kingdom.

Through a series of events, we learn that the second kingdom has invaded the fourth kingdom and vested control of its palace. We know the fourth king itself is very desirable land because of its strategic central location on their continent, so this isn’t a complete shock to Wolf or Andrew, who has been filled in on the old politics.

The rest of my plot a lot more loosey-goosey. I want there to be a new a character, a rogue, nymph-like girl wearing a red clock who has defected from a ladies school in favor of rebellion, and knows where Tony—along with Wendell, and a smattering of other royal cabinet members—are secretly sheltering. 

Part one, the first movie, would deal with the mystery of a flooded central park and our family’s travels through the portal, and the troubling negotiations with the pirates. Meanwhile part two begins with meeting this girl, who we’ll call Red, and traveling through the second kingdom. 

I want them to be chased and caught by second kingdom-appointed bounty hunters in league with the ladies school. I think this would also be a good place where it’s revealed that Red is the younger sister of the second kingdom’s queen, who is occupying the palace of White.

In order to continue their journey, Wolf and Andrew have to perform a heist and rescue her. Meanwhile, Virginia effectively vests control of the pirate crew by appealing to the female trolls and spouting feminist rhetoric, and talking about the advances of society in the tenth kingdom. With their help, they drop her off in the port town they last left Wolf and Andrew, and she’s accompanied by two of her troll crew.

Part three, perhaps Wolf, Andrew and Red come across Tony and the gang. My plot gets a bit vague here, because in truth, I only just came up with this as I typed up my script, so it’s really all in the air. 

There would be army of the second kingdom’s forces led by Red’ sister terrorizing the landscape, and maybe Virginia makes a detour to the troll kingdom and appeals to the three troll children from the first series. They know she didn’t kill their father, so perhaps things are fine. 

They’re still stupid, and while they don’t care for Virginia, they love chaos and war, so they back her by supplying her with an army. I don’t know. This is starting to sound like some Game of Thrones shit and I might be losing some of the magic and whimsy, so I’ll leave my ideas there.

The point is, the series is absolutely rife with sequel, or even series potential, and I’m mad at the world for letting Simon Moore and myself down. I need the content. Someone hire me for the content. I’m a writer. I have a master’s degree for it and everything.

And that leads me to the end of this video. We can call this point number eight simply for the sake of ending on a structured note:

#8: CONCLUSION

As a review of this entire video and the process of putting it together, I have to say I absolutely had a blast, especially because reviewing a smaller amount of content really gave me a lot of room to talk about the characters and the plots in more detail. I didn’t want this channel to just be a one-off: it’s something I really look forward to doing and have a lot of passion for,.

Beyond that, I’d like to thank you guys for watching, I sincerely hope you enjoyed. Please give this video a thumbs up and consider subscribing if that’s the case, because this is just the beginning. Also, comment if you’re a fan of the Tenth Kingdom, or gave it a shot because of this video, because I look forward to hearing what you guys have to say. Talk again soon.

[tapetum-lucidum]

Roadtrip AU....what are the main characters up to?

Morgan B Slater | Staring face against the window the entire time cause she's never been to a place in her life

Nora [Redacted] | Headphones on, totally ignoring everyone else to focus on one of her many electronic devices. Has an alarm set up on her phone for when they get close to a cool landmark, but otherwise barely even looks out the window. (will NOT share her snacks and food, and if you are playing a song she doesn't like loud enough to hear through her headphones, she WILL hack the playlist. even if its on a tape. No one is sure how exactly she does this.)

Arden Cassidy | Makes a very dedicated but tense navigator. They're good with maps and rarely miss a cue (not good at picking out places to go but by god they'll get us there), but may end up getting banished to the backseat for being Too meticulous. Oddly enough they're fine once that happens it's just if they have a Job To Do, they have to do it right

Val Malone | Suspicious of every rando at a gas station, but otherwise is very confused by every roadside attraction cause he’s barely been outside Boston before (“What do you mean there’s a CORN museum!?”). Is legitimately spooked by the hell is real billboards.

Iraia Miller | Sitting in the backseat (by choice), excitedly pointing out landmarks, making conversation, and enjoying the novelty of being on a road trip. If she's sitting next to anyone but Nora when they get tired, that person can expect to have part or all of a very sleepy snake on their person (especially Morgan, who's their closest friend of the group and thus the one who Iraia's most comfortable doing this with)

Keahi Lamarr | So Kiki is driving. She normally tries to get someone to play the license plate game with her for the duration of the trip. Her truck has one of those multi-disc cd players because she's retro, and loaded in there is the wildest assortment of music. We're talking old coldplay to tchaikovsky to doja cat to muppet show soundtrack. In the glove compartment there is an entire cd binder filled with other cds. Generally a very calm driver. Tunes out Cassidy's high strung navigation in a polite way.