#AND the fact that they just released a spinoff with Shadow

[krafterwrites]

All of this HAS to be setup for something, and I get a feeling we're going to find out what sometime next year

[atamascolily]

pmmm oneshots by subject

Just for fun, I put together a guide for my Madoka Magica oneshots on A03, sorted roughly by subject matter/theme. All are 7K or less, most in the 1-3K range. This is not meant to be a comprehensive list and will probably be instantly out of date, but can still serve as a good general reference. Enjoy!

inspired by art

Curation - The Law of Cycles isn't a person. It's an institution.

No Exit (The Nighthawks Remix) - Based on Nighthawks by Edward Hopper.

Balancing Act - Kyouko and Madoka take an unusual route to find Sayaka's witch, unaware Homura is watching from the shadows.

Marked - Junko Kaname invites Homura on a family trip to a local hot springs resort. Intrigued by Homura's refusal, Junko investigates--revealing a secret of her own along the way.

HomuMado Bittersweet Angst

The Night Parade of One Hundred Witches - Once a year on the anniversary of Walpurgisnacht, the streets of Mitakihara are home to a most unusual parade.

Flying Home - Soulmate Goose AU.

Memento - Mami does her best to help when Homura's grief over Madoka manifests in bouts of coughed-up spider lilies, though it isn't enough.

surreal weirdness

Orrery - Homura's apartment is out of this world.

Return to Sender - The epic story of Homura vs. junk mail.

Projections - Homura redecorates her apartment.

Splice - There's someone else out there besides Homura with control over time. The question is, what does she want? Scene 0 AU from before Scene 0 was released.

Witches

Absentia - As Homura investigates the mystery of Walpurgisnacht, one question eludes her: where is the witch's grief seed?

Strange Loop - The Stage-Constructing Witch narrates a familiar story with an unfamiliar twist.

Junk - Mitakihara's new magical girl duo has their work cut out for them when the Hoarding Witch manifests on the Kazamino City border.

Sticky Fingers - Kyouko needs Mami's help to get out of a sticky situation when a routine witch-hunt goes awry.

Trompe-l'oeil - Mami plays a deadly game of hide and seek against an elusive witch inside a reality-bending art gallery.

tea and sympathy - An invitation to visit the Dress-Up Witch means you will never be lonely again.

Fun and Games

Loosely connected series of one shots in a modern AU where the characters are playing an RPG based on the original series.

Fun and Games - It's another eventful session of the Puella Magi: Magica RPG: Mami one-shots a witch with her Tiro Finale attack, a new player joins the party, and Sayaka fails an important roll with devastating consequences.

She Who Fights Monsters - Kyubey convinces the gang to reconvene for a new campaign of the Puella Magi: Magica RPG, but all bets are off when Homura realizes the GM is up to his old tricks.

What Goes Around - Things get weird after Homura ousts Kyubey as GM of the ongoing Puella Magi: Magica RPG. Well, weirder, anyway. Homura and Mami Roommate Shenanigans

Inspired by Mitakihara Anti-materials spinoff manga. Domestic fluff AUs.

Moving Day - Homura moves in with Mami.

Soba ni Iru (Soba Noodles By Your Side) - Homura's first night in Mami's apartment.

Partnership - "I figured we could both use some tea," Tomoe said by way of greeting. "You had difficulty sleeping again, didn't you?"

Dirty Laundry - Homura finds a creative use for the washing machine.

Mami Character Studies

Childish Things - Mami stumbles across a box of childhood memorabilia.

half-life - Mami wished to live, but she didn't give any thought to what that life might look like, and now she's paying the price.

Twenty Facts About Mami Tomoe - Fragments from a tragedy in slow motion.

Fireflies - While searching for witches, Mami has a wondrous experience at an isolated shrine.

Fluff and Crack

Wash Cycle - "I like it," Sayaka said honestly. "It's just not what I expected heaven to be like, that's all."

The Adventure of the Sapphire Soul Gem - "Huh?" Sayaka said, unable to believe what she had just witnessed. "Did that goose just eat my soul gem?" Kyouko was faster on the uptake. "Quick, grab it!"

Final Form - Madoka and her friends get an unexpected glimpse of the Incubator life cycle.

Mermaid in My Tub - Kyouko intervenes in time to save Sayaka from becoming a witch--sort of. Now Sayaka's stuck living in the bathtub in Mami's apartment with a mermaid tail, and Kyouko is determined to make the best of it.

Sayaka Miki and the Terrible Horrible No-Good Very Bad Day

out of order - This place is a dead end, but so is she, and it's not like Sayaka has anywhere else to go at the moment, so she might as well make the most of it.

descent - The witch is still out there calling for its next victim, though not for much longer now that Sayaka's here. She's close enough to transform into her true self and leave this crude matter behind.

tainted - Caught up in despair, Sayaka rapidly loses touch with reality.

Miscellaneous Crossovers

No knowledge of the other fandom is needed.

Death Comes for the Incubator (x Sandman). Kyubey confronts his own mortality at last.

Memories of Somebody (x Bleach). A chance meeting between Homura and Ichigo reveals unexpected connections. Post-series (PMMM) and post-Memories of Nobody and Fade to Black (Bleach).

Palimpsest (x Sandman). A garden, a maze, a mysterious hooded figure. A book of pages written and erased again and again. In between timelines, Homura Akemi comes face to face with Destiny.

The Immortal Dragon's Disciple (x The Way of the Househusband). Homura Akemi finds an unlikely mentor in ex-yakuza turned househusband Tatsu Kuroda.

Good Morning, Ms. Saotome (x Sayonara, Zetsubou-sensei).  Junko Kaname sets up Ms. Saotome on a date with an eccentric teacher. Madoka has a front-row seat for what comes next.

xxxHolic-inspired Fusion AUs

No prior knowledge of xxxHolic is required.

asynchronous - The Dimension Witch dwells in a shop specializing in the granting of wishes... for a price.

a butterfly dreaming - Mami's perfect life comes to an end....but is the person who wished for this really so bad?

life in fantasy (the butterfly dreaming remix) - Mami Tomoe never, ever listens. Once again, Homura is left to cleans up the mess. Whumptober 2021

Cui Bono? - Mami wakes up in Homura's apartment, surprised and grateful to have survived her disastrous encounter with the Dessert Witch. But her host's contradictory behavior raises an important question: what exactly is Homura getting out of this?

Careful What You Wish For - Trapped in the Box Witch's labyrinth and paralyzed with guilt over Mami's death, Madoka is rescued by the most unexpected person imaginable.

Rude Awakening - Homura's latest fight with Mami might be a dream, but what awaits her upon waking is all too real.

Sticks and Stones - After a fight between Sayaka and an unknown opponent ends with the former grievously injured, Mami reveals an unexpected connection between them. Null Magical Girl Weirdness

Unlikely to make sense if you're unfamiliar with the Null Magical Girl light novel.

Null and Void - Fourteen-year-old Kosane's attempt to contract with Kyubey unexpectedly fails.

null thoughts, head empty - While waiting for the space-time collapse, Kosane and Kyubey discuss Incubator biology and the nature of the human soul.

Schrodinger's Incubator - The only thing more impressive than solving the perfect locked-room murder mystery is preventing it from happening in the first place. Miscellaneous

Tracks - Madoka searches for Sayaka along the train tracks.

Inventory - Homura sorts through the contents of her shield.

Family Business - This time, Madoka and Sayaka are rescued from a witch's labyrinth by the Tomoe twins, a magical sibling duo gifted with a flair for the dramatic, deadly aim with rifles, and fabulous fashion sense. It still ends badly for everyone.

Gingerbread - Nagisa and Mami make gingerbread together.

Parallels - Despite everything they have in common, Mami and Homura never quite connect. Then again, parallel lines never meet, except maybe at infinity.

Power Sources - Madoka and Sayaka discuss the topics they chose for their science essays, unaware of the relevance to their future lives.

Five Things That Probably Never Happened in Any Timeline (And One That Definitely Did) - Visions of a kinder, gentler magical girl show that never was. [based on the opening credits]

[toptophat]

Top Hat's Thoughts of Sonic Prime season 3 - Spoilers

INFINITY/10 - Dread was there for a great amount and that's all I need! Such grace, such elegance, and knuckles! 😍

(Ok I'll be a bit serious)

I really liked the season, i kinda prefer the prior seasons though due to the better pacing but it was still pretty fun

It was kinda cringe (for me personally) seeing Nine spout out the classic bad guy one liners (you know the ones) but it didn't bother me too much!

What DID kinda bother me was how certain things just get solved sometimes and it's not just this season! (E.g Rusty's redemption in season 2, Nine's redemption, and whatever the hell the resistance did to get Dread out of his depressive funk at the start of the season 3 off screen)

Quick side note, but did anyone notice the fact that SP kinda referenced the Abridged Sonic OVA twice?!?! That's pretty neat!

The Chaos Council is iconic, they are too flawless to have anything wrong with them and I need a sitcom with just them!

Shadow was such a chad for carrying Sonic to safety and honesty I think the show was definitely written by a Sonadow fan! (Go ahead, prove me wrong once you see how Shadow holds him so delicately in his arms)

I also seized the opportunity to call Grim Big, "Notorious B.I.G" nyehehe

The Roses were fun to see as they teamed up, but the part with Rusty and releasing the bird from her center kinda made me stare in confusion because:

Prepare for a small rant...

1. Please tell me you've been feeding that bird!

2. Your journey of self reflection literally went like this - "I love the Chaos Council" *Chaos Council leave her* "I hate the Chaos Council"

Look, I'm not expecting her to be this completely complex antihero or anything but holy shit! She's a goddamn robot made by and for the Chaos Council, how did it only take a minute after they desert her for her to switch sides??? At least with Nine, you can make some excuse that it was "human" emotion (even though I'm surprised that EVERYONE forgave him quickly) but I'm pretty sure a literal robot can't just speedrun a Zuko simulator

So yeah, as you can tell, that bird speech didn't mean shi- -ANYWAY! Overall, Sonic Prime as a whole was "way past cool ", I need a Chaotic Council spinoff, Dread Supremacy, Notorious B.I.G, I had nothing to complain about for the Rouges (they were fantastic), And justice for the birb!

See ya!

[horanghaejamjam]

Candlelit Dances: Teaser

“I told you not to come back here.”

“I needed to see you again.”

“Why, so you could say goodbye? Break my heart even more as I watch you give yourself to my brother?”

“I won’t do it!”

“You have to.”

“I refuse!”

“Why are you being so stubborn?”

“Because it’s not him that I love, it’s you.”

“You know I can’t resist you...”

Summary: It was a relationship that was destined to fail. He couldn’t betray his family and you were set to marry his brother. Despite this, fate had odd ways of working and you found yourself willing to do anything to be with Minghao, even if only for a night. 

Pairing: Vampire Prince Minghao x Female Reader

Genres: Fluff, Smut, Slight Angst

Special Notes: Spinoff story to “Vampire Kisses”, while this can be read as a standalone story it is recommended you read Vampire Kisses first to get a full understanding of the world and references. Forbidden relationship and vampire au. Smut notes will be added in the actual story as to not spoil anything. Setting is very Gothic/partially dated despite the fact the story takes place in the present/future depending on how you wish to interpret it.

Warnings: 18+ obviously, vampire themes including biting, blood drinking, and mentions of killing, forbidden relationship, potentially cheating aspects depending on how you view it (ie: reader is engaged to Jun but not romantically involved with him)

Estimated Release date: Between the first or second weekend of March To be tagged when Candlelit Dances is released please comment below or message me. 

Teaser:

The library seemed much colder than you remembered it to be, though perhaps that was your imagination. The welcoming atmosphere that usually invited you was replaced with a distant sense of dread. It hit you like a splash of ice water and made you freeze for a moment, almost debating turning around and returning to the comfort of your room for the night. However, you were determined to finish what you started, so you took a deep breath before continuing on your path. Almost on autopilot you navigated through various bookshelves and desks until you reached the familiar wooden door. You didn’t bother knocking, inviting yourself in and gently closing the door behind you. 

Minghao wasn’t at his desk like he normally was, instead you found him leaned against the wall as he looked out through the floor length window into the garden. His body was turned towards you, but his gaze remained focus on the view below him, giving you the perfect view of the man you loved. His shirt was still tucked in, though the first few buttons were undone and his sleeves were rolled up past his elbow, his cloak having been tossed carelessly onto his chair. One hand was tucked in his pocket while the other was mindlessly twirling a wine glass. His rings shone in the light and casted a reflection on the glass, only covered by the sloshing of the remaining red liquid inside. His expression was as sharp and stoic as ever, but you knew him well enough to know he was hiding something. There was a distance in his eyes, gazing at nothing as he was lost in his own thoughts. His bangs fell into his eyes and cast a shadow over his face, something he normally hated but right now didn’t seem to bother with. He looked just as beautiful as he always did, but you could tell he was hurting and that made your own heart hurt in return. 

Minghao knew you were there, he could sense your presence before you even walked into his study. The familiar aura you carried that had once been warm and inviting, but was now a dull blade stabbing at him every time he even thought of getting close to you. You could feel it too, the distance that had torn you apart over the last few days, the pain of wanting to hold him and promise you’ll never leave but knowing you couldn’t. You knew that he saw you, his eyes flicking over to you if only for a moment before returning back to the window. He didn’t move or make any effort to acknowledge you, merely pretending like you weren’t there. It hurt to be ignored by him this way, though you figured that you deserved it. Honestly you didn’t know what reaction you had been expecting after what happened, but you weren’t prepared for it to hurt this much. Perhaps coming here was a bad idea after all, that’s what you told yourself with a defeated sigh. You were about to turn and leave when you heard the male clear his throat. Looking back, you watched as Minghao straightened up and finished the rest of his wine before finally speaking.

“What are you doing here?” 

Moodboard:

↪ Click here to see my other Seventeen stories

[raeloganthesonic06fangirl]

Honestly, there's a decent chance that some of the storyboard & character artists for that new Sonic game WERE Shadow fangirls, back in 2005; If they were teenagers then, they'd be in their 30s now. I've heard that Star Wars has a similar thing happening, where people who grew up watching the movies are now writing the episodes for the spinoff shows.

I was thinking the exact same thing. Like, I saw that wings reveal and was like

"... I wonder how many are on the team right now that were THERE?"

Pretty sure as far back as Shadow's self titled game that we started really having major fan input.

I think we need to remember things like that Bentley Jones started out doing fan remixes before getting signed on to help arrange the ShTH OST, and then he got to do "Dreams of an Absolution" for Sonic 06, and those awesome remixes and covers as well his original work. In fact, if I recall, he's been signed in for some contributions for the upcoming movie.

And then there's Sonic Mania, which was an officially released project headed by a team of mostly fans of the retro era. And the comics have had artists that grew up on the 90s and 00s content. Elise's English VA, Lacey Chabert, was a Sonic fan growing up. Heck, the late Michael Jackson wanted to contribute to Sonic 3's music back in the 90s and it shows in the way that music was just fire.

At this point, half of Modern Sonic is pretty much run by elder fans, ha ha.

[beevean]

My very, very first Sonic game was Boom: Shattered Crystal (only after I managed to get myself over the fact I found Boom!Knuckles look terrible in a terrifying way XD XD), and I must say, it's quite a surprise to me how they managed to have such differences between SC and RoL despite the two games being part of the same spin-off. Like you said in your earlier post, RoL had an entirely failed attempt to make Sonic a lone wolf kind of dude, who had to learn to rely on his friends and who got (not even that correctly) vilified by the World of Jerkass about him releasing Lyric... after getting in that situation in a bid to protect his friends he apparently didn't value (aka, the situation doesn't even hold. Unless you want to make a case that Sonic deems them not strong enough to tackle an easily-winnable fight and doesn't value them in that way, but it's been so long that I can't really recall all the details of that scene). Meanwhile, I checked out the SC script real quick, and there Sonic seems so much more like a happy-go-lucky "we can rescue Amy together with the four of us!! Teamwork! :D Power of friendship!!! :D :D :D" kind of dude. And those sentiments are mostly returned by everyone else! That doesn't even touch on the fact they meet Lyric for the first time in both games, or the fact that the Ancients are, from the top of my head, hardly if ever mentioned in the tv show. Sure, a few of their technologies like the Enerbeam were made use of, but with such a strong focus on the Ancients in both games, it feels off to me that I can't even recall if they played a role in the TV show, despite me religiously following season 1 at the time. I feel like it's not that good a sign if your fancy new spin-off series has three entirely different stories in the various media produced for it, but I also wonder why they didn't try to make it more streamlined? To me, this whole situation with all the discrepancies makes it come across a little bit as if Boom truly wasn't so important to Sega after all.

What an introduction 😂

SC is like... the middle child of the Boom games. Everyone knows how bad RoL is, and FaI gained notoriety for being surprisignly decent. I don't know one thing about SC, except that it had a brainwashed Shadow (in RoL he fights Sonic because he's a prick lmao). Oh, and apparently Stick is in SC, but Amy was kidnapped? While in RoL Stick wasn't even mentioned because it took place before the cartoon.

I watched almost every episode of Boom (I think I only skipped the Misery parody). I can confirm that the show has zero lore, and the only connection to the games is the Enerbeam thing.

It's odd. SEGA clearly invested in Boom and wanted it to be a solid spinoff, RoL was one of the three exclusive WiiU games and between 2014 and 2016 nothing but Boom products came out. I remember even theories that the Avatar in Forces was supposed to be Boom Sonic! (notice the lanky build and the use of something similar to the Enerbeam) But there was no way it would become popular (it was basically Sonic in name only), so after the failure of RoL, they just... let it quietly die, both the games, and the cartoon that was aired at ungodly hours until it was cancelled.

[meteorstricken]

This ask is about the post you reblogged with the Ultima voting and I agree: Ultima is not a perfectly written character at all, but most of his critics are definitely comparing him with other FF Villains.

The funny thing is if he was written like a revisit of characters like Sephiroth, Kefka or even Garland pre or post-Stranger of Paradise; everyone would whine anyway.

Which is ironic, as technically he IS a revisit of a FF villain: The Final Fantasy Tactics' Ultima, who basically acted the exact same way as he did, with the sole exception that she didn't act as a god creator. Said game that some critics also whine that FFXVI isn't: a dark and tragic story for the heroes, realistic politic drama, mysterious conspiracy in the shadows, powerful magical beings- wait what do you mean FFXVI also has that? ...And yet, funnily enough, it was reviled when first released in 1997 because it was a spinoff, had a weird and complicated gameplay and THE new hot stuff FFVII came first.

Life is funny that way. If annoying...

Yeahhhh...There is a long and terrible tradition with Final Fantasy in general where the newest game gets lambasted as awful until the next one comes out, at which point the previous starts to be hailed as a misunderstood masterpiece.

And I'm just not into that. Life is short and the clock is never not ticking. If I dislike a game enough that I'd want to publicly bitch about it, I just stop playing it. No sense in giving it more oxygen, and even less sense in giving others with a different opinion grief.

As for Ultima, my argument was that there's nothing particularly wrong with how he's written, but that some people just don't like him because he's not their favorite archetype. I see a lot of that--people deciding that "not my favorite kind"= "flawed writing". This is annoying to me, because it shows that some folks just don't know how to discern between their personal opinion and objective analysis, or are so attached to their opinions that they treat them as facts, which in my book is a symptom of extreme arrogance. And what usually follows on the heels of this arrogance is mean-spirited behavior towards other fans who don't agree with them...and on and on.

[p5x-theories]

Thoughts on Future Collaborations

Collaborations are a fact of life for mobile gacha games, so I began wondering how P5X would handle them.  My first thought was potential events for the releases of P5T and P3Re, but then I realized that P5X may not be out of development by then.  So here’s my guesses at what may logically come in the future:

Other P5 spin-offs, past and future: If they’re planning any more it would make the most financial sense to use P5X for cross-promotion.  This is also the place they’d most likely go for future party members, given that they’re already part of the brand.  But on the other hand, maybe being part of the brand would mean that any spin-off thieves wouldn’t be reserved for events, they’d just be part of later versions the game?

Non-5 Persona games: The new SEES costumes in Reload would make great stand-ins for metaverse outfits.  And if P5X is still around by the time Persona 6 comes out there will absolutely be a collaboration.

Going outside the Persona brand is where things start to get iffy.

Other ATLUS games: SMT would be the most likely option.  Catherine and Metaphor might happen too, given their shared development teams with Persona.

Other Perfect World games: It’s easy to organize collaborations when you don’t have to negotiate with some other company’s lawyers…

Other gacha games: Persona 5 has had collaborations in the past, so it will probably continue to do so when the P5 gacha game launches.

But what form these collaborations would take is another question.

First off, I don’t expect them to add any party members that can’t remain in the pool.  Party members in this game require enough resources in this game that creating a new unit that you stop making money off of after the event is over.  And they might not want characters from outside the P5 brand in the game at all, depending on what the licensing agreement says.

But you know what could work for limited events?  Stuff like weapons and skins, things that don’t require too many resources to create but still look cool enough that players will want them.

Sorry for sending you my rambling thoughts, but I have speculation on this game and no one to share it with except for your blog.  Also, the reason I always send in submissions instead of asks is because they no longer allow people without accounts to send asks.

No worries, you’re good! That’s what this blog is for- I actually made it both because I wished there was a blog collecting official P5X news (and fanart), and also because I wanted to post theories somewhere and see what other people thought, hehe.

I think you’re right that P5X probably won’t release before P3R, let alone P5T; honestly, I’d be kind of shocked if it did. I can see P5′s various spinoff thieves getting added eventually though, especially given the little traces of Strikers in the P5X data already! Not sure whether events or just added story makes more sense for them- you bring up a good point with that, and I could see them going either way, I think. Honestly, I could even imagine them doing both an event and (possibly later) added story for any future P5 spinoffs that may happen?

I could see at least outfits/alternate skins and weapons based on the other Persona games showing up in P5X, I agree. I’m also kind of expecting there will be some form of those Velvet Room challenge battles involving the P3 and P4 protagonists from Royal here in P5X as well, given that Izanagi’s in the data as both a battle icon and a 3D model... along with Asterius, so Shadow Labrys may be joining that...? Though I suppose they could just be added as extra Personas in the gacha, similar to how they’re DLC in P5R. Adding in the actual teams from other Persona games as playable characters does seem a little more iffy to me, though, just because I don’t know how protective Atlus is over them/how determined Atlus is to keep them separate outside of games specifically indicated as crossovers, like the PQ games and Arena. Obviously I’d love to have them, but I could imagine why Atlus might not let them, so I suppose we’ll have to wait and see on that one.

Similarly, I wouldn’t be surprised by at the very least alternate skins/weapons referencing other SMT games, other Perfect World games, and maybe even other gacha games? That’s not that different from many of the DLC outfits in P5/P5R, so it feels like there’s enough of a precedent. Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if P5 keeps having crossovers with other gacha games, too, hah? Not sure whether P5X will, to the extent of something like P5X characters appearing in other gacha games or vice versa, though... I feel like I don’t really know enough about that to speculate on it much.

Either way, though, I look forward to seeing how that all ends up going!

[mrspettyferr]

Heyy. So i just want to say something. from gwynriel perspectives and i try to understand why they are so convinced the next book is about az and gwyn. Of cos they included unending shadow theories , elain's useless womb, weirdo hobby gardening, a secret lovely beauty quote (dont forget it was to described elain) and so on. So here, they said that yes elain would appear in the next book bcs az would reject her (they said az only want elain just for sex ) and az finally begin to realize he loves gwyn. I know this is kinda funny. And they go on and on that acotar6 is about elain finally accept the mating bond with lucien. I know most of these theories doesnt make sense but i want to know your opinion on these theories. Love y'all ❤

I think it’s fairly obvious many of them (not all, I never like to generalize) frankly don’t understand Elain as a character. They have a perception of her, one they don’t like, and they like Az (and Lucien), so they want to cling to anyone that could possibly sink that ship. Which means trying to fit a narrative around that couple.

Some of those theories are comical. So let me just lay down some facts and common sense.

Looking at this from a plot perspective:

Koschei will be released from the lake, because there’s no way in hell a final battle with the villain will happen with him chained up. 

He needs all four Dread Trove items to be released from his lake, so the fourth has to be found in book 5 so he can be free in book 6.

Only Feyre, Elain, and/or Nesta can find it. Feyre and Nesta have had their main journeys

It’s Elain’s turn, especially considering she already volunteered to go find it. And its veiled in shadows. (hint hint who will help her)

The Feysand bonus scene did not highlight "let's help one sister before we help the other" and "we haven't seen everything Elain can offer" just to say ACTUALLY, let's wait and skip over her for a book.

Looking at this from a romantic subplot perspective:

Elain and Lucien have regressed, not progressed. 

Lucien is now showing discomfort regarding Elain and Elain visibly shrinks into herself and loses her newfound boldness.

Solstice would have been a perfect time to show progression - but nope, SJM did the opposite.

Lucien has a home with Vassa and is said to be so close with her, he can’t even be trusted to do his job. 

Azriel’s pov confirms mutual romantic feelings between Elain and Az.

Az’s moodiness, avoidance of the river house, the reason he won’t sit near the fire, Nesta’s knowledge of his secret, their shared charged look - all point to the advancement of a romantic subplot with Elain

As stated above, Az will be needed to help Elain with the fourth Trove item

Bottom line: Vucien and Elriel continued to progress in ACOSF, and this book needs to lead us to the next romance.

Looking at this from SJM’s actual words:

“I realized at that point I wanted to tell not just this story about Nesta and Cassian, but also I wanted to tell the story of all these other characters who were in the earlier books as kind of side characters.”

“I know what the first two will be about.”

“But I do know that the Cassian and Nesta book is next. And I know what I want to write for the second spinoff novel, but I’m keeping the door open after that.”

“And I remember the entire time I was ripping out ivy, and was trying to get some semblance of order into the garden beds, I went into Elain’s head. Elain is a gardener, and everything I did became research for her book.”

Many of the seeds for this book (ACOSF) are already planted in ACOFAS, along with seeds for some of the other spinoff novels.

“Do you have another book planned for the third sister?” - “Yes--yes to everything. As soon as Nesta and Elain came back onto the page in ACOMAF, I knew that they would have journeys beyond what the readers were seeing.”

I may have hated math classes growing up but I can do some simple addition. If the spinoffs are about characters from the original trilogy, and seeds were planted in ACOFAS (before Gwyn existed), and SJM is researching Elain’s book, and she knows what the next book is about....

Elain is book 5. 

Those theories are wishful thinking and disregard facts and common sense.

(Note: I'm not saying Gwyn won't play a role in the next two books, or that she won't have a novella or something in the future. I'm simply saying she's not getting a full length book before Elain and likely won't be a main pov until after the Koschei story wraps up.)

[crusherthedoctor]

Can we have some unpopular Sonic opinions?

I tried to cram in a lot, so I hope this satisfies you. :P I tried to stick to the ones that I haven't brought up quite as often, since by this point, we all know that I think IDW's storytelling is dire, SA2's story is overrated, X Eggman is an embarrassing portrayal (at least from season 2 onwards), Blaze shouldn't be handcuffed to Silver, Shadow's backstory had issues with or without the Black Arms, Neo Metal Sonic looks silly, etc. But anyway, here we go:

- Knuckles may be tricky to incorporate into plots that don't relate to Angel Island, but making him obsessed with his duties is no better than having him forget about Angel Island entirely.

- I like Marine, and never found her annoying. Oh, I understood what they were trying to do with her, but I honestly wasn't put off by her, and found her Aussie lingo more endearing if anything. Since her debut was during the period in my life where where I couldn't stand Sonic himself, I instead thought he was irritating (and hypocritical) for getting annoyed with her for doing shit he would often be guilty of.

- Silver is just as guilty of being shoehorned into games and plots as the Deadly Six are. Having more fans than the latter is irrelevant, since we're still talking about a character who constantly has to time travel in order to be present.

- Speaking of Silver, if he has to stick around, please do something different with him. They've pulled the doomed future routine multiple times now, and it's been boring every single time. I wasn't interested when it involved Iblis. I wasn't interested when it involved Knuckles drinking the edgy Kool Aid. I wasn't interested when it involved a council of dumbasses... give it a rest already.

- The Tails Doll can work as a mildly creepy thing, with maybe more to it than meets the eye when it's time for a boss fight or what have you. But the memes about him stealing your soul are just dumb, and I thought it was dumb even back in my teenage youth.

- “Eggman is supposed to be clownish!” Yeah, well he's also meant to be a genuine villain with a 300 IQ. These qualities don't have to be mutually exclusive.

- “Sonic is supposed to have attitude!” Yeah, well that's not the same thing as being an absolute cunt. Sonic was only ever meant to come off as having an edge compared to Mario. He was never meant to be a GTA-tier protagonist.

- Rouge is not a villain, and never was a villain. Literally the whole point of her role in SA2 was to reveal that she was working against Eggman and Shadow the whole time, albeit using sneakier tactics to do so. You'd think all those people who exult SA2's story would remember this, but apparently not. She barely even qualifies as an anti-hero, since aside from stealing the Master Emerald, she rarely does anything morally questionable otherwise. She's got a lot more good in her than people give her credit for.

- Captain Whisker is a better Eggman Nega than the actual Eggman Nega. And as far as robot characters in this franchise go, Johnny's design is pretty underrated.

- I don't like Iblis or Mephiles, but I DO like Solaris, and it annoys me that it was out of focus for most of the story due to all the time spent on its less interesting halves. Had they kept the backstory with the Duke and his experiments, and worked from there, I think they could have provided an interesting contrast with Chaos (since Solaris can also qualify as a monster with a sympathetic backstory) instead of recycling the surface level schtick.

- Black Doom may technically be just as bad as Mephiles, Nega, Scourge, Mimic, etc, since he's yet another villain with one-note characterization and fucked over Eggman. But because he never gained a disproportionate fandom, he doesn't annoy me to the same extent. It's easier to ignore him by comparison, and his Dr. Claw voice and face shaped like a lady's delicate part make him enjoyable to mock.

- Likewise, while Lyric is also on the same level as these other villains, it's easier to dismiss him because I was never invested in the Boom games anyway, and being an obvious alternate universe (compared to Sonic X or IDW, which retain the Modern designs and plot elements), it never had an effect on the main series. I also unironically like his design, and if nothing else, at least this snake didn't start a hypnotism fetish across the internet.

- Sally - and the rest of the Freedom Fighters for that matter - have had their importance in the franchise severely inflated. They may have been lucky to be the face of popular media (SatAM and Archie), but they're not these magnificent entities that the game characters are but a speck of dust in comparison to. Having a “legacy” doesn't make them more entitled to shit than any other character, old or new.

- Conceptually, the treasure hunting gameplay is one of the better alternate gameplay styles IMO. But it was let down in SA2 by its one track minded radar (the levels may have been big, but I don't think that would have been an issue on its own if the radar was better). If they brought it back and made it more like SA1's treasure hunting, I'd be all for it, although it would probably be better suited for a spinoff title.

- This goes for a lot of games, but when it comes to 2D, I prefer sprites over models. Not that the Rush models are bad (though the ones in Chronicles sure as fuck are), but the sprites in Mania and the Advance trilogy are just so charming and full of character.

- I actually like Marble Zone. Yeah, the level design is a bit blocky, but I love the concept of an underground temple prison, mixed with lava elements in a zone that otherwise isn't a traditional volcano level.

- I also like Sandopolis Zone. Again, completely understand why it's not the most popular zone around, but I've been a sucker for the Ancient Egyptian aesthetic since childhood (you can thank Crash 3 for that), and Act 1 is visually stunning.

- I prefer the JP soundtrack for Sonic CD over the US version overall... but I also prefer Sonic Boom over You Can Do Anything.

- SA2's soundtrack isn't bad by any means - I love Rouge's tracks, and The Last Scene is one of my favourite pieces of music - but as far as variety goes, it's a step down from SA1's soundtrack.

- If Sonic X-Treme had been released, it probably would have been unenjoyable and confusing. Whatever your thoughts on SA1, it was probably the better option between the two as far as Sonic's first legitimate translation into 3D goes.

- I have no qualms with Modern Sonic and the other Modern designs and characters, but I also fully acknowledge that changing gears from Adventure onwards - and doing it with a great amount of fanfare - was always going to create one of the biggest divides in the fandom, and fans shouldn't act surprised that this happened. The fact that they felt the need to hype up a new design and direction in the first place (compared to Mario, who has mostly been the same since the beginning, with only the occasional minor change with little fanfare) also indicates that they weren't confident enough in Sonic and his universe being the way it was, which often gets ignored by all the “SEGA have no confidence!!!” complaints you see with their recent games.

- Unleashed did not deserve the incredibly harsh reviews it received back in the day... but it doesn't deserve its current sacred cow status either. It had more effort put into it than '06 to be sure, and I can respect that, but much of it was misguided effort, and even if you like the Werehog, you have to admit that the idea came at the absolute worst time. The intro cutscene may be awesome, as is the Egg Dragoon fight, but 2% doesn't make up the entire game. Chip was also quite annoying, and I wasn't particularly sad when he pressed F in the chat at the end.

- On the other hand, while Colours definitely has its shortcomings, and people have every right to criticse those shortcomings, a lot of its most vocal detractors tend to have a stick up their arse about the game because people actually enjoyed it, and it had a gimmick that people actually liked. Yes, it may have been the first game to have those writers everyone hates, but then SA1 was the first game to give the characters alternate gameplay styles and have other villains upstage Eggman, so...

- Forces is absolutely not on the level of '06. It's nowhere close. A game being flawed does not make it the next '06, clickbait YouTubers. Or should I say, the game they want to retroactively apply '06's reception to, since they've been trying hard to magically retcon '06's own quality...

- To echo @beevean, ALL of the 3D stories have their issues. SA1 is probably the most well-rounded of them on the whole, but even that one isn't perfect.

- To echo another opinion, although I do love SA1, I'm not crazy over the idea of a remake, and would prefer them to just take Sonic's gameplay from SA1 and work from there. Because with a remake, you're stuck in a hard spot: Do you keep it the way it is bar the expected graphical upgrades, and risk accusations of not doing anything to actually improve the experience? Or do you try to address past criticisms, and risk the wrath of the fans who will inevitably go on a #NotMyAdventure crusade about it? What people fail to consider is that the Crash and Spyro remakes were accepted gracefully because their original iterations were still unanimously beloved for the most part, whereas SA1 - and especially SA2 - have always been divisive, and have only gotten moreso over the years.

- People take their preferences for the character's voice actors too seriously. I have my own favourites like anyone else, but I don't make a big deal out of it.

- And with fandom voice actors, they usually focus too much on doing a basic impression of their preferred official voice actor, and not enough on the acting. So you end up getting a lot of fan voices who sound like decent impressions of Ryan Drummond or Jason Griffith on the surface, but they sound utterly empty beyond that impression, because there's no oomph or depth to the actual emotions. They think about the actor rather than the character, when it should really be the other way around.

- The thing with Ian Flynn is that he is capable of telling a decent story, and he can portray some characters well. But he's proven time and time again that everything will go off the rails if he's given too much freedom (ironic, given how quick he is to point the finger at mandates when something goes wrong).

- Ian Flynn and Shiro Maekawa are not the only people in the world who are allowed to write for Sonic. I understand that one should be cautious when seeking out new writing talent, but for all the fandom's accusations of playing it safe, they sure aren't in a rush to experiment outside of their own comfort zone.

- And of course, the big one: You don't fix the franchise's current problems by crawling back to its previous problems. It's much more helpful and constructive to discuss the good and bad alike with each of the games. Less “THIS GOOD, MODERN BAD”, and more “This could work, but maybe without that part...”

[clonewarsarchives]

Inside 'Star Wars: The Clone Wars'

By: Gerri Miller  (original article link on howstuffworks)

Sources

George Lucas interviewed August 4, 2008

Dave Filoni interviewed September 11, 2008

The sci-fi phenomenon that began more than 30 years ago with a movie about a galaxy long ago and far, far away has expanded exponentially ever since with sequels, prequels, books, games and animated spinoffs. Although the animated "Star Wars: The Clone Wars" movie, released this summer, has to date grossed a less than stellar $34 million, it was an offshoot of creator George Lucas' mission to create a TV series, and it served its purpose as a promotional tool for the weekly "Clone Wars" episodes that premiere on Cartoon Network Oct. 3, 2008.

Focused on the conflict briefly referred to in the original "Star Wars," the galactic civil war takes place in the period between "Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones" and "Episode III: Revenge of the Sith." The Clone Wars pit the Grand Army of the Republic led by the Jedi Knights against the Separatists and their Droid Army, led by Count Dooku, a Jedi turned Sith Lord aligned with the evil Darth Sidious. Many of the characters from the "Star Wars" universe are involved, including Yoda, Obi-Wan Kenobi and young Anakin Skywalker, before he was tempted to the Dark Side and became Darth Vader.

"I was lamenting the fact that in 'Episode II,' I started the Clone Wars, and in 'Episode III,' I ended the Clone Wars, and I never actually got to do anything on the Clone Wars," says Lucas. "It's like skipping over World War II."

To remedy that omission, he tapped Dave Filoni, an animator (Nickelodeon's "Avatar: the Last Airbender" series) and passionate "Star Wars" fan, to bring "The Clone Wars" to TV.

Ensconced at Big Rock Ranch, near Lucas' Skywalker Ranch headquarters in Marin County, Cali., Filoni and his team of artists and computer animators are making 22 episodes in season one and have nearly two more seasons written.

"We're way ahead. We've been doing this ever since I finished 'Revenge of the Sith,'" says Lucas, who hopes to do at least 100 installments.

He and Filoni collaborate on everything from story to design to execution in translating the "Star Wars" universe for television. It's a daunting creative, technical and logistic task, as we'll explain in the following sections.

Building the Universe

How do you scale down an IMAX-size spectacle for television and still have it make an impact, especially on a small screen budget? That's just one of the problems Dave Filoni has to solve.

"'Star Wars' is very famous for the scale of it, and how convincing it looks. So when you're doing a weekly television series, you have to figure out how to do things on that level," he notes. "Sometimes it forces you to be creative and come up with solutions that are better than if you can shoot everything you want," he continues, preferring to consider budgetary constraints a creative incentive rather than a limitation. "The team here is challenged to come up with these giant battles. We haven't shied away from anything."

While he did some of the initial character design, subsequently, Filoni has spent most of his time supervising other artists and animators, who number around 70 in-house and another 80 or so at facilities in Singapore and Taipei.

"Everything is written here, and the story and design and editing are all done here. The animation and lighting are done overseas, and sometimes some modeling as well," he outlines.

­"I meet with George to talk about the episodes and he hands out a lot of the storylines and main ideas for the stories. I'll draw while he's talking and show him the sketch," Filoni continues. "That way we communicate right off the bat about what something might look like."

At any given time, the director notes, episodes are in various stages of completion, "from designing to working on a final cut, or adding sound and color-correction. I have four episodic directors to help me, who each have an episode they're managing."

Rather than use computer animation to duplicate the live-action films' characters or continue in the very stylized vein of the 2004-2005 "Clone Wars" micro-series, "We kind of shot for the middle," says Filoni, who endeavored to blend a 2-D esthetic with 3-D technology.

"The 3-D model makers and riggers who worked on the prequels dealt with the height of realism to create convincing digital characters. I knew that we weren't going to be able to do that for the series. And we wanted it to be different than a live-action feature, to get away from photo-realism. It was a choice to simplify something in the character models, the same way we would do things in a 2-D show."

So how did Filoni stay true to the "Star Wars" legacy in this newest installment? Read on to find out.

Clone Style

Taking some inspiration from the earlier cartoon series, Filoni

approached the characters as a 2-D animator would, "but stylized the face a little more. If you look at Anakin, he has certain edges and lines in his face. I would draw an edge or a line that might be unnaturally straight or curved, and that would play into the lighting of it. I tried to sculpt in 3-D the way I would draw or sculpt an image in 2-D, with shadow and light. I wanted it to look like a painting -- you see a textured, hand-painted style on every character. I have texture artists who literally paint every single character right down to their eyeball, because I wanted that human touch on everything."

Advances in computer animation have allowed Filoni to accomplish much more than he would have been able to in traditional 2-D. "For eight years I worked just with a pencil. I never touched a computer. But working with George, we try to look at computers as an incredibly advanced pencil. The technical side helps the creative, artistic side," he says.

Battles filled with huge numbers of soldiers can be rendered faster than ever before, but they still have to be created, along with every other prop and character in an enormous universe. "'Star Wars' is so complex in that you're building a whole galaxy. We go to many different planets," Filoni reminds. "So every rock, tree, blade of grass, native vehicle -- every asset -- needs design. We had to create a whole bunch of assets for each episode, and the budget goes up for each element you have. Once you build it, you have it, but we can't go to a different planet and have the same chair there," he laughs. "On a schedule where we need those things right away, it's difficult to get it all built."

Since "The Clone Wars" is chronologically sandwiched between "Clone Wars" and "Revenge of the Sith," it has been a mandate for the creators to stay consistent with the mythology. "That's probably one of the trickiest things," admits Filoni. "We always have to keep in mind what the characters are thinking and feeling at the beginning of this and at the end. You have a lot of room to play with when you're in the middle, but you have to remember what people say in the third movie. With characters like Obi-Wan or Anakin or Padme, I have to pay very careful attention that it will hook up. And then there's the expanded universe of "Star Wars" novels and video games. I try to be aware of it all and work it in, because fans really appreciate it."

Filoni hopes to attract existing fans and create new ones, especially among the younger generation, but admits doing the latter may be easier. "One thing we have that's different from any movie that came before is we're an animated series. But there's an instant reaction to the word animation that it's for kids. How you get around that is with the stories you tell. We'll have our snow battles and we'll also have our lighter 'Return of the Jedi' moments. Some episodes lean older, some younger. But in the end it has a broad appeal," he believes.

The recent "Clone Wars" movie (out on DVD Nov. 11 ) served as a stand-alone prequel to introduce the characters at this point in time. In contrast, "The series has its small arcs and shows you the war from across a broad spectrum of episodes. It's not just Anakin Skywalker's story," Filoni underlines. "We can go left or right of that plot and deal with characters we have never seen. There's a lot of material. It's a three-year period in the history of the 'Star Wars' Universe, and there are so many stories to tell. The longer it goes, the more chance we get to tell fascinating stories in that galaxy."

Character Study

"The Clone Wars" shows a different side of some of the film franchise's most iconic characters. "In a series, you can do a whole episode about a character and learn more about what they were like, which makes what happens to them a lot more poignant," explains Filoni. "We know Yoda is powerful, but how does that power develop? How does he use it? We get to go into more detail that you just couldn't do in the live action films, because they're mainly focused on Anakin."

While few of the actors from the live action movies agreed to reprise their roles in voice over for "The Clone Wars," Anthony Daniels, the original C-3PO, is the exception. "One of the special moments for me was hearing Anthony on the telephone, discussing C-3PO with me and his experiences. That really helps us round out the characters," says the director, who enjoyed similar input from Rob Coleman, the animation supervisor who worked on Yoda on the prequels.

Of the new characters not seen in the live action series, there's the alluring but venomous Asajj Ventress, a disciple of Count Dooku. "She is, of course, a villain, and fits into the structure of the Sith," Filoni elaborates. "Darth Sidious -- Senator Palpatine -- is the main bad guy, and his apprentice is Count Dooku. Dooku is training Ventress in the Dark Side. She's getting more powerful. I wanted to make her intelligent, deceptive and also kind of sexual. She's kind of a forbidden fruit -- Jedi are not supposed to get involved with the more lustful aspects of life. She adds another dynamic to the series."

On the other side of the good/evil coin is newcomer Ahsoka Tano, Anakin's teenage pad­awan, or apprentice. "She's Anakin's student and helps us see him as more of a hero," says Filoni. "Once he gets over his initial reaction, he takes pride in her. He's unpredictable and the Jedi know that, but he has compassion and that is used against him and it later brings him to the Dark Side."

Ahsoka was created, says Lucas, "Because I needed to mature Anakin. The best way to get somebody to become responsible and mature is to have them become a parent or a teacher. You have to think about what you're doing and set an example. You look at your behavior and the way you do things much differently. The idea was to use her to make Anakin become more mature. We've made her a more extreme version of what Anakin was- - a little out there, independent, vital and full of life, but even more so. He gets a little dose of his own medicine."

"She's been a really fun character to develop," adds Filoni, who likes Ahsoka but admits that his character tastes tend to run a bit more obscure -- his favorite is Plo Koon, "a bizarre Jedi Master. It's been fun to develop him and show his personality beyond the fact that he's bizarre looking and carries a lightsaber."

Fan Fare

Just three years ago, Filoni dressed up as Plo Koon to see an opening night showing of "Revenge of the Sith," so it's not surprising that the 34-year-old fan is still pinching himself that he has this job. "It's a very creative atmosphere," he says of Big Rock Ranch, where the lakeside setting is "meant to inspire us artistically and definitely does. A lot of the people I work with grew up with 'Star Wars,' so we have a great time. It's hard, intense work, but George is very engaged in what we're doing. What more could you ask for? I have the guy who created the 'Star Wars' universe excited and interested in what we're doing. We couldn't be happier about that."

Asked why he thinks "Star Wars" remains a fan favorite today, three decades later, Lucas says diversification is the key. "We were always able to deal with different aspects of the story in various forms and I think that keeps it alive. It is a lot of fun and it's a universe that has been created to inspire young people to exercise their imagination and inspire them to be creative, and I think that always works."

"The original 'Star Wars' had broad appeal to everybody, and it holds up so well," adds Filoni. "I think there's a timelessness to it, even though Luke looks like a kid from the '70s with that haircut. Luke is a farmer boy and Han is a cowboy. Jedi Knights are like the samurai of Japan or the knights of Europe. Those archetypes work the globe over. It's a world phenomenon that speaks to everyone. There will always be a character you can relate to."

[popculturebuffet]

Ducktales Final Four: Beaks in the Shell! or JESUS WEPT!

This.. this is a big occasion for me. It’s a return to regular Ducktales coverage.. but it’s also the first episode of the LAST four of the series. It was thanks to Ducktales my blog got a following, first through in character chat things, then through my reviews of this very season. It was starting this last year that took my blog from something I was passionate abbout but did ocassionaly to a vital part of my being and my source of income via one lucky boy who just wont’ let me stop! I kid of course, I thank kev for it, though i’d gladly welcome any other review comissions from you fine folks and fit them into the schedule. There’s a page on my blog for how and if your on mobile you can simply send me an ask or submit to ask about comissiong an episode or episodes of an animated shwo you like and i’ll give you my prices and what not. But it’s thanks to these Kev started comissioning in the first place and thanks to you all clicking on these reviews every week I do them that kept me doing them early on. So I wanted to thank you all. 

Covering the last four episodes is really bittersweet for me. It’s not the end for ducks here: I have most of seasons 1 and 2 to cover, and will be covering a lot of season 1 next month so I can properly cover shadow war for my Lena retrospective, not to mention continuing to cover life and times when I have the space, various birthdays, including Carl Barks Next Month!, and so on and so on. But this is not only the first show I covered on a weekly basis but it’s the first show i’ve covered like that to end. To put it in perspective, Loud House won’t be leaving until it WANTS to and even then nick will probably prepare a second spinoff to follow it up in some form, Amphibia has both the rest of season 2 to go, starting next month!, and a third season renewal meaning while that probably WILL be it i’ll have had two full seasons to cover by the time it’s over, and I went into Close Enough FULLY expecting it not to make it past season 1 as it’s long and harried production cycle lead me to belivie Time-Warner was just going to dump it on HBO Max and be done with it.. and to my utter and everlasting delight the opposite has happened: It didn’t just get renewed but it’s become one of HBO Max’s most popular shows, the flagship of it’s adult animation lineup, and been given THREE more seasons, two of which are coming very soon, and likely will get as many as it wants for the forseable future. 

The point is.. I went into covering Ducktales expecting at least one more season and genuinely not knowing if i’d make it thorugh covering this one, and once this started to really work out for me, to the point from doubting i’d EVER be able to set up a Patreon to having one that nets me ten dollars a month, feel free to contribute if you enjoy these reviews even a buck a month helps, honest. Plus thanks to that ten bucks a month i’ll be covering the five part 87 Ducktales pilot in April and if you get it up to ten i’ll cover super ducktales. But I wouldn’t even had one without these reviews giving me something to start with, and I figured they’d be around for a few more years, at least one more season. I didn’t think the show would just.. end with this season and while the season IS a proper final season of the show, wrapping up arcs, introducing long overdue cast additions, giving us the biggest and best overarching plot thus far.. a good final season dosen’t make it hurt any less. But as a wise Synthizoid once said...

It hurts it’s going.. I wasn’t prepared for it.. but it’s giving us one hell of a last act, and if this episode is any indication, just because the end is in sight dosen’t mean the last few eps before the finale are phoning it in. This is the end... so now i’ve got my emotional stuff and the weight behind it out of the way, for now i’m defintely going to be bawling come the finale and I’m not ashamed, we can dive into the begining of the end. Counting down.. because really when else am I going to get to use this...

We’re at four and under the cut it’s beaks in the shell. Let’s get dangerous. 

We open with a crime in progress as Gandra is stealing a thing for FOWL and Fenton has shown up on the scene to stop her as you’d expect.. along with Huey the boy wonder! He’s finally Fenton’s Sidekick!

Seriously it’s just so sweet to see this little payoff, to see Huey, after talking about it and clearly wanting to assit Fenton however he can, actually participate. Granted he dosen’t have an armor, yet, of his own, but still he’s been through enough stuff to be helpful> plus, Gyro’s reaction to Fenton trying to ge the resources for another gizmosuit was...

Gandra trips up his wheel, and im with 87 Scrooge in Ducktales Remastered, which I finally got to play recently! Horay!, what WAS gyro thinking with that design. Regardless she gets away, and our heroes return the loot off screen. Good day’s crime fighting. 

Except something’s off with Fenton as he’s been working extra late lately and lying to both Gyro and Ma’Ma about it with both suspcious, Gyro because he dosen’t like not knowing things and especially not knowing what his former intern’s up to because he’s a bit of a control freak.. and because he probably can’t go visit his new clone farm and work on speeding up the process of his replacement bodies after moonvasion used em all up without Fenton finding out as he’d tell Scrooge and Scrooge would be like “Stop playing God in ways that could get me a steep fine!”. It’d be a whole thing. The fact Fenton’s also using their now shared intern in Manny and neither is telling him why probably isn’t helping and i’ts only that workplace harassment seminar that keeps him from trying to strangle either of them again. That and Manny dosen’t have a neck.

Ma’Ma is more upset that not only is he lying to her again, more on that later, but .. that she’s figured out he has a new girlfriend and understandably thinks there’s some dark reason he’s not telling her, and unlike Gyro turns out she’s two for two. I mean she is a detective while Gyro is more worried about his clone army, his man horse and his robot son. I mean the last two are valid but still Mama just has to worry about her job and her socially awkward adult son. She has more time to focus on this.

But yes, not only is Fenton seeing someone.. but it’s Gandra again. A bit abrubt but honestly this isn’t the first Fenton episode to move his life fast.. and frankly i’m more lenient on final seasons, or seasons INTENDED to be the last ones in terms of offscreen stuff, as your trying to get everything you can wrapped up in the span of 13-24 episodes depending on how lucky you get, if not less. Sometimes you just gotta use a reveal and some exposition to hurry things along and if presented right it works.. and here it is a while the summary for this episode spoiled the reveal, i’ts still subtly dramatic that not only has hef ully forgiven her.. but their together.. despite the fact she still works for fowl. Wuh-oh.  After the credits we get an idea of what their working on, as Fenton used the gizmoduck suit to enter some kind of VR scape. This is the Gizmoscape! It’s a vast virtual reality landscape.. that looks like a fancy version of the VR Interface from community. Marble pillars, flowing water falls. Though ironically enough Jim Rash’s character is NOT a part of it and despite Fenton suggesting letting him in to help with their glitch problem she’s reluctant as it’s THEIR baby and she wants it to be perfect first before they allow other people in. Though i’m also sure part of it is that Gyro would start screaming JESUS WEPT! over and over. 

Meanwhile Mark Beaks is having a big flashy press confrence to announce the new Waddlephone. Only a 50% chance of exploding! And that’s not my dig at Samsung but the shows as that’s really Beaks sales pitch. Unsuprisingly only one VERY bored looking nerd is there at the confrence. As for why he’s finally fallen so low part of it is explalined in the episode: His attempted thefts of the Gizmoduck suit have gotten stale. As the bored nerd puts it he’s tried to steal it four times already, two that we’ve seen but i’m VERY unsuprised he’s tried again off screen. He’s made it PAINFULLY clear he has no ideas of his own, constantly steals them, and the public’s tired of it. As for why it took THIS LONG.. this is sadly realistic. As the throngs of “hardcore gamers” defending Cyberpunk 2077 before it was released can attest to, internet nerd culture can often be toxic, stupid and defend big personalities even when they’ve CLEARLY done something terrible as long as their doing something they like. Beaks was clearly pilfering enough good products and doing enough antics on social media to still be liked and for them to ignore his blanat and douchey crimes and had enough money on him during said crimes to walk away from it. 

Problem is.. while people can be awful and defend someone despite them not deserving their loyality, being a douche in public and doing VERY terrible things.. you have to have something to earn that loyalty. Waddle had that at first iwth project ta-dah, Waddleduck, various aps i’m sure... but it’s clear from context by this point Beaks has nothing left and no cult of personality to insulate him. Unlike say Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos he dosen’t HAVE some big product to mask his shadier wealth hoarding actions, he just has rampat supervilian attempts to steal someone else’s power armor and a hired hyjacking to get back at his cold unloving mother. Even when he does supervillian stuff like that.. he can’t be bothered to do it originally. The public will, and very sadly, defend you from terrible stuff, we’ve seen it with people supproting Gina Carano even though she’s actively spreading harmful disnfermation and then had the GALL to compare herself to jews hiding from the nazis, and one journalist trying to defend her had the gall to compare this to the hollywood blacklisting if the 50′s instead of you know, someone who woudln’t shut up about harmful dangerous shit finally getting fired for using teh platform said job provided to spread said harmful dangerous shit about masks and the vacine. But if you have nothing to offer.. thieri just going to forget you and move on. He has nothing to offer so they’ll gladly gravitate to some other jackass who can at leasat given them a neat phone instead of trying to steal a superhero suit for the 8th time. Mark realizes if he can’t steal something soon.. he’ll be forced to go with the Nuclear option: MAKE SOMETHING HIMSELF. 

Back at Fenton’s toilet lab, Huey finds Fenton having some cyber makeouts with Gandra... which translates to him kissing the air and Huey feeling evne more awarkd than usual. As for why Huey’s here despite it being late, he got a piece of Gandra’s nanotech during the robbery and figures they can track her. Fenton is.. less than enthused about that for obvious reasons but things soon get worse for our hero as our other hero notices the linkup. And while sidekicks are a good thing in my eyes; They allow young heroes to get proper training, help nuture their talents and prevent assholes from telling them to stop it instead of you know helping them. It’s.. a more common trope than you think let me tell you. 

But Fenton’s discovered the Downside is they can show up anytime, want to hunt your criminal girlfriend down not knowing the full story, and if their a genius like you, figure out what your up to with no effort and really want to try it. Seriously Huey’s almost as smart as you Fenton and will no doubt surpass you one day, this was a matter of when not if and you shouldv’e been more prepared. But Huey wants to try, and while Fenton tries deflecting since he only has the gizmoduck helmet and it only works for him now... Manny comes in with a bunch of vr rigs and Huey dives in.  Naturally, Huey soon running directly into Gandra dosne’t go great.. and given this is huey his natural instinct is to have a panic attack over his best friend, mentor and the only person besides maybe his family, boyfriend and girlfriend that really gets him possibly betraying him and his entire family. Gandra is of course mad Fenton invited someone in when she didn’t want that, and even more someone whose clearly not happy with her and will likely tell on them because that’s basic hue-man nature. 

Fenton explains he didn’t ask for this, so we get easily the best part of the episode: Gandra’s solution to the child having a mental breakdown.. is to summon a weighted blanket and throw it over him, which Huey mistakes for a trap and she explains helps with Anxiety.. and while he struggles.. it really does. Damn gotta get me one of those. Also while his Autisim remains vauge, likely on puprose, Huey having anxiety disorder, while obvious before, is now 100% confirmed. 

So now he’s calm, though his Anxiety meter shows he’s still not happy and Gandra doubts he’ll listen, Fenton can at least try and explain: The two have been seeing each other and working on this in secret.. but it has NOTHING to do with FOWL other than Gandra embezzling resoruces to make it happen. Gandra also explains why the project is so important to her and Fenton via her own backstory: Super Science is a dangerous, unrpedictable field and accidents happen a lot, and given people tend to hate what they don’t understand, hence why the X-Men founded their own island  after getting spat on one too many times, it often gets an unfair bad wrap.. and she shows she’s had to put up with this her whole life, making an intresting lazer thing as a kid that lost to a volcano and getting glared at for it accidently destroying said volcano. And as an adult due to her work’s dangerous and experimental nature, no one would take a chance on it and like many a super villian she had to experiment on herself. It’s also why she worked for Beaks last season and works with FOWL now, only supervillians with thier grandiose ambitions and lack of care for property damage would fund her. 

That’s part, at least, of why this is so very important to her: The Gizmoscap eprovides an invorment where scientests and others can experiment unabated, where the only limit is imagination and those glitches they keep having and any accident can be frozen , dragged and dropped away with no damage. There’s no risk but all the reward and they plan to give it out for free, to let the public use this and let the world grow from it. 

It also fills in a lot of Gandra’s character and gives weight to her last apperance: Her working with Beaks, while hypocritical, now has a tragic edge as he was simply the only one who’d fund her work. Her hatred of Fenton’s corprroate job and people like Scrooge.. is that in general billionares like him usually aren’t good people, and even SCrooge has his clear faults, and she assumed he was just making Fenton shut up and do things just to beniefit him and make him more money.. when Scrooge was instaead paying him to do a genuine public service as gizmoduck, and gives him and Gyro a LOT of leway and a pretty bottomless budget and only turns things down if their way too dangeorus for public release. The tragedy here is if she’d gone to Scrooge.. she never would’ve had to work for FOWL. He wouldd’ve genuinely supported her and likely given her a full ride and a spot in the lab of her own, maybe as an intern but probably on her own merit given how game changing her tech is and how he of all people understands a ballance of risk and reward. It turns her from a very hypcoriticla techie who works with the very people she scorns.. to someone who has no choice and desperatley wants out.  And this is her way out: something new and bold that’, while not hers alone as Fenton co created it, could change the world and make it safe for people like her to do what they do without ridcule, scorn or risk. It’s everything she could’ve dreamed of and more and once it’s done she promises to leave fowl and as the end of the episode bares out, and as her tone makes clear, she’s genuine about it. She also TRULY does love fenton and vice versa and both are desspearte for Huey to keep a lid on things from Gyro till it’s ready, as she rightfully worries if it gets out unfisnished they’ll just be mocked agian.  Naturally being a good soft boy Huey is now entirely on board, because he loves science, and he loves love and this is both. And frankly given what we saw way back in Astro BOYD... .he knows more than anyone what its like to be laughed at and mocked for being diffrent and simply being smart. And even though his family lvoes him.. only one member is as smart as him in the same way, his mom whose still a very diffrent person, and it wasn’t till this season he really got to connect with people his own age like him. And both Violet and BOYD could benifit form this.. everyone could. So he’ll keep it secret for now.  This proves problematic as both Gyro AND Mama are there and both have questions. And while Huey ducks gyro, Mama.. interrogates a small child who she’s defintely met and likely knows has anxiety over something as trivial as her son having a secret girlfrined. You.. you guys might’ve wanted to remove this bit given last year. I”m just saying. Does not play well. The most Huey can come up with is a girlfriend in Canada which fenton plays along with... but given neither her nor gyro are really buying into things, though Mama has a check done on seamstresses in canada just in case because this bit was clearly written years ago and not rerecorded for whatever reason, Huey uses little bulb to fake a gizmo emergency so Fenton can get out of there, go home and work on this himself while Huey stalls and lies. But since his best on the fly lie was “a girlfriend in canada”, which is somehow worse than “who’s Dewey”, and while our boy is many things: excellent at opera, a good friend, a wonderful wingman, excellent at setting a mood, a good son, great at panic attacks, a genius, an expert woodchuck, knowledgeble on quantum mechanics.. the list goes on lying is not one of those things and he seems to be in a pickle. 

Meanwhile Mark is struggling to create, can relate, because he’s entirely creatively sterile. And that’s probably why out of Scrooge’s foes.. he stopped being a threat. He has no vision. And while true the Beagle BOys also don’t besides steal stuff and maybe get our deed back, that’s by design as Ma knows they can’t take scrooge or gizmoduck so why cry. Stick to petty crimes and stuff he isn’t aware of or dosen’t care about. But Magica and Glomgold do. Magica is cunning, if not subtle, and manipulative and when on full blast horrifyingly powerful, and it took everything Clan McDuck had to stop her at full, and she still nearly won without any powers when she came back, and even if Lena can keep her in check now, she still GOT her powers back and got her new arch enemy to defeat her old one. Glomgold while only slightly more comipitent than beaks, and even then VERY slightly, he at least has vision. His schemes are entirely stupid.. but he dosen’t stop coming up with them. They may be his first draft but damn if they aren’t entertaining and damn if one or two haven’t WORKED. Simply stealing a few cents from scrooge and gaslighting him in a devil costume NEARLY drove him insane and cost him his fortune.  Beaks.. has no ideas. He has ambiation.. but it’s to steal the same tech that even if he got it, he woudln’t know what to do with. The ONLY time he’s been a full on threat has been using someone else’s scheme, that Gandra clearly came up with and STILL required piggybacking on the gizmo suit. He has nothing and while it was fine for a while.. eventually h’es left iwth nothing. Glomgold at least has money, magica at least has power... Beaks HAD both.. but had no idea what to properly do with it and now is on his last legs. Even his idea for a coffee cups with aps is taken because of course “even the dumbest ideas are taken”, this is america. Making dumb shit for rich morons is our primary export. But he sees the fleeing fenton, has a breakdown and declares FINE if that’s what fate wants i’ll steal the armor I’LL STEAL THE ARMOR ALL DAY. 

So Fenton heads home to recharge in both senses of the word, and to tell Gandra the timetable’s moved and Huey can hold them only so long. And he seems to be wrong as Huey confidently prepares to answer their questions.. but is seemingly thrown when we get the real reason Mama is so upset: She’s just worried and still a bit hurt from Fenton not feeling he could tell her he was gizmoduck and it breaks her heart that her son feels he has to hide from her again. However while this is genuinely sad and emotional.. the reason he’s thrown is it’s NOT huey, but Louie, whose a bit miffed as he DIDN’T know Fenton was Gizmoduck, and can’t properly bullshit without full info. it’s also really nice that bit FINALLY came up as the rest of the four main kids have known for a while now. But Huey convincnes him to do it.. for 6 months allowance. Frankly the real shocker here is that they actually GET an allowance. 

However Mama.. is again a cop. One who REALLY needs to rethink her ethics.. but a cop, and the best one on the force, and thus has easily guessed this is not Huey, and given she’s probably ran into his schemes before, figures out which one he’d bring in to buffer for him and easily gets rid of Louie by asking him to tur informant on himself, since the REAL Huey would under pressure and Louie instead flees in terror not wanting to get arrested and leaves both the lab and the episode. Though I’m pretty sure i know where he went

So yeah things are not great and only get worse, as Mark breaks into fentons house via the open window and upon finding out abotu the Gizmoscape naturally plans to hack into it and take it for himself. Before he does Fenton talks to Gandra and admits they may have to let other people in and we get another reason: She’s worried she’s not good enough. He reassures her.. and this tender moment is interupted by Beaks who imprisons them, hyjacks fenton’s security system aka a gizmo armor, and while still a creatively sterile douche, does have a decent if horrifically scummy way to profit all of this: use the open coloabreation concept to get the legal right to steal all this and say it’s his. 

Fenton bemaons the fact that Gandra was right, one bad apple spoiled the bunch and unveling it too qiuckly would’ve gone bad as she feared.. but Gandra’s grown and realizes Fenton was also right, and that they needed more people. While the wrong people can ruin a project, collaboration can help, finding perspectives you didn’t see and helping fine tune ideas. Huey, whose collapsed at Fenton’s due to the exustion of lying, wakes up to find Beaks crimes and being unable to just unplug him, as while Beaks is VERY dumb, even he’s not THAT stupid. But Fenton gets out an SOS over morse to tell everyone So Huey does.. and the calvary arrives, as Huey enters the Gizmoscape with Mama and Gyro. And while Mama is pleased to realize she’s right about the girlfirend thing they don’t really have time for that, so once Huey explains the basic concept, he uses it himself to give himself GIZMO ARMOR. AT LAST. 

He also has extra long legs, because of course, just.. of course. Naturally Beaks steals it, and everyone else takes a stab at their own gizmotech armor: Mama daawns a stunning police themed one, Gyro goes for a bulb mecha based on the giant version of little bulb from the great dime chase, an idea brought up by LB, and Gandra goes for a sleek tron esque nanotech number. Beaks take sa bit from each and our heroes wonder how to beat him.. but Fenton realizes that’s simple: Beaks can only copy and steal... they can create. And Gandra uses this against him by pointing that out so he drops his super armor.. to look like Andross from Starfox.. which shows that EVEN when trying to come up with a cool final boss form... Beaks has to steal from something. The rest of the Gizmo Corps, my name for them I own that, Gizmo Legion would also be good, after Iron Man’s iron Legion, suit back up and kick beaks ass as a team. I smell second spinoff.. or first if darkwing ends up hyjacked by Seth Rogen.. who I have nothing agianst he’s just not the one who put in the work for a reboot. 

So our heroes win in an awesome sequence, seirously spinoff and Beaks is knocked the fuck out and presumibly will FINALLY go to jail for good to this as he can get away from a lot but directly breaking into an officer’s house and stalking her son, they can omit the gizmopart and even if Fenton went public.. no one would care and he and Mama can take care of htemselves, as can Huey, Gyro, Gandra and Manny, so it’s not like anyones in danger. Beaks is well and truly defeated: he has no idea, an imminet jail sentence, and no one to back him up. Fenton’s finally got the little boil off his back

So now the big fight is over, Gyro can actually process the Gizmoscape.. and is genuinely impressed.. he tries to hidei t because of course he does.. but it’s clear for someone who himself has constnatly been called crazy and had his ideas blow up.. this is paradise to him. a place where he won’t be judged and has unlimtied funds to experiment with his ideas without having to get yelled at when they destroy a city block or nearly choked to death by his own robot son, daughter or nonbinary person. He also easily fixes the problem and proves Fenton right for wanting to include him, as he points out they hadn’t been DELETING anything, simply downsizing it and it naturally caused stress on the server.  Fenton talks about Gandra and defneeds her to Mama.. whose just happy he’s happya nd someone can take her son. Alls well that ends well right. 

Final Thoughts:  So this was a... wait.. why are we cutting back to fowl.. why is bradford there. 

Yeah turns out megalmanoical diabolical msterminds kinda monitor their employees so he knew she intended to quit and stole resources, and while she plans to leave, he simply calls in a bunch of eggheads who overwhelm her with sheer numbers and has her fined two weeks pay.. and taken to the lost library to indefintely lock her up. What’s that she asks “You have your secrets, I have mine”

So yeah a bit of a downer ending

Actual Final Thoughts: 

This was an excellent capper to Fenton’s character arc. While the Gandra relationsihp is a bit rushed the rest is a masterful capper to his character arc: This episode shows off how he’s changed from EVERY one of his previous three focus episodes, while a major part of astro boyd and how he got his docterate it dosne’t quite contribute to his character arc,  and grown from them: From beware the buddy system! he’s learned to colaberate properly and taken his desire to WORK with other people, like he always did with Gyro but was constnatly shut out, and found a proper and brilliant way to that allows people like him, gyro, gandra and huey to really express themselvs. He’s grown from a niave rookie trusting the wrong people in who is gizmoduck.. to someone whose STILL fully trusting despite constant betryals, but now knows who to trust, and an experinced hero who once freed easily counters his nemisis.  And finally from Dangerous Chemistry, he’s finally got a ballance in his life: inastead of running from gizmo or treating his alter ego as something else.. he’s found a way to use the gizmotech for science, and FINALLY found his world changing invention one so good and so practical even his mentor, despite trying to walk it back, is genuinely proud of him and genuinely in awe.

Every step lead to his happy ending.. well okay his girlfriend still needs to be freed from her insane ex-boss, but that’s just a few episodes away. Fenton has everything he wanted when he started: his boss finally respects him and treats him as an equal, his mom not only knows who he is but is proud and supportive of him, he has a loving partner creatively and romantically.. and a best friend who while a good two decades younger, is there for him and who he genuinely apologizes too for putting so much on him. LIke all the endings so far this season.. it feels like a throughly satisfying end to the journey we’ve been following. This fits in nicely with Penny realizing earth could be her home and that she dosen’t have to constnatly fight to have a purpose, Lena finally accepting magic instead of running from it and thus gaining peace of mind and power to stop her former abuser from hurting anyone else, Goldie finally accepting how much she cars about Scrooge and his family and that she CAN change... all of this, except penny obviously has been built up through three seasons and while I DEFINTLY could see frank and matt returning to all of them.. i’ts nice to get some closure.  It feelsd earned and impressive. The episode is also.. REALLY fucking funny, from the weighted blanket gag to Beaks in general, to Huey yelling at fenton about Mama “She somehow broke Louie!”. It’s a masterful and throughly satisfying end to Fenton’s story. And again we’ll likely see him in the finale but character arc wise.. its a good place to end his. 

Next Week: FINALLY, AFTER 10,000 YEARS, IT’S THE TAILSPIN EPISODE. OWEEOOO, OWEEHHHH. 

Tommorow: We return to the noiry furry world of John Blacksad as everyone’s favorite panther detective battles white supremacists to find a missing girl and we’re introduced to your faviorite sidekick and mine Weekly. 

Later on this week: The Lena retrospective continues with Jaw$, we celebrate Tex Avery’s birthday, and I tackle the awful original tom and jerry movie. 

So if any of that tickles your fancy see you at the next rainbow

[watchtower-feed]

Dream Over

SSA Spinoff ✧ Tim Drake ✧ Subconscious Link Anon:  the Subconscious link with Tim Drake(Young Justice version) Note: Sadly, Tim barely had any spotlight in YJ so I’m writing from headcanon here. Words: 1,957

     “Tim! Behind you!”

     You shout on reflex and stop paying attention to your own surroundings. Tim knew it was there. He acts on reflex, not even looking, and shuts it down before it could take a bite at him. But you’re not so lucky.

     As Tim turns around, he witnesses the very moment an undead bites into your wrist. You scream in agony and it makes the rest of his senses numb. Your pain was vibrating through the air and he can feel it.

     You can feel its teeth boring deeper into your skin until it’s gnawing at your bone. Blood is oozing out and dripping on the ground. You try to pull your arm back which only makes it bite harder.

     You kick the zombie on the side of its head and it finally lets go of your bleeding and mangled limb. The absence of your voice knocks Tim back to his senses. He grabs you and drags you away from the rest of the horde, hacking and slashing them out of the way.

     The Narrows is a great place for escaping hordes because of its network of alleyways. Tim finds a hidden basement door and the two of you hide inside. You look around the small studio that used to be somebody’s office. There were blueprints, corkboards, and whiteboards hangup on the walls lit up by green glowing question marks littered all over the room.

     “What is this place?” you whisper.

     You sit down on a rolling stool and watch Tim go through a chest and take out a medical kit and a saw. You immediately stand back up.

     “Woah--”

     “We gotta cut it off, Y/N, before the infection spreads.”

     You back off slowly. “Na uh. No way. It’s one thing to be bit by a zombie and another to get my hand cut off.”

     Tim takes two steps forward for every step you take back. “You have to trust me.”

     You stomp your foot in place and glare at him. “Hell no. Dream over.”

     As soon as the words leave your lips, your eyes are forced open and you’re back in your bedroom. You blink three times before you assess your surroundings, making sure you really are in your room.

     Tim’s subconscious is a lot stronger than yours, which means he mostly controls everything that happens in the dreamscape. But you talked about it and decided to create a safe word. ‘Dream over’. Anytime any one of you says it, you’ll both wake up. 

     But that doesn’t mean you trust the system. Whenever you’re dreaming with Tim, everything feels so fixed and logical, as if you’re actually experiencing everything consciously. There are no time jumps and unbelievable events. It’s hard to tell it apart from real life.

     Even the apocalypse dreams Tim cooks up for you two feels real. As if Gotham was really hit by a new form of Scarecrow fear toxin that turned everyone into zombies. Tim even did an analysis on the toxin and came up with the result that Scarecrow mutated it with components from rabies.

     Your phone lights up and rings with Tim’s peaceful sleeping face displayed on it.

     “I sooooo cannot believe you right now.”

     “You would have turned if I didn’t--”

     “Tim. You told me we were going to have a zombie apocalypse adventure tonight. Not another simulation!”

     Tim is quiet for a second before he answers you, “I thought it was a great opportunity to test out plan Z.”

     Plan Z. Not because it’s his 26th plan. No way. Tim has about 72 plans, that you know of and have dreamed through so far. All plans for sudden world-ending events. You definitely know what the Z stands for in this one.

     “You could have let me turn then we could have reenacted human zombie relationship tropes-- Wait. Is cutting off my arm part of your plan Z?”

     “It’s just a contingency--”

     “Tim!”

     “You wouldn’t have gotten bitten if you just stuck to the plan. We were supposed to be assessing the area. No noise. No muss. No fuss.”

     You slump in your bed and pout at the phone. “Oh, well, forgive me for caring about you enough that I would risk my life in the process. Won’t happen again.”

     “Doubt it,” he teases. You place the phone in front of you and stick your tongue out. “How about we go back to sleep and I’ll make it up to you?” he says. “No more simulations tonight. I promise.”

     The fact that Tim thinks of absolutely everything also means that he creates the best worlds. Tamaran. New Genesis. Even his rendition of Mars feels real. Your favorite so far is his version of Themyscira.

     Of course, it’s not like Tim would’ve actually been to all of them. Magical places like that are only pipe dreams for born and raised Gothamites. Maybe Batman’s children have been to some of them. But you and Tim, all you’ve ever known are the streets, alleyways, and rooftops of Gotham. 

     “Where are we going?”

     Tim smiles. He can already hear how excited you are. “Go to sleep, Y/N.”

     You look at the time on your phone and it’s half past five. You have classes in the morning and you don’t really trust that Tim would wake you up in time. But you bite your lips and think about what could be waiting for you in the dreamscape.

     You close your eyes and thankfully sleep comes to you quickly.

     When you open them, the first thing you see is your hair floating in front of you. Your arms move slowly against the new gravity as you pull your hair back. Suddenly, it’s clear. You’re floating in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Deep underwater, right in front of the majestic gates of Atlantis.

     You open your mouth in awe and a bubble comes out of it. You quickly close your mouth and forget that you don’t know how to breathe underwater. But as you hold in your breath, you don’t feel the urge to take in oxygen.

     You see small bubbles fluttering about coming from your side. Tim is chuckling as he watches you. He points to his neck and he has gills opening and closing. You quickly feel your own and it almost grossest you out and excites you at the same time.

     ‘Come on.’

     You stare at him with wide eyes.

     ‘I can hear your thoughts!’

     Tim rolls his eyes at you with a smile.

     ‘Every time.’

     You’ve had other dreams where you and Tim would communicate telepathically. It’s not something you knew you could do with your links but Tim had figured it all out. After all, in the dreamscape, both of your subconscious are already connected. It was just a matter of opening your mind to each other.

     Tim leads you to the gates of Atlantis and you watch in awe as the guards open them. It’s not like any city you’ve ever seen.There are no roads or paths. The buildings are made from overgrown corals with other Atlanteans swimming in and out of it. The sun’s rays are slipping through the water's surface like small thin beams scattered about.

     Tim swims over to one of the overgrown foliage decorating the city.

     ‘They use magic to make the kelp grow this big.’

     ‘Magic? Did you make that up or did you read it in a Justice League journal?’

     Tim chuckles, making small bubbles float around him.

     ‘You’re messing with me aren’t you?’

     Tim stops chuckling and he puts his arms on your shoulders.

     ‘I swear I’m not. I’ll show you.’

     You swim after Tim. He leads you into a dome-like enclosure with a small platform in the middle. You’re about to swim to the middle when Tim stops you.

     Across the dome, a figure emerges from the shadows.

     ‘Is that-- That’s Aquaman!’

     He towered over the two of you. The dome’s ceiling only made him look bigger and more intimidating.

     ‘Are you allowed to just conjure up League members like this? This feels blasphemous.’

     Tim shakes his head and holds your shoulders to keep your eyes forward but Aquaman is just standing in the middle of the dome. Waiting.

     ‘Oh right.’

     Tim has visited Atlantis a few times but he’s never seen them perform their magic. The only magic he’s observed an Atlantean do is in combat.

     You grab Tim when he takes a step forward.

     ‘What are you doing?’

     Tim gently peels off your hands and smiles.

     ‘Remember. This is just a dream, Y/N.’

     You blink at him as he walks off. Then you scowl and cross your arms over your chest.

     ‘I know that. You’re the one who takes this stuff way overboard.’

     ‘Minds still linked.’

     You stick your tongue out at him.

     As soon as Tim is in the middle, Aquaman changes his stance for combat. Then the markings along his arms light up a cerulean hue, glowing in the water. He brings his arms back, grabbing at the water, and whipping it at Tim, knocking him down.

     ‘Tim!’

     He’s propped up on his elbows and he shakes his head.

     ‘Woah. Guess I left the difficulty level on hard.’

     ‘Oh my god. This is another simulation, isn’t it? What plan is this? For when the Justice League goes rouge?’

     ‘No, that’s Blackest Day--’

     Aquaman sends another wave at Tim before he could get up, making him fly against one of the pillars of the dome. You watch Tim’s body float down with your fists clenched.

     You stand in front of Aquaman and your arms light up, bathing you in an aquamarine glow. You have no idea how Atlantean magic works but this is your dreamscape and anything goes so long as you can believe it.

     The water around you starts to stir and you see a small whirlpool growing beneath Aquaman. You just want to stop him from attacking Tim. The whirlpool starts getting bigger. When Aquaman notices it, it’s strong enough to keep him in.

     You keep your focus until the whirlpool grows enough in size that Aquaman is no longer underwater and gasping on the ground. You’ve created a pocket in the middle of the ocean and trapped Aquaman inside it. 

     ‘Woah, YN. ‘ Tim floats beside you. ‘I don’t think whirlpools actually do that.’

     Tim’s thoughts are too much for you and your hold releases the water back around Aquaman. You immediately grab Tim by the gills, ‘I’m trying to help you! Stop distracting me with your logic.’

     Tim blinks at you for a second before he starts laughing, filling the gap between you with bubbles. ‘You know he can breathe on land, right?’

     Your eyes widen and your cheeks redden, ‘I knew that!’ You turn around to face him again but Aquaman is gone.

     ‘I made him go.’ Tim takes your hand. ‘I always forget that anything is possible here. I mean… I just watched you do Atlantean magic. How did it feel?’

     You bite your lip and turn to the side, letting your hair create a floating wall between you and Tim, hiding the blush that keeps spreading. 

     ‘The truth? I kind of feel like a level 99 waterbender.’

     Tim stares at you before he scoffs. It’s one of those little ones he always does with his eyes closed and mouth open like he’s silently laughing. ‘Sometimes I forget you’re such a nerd.’

     You smirk and squeeze his hand. ‘Coming from you, that’s insulting.’

     Tim smiles at you and then leans in slowly, using his other hand to slowly turn your face to him. He leaves a small kiss on your red cheeks. Then gently tugs on your hand.

     ‘Come on. You can show me Atlantis, Y/N.’

✧ Watchtower Masterlist ✧

[aion-rsa]

Best Serial Killer Movies of the ’90s Ranked

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Someone must have left the freezer door in the morgue open, because grisly reminders of the past are thawing before our eyes. You can see it this weekend with the release of John Lee Hancock’s The Little Things, a throwback to the days when movie stars hung out at crime scenes instead of in spandex, and it’ll be more apparent next month with the launch of Clarice, a television spinoff of 1991’s The Silence of the Lambs. All the evidence points to only one conclusion: the serial killer thrillers of the ‘90s are back!

Not that we’re complaining. For a macabre minute or two, every Hollywood name appeared eager to play either the detective or the killer—the hunter or the obsessed, which often proved interchangeable for both characters. Granted that means there can be something formulaic about many of these movies. Yet they can also be bleak, hard-edged, and ambiguous. From our modern gaze, where the dominant studio conventions prefer reassuring morality tales and sunny lighting, these movies’ preference for shadows and discomfort in the mainstream is kind of startling.

So grab your magnifying glass and fortify your stomach, because we’re about to revisit some of the best (and worst) of ‘90s serial killer thrillers. (Also this list is strictly for the decade when the genre was at its height and it excludes slasher movies like Scream, which may feature serial killers but were not exactly adult-oriented thrillers.)

12. Eye of the Beholder (1999)

Eye of the Beholder is a tonal oddity that only passingly flirts with the conventions of ‘90s serial killer thrillers, all while it tries to pay homage to (read: rip-off) Alfred Hitchcock. But any credit it deserves for deviation—including making Ashley Judd’s central femme fatale the killer—it loses in execution. As a muddied, impenetrable tale about an intelligence officer (Ewan McGregor) who spies on and falls in love with a serial killer, Eye of the Beholder is a scattershot of bad ideas that run the gamut from ludicrous to misogynistic.

Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but this movie will close the lids over your pupils inside of 30 minutes.

11. Nightwatch (1997)

It feels a little mean to rag on Ewan McGregor back-to-back, but maybe serial killer movies just aren’t his genre? That could be at least one takeaway from an ill-advised double feature of Eye of the Beholder and Nightwatch, the latter of which is a remake of a 1994 Danish film that I’ve not seen… and probably won’t since both the original film and American remake are directed by the same man.

McGregor plays medical student Martin here, a kid who gets an after school job by becoming the night watch security at the local morgue. But as a series of grisly prostitute murders pile up, Martin realizes he needs to figure out who the killer is—that or continue to be framed by the necrophiliac fiend who keeps coming by the morgue for one last liaison. It’s exactly as skeevy as it sounds. Do yourself a favor and go your whole life without hearing Nick Nolte sing “This Old Man” while climbing onto a corpse.

10. Natural Born Killers (1994)

The movie that Quentin Tarantino disowned, Natural Born Killers is a seedy mess based on a Tarantino script that was heavily rewritten by Oliver Stone, David Veloz, and Richard Rutowski. The concept itself is a seemingly inevitable escalation of the “bad romance outlaws” archetype that’s been floating around Hollywood since at least 1950’s Gun Crazy, and which was then made iconic by Bonnie & Clyde (1967).

But whereas those films relied on bank robbers living fast, Natural Born Killers descends into a seeming final form with Mickey and Mallory (Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis) as giddy serial killers who are eventually out for maximum carnage. Technically the pair are supposed to be presented as victims of traumatic child abuse—and who are then wrongfully glorified by the media. But Stone’s sloppy and tanked vision lacks the discipline to achieve anything beyond its maliciousness. Early sequences imagining Mallory’s abusive childhood like it’s a television sitcom, and later psychedelic visions of Robert Downey Jr.’s opportunistic news reporter as the Devil, do little to divorce the film from its shallow self-satisfaction in close-ups of heads being shot.

The movie came under controversy in the years after its release for inspiring alleged copycat killers as well as school shooters. It feels irresponsible to blame media for actual violence, but it’s still quite an indictment that Stone’s attempt to criticize media glorification became a favorite for many a disturbed individual with a gun.

9. Kiss the Girls (1997)

When studying competent, middle of the road Hollywood thrillers, Kiss the Girls is a solid place to start. As a decently made bit of studio convention, the movie is anchored by strong elements like Morgan Freeman as James Paterson’s literary hero, Alex Cross, and Ashley Judd as Kate, the victim who survives a masked killer’s attempt to abduct her into his harem.

Moments like Kate’s escape sequence through the North Carolina wilderness are effectively filled with adrenaline, and Judd particularly gives the salacious piece conviction. However, it is salacious to a fault. Even if the movie toned down the source novel’s even more lurid misogyny, the film studies Kate and the other victims with a lascivious male gaze, blurring sex with violence, real world horror with leering entertainment. Right down to its title, the film can be rightly criticized as Hollywood glamourizing another story about violence against women. Whether that damns the whole movie depends on the viewer, but it certainly keeps it low on our list.

8. The Bone Collector (1999)

Marketed with a hell of a tagline about there being thousands of taxi cabs in New York City that’ll get you home—and one that won’t—The Bone Collector is almost comically slavish to the clichés of ‘90s moviemaking. The wrinkle here is that after a faux cab driver begins abducting his victims off the street, the crime psychologist who must stop him is entirely stuck by his bedside. Due to a tragic accident, Denzel Washington’s Lincoln Rhyme is paralyzed from the neck down. Yet he is still able to catch serial killers by communicating in the earpiece of police officer Amelia Donaghy (an entirely unconvincing Angelina Jolie).

Read more

Movies

Lost Girls Review: Netflix Takes on the Long Island Serial Killer

By Rosie Fletcher

Books

The Last Book on the Left Takes on the Grim History of Serial Killers

By Alec Bojalad

Together the pair stay one step behind the mystery killer’s tracks as he executes a series of increasingly gruesome and ridiculous murders. It’s preposterous, and in some ways a forerunner for Saw with the satisfaction it takes in absurd death traps, but Washington is effortlessly compelling, even when he never leaves his apartment. As a bit of absurd Hollywood fluff, right down to the ultimately lackluster unmasking of the killer, it can be entertaining, even if you’ll deny it afterward.

7. Copycat (1995)

More potent than I remembered, Copycat is a genuinely well-crafted Hollywood thriller that may not reinvent the wheel but takes it out for a damn good spin. In the driver’s seat is Sigourney Weaver as Dr. Helen Hudson, a criminal psychologist who is an expert on serial killers until one follows her into the bathroom after a guest lecture. He nearly hangs her from the ceiling. Following that white-knuckled opening, the film jumps years ahead and Helen has become agoraphobic and afraid to leave her home.

Yet when a local series of murders reveal the pattern of a predator imitating the methods of his favorite “celebrities”—one crime scene is like the Boston Strangler and another emulates the horrors of Jeffrey Dahmer—Helen is pulled out of retirement by a no-nonsense detective (Holly Hunter). The winning chemistry between Weaver and Hunter—who are refreshingly free from the studio-mandated romantic subplots in some of the other movies on this list—and the blunt force power of their performances aid this sincerely disquieting flick. A needlessly convoluted third act aside, the movie still works as a warning about the danger of fanboys a generation early.

6. Fallen (1998)

Denzel Washington appears again thanks to this clever supernatural spin on the serial killer genre. At the beginning of Fallen, Washington’s John Hobbes appears on top of the world. The serial killer he chased for years (Elias Koteas) is about to breathe deeply in the gas chamber. Yet after the lever is pulled, and with Koteas singing the Rolling Stones’ “Time is On My Side” until his last breath, a funny thing happens: the murders continue.

In fact, more than just the killings, strangers in the street sing “Time is On My Side” in Hobbes’ ear, and he soon realizes that he faces a devil of a killer whose been operating since the beginning—quite literally since the villain is a demon who was once an angel that fell with Lucifer. It’s a bizarre premise given strutting confidence thanks to Washington’s performance, as well as good supporting work by John Goodman and Donald Sutherland. Twenty years later and its ending still sticks with me.

5. The Exorcist III (1990)

If you haven’t seen The Exorcist III, we know what you’re thinking: “Really?!” Yes. In fact, this isn’t even an exorcist movie; it should’ve been titled Legion like the 1983 novel it’s based on. Alas writer-director William Peter Blatty was forced to use the title and do reshoots that added an exorcism in the climax. Still, this supernatural thriller which involves a serial killer back from the dead is far better than it has any right to be.

Following the character of Lt. Kinderman from the 1973 masterpiece, the middle-aged gumshoe is now played by George C. Scott instead of the late Lee J. Cobb, and he possesses Scott’s usual love for contrasts between the restrained whisper and a bombastic howl. He also makes a sympathetic, secular detective forced to face the horrors of Hell when a series of murders committed against Catholic priests appear to be the work of the Gemini Killer (Brad Dourif), a serial killer whom Kinderman sent to the chair more than 10 years ago.

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Movies

The Exorcist III is a Classic and Better Than You Remember

By Jim Knipfel

Movies

The Exorcist Is Still the Scariest Movie Ever Made

By David Crow

Somehow the fiend—plus Kinderman’s long dead pal Father Damien Karras (Jason Miller)—appear to now be living in the same body of a John Doe kept in a mental asylum. With an unrelenting atmosphere of dread, palpable tension, and more of Blatty’s intellectual struggle with concepts of faith and evil, the film is more high-minded than its hacky title suggests. It also features one of the best jump scares in movie history.

4. Summer of Sam (1999)

The only movie on this list directly based on an actual serial killer’s crimes, Spike Lee’s Summer of Sam is a serious-minded joint. However, it’s only partially about the murders perpetrated by David Berkowitz, aka the “.44 Caliber Killer,” aka the Son of Sam. Rather the film focuses on the effects a serial killer has on the culture of New York City during the sweltering summer of 1977, and how it affects young lives trying to make it in the big city.

Influenced by Lee and his co-writers Michael Imperioli and Victor Colicchio’s memories of growing up in 1970s New York, the pic is a love letter to a grim moment in history when the city was about to explode with murders, blackouts, crime, and disco. All of this is digested from the vantages of Vinny (John Leguizamo), a philandering hairdresser guilt-ridden for cheating on his wife (Mira Sorvino), and his childhood pal Ritchie (Adrien Brody), who’s left the old neighborhood behind to join the fledgling punk rock scene.

With a greater interest in how a serial killer affects the culture and institutions of a city on edge than being a traditional crime drama, Summer of Sam is a bit of a forerunner to David Fincher’s far more polished Zodiac from a few years later. With heavy-handed dialogue and a plot too big for Lee to fully get his arms around, even at 142 minutes, Summer of Sam can be uneven and messy. But it has the sweaty incorrigibility of a long night out, and of revelries half remembered like from a fever dream.

3. The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999)

The rare serial killer movie told entirely from the perspective of the killer, Anthony Minghella’s The Talented Mr. Ripley is disarmingly creepy. Despite its glossy awards bait sheen, there is a cold-blooded streak that runs deep to the heart of the piece, likely due to Patricia Highsmith’s source 1955 novel. Starring Matt Damon fresh off his Good Will Hunting golden boy sheen, the film uses its casting to disorient and ultimately disturb.

Like Highsmith’s book, the film is not structured like a traditional thriller. It instead favors a detached ambivalence about its seemingly nebbish hero as he agrees to become an errand boy for the rich by traveling to 1950s Italy in order to retrieve a silver spoon cad (Jude Law) for his father. But the more time Tom Ripley (Damon) spends with Law’s Dickie Greenleaf, the more he grows envious of Dickie’s lifestyle, his wealth and confidence, and maybe even his affection for socialite Marge (Gwyneth Paltrow). There is a subtle—too subtle due to ‘90s Hollywood conventions—homoerotic undercurrent throughout the film as Ripley slowly works up the courage to take his first life. It won’t be his last.

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Movies

Knives Out: When Murder Makes You a Better Person

By Natalie Zutter

Movies

Seven: The Brilliance of David Fincher’s Chase Scene

By Ryan Lambie

Highsmith wound up publishing four subsequent sequels to The Talented Mr. Ripley, but unfortunately no more were made with Damon. Perhaps because this was too unsettling for an ongoing franchise.

2. Seven (1995)

While watching David Fincher’s masterful Seven, the thing that immediately stands out is the oppressive nihilism that permeates throughout. There were decades of neo noir before this detective yarn about the hunt for a serial killer, but none demonstrated such an overbearing sense of despair before the opening credits were even concluded. And perhaps what makes it unshakable is how welcoming the film is toward bleakness; it succumbs long before the gut-punch finale.

Telling the story of an old cop days from retirement (Morgan Freeman) and a hotheaded rookie detective (Brad Pitt), Andrew Kevin Walker’s script has an economy of pace that still impresses despite its cynicism. Very quickly one murder becomes two, then three, and soon four. Yet none of the atrocities are reveled in by Fincher’s blocking; they’re off-screen mutilations which leave psychic damage on his two leads and, eventually, us. The deaths also quickly establish a pattern that their serial killer is targeting seven souls, each intended to embody one of the seven deadly sins.

The movie is a classic now for its climax where the killer “John Doe” (a reptilian Kevin Spacey) turns himself in and leads the cops into the darkest pit, but it’s the entire package that makes this one linger more than 25 years later. At the end of the film, Somerset quotes Hemingway by saying, “‘The world is a fine place and worth fighting for.’ I agree with the second part.” I’m not convinced his film does.

1. The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

As the film that kick-started the idea that serial killers could create their own film genre, The Silence of the Lambs still remains the best of its kind. Blessedly unaware that it was creating conventions for countless copycats, the film tells its psychological drama with simplicity and clarity. Whereas other films on this list bask in their bleakness, there is a dogged optimism and even perverse warmth to this Jonathan Demme adaptation of Thomas Harris’ Silence of the Lambs novel. And that’s of course largely attributable to the casting of Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster.

As Dr. Hannibal Lecter, Hopkins is of course monumental. It’s a performance that turned a quinquagenarian into an overnight movie star, and became Hopkins’ calling card as he returned to the not-so-good doctor’s well one too many times. Still, he’s undeniably enthralling as Hannibal, a cannibal psychologist with superhuman powers of observation and mental menace. Even so, Foster is often overlooked by critics for her own contributions as the FBI trainee who’s proverbially fed to the incarcerated Lecter—a pretty face to get the serial killer to consult pro bono on the crimes of another mass murderer. It’s just one more example of casual sexism faced by Clarice that gives Foster as much to play as Hopkins.

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Culture

David Fincher’s Zodiac: The Movie That Never Ended

By Don Kaye

Movies

The Little Things Ending Explained

By David Crow

Surrounded by the slights and prejudices of men—be they in law enforcement or straight jackets—Clarice is constantly underestimated. She finds an intellectual rapport with Hannibal, but she pulls herself out of the darkest night, and the screaming of the lambs, without assistance. Her perseverance matched by Hannibal’s darkly seductive qualities is the juxtaposition that makes Silence of the Lambs one of the finest films of its decade.

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Core Character Ranking - No Straight Roads

At this point with the game having been out for well over four and a half months, I figure that with having a small piece of fiction under my belt, and with the fandom having cooled down from the initial release but still hot enough for content to steadily be coming out from the fanbase, now is a good time for me to share my thoughts on No Straight Roads - rather, what I call the Core Characters of No Straight Roads.

I call them this because they are the collective protagonist main characters and antagonistic bosses - not filling up one bucket or another quite satisfactory. I might even make this into a series if anyone cares enough to hear my thoughts on other pieces of fiction. If you’re interested, continue below the line.

Oh, also, spoilers for No Straight Roads if you still care about that.

Disclaimer before continuing onwards - I’ve never actually played No Straight Roads! I’m not exactly a person with enough wealth to throw at my own interests and hobbies, but I feel I’ve absorbed enough through culture osmosis, 100% walkthroughs of the game, and other people’s interpretations of the game to be able to make my own informed opinions on the characters.

Also, this isn’t a “bosses” ranking list - this is a character ranking list. Meaning that individuals are going to be ranked rather than the whole. For example, Sayu will be divided into the four members behind Sayu (hereafter refered to as “Team Sayu”) as well as Sayu herself. This also means I won’t fully go on the gameplay mechanics as I don’t have enough experience with it to make a fully informed decision. I will talk about what I’ve seen though.

With that in mind, we’ll be starting as all of these lists usually do, from the bottom ranking to the top: ________________________________________________________________ 20. Eve

Now, this may come as a shock, but I absolutely despise divas. Eve was entertaining enough, but through her videos she was only relatable and likable to me before she and Zuke broke up. Mostly because I could relate with her self-loathing and her found happiness.

Still... setting someone’s hair on fire? And then being confused as to why that happened? Then completely blaming the victim and using that mistake as fuel to shut out any other potential kindred relationship for the future? I’ve seen people who do that; it’s pathetic at best and annoying to see at worst. Thankfully, due to Zuke, she does eventually come around.

Her music and boss fight are interesting enough I suppose. I like how the perspective changes and I adore when you have to switch over to Mayday and it becomes a fully chaotic mess of limbs, doubt, hatred, and rage. I live for that chaotic aesthetic.

Otherwise, she’s just... the weakest character to me in No Straight Roads.

Maybe she’ll Eve-ntually earn my respect in supplementary materials.  ________________________________________________________________ 19. Sofa

The first member of Team Sayu I’m mentioning and he’s this low on the list. Ouch. Not to say that I hate him, the hate started and ended with Eve - he, along with the others don’t really have much of a personality canonically that I can see to judge him on. But in terms of his design, I’ve never been much of a fan of “overweight and silly” outside of Doctor Eggman/

Do not take this the wrong way. I am in NO way fatshaming ANYONE.

I just have never liked that design in fictional characters. See Hifumi Yamada from “Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc” for more on what I mean

Still, he’s a core member of Team Sayu and from the fanfiction I’ve read he’s one of the better characters to write with. Maybe if we got a spinoff or other related materials, he’d go up a few numbers in rank, but as it stands, he’s the weakest of the group.

Sofa-r so good, let’s move on before these puns go too far. ________________________________________________________________ 18. Mayday Yeah. I’m not a huge fan of Mayday herself. Hotheaded protagonists are fine here and there, but she’s so hot-headed I’m surprised that she didn’t have the fire aesthetic as well. I guess with it all being taken by Tatiana, they could only give her a warm color scheme so it wasn’t redundant.

Her gameplay seems fine, if a bit basic. The heavy hitter is also a hothead, who could guess. I kinda like how someone as scrawny and small as her also has the biggest heart and temper. Also the gags that come from her relating to the other bosses are hysterical and make for good protagonist material. Still, outside of her interaction with DK West, Zuke, and Team Sayu, as well as the very end of the game, there’s a lack of enough “heroic” traits that makes Mayday fall flat from just shy of ranking higher.

I don’t have a clever pun, joke, or one-liner for Mayday, so let’s go to the next person in my list. ________________________________________________________________ 17. DJ Subatomic Supernova I have never really liked disco or dance music at the best of times, but I love space. So what happens when you mix something I feel lukewarm to, something I absolutely adore, and combine it with a trait about a person I absolutely also despise?

You get space helmet man who likes fresh ice cream and goes on for minutes about how great he is and how everyone else around him are plebeians - not knowing how pretentious the stage name “Subatomic Supernova” is.

If I had made this list when I had first seen No Straight Roads, he’d be only just ahead of Eve just because I dislike her so much more than I hate egotism of DJ Subatomic Supernova. But he’s now gone higher on the list since he’s grown on me thanks to the fandom and me realizing the game is parodying the stereotypes and the industry of music. Also, Zuke’s drum solo is AMAZING with the EDM version of DJ SS’s theme. He’s even gone so far as to become half of my second favorite paring in the NSR fandom!

Shine on, you funky space man. ________________________________________________________________

16. DK West Ewah! Older of the two brothers by age, younger of the two by maturity. I absolutely love this goofball. His shadow powers are absolutely amazing to watch and while I normally don’t like rap outside of Eminem (and even then only select tracks), he grew on me a lot. He’s so unique and the culture he’s based on from what I understand was researched with a lot of respect and care.

I’ve heard (and seen) that the third fight ramps up the difficulty way too much, but considering that Mayday is attempting to repair a broken household, it makes sense it’d be such a heavy undertaking from a gameplay and story point.

Also DK West Encounter 1 is a smash hit, telling us everything we really need to know between DK West and Zuke while being an absolutely great song that reminds me of Epic Rap Battles of History for anyone that remembers that.

He overshadows his previous competition by a large margin, and I can’t wait to see more of him if that’s possible. ________________________________________________________________ 15. Yinu’s Mom As the real mastermind behind Yinu’s position in NSR, it suddenly makes so much sense as to why a literal child is in such a strict EDM hierarchy like NSR. What keeps her from going above and beyond this ranking isn’t anything more than just the pressure she puts on Yinu to perform. During the fight, and what I can only presume also happens outside of concerts in the universe of No Straight Roads, it seems like she entirely forgets the reason Yinu keeps playing the piano in the first place.

However, I am a huge sucker for family dynamics, and her stopping her assault due to the memories that Yinu was able to drag out of her through the broken piano by playing Heart of the Prodigy is enough to almost enough for me to reach the level of emotional catharsis as the ending of Pixar’s “Inside Out” did for me. And the way she shielded Yinu when they were falling, the gasp of fear that she might not survive the fall - just pure, amazing storytelling through “show, don’t tell”.

I will say, the more morbid part of me that enjoys things like Danganronpa, Your Turn To Die, and Nonary Games, had the thought of “if it weren’t for the fact that Mayday and Zuke also fell from that height and survived (and that this game is meant for younger audiences), Yinu would have became an orphan.”

Mother of the Year award goes to Yinu’s mom for being the most realistic, sympathetic, non-dead mom in fiction. ________________________________________________________________ 14. Yinu I love classical music, but I don’t really like children. Yinu is an exception to my general dislike of children. The promotion that was released before the game was a little eye-rolling, but it was also funny. Fortunately, in the game, Yinu is so much more mature and interesting than the promotional material lead us to believe. The way the piano plays plays in the base version of VS Yinu conveys just how talented she is at nine years old. It’s a shame that it slowly gets covered up by the EDM version as the battle goes on.

But her reasoning for playing the piano, through the photos you get from Yinu’s backstory is all the more reason to respect this literal child. She turned the loss of her music teacher and father into a shining passion for music. The piano being the very memento of her deceased dad - looking at the photos and then realizing what you did in shattering her piano creates a fantastic retroactive look at just how destructive Bunkbed Junction’s revolution really is to people.

We’re not even half-way down the list, and yet we already have great characters like this, so let’s keep looking. ________________________________________________________________ 13. Dodo There’s been a huge gap since the last Team Sayu member. So what makes Dodo so great compared to Sofa? Well, the deep voice that comes from the scrawny, blue man is funny to me. It caught me off-guard the first time I heard it and had me giggling for hours afterwards after I paused the video to regain my composure.

That, and mocap work is hard work. On top of that, though he’s mostly not the face everyone remembers when fans think of Sayu, it takes a lot of talent and self-confidence to dance like a cutesy mermaid despite being a male, at least in my opinion. So I see him as having high confidence, but also being like Zuke in the “chill and mostly quiet” department.

There’s not much else for me to say, since most of Team Sayu doesn’t have blatantly obvious character traits. So let’s move on. ________________________________________________________________ 12. Sayu Sayu herself is... well, not real. It’s like trying to judge any number of the Vocaloid/UTAU voice banks. Sure you can place any number of personalities and messages into it, but in reality she’s just been built as a “cutsie, wootsie, pink mermaid” idol.

Still, the personality that Team Sayu gives her is fantastic. Her fight is annoying, and lackluster even to watch, but her song is amazing in all of its forms, even if for me the vaporwave version is the least effective of all of them - and Analog Aquatics is the BEST lead-up song to it, even ahead of Heart of the Prodigy.

Hatsune Miku? Who’s that? I only see Sayu as the best Vocaloid. ________________________________________________________________ 11. Remi Technically the creator of Sayu in the first place and her designer, Remi seems to be the “all according to plan” type. To think that his passion for art would lead to a career such as NSR, and a close-knit friend group like Team Sayu. It’s something that I’m sure that every artist has had as their goal at one point or another.

I highly respect anyone with the ability to put their artwork out in public, both in real life and as a character. Even so, there are characters I like even beyond Remi, and once again, we don’t have much to go off of for him outside of the very few times we see him in Sayu’s battle.

Almost all of Team Sayu has been covered at this point - heck, even Sayu herself has already been covered. So where’s Tila you ask? Well, we’ll get to that, but not for a while. ________________________________________________________________ 10. Tatiana “Kul Fyra” Qwartz From the very moment we first hear her voice, we can tell she’s all business and order. When we watch all of NSR reject the rock music outright and listen to Tatiana’s speech afterwards? How she seems to disregard her artists own safety and prioritizing undermining Bunkbed Junction’s efforts just because she can’t bear to remember her old bandmates? Wonderfully selfish for a heartbroken character.

Also, for those who hate her time-oriented powers and how weakly linked they are to Tatiana herself? Consider this: She’s almost 50 years old by the time Bunkbed Junction starts their revolution. She’s lived long enough to be anyone in the cast’s mom - probably even old enough to be Team Sayu and Yinu’s grandma. She has only seen a progressive march of time erode at everything she ever loved and cared about.

The blazing passion within her is brought back to her through Bunkbed Junction’s actions, but through a reversal of time and a reflection of her memories. Bunkbed Junction literally shatters the world view that she constructed for herself to ignore the regret and pain that had been slowly eating her up inside without her ever even having fully realized it in the first phase. By the time Tatiana reverts back to using her Kul Fyra form, she’s trying so hard to list any number of reasons to ignore her past and focus on what little time she actually has left to work on the future.

This was a bit of a longer explanation and reasoning, but for a character as amazing and symbolically complex as Tatiana, she absolutely deserves it. And as you’ll see for the next character, this is only a fraction of my love for the characters of No Straight Roads. ________________________________________________________________9. Neon J And here we start with my absolutely favorite characters, the ones I not only enjoy reading and writing about, but that in canon I can wholeheartedly accept them for who they are, flaws and all.

My grandpa was in the navy, and to make a long story short there were some complicated things that happened that required me to live with both him and my grandma when I was really little. So already there’s something that I can latch onto and adore. Even with how cringy Neon J is at the end with him attempting to try to give an epic war hero speech, my grandpa can be the same way sometimes, and that’s okay. They kind of act similarly outside of that as well.

His design is so sleek and smooth, and sometimes I forget that he’s actually a cyborg, unlike his sons boyband creations. Normally I hate the military, war, and what it all represents at a cynical level, but when it’s portrayed in a way like No Straight Roads did for Neon J and 1010, it reminds me of the people who actually join to serve their country and the people in it, despite how few in their countries actually deserve their respect.

And yeah, I can already hear the “blah blah fiction is poorly portraying law enforcement/the military because ect ect”. I disagree. Think of it this way: Neon J is a fun example of what a leader in a military unit is. Not only that, he’s extremely loyal and willing to do what it takes to get the job done - including having a program inside 1010 that makes them explode when they fail to generate the requisite fan praise that’s likely required to keep 1010 merchandise flying off of the shelves and thus prove to the other NSR artists that even robot boybands can be used to help Vinyl City; AND use said robot boyband as weapons to fight off any threats - internal or external.

Also think about what he had to go through to become a cyborg. That means he likely had to replace everything that’s on the surface - imagine what he needed to replace underneath all of that metal. How much of his original body is left? How badly did the war he was involved in hurt him? How many comrades did he lose to try to recreate that feel in a boyband? Aren’t the implications of that so much more grand than the surface level “radar head man is bad representation of military people because he’s silly and ineffective at his job”. Furthermore, tell me of a person in the real world who lost so much of their body they literally had to become a cyborg that has a literal radar for a head.

On top of all of that he’s the second half of my second favorite pairing. Not that is has any major bearing on how great Neon J already is. Is it silly that Neon J tries to give a huge speech at the end when we know Bunkbed Junction is just trying to get to Tatiana? Yes. But it’s fun.

I salute the No Straight Roads team for creating such an amazing character . ________________________________________________________________8. Blue 1010 Robot | Purl-Hew Ah yes, now we start getting to what’s taking up most of the top 10 slots. Kind of funny that not all of the 1010 members are going into the top 5 slots with how much I ranted and raved about Neon J. But I have characters I like way more than most of the 1010 band members.

And yes, I’ll bring this up now since we’re actually talking about 1010, that will apply to all the members of 1010 so I don’t have to repeat myself: I already know that they’re meant to parody boy bands, pop bands, and how similar all of them are and ect ect ect. That doesn’t stop me from going “hee hoo pretty boys” at fictional characters. And, yes, I know they don’t canonically have names, but I’m going with what’s been accepted across the fandom. Also all of their body types are the same: I like them alot. They’re tall, in monochrome (hah, chrome), and the way they bob to the beat in their battle is fantastic and shows they are powered by music as much as any machine is in the universe of No Straight Roads.

Starting off with my least favorite of them, Purl-Hew just reminds me of Garnet from “Steven Universe”, which is not a bad thing. It’s just that outside of what we learn of Garnet, she’s a character I often forget exists. I think it’s honestly the shades and the blue, more square-like hair that makes me draw the comparison. Purl-Hew strikes me as the “cool” one. The one that recites his poetry in coffee shops and is the sensitive boy with a cold exterior. You know the kind of person I’m talking about.

Other than that, I like the 1010 branding on the side of his head. I normally don’t like hairstyles like that, but somehow with how it flows and how non-obnoxious it is, I actually find myself liking the hairstyle. Also coupled with the fact that I see him as the second eldest of all five of them, who likely cemented an identity for himself before the others, makes me like his entirety even more.

A cool dude deserves a cool transition, but since this isn’t a video, a line break will have to do. ________________________________________________________________7. Red 1010 Robot | Zimelu Zimelu is one of the ones that strikes me as the one that’s borderline trying to break free from the rest of the band and become his own artist. The mowhawk, the color red, even to what he’s likely supposed to represent in-universe. Many see him as having anger issues, and considering what 1010 is about coupled with, again the hair style and his color, yeah I can see why.

But I also see him having a somewhat tsundere side. Not overtly fully tusndere as “I-It’s not like I like you or anything!” but more of a “Hey, I got you [insert favorite food] to eat. Don’t read too much into it.” while looking off to the side to avoid seeing your reaction just because he’s not sure if he can handle the thought of him possibly being wrong and then seeing you be disappointed kind of tsundere.

I don’t see a lot of peices of work exploring this concept, and I’d love to see more of it - or heck, even other personality traits that could be lying under the rebellious design of him.

I see him as the middle child of the group, which could also add to the rebellious personality and anger issues. Not sure if anyone agrees with me on this though. ________________________________________________________________6. Yellow 1010 Robot | Haym Okay, so this is a bit weird. Haym is my second least favorite in terms of design, but third favorite because he’s supposed to be the sunny, shy, and sweet one. I see him as the second youngest of all of the 1010 members. Old enough to have experience and understand his purpose, but young enough to retain that childhood-like innocence and sweetness.

I think he’s content about his place in 1010. It’s not that he would slack off or anything, but he’d be the most comfortable with his identity out of all five of them, even years down the line. Where Purl-Hew has to upkeep his identity, Haym is fine just being who he is and happy that the crowd accepts him for who he is.

Also him saying “even your lips, which form that raaaaadiant smile~” made me smile like an idiot and my heart flutter when I first saw him - and don’t even get me started on his pose when he was saying that. So that probably has at least some bearing on his placement in this list. ________________________________________________________________5. Green 1010 Robot | Eloni Haym was weird for me to admit I still don’t fully like his design, but Eloni’s design is actually worse for me. I still don’t like the fact he looks like you could hang him on a Christmas tree or a keychain and not be out of place there. But as I learned more - especially the part where in-universe he’s the least-liked because he’s the prankster type, my heart melted for the guy.

While I myself am not a prankster or a fan of prankster types, sympathetic characters that are generally unliked in-universe for something minor or not their fault is something that will always get me to love a character. There’s also a lot of great fanfiction out there for Eloni, playing with the idea of jealousy, feelings of inadequacy, and the resulting love and support that inevitably follows from a strong supporting family.

Also, I see him as the youngest, and likely the one who thought it’d be a good idea to give everyone reindeer heads for the Christmas event instead of whatever was originally planned. The fans probably loved it anyways, even better than what was originally planned, but never knew it was Eloni’s messing around that gave them the toy-soldier-with-reindeer-heads 1010.

Second best 1010 boy deserves to be in the top 5 for all of this and more. ________________________________________________________________4. Tila Tila? You mean the one girl who only goes “pyun” a few times? The only one of Team Sayu that has any voice lines that are more than sobs, grunts, tremoring fear, and sounds of triumph?

Yes. That character. You want to know why?

First, lets start with her design. She wears an oversized hoodie and glasses - already two things I can relate to. The color contrast is just perfect between her hair, skin, and hoodie. Her design alone to me screams “high-functioning introvert”.

Her one line? Going “pyun” a few times? Absolutely adorable. I wanted to hear her say more lines, and the delivery of them being so uncertain filtered through a microphone to not come out that way as Sayu? She is definitely the shy one of the four of them. Also let’s not forget she’s Sayu’s voice actress in universe. Meaning that VS Sayu is something that Tila is singing.

Also, in the background material for Sayu, she’s the one that apologizes for using Remi’s art for one of her songs, and starts the collaboration with all four members of Team Sayu. It’s her story we follow. Not any of the other four members, though Remi does actually say something.

Though we don’t get much else of her, which prevents her from taking a spot in my top 3 picks, if we got just a little bit more from her, I’d definitely bump her to 3rd, maybe even let her take 1st. As it stands, compared to the rest of Team Sayu and Sayu herself, top 5 is nothing to sneeze at. ________________________________________________________________3. Kliff “No one like’s Kliff! He’s evil and bad!”

I mostly disagree with that statement, politely of course. Does no one like him? Seems that way in the fandom, but I like him. Is he evil? Yes, most certainly. Is he “bad”? Well, what’s the context of bad in this case? A bad plot-twist? A bad character? A bad guide? Not really. Well, except for the last part, possibly, but even then he’s still serviceable.

I mean take into context that Tatiana is Kul Fyra. On a first viewing, after having fought so many people after first meeting Kliff, most people would have forgotten that he, like Mayday, also likes Kul Fyra and was even there for her concerts. People who have insane memory would remember it, but for the rest of us, it probably came as a shock that Kliff would send a satellite into the NSR tower.

But he’s a fan that put Kul Fyra on a pillar, just like Mayday. He’d hoped that rock artists would get her back into rock music, to reignite the fire in her, so that he could enjoy her music again. He even says that he’s still her fan. He questions Tatiana “did my loyalty mean nothing to you?”.

And while yes, she didn’t technically owe him anything, the way that Tatiana shoots Kliff down so coldly after all of his attempts and his waiting - after she shut herself away from any potential future differing opinions and banning rock so she couldn’t remember the heartache - he snaps.

I’m not saying that Kliff was right, or that his reaction was fully justified. But imagine him saying he’ll be the strategic planner of NSR - after all, it was thanks to him that Mayday and Zuke got as far as they did. They knew what was coming ahead of time due to his advice. Mayday and Zuke would just be figureheads. It would be entirely realistic, and not make Kliff entirely evil.

Still, with all the hypotheticals out of the way, having an entirely selfish twist villain like Kliff was amazing. When you go through the entire story knowing how it will end on a second playthrough, suddenly his motives and what he says makes so much more sense.

I want to see (or maybe someday I’ll write) a redemption arc for Kliff. He’s not so fargone that I’d write him off as another villain for the sake of evil, but it would take actual work and effort. It’s something I look forwards to seeing in the far future.

Though he is also fun to see as an antagonist in all of these stories I read about him. ________________________________________________________________2. Zuke On a scale of 1 to 10, I’d rank Zuke an 11. From his design, to his animations, to his background, his voice, his lines - everything is an 11/10 for me.

Starting with design again, normally I’d dislike the major contrast such a saturated green against a saturated blue. But there’s other bits in Zuke’s design - his red eyes, the fact that his clothing is a good neutral base to draw away from the chaos of colors of his head - only to lead back into what looks like ultra-comfortable blue-and-green flannel with dark blue flats? It all screams the perfect chill dude to hang out with.

His personality matches too. He’s laid-back, wise, rational, humble, and kind. Almost the perfect man in every way. Though he has his limits, especially when it comes to DK West, and he’s not always the most intelligent at times. Sometimes he takes a minute to put two-and-two together, especially when he’s under pressure and nervous.

And his drumsticks being used as a walking cane when he’s not battling, admitting that it’s NSR property - recognizing that NSR itself is not bad, it just needs change. He doesn’t generally talk smack unless, again, it’s DK West. He probably says less than Mayday does out of the two, but I wasn’t counting. I was just thankful that he was talking at all, attempting to be the voice of reason in situations, telling Eve he was wrong for leaving so suddenly (even though he’s not at fault for his hair being set on fire), reconciling with DK West after Mayday gets them to talk about their feelings to each other - he experiences the most growth over the longest period of time.

In fact, it feels like we’re witnessing Zuke’s entire story through the eyes of Mayday. Sure, Mayday has a stake in the conflict, and a small bit of growth, but none nearly so much as the jolly green giant between them. Heck, he’s so good that he made DJ Subatomic Supernova’s music actually sound good.

If this wasn’t enough, he’s also one half of my favorite pairing. Where’s the other half? Where he belongs of course. ________________________________________________________________1. White 1010 Robot |  Rin Look guys, my favorite character of No Straight Roads is finally here. Let me be the ideal fan and give him my utmost attention.

ATTENTION!

Hoo boy have I been waiting to talk about Rin! His design is the one that I love the most despite how simple and obviously pandering it is. I mean come on, he’s got the kind of hairstyle that just screams “typical emo/scene/goth/pop leader” without the sweeping bit of hair in front of the eye like Haym’s or other emo/scene/goth hair styles. He has no unique colors to himself (white and black are technically not colors). Heck, as a robot meant to parody pop/boybands, he technically should be the most bland and uninteresting part of 1010.

But that’s where you’d be wrong. Rin is the one who leads the flirting attempt against Mayday. Rin is the one who is focused on the most of all the 1010 members when the cutscenes play. Rin is the one who’s talking the most in the promotional video for 1010 and No Straight Roads. Even though Zimelu takes up most of the spot in the in-game photo op, Rin is the second most noticable. In the “wefies” the 1010 members make in the promotional video, Rin is front and center.

Rin is the poster child. Meaning he has the most mounting on him of all the members of 1010. And this can manifest in any number of interesting character traits. I’ve already written an (as of posting this review) three chapter fanfic on Rin and his dynamic with not only the other half of my favorite pairing, but also his dynamic with Neon J, and how both Zuke and Neon J view Rin - through what I perceive how Rin actually feels and acts when he’s not on stage.

I could probably do an entire 20 minute review on why Rin is the single-best character of No Straight Roads, both in and out of canon, but I don’t have the tools for it. And as a side note, the guitar solo that Mayday can play over the song is the single-best of all the guitar solos, the second being the one against Yinu - and that deep passion for 1010 is reflected well in the guitar solo.

Zuke may be an 11/10, but Rin is a perfect 10/10 - and I wouldn’t have it any other way . ________________________________________________________________Afterwords Finally, after an entire 4 hours of writing, I’d like to hear your thoughts on all of this, if you’ve made it this far.

What did you agree and disagree with? Feel free to comment if you want.

As for me, I think I’ll continue to browse the work of the fandom, keep an ear out for any future updates or sequels, and rock on with the amazing soundtrack of No Straight Roads jamming loudly in my ears.

Rock on fellow No Straight Roads fans! Or whatever genre you prefer to listen to.

[krisrix]

hi what’s persona 4

I’ve been staring at this message on and off since you sent it, Anon. I don’t know how to answer you without going feral. So, that’s what you’re gonna get.

Persona 4 is a JRPG from Atlus. It released on the PS2 almost twelve years ago (July 10, 2008). Here’s the main cast:

It has since spawned a truly grotesque amount of spinoffs, which I love to unhealthy degrees:

Persona 4 manga (2008-2019)

Persona 4 Golden (2012, remake + lots of additional stuff, PS Vita)

Persona 4 Arena (2012, fighting game sequel by Arc Sys)

Persona 4: The Animation (2012, 26-episode anime)

Persona 4 Arena Ultimax (2013/14, fighting game sequel sequel)

Persona 4: The Golden Animation (2014, 12-episode anime for the true fans)

Persona 4 Visualives (2014, two stage productions that I have yet to find subtitled versions of)

Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth (2014, dungeon-crawler!AU, crossover with Persona 3, 3DS)

Persona 4: Dancing All Night (2015, rhythm game, PS Vita, sequel before the other two sequels)

Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth (2018, dungeon-crawler!AU sequel, crossover with Persona 3 and Persona 5, 3DS)

Wait, wait, what’s this about Persona 3 and Persona 5? Don’t worry about it. They’re completely separate games. Well, until they’re not. But it’s fine.

Is that confusing? Yes. Are you scared? You should be. Do you want to dip your toe into Persona 4 anyway? GOOD. Do you not own a Vita? That’s fine, no one does.

Which is why, in this extremely fucked up year we’re living in, Persona 4 Golden has been released on Steam.

Okay, so, Persona 4 Golden on Steam is the thing to play, got it. But WHAT is it?

It’s a murder mystery in a small town and you, our slightly-blank-slate transfer student protagonist, will lead a ragtag team of misfits Scooby-Doo style to stop further murders and solve the mystery! How will the team do this? By jumping inside a television and addressing their fragile, fragmented mental states and harnessing their issues into summonable humanoid weapons called Personas. Yeah. It’s pretty cool.

And when you’re not inside a strange TV world and fighting monsters with semi-physical embodiments of Jungian psychology in order to save someone before they are murdered... well, then you’re just a normal Japanese teenage boy! Which means you go to school. And take exams. And eat questionable food found in the back of your uncle’s fridge. And get deeply invested in the weather forecast. And join a sports team. And go fishing, I guess—I dunno, I never did the fishing part.

You know what else you’ll do? SOCIAL LINKS.

You’ll grow deeply familiar with most of these characters. In fact, social links are probably most of the game. You’re gonna spend a lot more time hanging out with people and figuring out all the things that make them tick than, you know, stopping murders. But that’s okay because BONDING WITH OTHERS IS THE TRUE POWER.

Oh, and did I mention that there’s also an addictive gotta-catch-’em-all element to the battle system? Cuz there is. You’ll collect more and more Persona to fight with, and you’ll level them, and you’ll FUSE THEM, and then you’ll discover all new ones. It’s like Pokemon, but you do it in the back of a fancy limousine (eat your heart out, Pokemon Go) and instead of animal-ish creatures, these are mythological ones of every variety. Like Loki, and Sarasvati, and Horus, and Uriel, and... this guy:

AAAAAND all of the Persona and social links are TAROT themed. Don’t know anything about the tarot? That’s okay. You will.

Plus, the music is bops all around.

You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. You’ll experience second-hand embarrassment. You’ll be filled with righteous fury. You’ll pick favourites even when it’s bad from a tactical perspective. You’ll marvel at how suddenly you can get people to fall in love with you. You’ll pet a fox.

So there you have it!

GO PLAY PERSONA 4 GOLDEN