#And I know this is not really a Huge Deal in the Greater Scope of things but you get it.

[clit-a-cola]

People will be like "shipping miss pauling with a man is lesphobic because this one deleted tweet from one writer of the comics said she was a lesbian!!!!" but then go and ship her with a bedicked merc and call it lesbian yuri cause they slapped she/her pronouns on him lol

[anheliotrope]

Rambling About C# Being Alright

I think C# is an alright language. This is one of the highest distinctions I can give to a language.

Warning: This post is verbose and rambly and probably only good at telling you why someone might like C# and not much else.

~~~

There's something I hate about every other language. Worst, there's things I hate about other languages that I know will never get better. Even worse, some of those things ALSO feel like unforced errors.

With C# there's a few things I dislike or that are missing. C#'s feature set does not obviously excel at anything, but it avoids making any huge misstep in things I care about. Nothing in C# makes me feel like the language designer has personally harmed me.

C# is a very tolerable language.

C# is multi-paradigm.

C# is the Full Middle Malcomist language.

C# will try to not hurt you.

A good way to describe C# is "what if Java sucked less". This, of course, already sounds unappealing to many, but that's alright. I'm not trying to gas it up too much here.

C# has sins, but let's try to put them into some context here and perhaps the reason why I'm posting will become more obvious:

C# didn't try to avoid generics and then implement them in a way that is very limiting (cough Go).

C# doesn't hamstring your ability to have statement lambdas because the language designer dislikes them and also because the language designer decided to have semantic whitespace making statement lambdas harder to deal with (cough Python).

C# doesn't require you to explicitly wrap value types into reference types so you can put value types into collections (cough Java).

C# doesn't ruin your ability to interact with memory efficiently because it forbids you from creating custom value types, ergo everything goes to the heap (cough cough Java, Minecraft).

C# doesn't have insane implicit type coercions that have become the subject of language design comedy (cough JavaScript).

C# doesn't keep privacy accessors as a suggestion and has the developers pinkie swear about it instead of actually enforcing it (cough cough Python).

Plainly put, a lot of the time I find C# to be alright by process of elimination. I'm not trying to shit on your favorite language. Everyone has different things they find tolerable. I have the Buddha nature so I wish for all things to find their tolerable language.

I do also think that C# is notable for being a mainstream language (aka not Haskell) that has a smaller amount of egregious mistakes, quirks and Faustian bargains.

The Typerrrrr

C# is statically typed, but the typing is largely effortless to navigate unlike something like Rust, and the GC gives a greater degree of safety than something like C++.

Of course, the typing being easy to work it also makes it less safe than Rust. But this is an appropriate trade-off for certain kinds of applications, especially considering that C# is memory safe by virtue of running on a VM. Don't come at me, I'm a Rust respecter!!

You know how some people talk about Python being amazing for prototyping? That's how I feel about C#. No matter how much time I would dedicate to Python, C# would still be a more productive language for me. The type system would genuinely make me faster for the vast majority of cases. Of course Python has gradual typing now, so any comparison gets more difficult when you consider that. But what I'm trying to say is that I never understood the idea that doing away entirely with static typing is good for fast iteration.

Also yes, C# can be used as a repl. Leave me alone with your repls. Also, while the debugger is active you can also evaluate arbitrary code within the current scope.

I think that going full dynamic typing is a mistake in almost every situation. The fact that C# doesn't do that already puts it above other languages for me. This stance on typing is controversial, but it's my opinion that is really shouldn't be. And the wind has constantly been blowing towards adding gradual typing to dynamic languages.

The modest typing capabilities C# coupled with OOP and inheritance lets you create pretty awful OOP slop. But that's whatever. At work we use inheritance in very few places where it results in neat code reuse, and then it's just mostly interfaces getting implemented.

C#'s typing and generic system is powerful enough to offer you a plethora of super-ergonomic collection transformation methods via the LINQ library. There's a lot of functional-style programming you can do with that. You know, map, filter, reduce, that stuff?

Even if you make a completely new collection type, if it implements IEnumerable<T> it will benefit from LINQ automatically. Every language these days has something like this, but it's so ridiculously easy to use in C#. Coupled with how C# lets you (1) easily define immutable data types, (2) explicitly control access to struct or class members, (3) do pattern matching, you can end up with code that flows really well.

A Friendly Kitchen Sink

Some people have described C#'s feature set as bloated. It is getting some syntactic diversity which makes it a bit harder to read someone else's code. But it doesn't make C# harder to learn, since it takes roughly the same amount of effort to get to a point where you can be effective in it.

Most of the more specific features can be effortlessly ignored. The ones that can't be effortlessly ignored tend to bring something genuinely useful to the language -- such as tuples and destructuring. Tuples have their own syntax, the syntax is pretty intuitive, but the first time you run into it, you will have to do a bit of learning.

C# has an immense amount of small features meant to make the language more ergonomic. They're too numerous to mention and they just keep getting added.

I'd like to draw attention to some features not because they're the most important but rather because it feels like they communicate the "personality" of C#. Not sure what level of detail was appropriate, so feel free to skim.

Stricter Null Handling. If you think not having to explicitly deal with null is the billion dollar mistake, then C# tries to fix a bit of the problem by allowing you to enable a strict context where you have to explicitly tell it that something can be null, otherwise it will assume that the possibility of a reference type being null is an error. It's a bit more complicated than that, but it definitely helps with safety around nullability.

Default Interface Implementation. A problem in C# which drives usage of inheritance is that with just interfaces there is no way to reuse code outside of passing function pointers. A lot of people don't get this and think that inheritance is just used because other people are stupid or something. If you have a couple of methods that would be implemented exactly the same for classes 1 through 99, but somewhat differently for classes 100 through 110, then without inheritance you're fucked. A much better way would be Rust's trait system, but for that to work you need really powerful generics, so it's too different of a path for C# to trod it. Instead what C# did was make it so that you can write an implementation for methods declared in an interface, as long as that implementation only uses members defined in the interface (this makes sense, why would it have access to anything else?). So now you can have a default implementation for the 1 through 99 case and save some of your sanity. Of course, it's not a panacea, if the implementation of the method requires access to the internal state of the 1 through 99 case, default interface implementation won't save you. But it can still make it easier via some techniques I won't get into. The important part is that default interface implementation allows code reuse and reduces reasons to use inheritance.

Performance Optimization. C# has a plethora of features regarding that. Most of which will never be encountered by the average programmer. Examples: (1) stackalloc - forcibly allocate reference types to the stack if you know they won't outlive the current scope. (2) Specialized APIs for avoiding memory allocations in happy paths. (3) Lazy initialization APIs. (4) APIs for dealing with memory more directly that allow high performance when interoping with C/C++ while still keeping a degree of safety.

Fine Control Over Async Runtime. C# lets you write your own... async builder and scheduler? It's a bit esoteric and hard to describe. But basically all the functionality of async/await that does magic under the hood? You can override that magic to do some very specific things that you'll rarely need. Unity3D takes advantage of this in order to allow async/await to work on WASM even though it is a single-threaded environment. It implements a cooperative scheduler so the program doesn't immediately freeze the moment you do await in a single-threaded environment. Most people don't know this capability exists and it doesn't affect them.

Tremendous Amount Of Synchronization Primitives and API. This ones does actually make multithreaded code harder to deal with, but basically C# erred a lot in favor of having many different ways to do multithreading because they wanted to suit different usecases. Most people just deal with idiomatic async/await code, but a very small minority of C# coders deal with locks, atomics, semaphores, mutex, monitors, interlocked, spin waiting etc. They knew they couldn't make this shit safe, so they tried to at least let you have ready-made options for your specific use case, even if it causes some balkanization.

Shortly Begging For Tagged Unions

What I miss from C# is more powerful generic bounds/constraints and tagged unions (or sum types or discriminated unions or type unions or any of the other 5 names this concept has).

The generic constraints you can use in C# are anemic and combined with the lack of tagged unions this is rather painful at times.

I remember seeing Microsoft devs saying they don't see enough of a usecase for tagged unions. I've at times wanted to strangle certain people. These two facts are related to one another.

My stance is that if you think your language doesn't need or benefit from tagged unions, either your language is very weird, or, more likely you're out of your goddamn mind. You are making me do really stupid things every time I need to represent a structure that can EITHER have a value of type A or a value of type B.

But I think C# will eventually get tagged unions. There's a proposal for it here. I would be overjoyed if it got implemented. It seems like it's been getting traction.

Also there was an entire section on unchecked exceptions that I removed because it wasn't interesting enough. Yes, C# could probably have checked exceptions and it didn't and it's a mistake. But ultimately it doesn't seem to have caused any make-or-break in a comparison with Java, which has them. They'd all be better off with returning an Error<T>. Short story is that the consequences of unchecked exceptions have been highly tolerable in practice.

Ecosystem State & FOSSness

C# is better than ever and the tooling ecosystem is better than ever. This is true of almost every language, but I think C# receives a rather high amount of improvements per version. Additionally the FOSS story is at its peak.

Roslyn, the bedrock of the toolchain, the compiler and analysis provider, is under MIT license. The fact that it does analysis as well is important, because this means you can use the wealth of Roslyn analyzers to do linting.

If your FOSS tooling lets you compile but you don't get any checking as you type, then your development experience is wildly substandard.

A lot of stupid crap with cross-platform compilation that used to be confusing or difficult is now rather easy to deal with. It's basically as easy as (1) use NET Core, (2) tell dotnet to build for Linux. These steps take no extra effort and the first step is the default way to write C# these days.

Dotnet is part of the SDK and contains functionality to create NET Core projects and to use other tools to build said projects. Dotnet is published under MIT, because the whole SDK and runtime are published under MIT.

Yes, the debugger situation is still bad -- there's no FOSS option for it, but this is more because nobody cares enough to go and solve it. Jetbrains proved anyone can do it if they have enough development time, since they wrote a debugger from scratch for their proprietary C# IDE Rider.

Where C# falls flat on its face is the "userspace" ecosystem. Plainly put, because C# is a Microsoft product, people with FOSS inclinations have steered clear of it to such a degree that the packages you have available are not even 10% of what packages a Python user has available, for example. People with FOSS inclinations are generally the people who write packages for your language!!

I guess if you really really hate leftpad, you might think this is a small bonus though.

Where-in I talk about Cross-Platform

The biggest thing the ecosystem has been lacking for me is a package, preferably FOSS, for developing cross-platform applications. Even if it's just cross-platform desktop applications.

Like yes, you can build C# to many platforms, no sweat. The same way you can build Rust to many platforms, some sweat. But if you can't show a good GUI on Linux, then it's not practically-speaking cross-platform for that purpose.

Microsoft has repeatedly done GUI stuff that, predictably, only works on Windows. And yes, Linux desktop is like 4%, but that 4% contains >50% of the people who create packages for your language's ecosystem, almost the exact point I made earlier. If a developer runs Linux and they can't have their app run on Linux, they are not going to touch your language with a ten foot pole for that purpose. I think this largely explains why C#'s ecosystem feels stunted.

The thing is, I'm not actually sure how bad or good the situation is, since most people just don't even try using C# for this usecase. There's a general... ecosystem malaise where few care to use the language for this, chiefly because of the tone that Microsoft set a decade ago. It's sad.

HOWEVER.

Avalonia, A New Hope?

Today we have Avalonia. Avalonia is an open-source framework that lets you build cross-platform applications in C#. It's MIT licensed. It will work on Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android and also somehow in the browser. It seems to this by actually drawing pixels via SkiaSharp (or optionally Direct2D on Windows).

They make money by offering migration services from WPF app to Avalonia. Plus general support.

I can't say how good Avalonia is yet. I've researched a bit and it's not obviously bad, which is distinct from being good. But if it's actually good, this would be a holy grail for the ecosystem:

You could use a statically typed language that is productive for this type of software development to create cross-platform applications that have higher performance than the Electron slop. That's valuable!

This possibility warrants a much higher level of enthusiasm than I've seen, especially within the ecosystem itself. This is an ecosystem that was, for a while, entirely landlocked, only able to make Windows desktop applications.

I cannot overstate how important it is for a language's ecosystem to have a package like this and have it be good. Rust is still missing a good option. Gnome is unpleasant to use and buggy. Falling back to using Electron while writing Rust just seems like a bad joke. A lot of the Rust crates that are neither Electron nor Gnome tend to be really really undercooked.

And now I've actually talked myself into checking out Avalonia... I mean after writing all of that I feel like a charlatan for not having investigated it already.

[thebibliosphere]

So I'm currently unemployed because I got fired for taking too much sick leave (it was legally sketchy blah blah blah but in the end I just can't work and take care of myself and investigate my mystery health problems at the same time). So I've been spending more time writing!

I really admire your writing and loved Hunger Pangs. I'm looking forward to the poly elements developing and I'm wondering if you have any advice for writing about poly. I've made one of my projects a snarky take on "write what you know" ... Apparently what I know is southern gothic meets Pacific northwest gothic, chronic illness pandemic surrealism, and falling back-asswards into threesomes.

I know this is a very open-ended question and I don't expect an answer, I'm just curious about it if you have the energy. As a writer, trying to write honestly / realistically about polyamory/enm, I'm curious if you have any thoughts on what's different about portraying monogamy or nonmonogamy in books, romance or erotica or otherwise.

I'm trying to read examples but it's hard to find examples that fit the niche I'm looking at. Excuse me if this question is nonsense, it's the cluster headaches.

I'm sorry to hear you've been dealing with all that and solidarity on the cluster headaches. But I'm glad you're finding an outlet through writing! And I hope you're happy with an open-ended ramble in response because oh boy, there's a lot I could talk about and I could probably do a better job of answering this sort of thing with more specific questions, but let's see where we end up.

There's definitely a big difference between writing polyamory/ENM (ethical non-monogamy) and what people often expect from monogamous love stories.

Just even from a purely sales and marketing standpoint, the moment you write anything polyamorous (or even just straight up LGBTQIA+ without the ENM) you're going to get considered closer to being erotica/obscene than hetero romances. It's an unfair bias, but it's one that exists in our society. But also the Amazon algorithm and their shitty, shitty human censors. Especially the ones that work the weekends. (Talking to you, Carlos 🖕.)

So not only do you start out hyper-aware that you're writing something that is highly stigmatized or fetishized (at least I'm hyper-aware) but that you are also writing for a niche market that is starving for positive content because the content that exists is either limited, not what they want, or is problematic in some fashion i.e. highly stigmatized or fetishy. And even then, the wants, desires, and expectations of the community you're writing for are complex and wildly varied and hard to fit into an easy formula.

When writing monogamous love stories, there is a set expectation that’s really hard to fuck up once you know it. X person meets Y. Attraction happens, followed by some sort of minor conflict/resolution. Other plot may happen. A greater catalyst involving personal growth for both parties (hopefully) happens. Follow the equation to its ultimate resolution and achieve Happily Ever After. 

But writing ENM is... a lot more difficult, if only because of the pure scope of possibilities. You could try to follow the same equation and shove three (or more) people into it, but it rarely works well. Usually because if you’re doing it right, you won’t have enough room in a single character arc to allow for enough growth, and if ENM requires anything in abundance, it’s room to grow.

And this post is huge so I’m going to put the rest under a cut :)

There's also a common refrain in certain online polyam/ENM circles that triads and throuples are overrepresented in media and they may be right to some extent. Personally, I believe the issue isn't that triads and throuples are overrepresented, but that there is such minuscule positive rep of ethical non-monogamy in general, that the few tiny instances we have of triads in media make it seem like it's "everywhere" when in actuality, it's still quite rare and the media we do have often veers into Unicorn Hunter fetish porn. Which is its own problematic thing. And just to be clear, I’m not including this part to dissuade you from writing "falling back-asswards into threesomes." If anything, I need more of it and would hook it directly into my brain if I could. I'm just throwing it out there into the void in the hope that someone will take the thought and run with it, lol.

I’d love to see more polyfidelitous rep in fiction, just as much as I’d like to see more relationship anarchy too. More diversity in fiction is always good.

Another thing that differs in writing ENM romance vs conventional monogamy is the feeling like you need to justify yourself. There's a lot of pressure to be as healthy and non-problematic as possible because you are being held to a higher standard of criticism. Both from people from without the ENM communities, and from the people within. Granted, some people don't give a shit and just want to read some fantastic porn (valid) but there are those who will cheerfully read Fifty Shades of Bullshit and call it "spicy" and "romantic," then turn around and call the most tooth-rottingly-sweet-fluff about a queer platonic polycule heresy. That's just the way the world works.

(Pro-tip for author life in general: never read your own reviews; that way madness lies. I glimpsed one the other day that tagged Hunger Pangs as “ethical cheating” and just about had an aneurism.)

And while that feeling of needing to justify yourself comes from a valid place of being excluded from the table of socially accepted norms, it can also be to the detriment of both the story and the subject matter at hand. I've seen some authors bend so far over backward to avoid being problematic in their portrayal of ENM, they end up being problematic for entirely different reasons. Usually because they give such a skewed, rose-tinted perspective of how things work, it ends up coming off as well... a bit culty and obnoxious tbh.

“Look how enlightened we are, freed from the trappings of monogamy and jealousy! We’re all so honest and perfect and happy!”

Yeah, uhu, sure Jan. Except here’s the thing, not all jealousy is bad. How you act on it can be, but jealousy itself is an important tool in the junk drawer that is the range of human emotion. It can clue us in to when we’re feeling sad or neglected, which in turn means we should figure out why we’re feeling those things. Sometimes it’s because brains are just like that and anxiety is a thing. Other times it’s because our needs are actually being neglected and we are in an unhealthy situation we need to remedy. You gotta put the work in to figure it out. Which is the same as any style of relationship, whether it’s mono, polyam or whatever flavor of ENM you subscribe to* And sometimes you just gotta be messy, because that’s how humans are. Being afraid to show that mess makes it a dishonest portrayal, and it also robs you of some great cannon fodder for character development.

Which brings me in a roundabout way to my current pet peeve in how certain writers take monogamous ideals and apply them to ENM, sometimes without even realizing it. The “Find the Right Person and Settle Down” trope.

Often, in this case, ENM or polyamory is treated as a phase. Something you mature out of with age or until you meet “The One(tm).” This is, of course, an attempt to follow the mono style formula expected in most romances. And while it might appeal to many readers, it’s uh, actually quite insulting. 

To give an example, I am currently seeing this a lot in the Witcher fandom. 

Fanon Netflix!Jaskier is everyone's favorite ethical slut until he meets Geralt then woops, wouldn’t you know, he just needed to find The One(tm). Suddenly, all his other sexual and romantic exploits or attractions mean nothing to him. Let's watch as he throws away a core aspect of his personality in favor of a man. 

Yeah... that sure showed those societal norms... 

If I were being generous, I’d say it’s a poor attempt at showing New Relationship Euphoria and how wrapped up people can become in new relationships. But honestly, it’s monogamous bias eking its way in to validate how special and unique the relationship is. Because sometimes people really can’t think of any other way to show how important and valid a relationship is without defining it in terms of exclusivity. Which is a fundamental misunderstanding of how ENM works for a lot of people and invalidates a lot of loving, serious and long-term relationships.

This is not to say that some polyam/poly-leaning people can't be happy in monogamous relationships! I am! (I consider myself ambiamorous. I'm happy with either monogamy or polyamory, it really just depends on the relationship(s) I’m in.) But I also don't regard my relationship with a mono partner as "settling down" or "growing up." It's just a choice I made to be with a person I love, and it's a valid one. Just like choosing to never close yourself off to multiple relationships is valid. And I wish more people realized that, or rather, I wish the people writing these things knew that :P

Anyway, I think I’ve rambled enough. I hope this collection of incoherent thoughts actually makes some sense and might be useful. 

----

*A good resource book that doesn't pull any punches in this regard is Polysecure by Jessica Fern. It's a wonderfully insightful read that explores the messier side of consensual non-monogamy, especially with how it can be affected by trauma or inter-relationship conflicts. But it also shows how to take better steps toward healthy, ethical non-monogamy (a far better job than More Than Two**) and conflict resolution, making it a valuable resource both for someone who is a part of this relationship style***, but also for writers on the outside looking in who might have a very simple or misguided idea of what conflict within polyam/ENM relationships might look like, vs traditional monogamous ones.

** The author of More Than Two has been accused of multiple accounts of abuse within the polyamorous community, with many of his coauthors having spoken out about the gaslighting and emotional and psychological damage they experienced while in a relationship with him. A lot of their stories are documented here: https://www.itrippedonthepolystair.com/ (warning: it is not light material and deals with issues of abuse, gaslighting, and a whole other plethora of Yikes.) While some people still find More Than Two helpful reading, there are now, thankfully, much, much better resources out there.

*** Some people consider polyam/ENM to be part of their identity or orientation, while others view it as a relationship style.It largely depends on the individual. 

[idrellegames]

Hi! I'm so curious about your writing process! I was wondering, do you have like, drafts of random scenes that will come up later, or do you keep everything entirely in your mind until its time to put it in the game? I personally always write drafts for the scenes i like even before its time for them in the plot but then i get so distracted by these 😅 Anyway, you are incredible and I hope you're having a nice day!

Hiya! 💗

My writing process for Wayfarer is pretty different from how I usually write. I typically prefer writing in chronological order, but on small(er?), contained projects I sometimes jump around depending on what I want to write on a given day. I have a two-act play where I wrote the first act and then the third act and left the second act for last because it was the hardest. 😅

But because Wayfarer is as much a game as it is a web novel, the scope makes it impossible for me to skip around. The number of variations and the way they compound to create unique results and outcomes makes it necessary for me to write in chronological order. I can't start working on scenes from later chapters because I'm not sure where exactly the emotional throughline of the characters is going to land before I've written the material that precedes a specific scene, and I'm also not exactly sure which variables I need to track because I haven't created them yet.

For a project as large as this one, I rely heavily on a rigorous outlining process. I have a master beat chart that gives the rough overview of the major events in each chapter and the most important plot points of each act. I don't go into the nitty-gritty details here, the master chart is specifically for the overall plot of the game.

I have smaller beat charts that go into greater detail for each Act so I can have a clear sense of the pacing (plans for romance/friendship scenes and main character side quests go here). And then when I start working on a chapter, I create a full chapter outline and smaller separate, detailed outlines for each major section and the branches within that section. These are usually done in a way so as I'm writing each branch, I can quickly check off all the things I need to account for as I complete them.

When I'm actually writing new material for the game, I work in sections leading up to a bottleneck (a bottleneck is when all relevant paths/choices lead back to the same scene).

So, for example, right now I'm working on a large endgame sequence in Route B where Aeran and the MC have to return to the Count (returning to the Count is a bottleneck, it's a plot event that will always happen). This sequence is divided into three sections, depending on the player's previous choices. Each of those three sections are further subdivided into branches that split again depending on skill checks before they bottleneck back onto the same path.

The game's mechanics often mean I'm dealing with 4 outcomes per choice. Even though the player only sees 2 choices (like a Strength choice and an Agility choice), the passage actually leads to 4 possible outcomes (i.e. 1 for passing Strength, 1 for failing Strength, 1 for passing Agility and 1 for failing Agility) or more if there are alternative, non-skill based choices.

It becomes a lot to keep track of, so I colour-code everything in my Word document. I also make a list at the start of each major section or branch that covers all of the possible results so I don't miss anything. It basically turns into a game of "Did I do all the orange choices? OK, yes, we can move on now." 😂

Once I've finished all the material for a branch, I'll put an X next to it so I know I've written it and move on to the next branch. I also include notes about any approval changes or variables I need to flag here so I don't forget them when I start coding. I don't like coding directly in Word, it just makes things more difficult to read and keep track of when I start putting new game content into Twine.

I keep an Excel file that tracks all the variables (their names and whether they're a boolean, a string, an array or an integer), what choice they track, what sequence/area they first appeared in, and whether or not they will continue to be used after the end of the chapter. I unset variables when I'm done with them to help keep the game's memory size down (Wayfarer is going to be huge, so any excess stuff in the background needs to be trimmed).

When I'm writing a scene, I try my best to stay in that scene and not worry about anything outside of it. Otherwise, I would get easily overwhelmed by the amount of content I have to create to stay true to the game's vision.

When I have really specific ideas for a scene that occurs much later in the game, I usually jot them down alongside some rough dialogue for later reference (I have a few Mel, Ren and Calla romance scenes that currently exist in this form). I also keep a journal or a stack of paper next to me while I'm writing so I can write down any ideas that may spring up for later incorporation. Writing them down right away and moving on helps me keep my focus where it needs to be.

I also keep a separate sheet for any edits/changes to code/lore changes for existing material I may think of as I write. When I work on a patch for the game, I always tackle the things on that list first before I move on to bug reports.

And that's about it. 😅

[stillness-in-green]

The MLA(/PLF) Headcanon Post (1/2)

In response to this nice ask about whether I have any headcanon or thoughts about the current members of the MLA/PLF, I spent two weeks blithering 16.5K words of exactly that into a Word file, because when it comes to underappreciated characters I love, I do not understand restraint.  This post and its follow-up will cover all ranked ex-MLA members of the PLF, as well as Original Flavor Destro and Curious, since I wasn't going to leave them out of a project like this even if they aren't "current."

The ask only mentioned having previously read The Lore Post, the last exercise in ridiculousness that I wrote at the tail end of MLA Week, so I wrote this to summarize everything that doesn't appear there—which is to say that a lot of the material in these two posts will look familiar to anyone who's read my fanfic about the MLA cast.  There’s still plenty of new material to go around too, though!

So, I don't have much in the vein of askblog-style headcanons where I can randomly tell you stray trivia about a character’s favorite foods or their love languages or what have you; that stuff either comes up when I'm writing fanfic or it doesn't.  That said, below, please find a mix of thoughts I keep in mind when writing characters, facts that have only turned up in my fanfic/notes so far and not the Lore Post meta, and a selection of lightning round headcanon provided by cross-referencing a random number generator with some old questionnaires I keep around for OCs and tabletop characters.

In this post: Destro, Re-Destro and his advisors, and Geten.

Destro— 

General Thoughts The whole "revolutionary leader" thing came very naturally to him. He was committed, charismatic, very willing to risk his life and safety for the cause, and he cared about his people. All that said, he absolutely had a pompous, prideful streak, especially where it came to his justification for terrorism.  You only have to read his own words to see that.  Still, he was in large part reacting to the world he lived in, one of greater violence and danger than the current day. 

I like to think that—because he was genuine in wanting freedom for all—he would not approve of what became of his Army.  He'd be able to see how they got there, and he would probably have made much the same choices if he'd been there with them, but while he would have agreed that his role should be remembered—that's just Due Credit—he would never have wanted to become the nigh-on religious figure his followers turned him into. Continuing to fight the good fight for his ideals is one thing, but secret salutes and isolated villages and being raised from infancy to know your life has only as much worth as it can contribute to Liberation…  Well, it's just not what he would have wanted for his people, much less his descendants. 

Family Situation Chikara was only around 7 when his mother was killed, the event that would shape the rest of his life.  He wasn't hiding in the closet from the mob, either; he was kicking and punching and biting, his motivation to save her overflowing—but he was still only 7, and eventually overwhelmed.  His own life might well have ended there with hers, but for a group of neighborhood vigilante types (at least one of whom probably went on to a career as a hero, after legalization).

He went most of his adolescence without getting involved with anything more sinister than student newspapers, founding a secret meta-rights "club," and attending the odd larger protest, but when the government started talking about passing laws restricting the use of meta-abilities, he started getting very radical very quickly, and when some absolute snake started to use his martyred mother's words to bang the drum for banning quirk use outside the home outright, he went off the deep end.

Lightning Round (Randomly Selected Headcanons)

Favorite book genre?  Memoirs and biographies—he wouldn't have written his own if he didn't appreciate their value.  The intimacy of the personal juxtaposed against the broad scope of history appeals to both his regard for individuality and his revolutionary mindset.

Most prized possession?  Thoughts on material possessions in general?   He doesn’t generally prize material possessions—in fact, he’s something of a skinflint.  His most prized possession is an old pair of gloves that belonged to his mother, which he'd been wearing at the time of her murder.  He didn't come from money to begin with, but his mother’s story made enough of a splash that his financial situation was improved by well-meaning sorts sending along donations and contributions and the like, as well as government officials knowing they needed to be sure that he wound up somewhere at least semi-reasonable lest they court further outrage by mishandling the son of a martyred woman.  The money all went towards school and living expenses, though, leaving him quite experienced at balancing a budget, which would come in handy for that whole ‘leading a violent uprising against the state’ thing later on.

Academic Background: Got all the way through college!  Was involved in student groups as far back as middle school, and only got moreso the further in school he got.  Majored in Human Development; he was intending to go into the public health and policy sphere before the appropriation of his mother's language pissed him off so much he got into terrorism instead.

THE MODERN MLA

Re-Destro—

General Thoughts A huge amount of the way I write him is influenced by one single thing—his characterization as described in the second data book.  His personality is summed up there as "sokoshirenai yami"—bottomless darkness, or, as a friend translated it for me, "unfathomable gloominess."  That really, really stuck with me, because on the one hand, it's so opposed to virtually all of what we see of him on the page, where he's being cheerful or scornful or sycophantic; the closest he ever gets are his brief tears for Miyashita, Curious, and his other followers.

On the other hand, it makes so much sense that the man we see—the man who talks about the heavy burdens of his legacy, who was handed that legacy when he couldn't possibly have been any older than 6 or so, who willingly straps on a self-designed torture device to wring out more power, who all but worships the ground Shigaraki walks on even though Shigaraki is the reason Re-Destro no longer has legs to walk that same ground with—should be "unfathomably gloomy."  Of course he's gloomy!  He was never allowed to be his own person!  He has never in his life known true freedom, only existed as a vessel to bring that freedom to others!  And he can't really even talk to his closest friends about it, because his closest friends are still his followers, and he wouldn't want to weigh them down!

With that context, it makes all the sense in the world that he'd be so devoted to the man who relieved him of that burden.

Family Situation He loved his mother Yukie a great deal, despite knowing from early on that he was carrying the weight of the title because she believed she couldn’t.  (Perhaps growing up hearing about the martyrdom of Destro’s mother left him wanting to ensure the happiness of his own, for her happiness was very rare.)  He was 10 when she was killed in a Villain attack; she’d been on a daytrip over to a neighboring city to visit some of her erstwhile school friends.  The requisite mourning period was 49 days, and as the only surviving family member, quite a lot fell to him even before considerations of his role as Re-Destro.  it was perceived as better—for both the Army’s morale and for his own stability—for him to be involved with as much of the work of transition as possible, but obviously he couldn’t do it completely alone, nor should he.  Thus, for two months after Yukie’s death, the previous generation's Sanctum[i] stayed with him in his family home. Afterward, he moved in with Anchor (one of his grandfather's advisors), where he would spend the rest of his young adulthood until moving away for college.

Claustrophobia The name of that literal-iron-maiden deathtrap he brings to bear against Shigaraki is no coincidence: Rikiya developed claustrophobia over the course of a stint of abusive training when he was thirteen. He generally has a pretty good handle on disguising it, thanks to a combination of people being unwilling to ask him questions they don’t actually want the answers to and the fact that he had to learn how to operate through it in order to complete the training at all. He has never told anyone, largely because he’s never been able to recognize that it was abuse, and so his abuser remains a figure of some influence.

Education He was largely taught by private tutors, in his home and in theirs, rather than attending school, but I think he probably wasn't completely home-schooled.  Particularly once he'd decided that he did want to attend university—and not just some little local technical program, but a major school in a proper city—he probably attended classes a few times a week at his local high school just to get a feel for being around other people his own age. He'd been friends with Koku for several years by that point, otherwise he probably would have been pretty hopeless, but he was still a pretty odd duck by the time he got to university.

This, incidentally, is why he never pushed Geten too hard about school—his own experience of it was so weird and piecemeal that he mostly thinks of school as relevant only for the education it provides, and less so the crash course in social dynamics.  Since Geten doesn't care about getting an education (nor, indeed, about learning how not to be a rude little troll), and has a strong enough quirk that he'll never lack for a position in the Army even without a formal education, Rikiya is perfectly happy to let Geten have his way and just be minimally learnèd.

Stress His powers operate by infusing his body with the characteristic black matter of his manifested stress; he can increase his size with this (his so-called Liberated Form isn't just armored up; he becomes physically taller and bulkier), as well as throw handfuls of the materialized power.  A side effect of this is that his stress can also infuse itself into his bodily fluids. The stress matter is a highly dense particulate, so if Rikiya is not in proper control of himself, his proverbial blood, sweat and tears can be literally heavy with the weight of his power.

The Value of Life He cares very much about the lives of his followers, but those genuine feelings are filtered through both the mental compartmentalization required by an emotion-based quirk, and an upbringing that taught him to care about his underlings in the same way one would rare goods.  Valuable goods, certainly, goods worth being proud of, goods to be maintained with care, but still, ultimately, things that can be sold or traded or bartered off as necessary to further one's goals.  Even his own life, while "objectively" the most valuable of them all, isn't an exception to that policy—the Great Cause is more important than any individual life, up to and including his own.

On a Personal Note He’s something of an obvious weirdo to outsiders—his enthusiasm comes off as strident, his smiles overly polished—but despite that, he's bizarrely hard to dislike once they start spending real time with him.  He's not anywhere near as prideful about himself as he is the legacy of the MLA, for a start; he's actually pretty self-deprecating when he's not performing the whole Heir of Destro's Great Bloodline routine at people.  He's also happy to go along with other people sharing their hobbies (because he doesn't have any of his own).  The more you get to know him, the more obvious it becomes that he's a total basket case, but “total basket case” is still an improvement over “self-absorbed 1%-er CEO” that people like Spinner come in expecting.

What Are Boundaries? He has very little understanding of how to enforce boundaries around his private life, or, indeed, of why such boundaries might ever be necessary.  Oh, he can do the double life thing, keep the CEO of Detnerat separate from the Grand Commander of the Metahuman Liberation Army, but when it comes to the MLA itself, he's so groomed to devote himself to the cause that he doesn't really distinguish between the responsibilities of Re-Destro and the needs of Yotsubashi Rikiya.  Rather than being the egomaniac you might expect of a man with the absolute power over others he has, he instead struggles to assert himself as his own person at all.

Issues with boundaries are not uncommon with the MLA—they're all raised to see themselves as warriors to advance the cause before they are, like, “human beings”—but Rikiya’s are particularly exacerbated because he was raised by adults who were getting pretty paranoid about his bloodline's tendency to die young, and thus were always checking in on how he was doing, dictating his schedule, weighing in on his plans, and so on.  He just wasn’t raised with reasonable expectations for privacy.  Even as an adult, he'll give his apartment door code to pretty much anyone in the MLA who has even a semi-plausible reason to want it—certainly quite a few of the elders know it!  And it isn’t only the elders, either; Rikiya's phone and several of his accessories carry tracking chips courtesy of Skeptic, which Rikiya knows about and doesn't think is at all untoward.

While his experience dating Koku definitely taught him some hard lessons about how much he could allow himself to ask of people who would obey him without question (they broke up over Rikiya’s realization that Koku would never deny him anything, thanks to a cracked rib Koku didn’t see fit to tell Rikiya about until Rikiya hugged him a little too hard), he never learned how to value his own autonomy in turn.  Oh, he's the Grand Commander, and everyone around him has been raised to venerate his bloodline, so most of them would never even think about trying to take advantage of him as such, but it's absolutely the case that people who are bold or familiar enough to try can basically run right over him with minimal efforts made at obscuring the fact.  His life is full of people who do and have done exactly that, some to a net positive effect, and some—well.  See again the entry about his claustrophobia.

The abjectly terrible state of his sense of self-worth is also the reason the Claustro exists.  While he was relatively capable of trying to work around his phobia when he was younger, the older he got, the more it started to feel like leaving doors cracked behind him or only working in offices with big spacious floor plans and oversized windows was, in some way, Letting Down The Cause by allowing his fear to control him, rather than embracing it so he could properly stockpile it for later use.  A dinnertime chat with Curious about turning one’s trauma into a weapon for the good of others catalyzed this, leading to the development of the “burden-enhancing steel pressure mechanism,” Claustro. 

(It also means the clone of him made by Twice to handle Detnerat after Deika is bizarrely okay with its circumstances, which I will almost certainly write more about one of these days, but I’m still kind of reeling from that reveal, so more on that another time.)

Lightning Round

Religion?   He doesn't identify as being of a religious faith, but he was brought up in the same peaceful marriage of Shinto and Buddhism that the majority of Japanese people are, and like many, he adheres to a number of traditional practices more out of habit than devout faith.  There are two celebrations that demand significant emotional investment from him.  First comes the New Year's celebrations, important because the MLA prides itself on looking to a brighter, freer future, and it's a period when he can let himself think that maybe he'll be just that little bit closer to Liberation by the end of the year than he was at the start.  Second is Obon, a summer festival for honoring one's departed ancestors. Since his authority and his life's work derive entirely from his bloodline, he's obligated to care about this one, though in practice, he tends to shy away from thinking much about Destro (who he has very twisted-up feelings about indeed) in favor of less emotionally fraught waters.

What did he dream of being or doing as a child? Did that dream come true?   He never really had a significant period where he thought about being e.g. an astronaut or a doctor or a hero; in fact, it came as something of a surprise to him the first time Koku asked him what he was planning to do when he grew up.  He always just had the nebulous expectation of, "Be the Grand Commander," and the elders were happy to leave it at that until he brought it up on his own.[ii]  

How does he behave around children? He likes kids!  He’s wistful about the freedom enjoyed by happy children while also being sympathetic to ones that seem overly burdened.  He’s not the most natural person in the world with them, but most of them can tell that the awkwardness comes from a well-intentioned place, and will treat him as a funny-looking man who’ll let them bother him at length without getting mean.  It turns out he’s actually pretty good with them, then, if only by virtue of being easily bullied.  (This, notably, goes for non-MLA-affiliated children.  Everything’s much more formal within the cult, though it didn’t Geten long to suss out the “easily-bullied” part, either.)

Trumpet—

General Thoughts The largest factor in how I write Koku is, of course, the headcanon that he and Rikiya are ex-lovers, and neither of them is 100% over it even all these years later.  Beyond that, though, Koku is the most temperate of the group, the one with the most easy charisma (MLA members are more swayed by Re-Destro, but Koku does better with outsiders who aren't predisposed to hanging on Rikiya's every word).  He strives to come off as The Sensible One, and given the extremes the rest of the inner circle are capable of, it's not hard for him to maintain that title.  He's as messed up as any of them, though, second only to Rikiya in levels of childhood grooming.  He thinks of himself as a practical man, but he is deeply indoctrinated, the boundaries of his expectations very much defined by his upbringing, so he never really sees it coming when he gets clobbered by something from out of left field.

Family Situation: Koku has the largest family of the identified members.  Aside from his grandfather (called Old Man Hanabata, the founder of the Hearts & Minds Party, and passed away by the canon era), Koku has cousins, nieces, nephews and more, courtesy of his uncle, his older sister and her husband, and other extended family.

He’s also the member most accustomed to wealth, power and influence.  He's from a rural area, certainly, but being in a family of hereditary politicians (and with that family not suffering a string of untimely deaths and disappearances like Rikiya's did), he was raised from the start with ready access to money and nice things.  Still, for all his family's sway in a major branch of the MLA's operations, they're not First Families, and thus don't have any elders in their ranks, making them still somewhat subordinate to said elders when it comes to orders about the Great Cause.  (He’s working on it.)

Meeting Re-Destro Koku and Rikiya met at 12 and 10 respectively, when Koku tagged along with Old Man Hanabata for a meeting RD was likewise accompanying Anchor for.  It had been the better part of a year since Rikiya's mother passed away, but he was still strikingly melancholy for a boy that age, which—along with all the weight given to the importance of the meeting—left quite an impression on Koku.  Koku thus became Rikiya's first real friend in his own age group, a friendship heartily encouraged by everyone around them.  Koku was well-behaved, intelligent, a little older but not too much so, and set to become influential without a danger of becoming too influential; he was seen as a good choice for a friend.[iii]

The Break-Up Painful as it was at the time, there was a silver lining to his and RD's post-college break-up: it got Koku out of the elders' pocket.  He’s been groomed for one thing or another all his life, but after he became friends with Rikiya, he was always getting leaned on to report back to the First Families about how Re-Destro was doing, and to try to influence him towards actions the First Families approved of.  In a very real sense, Koku was part of the apparatus keeping Rikiya from any real freedom.  Their break-up and subsequent estrangement meant that the elders had far less to breathe down Koku's neck about, and by the time they reconciled, Trumpet had gotten his feet under him, as had Re-Destro, and they were both better able to fend off such background meddling.

This doesn't mean Trumpet's not still carrying a torch, however.  He thought he was handling his long-banked feelings pretty well—being Professional, being the advisor Re-Destro needed and as much a friend as Rikiya would allow—right up until Rikiya scared the life out of him by nearly dying in Deika.  He's all but glued himself to Rikiya since, as much as he can get away with given their respective responsibilities.

As an Advisor Other than leading the HMP, he does some work with internal politics and reputation. It's not, strictly speaking, his actual job as advisor—Re-Destro or the elders would probably be sought for more formal or critical mediations—but he and the people who report directly to him do enough travelling around to see constituents that they're often in a position to field those tensions before they get big enough to require attention from higher up.  Koku's happy to do so, in fact—not because he just loves handling petty arguments about resources, but because the HMP is a faction of the MLA in and of itself, and mediating is a boost to that faction's standing and autonomy.  (Also, it's that much less on Rikiya's ever-overburdened plate.)

Lightning Round

What would he do if he needed to make dinner but the kitchen was busy?Ahahahahaha, “make dinner but the kitchen was busy,” please.  Any time there could feasibly be someone else occupying a kitchen he has any business being in himself, it would be a housekeeper, and s/he would be making food for him/his family.  It’s not as though Trumpet has never cooked—he did live alone for some years after school—but outside of a scant few years in university, there’s never really been a time that kitchen use overlap would have been a problem for him. 

Favorite indulgence and feelings surrounding indulging. Probably gourmet cuisine, especially imported stuff. He’s had tailored clothes all his life; they’re just part of the job.  Expensive alcohol also doesn’t wow him; it wouldn’t be strange to find some sake maker whose family has been doing it for sixteen generations in the village he grew up in.  It’s a lot harder to cultivate a true gourmand’s palate out in the sticks, though, no matter how rich your family is.  Living in actual civilization affords a great deal more variety—and anyway, nice dinners are one of the few things he can reliably tempt Rikiya into accepting.  As to his feelings about indulging in general, he’s broadly For It.  He works very hard, he seldom gets real time off, and it doesn’t help the Great Cause for him to deny himself nice things, unlike some people.  (He’s maybe a bit bitter.)

Does he like to be the center of attention all of the time? Not especially.  Oh, he’s very good at it, certainly, and he doesn’t dislike it, but being the center of attention is practically always going to be tied up in The Great Work, so he desperately needs to get out of the spotlight from time to time, if only to be able to turn off the persona.

Curious—

General Thoughts There are two main factors in how I write Chitose: her practicality and her rapaciousness.  I write her as having an appreciation for good moral character in other people, especially when it makes a good story, but not considering herself particularly bound by conventional morality: her moral compass is Liberation, and she follows it unswervingly.  I also write her as predatory, lusty about a lot of things, often to the point of overstepping.  It doesn't hurt anyone that she likes hearty foods and strong alcohol, but she also doesn't have much regard for peoples' boundaries, and even less so when she thinks they have something to offer the Great Cause.

While that trait isn't without its benefits, it can get pretty ugly, too, as we see in how she treats, and talks to, Toga.  Even with Rikiya, the only person she thinks of as 'above' her in any meaningful sense, she's not at all above manipulation.  She's respectful of him, but knows him too well to always take him at his word.  He plainly can't always see what's best for him, but what's best for him is best for Liberation, and therefore, as a Liberation warrior, it's her responsibility to sometimes make decisions for him.  He'll appreciate it in the long run—he always does.  (Skeptic and Geten have similar views—Rikiya makes it easy.)

Family Situation She probably has the best actual relationship with her family of the group—her mothers are removed enough from the heart of MLA politics that her relationship with Rikiya doesn't color her family life the way Koku's does his, and she's much more sociable than Skeptic or Geten.  She doesn't get home much—just the major holidays, work permitting—but she's in frequent enough communication for a grown woman, and chats with her younger sister more often than that.

Meeting Re-Destro She met Rikiya properly when they were 21 and 27 respectively.  They were living in the same city at the time (him running Detnerat, her in university), so of course she'd seen him at the odd MLA event he turned up at, but when she landed an internship in her junior year, she cheekily turned up one day in her reporter capacity to interview him as “a local rising star of industry.”  It was the first chance they'd had to talk one-on-one, and would not be the last, as she frankly elbowed her way into his life and gradually sussed out that here was a man with Problems.  He and Koku were still in a distant patch at the time; she is largely responsible for getting them back on friendly terms as a way of showing her Pure Intentions.

The fact that her Pure Intentions both land her a square position as one of RD's advisors herself and get Rikiya to a better place emotionally is calculated, but not, therefore, untrue.  Ironically, while she was concerned about looking like a gold-digger, the MLA elders were probably thrilled and relieved to hear rumors that Rikiya was getting romantically involved again.  And with a lovely young MLA woman!  They wouldn't even need to worry about surrogacy arrangements!  (Not having grown up around the Yotsubashis, Chitose is unaware of exactly how pointed an interest the elders take in the matter of securing that bloodline.)

Feelings Today She loves Rikiya dearly, and prizes his regard more highly than anything in her life, but has not devoted much thought to the idea of being in love with him. She's married to her work, as they say, but she's also keenly aware that Rikiya would, for a great many reasons, be a lot of work to be in love with.  She's decided it's generally better for his mental well-being, and therefore also better for the Great Cause (she’s much more capable of reading that relationship reciprocally than Rikiya is), to make sure he's eating at least one good meal a week and getting some proper socialization in outside of MLA meet-and-greets.

As an Advisor She handles external politics and reputation--it's her job to prime Japan culturally for the Liberation agenda in ways more wide-reaching than Trumpet (he's head of a political party, and that's not nothing, but that party is still a small minority on the floor of the Diet).  She pulls attention to stories that benefit the MLA, and diverts attention from stories that don't.  This is far broader than just publishing Destro's memoir; it also means poking holes in the broader Hero Society narrative.  She does this by providing as broad a platform possible for stories about the tragedies of excessive regulation, the evils of quirk-related bias, the abuses of power heroes are capable of, and so on.

Lightning Round

Does she remember names or faces easier? She’s quite good with both, actually, but I’d give names the advantage because she works primarily with written rather than visual mediums.  (Also, BNHA names being the ridiculous puns that they are, you can probably tell more about a person in HeroAca Land by analyzing their name than their face anyway.) 

Is she more concerned with defending her honor, or protecting her status? Her status, absolutely.  Impugning her honor hurts no one but her; she can laugh that off because honor is a silly social construct anyway.  Threatening her status is a much more dangerous prospect—her status is long-cultivated to enable the advancement of Liberation ideology; it lets her keep an eye on Re-Destro, who needs as many people looking out for him as he can get; it’s what she’s worked for all her life. Curious will fuck you up if you threaten her status.

In what situation was she the most afraid she’d ever been? The time she got in trouble for nearly exploding some dude’s face off for stealing her purse.  She was 17, had spent very little time in non-Liberated territory before, and was not raised to wait on heroes to solve her problems.  She wasn’t afraid of the thief or the hero, really, but she was completely terrified that she might have just blown over half a century of secrecy by not performing Helpless Civilian well enough. The terror was pretty convincing to the police interviewing her about it, anyway.  On the whole, it was a very valuable learning experience!  

Skeptic—

General Thoughts Tomoyasu is a character I haven't written extensively yet, but what I think is most interesting about him so far is the contrast of his hyper-modern methods with the bone-deep zealotry for the cause.  See, Rikiya, Koku and Chitose all grew up in the sticks; Rikiya and Koku had money from a young age, but it was old money, tied up in trusts.  (Geten didn't have any of those, but Geten's a different story for other reasons.)  Tomoyasu grew up in a major city from the start; he was a technological prodigy from practically as soon as he could hold a tablet.  He has very little respect for the old ways of doing things when he knows there are newer, better ways of advancing the Cause. However, none of that makes him more likely to break from the MLA's ranks—if anything, his idiosyncratic approach just causes him to approach Liberation in really weird ways, ways no one else would ever come up with.

Pressganging Bubaigawara Jin based on a plan to clone Re-Destro?  Who else would that ever even occur to, much less such that it became the basis for an elaborate psychological assault?  But that's Skeptic in a nutshell—respect the old for what it did at the time, but don't think that means you have to use the same methods they did forever as you pick up the torch to carry it forward.

Family Situation He has an amicable but not intimate relationship with his family.  His parents are very proud of what he's done for the cause and how he won the confidence of Re-Destro, but they don't make much claim to understand how his mind works.  In turn, he recognizes the value of their support over the years—he certainly made a lot of waves with his unabashed venom for the MLA leadership's hidebound traditionalism, and his parents' staunch backing meant a lot for him being able to take the stands he did—but is not very emotionally close with them.  Might find himself with an older brother, if I ever occasion to write about his family situation in more depth.

Education He graduated a four-year university program for getting his computer science degree in two very intense years, during which he did virtually nothing for the Great Cause, his intention being to better position himself for maximum ability to advance Liberation afterward.  See above re: battles his parents fought for him while he was busy modernizing.

Meeting Re-Destro He met Re-Destro via Curious.  He was 22, just a year out of university and already climbing the chain of command at a young telecommunications company.  Rikiya was 33, working on the Claustro, and needed proprietary comms built to a higher standard of security than Detnerat was focused on.  Curious, who was always better positioned to be keeping up with the local personalities, introduced them.

Tomoyasu attempted to keep a civil tongue in his head the first few times he and RD met, but he'd been running on bile and energy drinks for years by that point and was hard-pressed to stop just because he was meeting his Grand Commander.  If anything, finding out that Rikiya was okay with his direction and his mouth eventually helped him chill the fuck out, marginally.

On that note, Skeptic is absolutely the advisor most willing to backtalk Rikiya right to his face.  (Rikiya loves him for it.)  Oh, he'll still accede to Rikiya's wishes, and Re-Destro's orders are his highest priority, but that doesn't mean he feels obligated to be diffident about it.  Like Curious, he has a highly developed sense of, "It's fine if it's for the greater good," which will and has led to him taking things into his own hands when he thinks he knows best (which is always).  He's not going to explicitly disobey orders, but he will creatively interpret them if he feels strongly about them, and he will try to "anticipate" orders before anyone has time to give him specific ones, the better to tailor his efforts towards proving his methods and goals correct rather than being stuck with orders he hates.

On Names I’ve definitely evolved some in my approach on this since I started writing the MLA cast, but at current, Skeptic and Geten are the only ones I consistently write as using and thinking mainly in terms of code names rather than given names.  Trumpet is too familiar with the public/private divide, and has too much intimate history with Rikya-the-person, to default to Re-Destro; Curious is too trained to look for The Human Heart of the Story.  Re-Destro himself, ever since breaking up with Koku, has always tried to use code names for people (himself excluded, because he has enormous self-confidence issues about measuring himself up to the original Destro), but can slip into given names when he’s vulnerable.  To Skeptic and Geten, though, the code name is the real name, for all intents and purposes.  The cover identity is a fake; the whole point of the code name is that you’re proving yourself worthy of taking up your proper place in the Army.  Of course the name you win for yourself is the name that counts.

Lightning Round

Given a blank piece of paper, a pencil, and nothing to do, what would happen? You’d pretty much have to lock him in a room with nothing but paper and pencil in it for that to be his first resort rather than whatever item of personal electronics he’d otherwise have on his person.  But assuming some actual plausible scenario—couldn’t bring his electronics into a government building, let’s say—he would find trying to do something productive on paper and pencil rather beneath him, and he’s an inveterate fidgeter.  I mostly see him folding that ludicrously tall frame of his into a chair and setting to using the pencil to poke about three hundred holes in the sheet of paper, meticulous and orderly, while muttering complaints to himself the whole time until something annoys him a bit too much and he jabs the whole pencil through the page. 

Who does he see as his best friend?  His worst enemy? I headcanon him having a very reasonable, functional, productive relationship with his No. 1 advisor, Red, and being reasonable, functional, and productive probably goes a lot farther on making you Skeptic’s “friend” than any amount of emotional intimacy.  But “best friend” is not really the kind of language Skeptic uses for his relationships; if you were to ask him who his best friend is, he’d probably tell you, “Iced coffee.”  As to his worst enemy, that’s just whoever is annoying him most on any given day, from difficult clients, to people annoying Re-Destro, stodgy elders, that hero grinning like a tool, that couple walking too slow in front of him on the sidewalk, etc. And Skeptic is pretty proactive about dealing with enemies, as much as he can be.

Has he ever been bitten by an animal? How was he affected (or unaffected)? lol he is a city boy and always has been.  He probably tried to pet a stray cat once out of curiosity, and because it seemed like the sort of thing people did, and then has never forgiven Animals In General when it bit him and then ran off. 

Geten—

General Thoughts Another one I haven’t written a great deal about yet, particularly in the present day, though I’m looking for that to change soonish.  One thing I’d like to explore is Geten when he’s not seething with rage and shame because he failed to bring Re-Destro a victory in Deika. The fandom tends to write Geten as an always-angry attack dog barely contained beneath a chilly veneer, and that’s fair—ever since we got the face reveal, ever since the MLA’s defeat at Shigaraki’s hands, Geten has been an always-angry attack dog barely contained beneath a chilly veneer.

But if you look at Geten from before we knew what was under the hood, you find a different story.  “Chilly and angry all the time” is not at all how he acted when he was fighting Dabi!  At that point, he was talkative, even chatty.  He engaged in a lot of snide smack-talk; he was obviously confident in himself and he spoke very proudly of the MLA as a collective.

He was still quiet at the dinner he attended with Rikiya and his advisors, yes, so I don’t think Geten’s done some kind of full 180 on characterization.  I do, however, think that Geten has a sense of humor in there, has a sense of camaraderie with the MLA rooted in more than just his relationship with Re-Destro, even if Re-Destro is obviously his most important person.  I don’t know if we’ll ever see that in the manga proper, given everything that’s happened, but it’s worth remembering in terms of what Geten is like when he’s solely among allies.

Family Situation Orphaned at a young age, and a problem child from then on.  He passed through a series of foster parents and state facilities before eventually crossing paths with the leader of the local MLA branch in Kesseru, Beacon (more on him next time).  This encounter would lead to him being sent to a group home with a reputation for being good with such difficult cases, giving them Structure and Companionship and Meaningful Work.  (Spoilers: It’s Liberation.)

Despite evening out considerably after a significant meeting with Re-Destro when he was 7[iv], Geten never got particularly close to his adopted family/the other kids at the group home.  He's very favored by the Grand Commander, for one thing, and he has the strongest quirk in the home for another—and since he learned the quirk supremacist stuff from them, that’s a pretty significant part of the dynamic!  Both of these factors mean there's some distance between him and the rest. Still, he's not on bad terms with them—indeed, his foster parents are quite proud of him—and he would probably tear out someone's throat with his teeth for threatening them, if only as a matter of pride.  

There are 4-6 other kids there at any given time; for the bulk of his young adulthood, there were two older than him, the others younger.  He doesn't have much time for Big Brother Pastimes, but is not completely immune to them, either, particularly where the youngest kids are concerned.  His tolerance for Little Brother Antics, however, is nonexistent—if the older kids think they can ruffle his hair and treat him like a kid, they can square the fuck up; he is Number One around here and don’t forget it.

Education Geten never went to school, but he's not completely uneducated.  He had some tutoring in the group home, some more from Re-Destro personally, and has a pile of books he keeps at his bedside, mostly strategic in nature.  He finds them vexing at times, but is slowly reading through them anyway because Re-Destro asked him to.  He’s been a bit more diligent about it since he was made a regiment leader, because lord knows Dabi isn't contributing much.

On Re-Destro Re-Destro became fond of Geten for the same reason he became fond of Skeptic and Curious—Geten was willing to push back.  He really did make some attempts early on to keep Geten at a proper distance, mindful of anything that would look too much like favoritism.  And Geten knew, in the hard-headed way of a child, that Re-Destro was being a grown-up about things, trying to be mature, trying to be impartial.  Geten just didn’t care about any of those things.  Every time, he would listen very seriously to the things Rikiya told him, nod attentively, repeat back what he’d been told, and then go on about doing his own thing anyway.  And his own thing was, typically, to keep coming back.

Of course, if there’s anything we can tell about Re-Destro from the way he treats Shigaraki, it’s that Re-Destro loves people who take the choice away from him.

Eventually, of course, Geten grew up (mostly; I peg him at 19 now), joined the MLA officially, and had to settle into the structure of the Army.  It began to lead to trouble for Re-Destro, when Geten blatantly disobeyed him; it stopped being cute.  Still, the sense that he Knows What’s Best lingers, so Geten works himself very, very hard to be everything Re-Destro needs him to be and more, so that maybe Re-Destro’s burden will be just that little bit lighter.

On Quirk Supremacy (and Re-Destro, still) Here’s the thing about Geten and the whole, “A life without a strong meta-ability has no value,” line, and this continues to drive me mad because of how people getting it wrong influences the bad takes on the MLA in this fandom: Geten is not a reliable witness.  He is not one of the leaders of the MLA, nor does he speak for its rank and file. Even if you assume the absolute worst about his implications there, far worse than is justified by the text, Geten’s very name, Apocrypha, means that he cannot be presumed to be aligned with MLA orthodoxy.

The only one of the people close to Re-Destro who wasn't born and raised MLA, he still manages to come off, in some ways, as the most zealous of the lot of them.  But really, it’s very noticeable that Geten—unlike Re-Destro himself, and unlike even Re-Destro’s close cohort—never talks about the original Destro, never even mentions him.  When he thinks about his leader, he only ever thinks about Rikiya.  Geten doesn’t follow Re-Destro because of his bloodline, because of the tenets; he follows Re-Destro because of personal loyalty.[v]

So how best to do that?  Well, think about it: Geten is not terribly intelligent, nor wealthy, nor well-connected. He and Trumpet are the ones most influenced by the quirk supremacist line of thought, Trumpet because his relatively weak quirk comes off as exponentially stronger the more he can surround himself in people it works on, and Geten because his strong quirk lets him mentally justify Re-Destro's investment in him despite his other insufficiencies.

Compare this with Re-Destro, who only ever talks about quirks in terms of freedom. Even more prominently, look at Skeptic and Curious, who are not at all defined by their quirks and how strong or weak said quirks may be.  Indeed, those two devote scarcely a thought to the matter because they contribute to the cause in much more important ways and seem to be perfectly comfortable with where that leaves them.

Geten may not be very smart or influential, but he’s very capable of looking at what strengths he does have and focusing hard on those.  That, I think, is what really lead to his embracing quirk supremacy, even in the face of evidence that he doesn’t have the whole picture: the search for a way to measure himself up to the movers and shakers Rikiya is otherwise surrounded with, and not come up drastically wanting.  

“Apocrypha” Geten has been Geten for a long time, since long before the MLA types usually take up their code names. He’s also an outlier in the MLA for having a name in Japanese instead of in English—the only one who does!  My headcanon, unless and until we get some other members with Japanese code names, is that he got the name directly from Re-Destro—possibly even in the conversation that lead to him imprinting so hard on the man when he was 7—and insisted on keeping it before any other code name that was suggested to him in later years.

But yes, he does have a normal Japanese name on file at the group home, which he’s obligated to answer to on the rare occasions that someone from Child Services is checking in or he and Re-Destro are out in public.  I don’t plan to bother coming up with it unless I need to, as I expect we’ll get it in a character profile one of these days.

His Quirk While a lot of people like the vibe of Geten and Dabi being somewhat equivalently vulnerable to their own quirks, and I agree it makes for good fanart, in truth, Geten is only as vulnerable to his ice as Endeavor is his flames.  Which is to say, he isn't immune, but he's certainly more resistant to it than the average person would be!  There’s already plenty of good material to contrast Dabi and Geten without pretending their quirks are more mirrored than is actually the case.

Lightning Round

How does he treat people in service jobs? He doesn’t, because he’s never in a position to interact with people in service jobs.  There have been times he’s gone out with Re-Destro, but in those cases he’s mostly let Re-Destro handle the human interaction.

What does he dislike in other people? Laziness; the lack of a higher purpose of some kind.  (It’s possible he’d thaw out on his disdain for Dabi considerably if he knew more about Dabi’s plans to undermine the whole of the Hero System than Dabi is inclined to tell him.)

Is he always there for a friend in need? Sure, as long as by “friend” you mean “fellow Liberation warrior” and by “need” you mean “in need of an icicle punched through one of someone else’s desperately fleshy body parts.”

Footnotes

[i]  Sanctum II's tastes being what they are, this probably means Rikiya is the MLA member most likely to be able to perform traditional Japanese tea ceremony.

[ii]  And there were elders who would have been happy to leave it at that permanently, I'm sure.  There are always going to be those regents who have trouble relinquishing power back to the boy prince when he grows up and becomes king, you know?

[iii]  And, when it eventually got out that they were dating, a relatively solid match, give or take the surrogacy arrangements that would eventually need to be made.

[iv]  I’m hoping canon gives us some details on this eventually, so I’m not planning to iron out more headcanon on the matter unless I absolutely have to.

[v]  This, incidentally, is a large part of why Rikiya does keep him around—it’s soothing to have someone around who never brings up his ancestor.  Anyway, after Geten evolved his quirk, people stopped complaining so much, even though RD never did get around to, like, giving Geten any formal responsibilities.  Geten, who knows very well that Re-Destro’s real advisors have real jobs, mostly took this as reason to be all the stronger, in hopes that he’d eventually be given one.

[animebw]

Binge-Watching: Re:Zero S2, Episodes 18-19

In which the show’s world is blown wide open, we meet a new, terrifying foe, and Emilia confronts the pain of the promise she’s carried with her all this time.

Eons Ago

In my days, I’ve seen some Re:Zero fans describe season 1 as the story’s prologue. That description never really made sense to me; if it takes twenty-five episodes (twenty-six, if we consider the double-length first episode) to get your story out of prologue mode, then you are doing something wrong. But now that I’m deep into season 2, I think I kind of get where those fans are coming from. I still don’t agree that season 1 is just a prologue, but holy shit has the story taken off since Rem’s departure. Season 1 was almost entirely focused on Subaru as a character and his growth through the trials he endured, with most of the big worldbuilding and lore details occurring in the background, Now, though, the greater scope of Re:Zero’s world has fully stepped into the spotlight. Time’s been taken to flesh out Lugunica’s history, how the characters we know fit into the broader sweep of what’s happening in this country, the goals driving everyone to try and reshape Lugunica’s future and the lengths they’ll go to in order to do so. We've had three straight episodes exploring Emilia’s backstory in exhaustive detail, and that’s directly after an episode entirely devoted to Garfiel and a half-episode giving Otto a chance to shine. And it looks like next episode is only gonna continue that trend by picking up on yet another subplot introduced in episode 18 and fully fleshing out how the Sanctuary was made in the first place. We’ve spent more time with Subaru’s allies in this second cours than we have with Subaru himself. And that speaks to how Re:Zero’s focus has expanded in its fourth arc; this isn’t just a story about Subaru’s personal growth anymore. This is a story about all the people in his orbit, and the world they live in, and the history of that world that defines its course, and all the interconnected moments that weave their collective tapestry.

The one downside to that approach- if you can really call it a downside- is that the more we dive into the world of Re:Zero, the more I realize just how staggeringly huge it is. For every answer Emilia’s backstory gives us, it only raises more questions to take its place, questions that will no doubt lead us still deeper into this world’s backstory. For example, how exactly is the witch cult structured? The archbishops seem to lead factions of cultists under their control, but Betelgeuse is not yet an archbishop when he’s providing aid to the elves. He only becomes an archbishop when he fucking injects himself with the power of the Unseen Hand and is given the title of Sloth, which only raises further questions still. Who gave Geuse the Sloth Factor in the first place? Why did he have leadership over his comrades if he wasn’t an archbishop? So much of this organizations’ mechanics are still shrouded in mystery, and there’s little time to pore over the few details we get because we’re too busy being bowled over by Geusu’s first “DESS!” coming from a heroic declaration to protect the woman and girl he considers his family. He didn’t even want the title of Sloth when it was given to him; he rejected it and said it was a lie that he would never let come to pass. So was Geuse’s cult an offshoot of the witch’s cult that once worked against them, or is there something more complicated going on? Either way, we’ve only scratched the surface of what’s truly going on with them.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. We still don’t know how the third Beast of Gluttony found its way here. Hell, we don’t even know what’s the deal with the big Seal they’re fighting over. Clearly, opening a spectral door in the middle of the forest is a bad idea, but what powers does the Witch Cult hope to unleash by doing so? And why does Emilia have the ability to become its key, exactly? Because if she really is the daughter of Satella, then Mother Fortuna needs to have a long talk with her brother about his taste in women. Yeah, no marriage is perfect, but I feel you can do better than an eons-old personification of one of humanity’s oldest sins. Or maybe being the “daughter of a witch” is just a symbolic title, as we see Beatrice describe herself as Echidna’s daughter in our brief flashback to her meeting with Ryuzu. Which raises an entirely separate set of questions, because it looks like this meeting occurred way back when Echidna was still alive and hoooooly shit that’s wild to even think about. Not to mention one of Roswaal’s ancestors showing up back then as well... except I wonder if he’s actually an ancestor, because he sure looks and sounds an awful lot like the present day Margrave Mathers, minus the hammy affect we now know hides his true malice. It would not surprise me if Roswaal also turned out to be immortal in some way, that’s all I’m saying.

The Eight Witch

But even all of those mysteries pale in comparison to the biggest bombshell these episodes drop on us: MOTHER FUCKING PANDORA. Hey, excuse me, show, do you fucking mind? I just got done wrapping my head around meeting the seven sin witches and now you drop an eight witch on me out of nowhere? I honestly thought she was just Kid Echidna for a while due to the bushy eyebrows (and who knows, maybe they do have some connection), but then Regulus drops an entirely new name on us and I just about lost my shit. The Witch of Vanity is a cherry bomb straight through the glass window that upends everything I thought I understood about this world’s mythology. And she has possibly the most terrifying power of all her (possible) sisters: the power to literally erase the effects of a person’s actions. When Regulus starts getting too mouthy for her liking (Side note, Regulus really is just the embodiment of the “I feel threatened when we are not talk about me?” meme, isn’t he?), she just snaps her fingers and blips his entire existence somewhere else entirely. All the injuries he landed on his foes, all the damage he did to the battlefield, gone as if he never showed up in the first place. That’s some King Crimson levels of high-concept temporal fuckery. And it makes Pandora functionally immortal; whenever she dies, she can just erase the action that killed her and pop up again good as new, save for the blood splatter where her body was once blown apart in a reality that no longer exists. I think. Honestly, I’m still trying to wrap my head around her powers, and I bet we’ll get further clarification on them eventually, so don’t spoil me if I’ve messed something up. I’m game to see just how insane these abilities get.

And even putting her powers aside, Pandora as a presence in this battle scares the everloving shit out of me. She’s constantly smiling, constantly happy, constantly joyful at her opponents’ struggles. She cries tears of joy when Betelgeuse takes in the Unseen Hand, she sends Regulus away with no ill will for his whiny outbursts, she even shows grace toward Emilia when the little girl rejects her request to open the Seal. Only a couple brief moments show the anger hiding under her smile, and even then, there’s no real spite in it. Pandora seems like she genuinely loves everyone, from Regulus’s egotistical blathering to Emilia’s selfless bravery to Fortuna’s unending badassery. But she’s also willing to pull dirty tricks like clouding her opponents’ sight to make them see things that aren’t there. That moment where she made Fortuna think she just slapped Emilia? Holy shit, I just about had a heart attack. It almost feels like she’s playing with them, enjoying watching them struggle because she’s confident that the outcome is already determined in her favor. Even when she’s forced to abandon her quest for the seal, she shows nothing but tenderness toward Emilia as she wipes the girl’s memories and inserts herself in the hole they leave behind. I don’t understand what she wants or why she wants it, or how she even relates to the other witches, but that level of self-assured kindness is chilling on a level I think I’m only just starting to comprehend. Once again, Re:Zero season 2 proves that there is nothing more terrifying than the words “I love you.”

Even when it comes from someone you love back.

Winter is Here

Because through the absolute nightmare of this flashback, through all the sacrifices and tragic deaths and rage and sorrow, the reason it hurt Emilia so badly- the reason she couldn’t bring herself to complete this trial before now- was her mother’s love. Fortuna might not have been her blood mother, but she was the best mother Emilia could have asked for. And much like Garfiel before her, knowing how much Fortuna loved her is what made losing her such a crushing, inescapable pit. Even before shit really goes wrong, Emilia’s already internalized that this mess must be all her fault in some way. It’s her fault for breaking promises, it’s her fault for being a bad girl, it’s her fault that she’s about to end up alone. She can’t help but feel like she deserves to lose everything for not keeping her word and escaping from her forest prison. But through it all, Fortuna never surrendered her love. Even when she’s been pierced through the heart and lies bleeding out in the snow, she uses her final words to profess, once again, how goddamn much she loves her adopted daughter. And Emilia feels the full weight of that trauma, even if she’s only now remembering the specifics. Small wonder she grew up with such intense abandonment issues and lack of self-worth; the last time she did something even slightly improper, it resulted in her home being destroyed, her mother being slaughtered by her boyfriend in a fit of deluded rage, and all her kinsman being frozen in eternal ice by her own blind rage. Can you blame her for falling apart at the slightest suggestion, however small, that such horrors might befall her again?

And Jesus Christ, I cannot stress enough just how heartbreaking it all is. Watching Betelgeuse slowly fall apart until he rips through Fortuna by accident, watching Fortuna absolutely fucking cut loose with full Mama Bear fury to keep her daughter safe, watching Archi blow his goddamn leg off and freeze the stump to stop the infection from killing him, watching Pandora put herself back together over and over again no matter how many times she dies, watching Emilia erupt in a blizzard of grief and fury and turning an entire countryside to ice as she implores her mother’s killer to die, killing a witch who can’t be killed over and over again, screaming with the kind of agony no child should ever have to bear... god. Words can’t do it justice. There’s nothing rational or logical about this kind of suffering. It just hurts. It hurts on a primal level that can’t be reasoned with or shut away. I fully understand why this trial crushed Emilia. I fully understand why it would drive her insane without a supportive shoulder to lean on. She went through absolute hell and internalized the idea that it was somehow all her fault, that every last ounce of this tragedy was a sin fallen on her own head. The fact she turned out as stable as she did is a fucking miracle. Anyone without her strength would have broken under that pressure long ago.

Power of a Promise

And yet, somehow, Emilia pulled through. No matter how many times she broke down crying, now matter how insurmountable the challenge seemed, the light within her refused to die. Even in the thick of that nightmare in the past, when faced with an option to open the Seal to save Fortuna’s life, she somehow found the courage to stay true to her promise. Because just as the ties of love can be chains holding us down, they can just as well be the wind that carries us into the sky. Just as a promise can lead to ruin and misery, it can be a bond stronger than steel and brighter than silver. No matter how much it hurt, Emilia and Fortuna loved each other. They were family beyond family. They trusted each other, they believed in each other, they held fast to each other even to the bitter end. Just look at how much ass Fortuna whips to keep Emilia safe; those jaw-dropping ice spells are the work of a woman who refuses to give up on love. And even though it ended in tragedy, there’s no doubt in my mind that Fortuna would die all over again if it meant giving the child of her brother, his wife and herself a chance to keep on going. No matter how much Emilia’s lost, Fortuna’s love is still with her. The promise they made so long ago remains unbroken. And so long as Emilia never regrets making that promise, it won’t ever fade no matter how much darkness lies ahead.

Because for all the pain of these episodes, the moment that stands out the most to me isn’t one of despair or tragedy. It’s the moment where Emilia in the present watches herself in the past, as she makes the promise to Fortuna that sealed their fates. The moment they swear that no matter what, they’ll always be with each other. And in a perfect mirror of the child she once was, Emilia breaks down sobbing as she makes good on that promise all over again with a single phrase:

“I love you, mother.”

And that’s all you need, isn’t it? That’s all the light necessary to drive back the darkness. Emilia finding the strength to speak her love once again, to accept how much Fortuna meant to her no matter how heartbreaking, is a spell more powerful than any of the high-level ice magic Fortuna tossed around. It’s a spell strong enough to break through the first trial and put her back on her feet at last. No matter how much it hurts, Emilia won’t give up on love anymore. She won’t give up on herself. She won’t give up on all the people, from Fortuna to Subaru to the villagers of Arlam and everyone in between, who’ve placed their faith in her. So what if it’s her fault her people are frozen in ice? She’ll just have to apologize over and over when she finally wakes them up. And then, she can bring them out at last to the big, wide world before them. The world they were never able to see before when they were imprisoned inside invisible walls. No longer will they be trapped inside some forgotten Sanctuary: as Subaru so beautifully puts it, once this long nightmare is finally over, they’ll be able to call the entire world their sanctuary. And Emilia will stand tall through it all, shouting to the heavens so Fortuna can hear just how far her daughter’s come, still wearing her mother’s hairpin after all these years, forever believing in the promise that hairpin represents.

After so long wallowing in despair... Emilia is ready to fly once more

And could not be more grateful for the tears we’ve shed together.

Odds and Ends

-”It is true you are special, but not so much that you can look down on others.” Echidna... you fascinate me.

-”Don’t mind me. Just killing time, I suppose.” aksjhsad is that a tsundere affect I hear

-”Just this much, I suppose.” this is too cute what the fuck

-It took us half the cours to see the damn OP. And we still haven’t seen the ED. Good lord.

-”Now that you’re fighting back, they’ll be a poor fit.” God, imagine if the next two trials were even harder for Emilia. That would just be evil.

-”I’m sorry, mother.” fine just rip my heart in two why don’t you

-”Hey, don’t go understanding each other like that!” dsfskjshdfkjhsdf

-Imagine, little old Otto being the one to throw Roswaal’s plans out of gear. What a king.

-”I advise you to surrender.” THE BALLS ON THIS KID.

Six episodes to go. See you next time!

[pcgamepure09]

Extraordinary and Bad in Gaming

Gaming is most likely the best diversion and even livelihoods in the world. People wreck around for amusement just or learning while others record accounts about the games. In this article, I will focus in extra on gaming itself and less the side of how to make gaming accounts. Gamers come in each exceptional age, genders, religions, regions and shapes. The establishments of people who are gamers make gaming extensively more fun.

Establishments of gamers can have an effect in the sort of games that people play. There are a wide scope of blends for different arrangements relating to the sort of games and kind of gamers. You really need to look at the game's site to get every one of the proper information prior to buying PC Game Pure .

There are various online stages where you can buy games from like Steam or Humble Bundle. Those districts will give you the portrayal, accounts by the association, pictures, customer and non-customer marks, reviews, site, association and their social account(s). Realize the game's site likely will not show you all that you require to know. As a base, a gaming association will show a short endeavor to make it happen depiction, restricted amount of pictures (5, most ideal situation, several accounts by them and their social records. The most they will give is an illuminating portrayal, their social records, customer studies and accounts by them.

We should make a dive straightforwardly into what is viewed as negative with respect to gaming. The greater part of the cynical things about games come from the certifiable people on those games, the kind of games and the sorts of games for some unsuitable person. A game can be bad quality yet it's not by and large the circumstance where the real game is horrendous. It might be where it was some unsuitable kind of game for some inadmissible person. This is where the classes come in. Perhaps a game has a bit of mercilessness. That doesn't make it horrendous; it basically makes it some inadmissible kind of game for a seven year old. Of course maybe you bought a conundrum game for a person who loves movement type games. So the movement loving individual won't see the value in it, yet that doesn't make the conundrum game terrible!

The sorts of games are ceaseless from bareness, meds and alcohol, detestability, wagering with money to say the very least. These different sorts aren't ideal for youth gamers similarly as misguided for people who could do without seeing such things.

Gaming has incredible and awful sides really like the wide range of various things. The key is the means by which extraordinary and dreadful are those sides. For example, a couple of games have an awful side with players that like to fight a ton. This is typical in games. Appreciate for a huge load of gamers this is surely not a big deal; in any case, for youth who are new to the game or regardless, gaming in general this can be disillusioning. There are times when you need to avoid the awful sides all together. There are times when the incredible balances the awful. Accepting this happens and there are no issues with the real game; the awful side is just that one insignificant fly in your room which is no big deal. Alert: If the horrendous balances the incomparable, I would unequivocally recommend avoiding that game.

Another viewpoint that people will disturb a game architect or creator about is depiction. Should I say, a shortfall of depiction which isn't confined to race, body type and message in the game. Accepting you can change your individual, clearly you will not dislike depiction. There is an issue in specific games where they don't address strong and sharp females, minority females and folks, immense, little, tall, and short females and folks. Notice how I didn't put "folks" after female for strong? That is because folks in games are ALWAYS tended to as strong and insightful.

In games that show a male strong and quick, he will generally likely be white, tall, unstable, superstar looking and buff. You will inconsistently see him be a minority, short, stout, not buff, quirky looking, while at this point being strong and sharp. You see this even LESS for females. A couple of females in games are also white, tall, feeble and strong while showing skin like no tomorrow. You simply see THESE females in MMORPG games (Massively Multiplayer online Role Playing Game) be that as it may. RPG games are planned for lala lands where you for the most part fight people and monsters. Clearly the females' subtleties will be strong anyway they won't look strong.

In many games, when they add an individual for you to play they for the most part add a white male first, then a white female, then a dim male, and a short time later a dim female. They don't even really add people who are mixes of races or in the center. With respect to the dull characters they simply add one shade of "dim" or "African American" and not many out of each odd person of shading on earth is that shade.

In games, the vast majority of the characters are for each situation unstable and tall. You don't really see characters that are short and feeble, tall and tubby, short and stout, etc There are a numerous people who aren't unstable and who aren't tall.

Then at long last, there is the mental message that goes with the sexual direction, race, and body type. What do I mean by the mental message? A couple of games send a roundabout message in regards to that character being strong and sharp or something else. While for various games it will in general be a mental message either purposefully or not. For example, in the game you play and you see a minority female who is short, full, nerdy looking and her ascribes are to be a dolt, guiltless, and moronic. It could send a mental message to you that people that seem like her are actually similar to her. They're not sharp, they aren't thin, and are not tall. They did incapably in school, et cetera So you start thinking those things subject to not simply seeing this in that game over and over, anyway when it happens in various games also.

The most really terrible part is NONE of these things are legitimate. Without a doubt, certain people aren't shaky, tall, and maybe not unreasonably splendid; but instead not EVERYONE is like this! You do have short stout minorities who are shrewd as anyone might imagine! You have a wide scope of mixes of people who ARE astute! Clearly, this heap of things about sexual direction, race, body type, and messages aren't just in gaming; they're in films, TV shows, advancements, etc Intriguing that a piece of the producers who make the games, movies, TV shows, advancements, etc, are minorities themselves and they make up the quantity of occupants in the earth. (Search "all out people by race 2016" and click the underlying three associations if you don't confide in me.)

Fast disclaimer: I AM NOT BASHING ANYONE! Without a doubt, I was hollering that. This section of the article is referencing to you what I know, read, hear and experience in gaming.

If you don't believe me go gander at the current TV shows, movies, commercials, and games. A show to look at for extraordinary depiction is Milo Murphy's Law. Two games to look at as a wellspring of viewpoint for extraordinary depiction are OverWatch and Atlas Reactor. By and by in these fields it has improved for depiction unequivocally sex, race and as of late starting body type (expressly in a particular request). A couple of games even add robots and creatures as playable characters to do whatever it takes not to have issues with depiction. This kills the issue of customers requiring an individual to address their genuine or supported sexual direction, race, or body type since now there is an individual most customers can yield to. In light of everything, it's impractical to fulfill everyone.

OK, since I ranted and moved the awful stuff; we ought to get into the incredible bits of gaming! You have gamers as energetic as three years old and as old as 90+! Despite your age, race, sex, religion, culture, or region gaming can be valuable for anyone. Gaming can not solely be fun, yet productive and enlightening.

A benefit with gaming is it can help youth with having more confidence in themselves and be all the more cordial. If they play an online multiplayer game and talk with various players all through the planet, this can help then with becoming familiar with bantering with others other than family and they procure trust in what they're saying. They can go from a smart individual to a social fan! It can happen fast or progressively. Whether or not it's everything except a game anyway a spot for gamers, trained professionals, style originators, vehicle darling, etc to talk; it will regardless help them with being all the more well disposed. Recollect in any case, creating to someone and thereafter voice visiting to someone are two novel experiences. Youth can be incredibly amicable when creating yet especially meek when voice visiting.

[aion-rsa]

Why Kid Cosmic Is About “People, Not Powers”

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This feature contains some spoilers for Netflix’s Kid Cosmic.

After exploring the stretches of space, wonder, and imagination in shows like Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends and Wander Over Yonder, Craig McCracken returns to the realm of superheroes with Kid Cosmic, a more direct, comic book-esque take on the genre than his first smash hit show, The Powerpuff Girls. 

The show stars Kid, a young boy who finds a set of superpowered stones, and from there, all heck breaks loose. In the midst of fighting waves upon waves of aliens and creatures from other worlds, however, is an earnest, realistic story about a boy dealing with grief, and the small town that unites behind him through it all.

Den of Geek got a chance to chat with Craig over email about the show, about what it means to be a superhero, and how Netflix allowed for Kid Cosmic to explore that in a more mature, “all ages” way that’s arguably beyond the scope of most animated kids shows.

Den of Geek: Kid Cosmic is about a kid who is so engaged in comic books that when a set of super-powered stones literally lands at his feet, he wants to be a real superhero, arguably at some pretty significant costs and risk. What influenced you to come up with this specific premise? How do you view this, and the serial, thematic nature of it, against the immense number of superhero based media in the world today?

Craig McCracken: I was inspired by the supreme confidence that kids have at that age. I, like a lot of kids, dreamt of being a superhero when I was young, and in my fantasies I was always amazing and really good at it. I had that same confidence with my drawing when I was young. I drew all the time, I studied every cartoon and comic I could get my hands on, and I had the passion to do the job. I couldn’t understand why I had to grow up and go to art school before I could have that career, I was ready for the job at 12! 

The answer was that I wasn’t good enough yet, I had way more to learn (still do!). So I took that personal childhood experience with my drawing and applied it to superpowers instead. The thing that I feel sets Kid Cosmic apart from other hero-based media is that it’s focused less on epic hero mythologies and more on the smaller human stories. In writing the series we always reminded ourselves it’s about the people not the powers. 

Style wise, the show is heavily indebted to the classic comic book/serial look. The framing and storyboarding; the uses of fonts in the credits; the nifty end cards with the characters on fake comic books. One thing I’ve noticed, specifically, is that the movements at points were jumpy, as if frames were missing. Was that a conscious choice? Do you think that adds to the look and feel you’re going for?

A lot of the choices that we made in Kid were based on the fact that these are real people in the real world, they aren’t cartoon characters. So with the animation we avoided overly smooth and flowy actions or lots of squash and stretch, things that you associate with “cartoons.”  If an action felt natural on 3s or 4s we kept it. 

New Mexico as a setting is an inspired choice. There’s something freeing about its wide expanse of desert, but also terrifying in its (from a kids’ perspective) unexplored nothingness. How do you think the setting reflects the themes?

It’s not specifically New Mexico but sort of a generic rural southwest desert vibe. It could be New Mexico, it could be California, it could be Arizona, basically it’s a remote enough place where a spaceship could crash and not a lot of people would know about it. The other thing that is nice about the desert is that it forces you to tell a story about the characters because there is no surrounding environment for the characters to get distracted by, it’s a flat empty stage to play in. It’s also alone in the middle of nowhere, sort of like Earth is in the greater universe. 

This is, relatively speaking, darker than most kids animated shows. It has pretty brutal alien deaths, and while they’re dispatched in unique ways (colorful blood, “de-rezzing” out of existence), they’re still a bit more intense then what’s usually out there. How was Netflix in responding to this? Do you feel there may be a kind of commentary here on how sensitized kids may be to the kind of violence they witness in superhero comics and films?

Again that’s the reality creeping in, even though there is fantastic stuff happening, Kid Cosmic doesn’t take place in a fantasy world. Danger exists, the stakes are high. This just increases Kid’s struggle and makes it more real. At the beginning, Netflix said this isn’t specifically a “kid’s show” it’s an all ages show that can be watched by young viewers, families, animation fans, anybody. So from their perspective, anything that you might see in a big summer superhero movie was fair game. 

I want to talk about the Kid himself, who, to be blunt, is a lot to handle in the first few episodes. The approach seems to be that the Kid needs to learn a lesson about humility and what it means to be a “true hero.” But I’m also fascinated by his tragic backstory. It’s portrayed vaguely, but hints at his motivation. Do you feel that keeping the specifics of what happened to the Kid at arms’ length works to prop up the theme?

I wanted to tell a story about a real kid and kids at that age aren’t perfect. They make mistakes, they may be a bit intense or selfish and are hard to deal with sometimes. It’s part of growing up and maturing. Often heroes for young viewers are portrayed as aspirational. They always do and say the right things. I wanted Kid to be more realistic and relatable. 

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As far as his backstory goes, my father passed away when I was 7 so what motivates Kid to want to be a hero is very close to me. We felt he should have a more sincere motivation in wanting to be a hero other than it would be fun and cool. It had to come from a real place and losing his parents and wanting to stop bad things from happening felt more true. Keeping that part of the story at arms’ length was a way to keep the overall tone of the season balanced. Even though Kid carries this real and heavy weight around with him, we didn’t want it to drag down the overall fun and energetic tone of the series. 

Stuck Chuck is portrayed as the Kid’s conscious – specifically, his self-doubt, his frustrations, his lies. Can you go into more about the conception of this character?

Frank Angones, who I did early Kid development with, and I are both huge Buckaroo Banzai fans and we were talking about a scene that got cut out where after the Lectroid ship was destroyed Buckaroo found some random Red Lectroids left behind who forgot to get on the ship. We thought the idea of having to deal with random aliens was hilarious. So we applied that to Stuck Chuck, and what started out as a joke turned into an absolutely essential character. Chuck is not only a constant threat to Kid’s life but he is a constant threat to his confidence. He’s like an anti-Jiminy Cricket and is one of my favorite characters in the show. 

Later in the season, there’s a big twist in who the real villains are, and in the process, the depiction of superheroic antics are pushed up to a ridiculous degree. It almost feels like a winking satire of the whole “Space Force” thing. Was that intentional? Do you think there’s a tension that exists between the depiction of superheroes and their connection, however tenuous, to a military aggressiveness that merits more discussion?

I get asked that a lot, but I came up with Earth Force Enforcement Force long before Space Force. Aggressiveness is the right word. As a fan of superheros I’m tired of being told dark stories about heroes more focused on fighting and winning wars than actually helping the innocent victims of those conflicts.  I miss good guys that are actually “good guys.”

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

The ending, to keep things vague, is a pretty sudden transition from the initial premise. If granted a season 2, what other themes would you explore? Do you think you’ll be able to keep a solid grasp on the true nature of superheroics, if you place them in a new setting where over-the-top superheroics would be necessary?

We want to explore other ideas of what it really means to be a hero. If season 1 was “heroes help” what other aspects are essential to be a hero? So we plan on exploring that idea but through the experience of some of the other characters. Namely how does a teenage waitress from Earth suddenly lead a team of regular people to save the universe? Again it’s about the people, not the powers. 

The post Why Kid Cosmic Is About “People, Not Powers” appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3b7FtUX

[arrowpusher]

Breaking my silence

After a week straight of insomnia keeping myself awake reflecting on current events, I think I need to write something to collect my thoughts.

Yes, I chose Tumblr because I am not brave enough to display my unpopular opinion on Facebook or Twitter where a lot of my friends and family will disagree, and I don’t want to cause any hard feelings. (It’s like whenever I post about Apple, my older cousin who works at Apple always write lengthy replies, and then I do not elaborate on my beliefs with counter-arguments because I respect my cousin too much.) I just value relationships far above than my political viewpoints, so here I hide.

First of all: I support Black Lives Matter. I am saddened by the tragedies. I believe systemic racism urgently needs to be addressed.

However, there are aspects of recent events that make me uncomfortable and conflicted.

1. “It is wrong to condemn the violence and the looting. This takes away from the BLM Movement. Property can be replaced.” I remember my college professor on Cal tuition protests explaining that if you don’t throw a temper tantrum, people won’t listen to you. But so much looting has absolutely nothing to do with protests, it creates mixed images of the cause locally and worldwide, and the extent of destruction makes me lose faith in humanity. I heard about a local privately owned pharmacy not only suffering significant losses; they run a mental health clinic and because long-acting injectables got stolen, patients are unable to receive their treatment. I saw on the news people stealing cars, women walking out of Victoria’s Secret with designer lingerie, teenagers hysterical getting their hands on “free” stuff... tell me how this helps address racism. Businesses are already suffering huge losses in these uncertain times, and people are just getting back on their feet and likely running on a deficit. Even when property can be replaced, what do we gain from the destruction that cannot be accomplished through constructive means? Do people's livelihoods have to be destroyed overnight to make a statement? I saw a video explaining the looting of a low-income neighborhood, that people are profiting off of the pain (and I noticed someone posted this video on social media and got significant backlash for condemning violence.)

2. “Police are bad. Hence, they need to be de-funded.” While systems-wide changes need to be made to eliminate police brutality, I also find myself feeling bad for the the part of the police workforce who actually are kind-hearted individuals who are doing their job to protect society and putting their life on the line while at it. Policemen went from being first responder heroes to national villains overnight. I do not find it acceptable that policemen have lost their lives amidst the chaos of the lootings (like the retired officer checking on his friend’s store... I saw a poster “You killed him because ‘they’ killed someone?” It reminds me all too much of the primitive eye-for-an-eye argument). Also, I have not seen any mention of 2A. Despite all the recent shootings and massacres, relatively little change has happened on gun control. Until then, there is significant risk to both police officers and the general public. I recall reading that the Gilroy Garlic Festival shooting was not catastrophic because the police were able to control the situation quite quickly. I don’t expect gun control and crime to dissipate by itself (especially during economic and political instability) and I actually fear for public safety in the future. Who would want to be a policeman if you get so much hate, have limited resources, yet are still forced at times to make split-second decisions that could cause your life. This spirals further into me being annoyed at how little is said about decisions on the military and warfare, which not only consumes so much funding, but directly causes blatant harm and civilian lives. When I have to Google “current wars in 2020″ as a refresher, I begin to question why the same momentum of the anti-police movement in the US is not given to international conflicts with oppression at much greater magnitudes. 

3. “Speaking up about other minority issues takes away from the cause.” I don’t know, maybe I have a conflict of interest as a minority living in America... but I really would like to see this blossom into a larger civil rights movement. I did not see as much outcry, as much action, as many donations by individuals and large corporations, when ICE was hunting down and deporting immigrants, when children were separated from families and detained, when the oil pipeline was planned to invade Native American territory, or when all of the tax changes were made under the Trump administration which perpetuates and accentuates socioeconomic inequalities. There was news coverage, but for the most part, we sat on our couches. I also should not have to worry about my parents being the victim of hate crimes when they go on a walk outside. I know we still need to maintain focus (like when I start to think about the inertia in dealing with climate change... but I’m not going to say wildlife matters because then any movement is a moot point if you try to change everything about the world in one go). I think we still can maintain focus and expand the scope: systemic racism and implicit bias apply broadly. Just because an inequality isn’t trending, it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist and does not deserve attention. 

I try to convince myself to try not to lose more sleep over this (hint: it’s been pretty unsuccessful) because at the end of the day, I’m not going to change anything. This is a sad reality I have felt about current events and the workings of social media--constructive discussion is important, yet it gets stifled in the cyberspace and you get personally attacked. I’ve commented on a few posts on Facebook with a relatively moderate viewpoint, and I got replies that essentially made me wonder if I was unknowingly alt-right. (Then, I had the same discussions with co-workers who agreed with me and brought up other valid points, and I felt less like a bad person). I know I contribute to the problem and I have my own implicit biases, but I don’t think my opinions are really as malicious as some Facebook friends of friends have made me feel. My endurance has dwindled and my mental strength has already grown fragile during these difficult times... I think I need to give myself a little more self care than staying up every night thinking I’m racist because I agree 100%, but not 1000%, with the current movement. 

Anyways, I don’t care whether or not I get hateful comments on this post. I wrote this largely for myself, so one day as I revisit my previous blog posts, I can see how I used to think about the world, and inspire myself to make change if I’m jaded. 

“You, I, and we all have the right to be respected.”

[animebw]

Binge-Watching: Mo Dao Zu Shi S2, Episodes 1-3

Season 2, go! In which we shift from the past to the present, and the change in priorities makes a world of difference.

Journey’s Start

The first season of Mo Da Zu Shi could reasonably be described as mythmaking before anything else. It was a huge, sprawling prologue dealing with epic clashes of power, larger-than-life characters, dramatic and melodramatic turns of fate and destiny befitting the ancient Greek stage or folk legends of old. But because the source material’s story structure wasn’t the same as the adaptations, it let to an interesting scenario where we were essentially getting the grand epic backstory before the story itself, almost like the Lord of the Rings started with the Similarian before moving on to Fellowship of the Ring. Like, yes, all this deep worldbuilding and mythmaking is impressive, but shouldn’t we first get acquainted with the characters and status quo all this stuff is designed to enrich? They say all journeys start with a single step, after all, not that they start with a 10-mile run in the opposite direction.

Well, now that the backstory is mostly taken care of, the second season is finally able to return to the present, picking up the main story right as it’s taking shape. And the difference really is night and day; this already feels like a markedly different flavor of storytelling. The stakes are lower, the battles less apocalyptic (if no less gorgeous), the scope more narrow and intimate. It’s less a grand epic and more a starting point, which makes sense, because this stuff actually is the opening chapters of the original text. And this is exactly the kind of point I’d expect a sprawling adventure narrative to start from, with a small group of characters thrust out of their comfort zone, thrown into unfamiliar circumstances, and slowly piecing together the bigger mystery behind what’s going on. The great wars and epic clashes of might are still far on the horizon; for now, we’re hanging out with a merry band of mismatched dorks, getting to know the rules of the world, building relationships, establishing secrets to be uncovered, and slowly growing in tension as the entangled threads of plot thicken. This is Frodo’s first encounters after leaving the Shire, to continue the extended LOTR metaphor, the first steps into an exciting, mysterious land that demands to be explored.

New Mysteries

And I’m not gonna lie, I really like the difference. Sure, the first season was crazier and more explosive, with huge battles and plot turns around every corner, but there’s something really exciting about setting out on a big adventure for the first time that was lost in the sturm and drang. But now, it feels like I’m really meeting this universe for the first. Wei Wuxian, Jin Ling, Lang Wanji, and Jiang Cheng all have interesting relationships with each other, and it’s fascinating watching them all play off each other. There’s a great active tension established between WWX and LWJ, as WWX tried to keep his true identity hidden and LWJ slowly begins sussing it out. There’s an interesting mystery being set up with who’s being the possessed body parts that are wreaking havoc across the landscape. There’s even a great sense of dark menace to the demonic powers being thrown around; compared to how colossal the battles in the past could get, there’s something really kind of chilling about the simplicity of a silent, dead field of bramble-covered corpses sticking upright like stones. It’s the kind of slow burn that only the beginnings of long journeys can really capture, the excitement of seeing all these little pieces of a much greater whole and wondering just how big they’re eventually gonna get.

And the hints at the parts of the backstory we still haven’t covered are captivating. What happened to WWX after he became a demonic cultivator? When was the moment he officially became seen as a threat? Why did the Jiang patriarch first rescue him from a life of poverty in the first place? And man, everything about Jin Ling especially is absolutely fucking loaded with dread. We already know WWX was responsible for his parents’ death, but now it’s also revealed that his mother... might have been WWX’s Shijie from the Jiang Clan all those years ago? Good fucking god, did WWX end up killing the sweetest person he ever knew? And Jin Ling refers to Jin Zixuan, Shijie’s former fiance, as his uncle... did Shijie end up marrying the brother of the guy she was initially engaged to? And is Jin Zixuan responsible for poor Wen Ning’s death? If so, how? And how was WWX able to turn him into an autonomous ghost general after the fact? The more questions are raised, the more eager I am to see them answered, and that prospect excites me in a way the first season didn’t. You can only get so much out of a pre-ordained flashback, after all; now that Mo Dao Zu Shi is finally operating in the present tense, I feel like I can finally start discovering it from the ground up, one step at a time. Color me excited to see where this journey takes us.

Odds and Ends

-Eey, second verse of the OP! That’s a nice touch.

-LWJ be like, “You ain’t stealing my clothes while I’m in the bath, sweetie.”

-Now this is fascinating. WWX and LWJ are using their powers together to purge this thing. Using dark cultivation to assist the forces of good, just like WWX was talking about in the past. Maybe he was on to something after all.

-Ah crap, who could be behind a dismembered soul? And just what’s he planning?

-”Cornetto Tsundere ice cream: be tsundere together!” These adds are slaying me, good god.

-”Was the Yiling patriarch really that great?” That moment when you shade your past self to avoid being discovered

-”Everything cute is mine.” Is it bad if I’m almost enjoying the ads more than the show itself?

-”Rise.” Hoooooly shit, that was cool.

-”He would not hurt someone through unscrupulous means” God, he still has so much faith in him...

-Did he just pull the ancient Chinese equivalent of a cyanide capsule? Damn.

-Jin Ling’s dog is a very good boy.

Onward ho, lads. See you next time!

[marshmallowgoop]

All the discussion around episode 6 of Kill la Kill lately just got me thinking about how the ep is really one of the show’s best.

This bit, for example, is absolutely excellent. 

There’s such a fantastic buildup. The phone rings, Soroi answers and immediately stutters upon realizing who’s on the other end, and when he coarsely whispers, “It is Mistress Ragyo,” you don’t even need to know Ragyo’s connection to Satsuki to understand that this caller is a big deal.

And the anime promptly confirms as much. Satsuki accepts the call, and wham. Viewers are presented with an extreme close-up of Ragyo’s mouth and an intimidating line: “What’s this I hear about you putting on your wedding dress?”

While the moment is only a few mere seconds long, so much is accomplished. Without anyone directly saying anything, the cinematography here clearly establishes Ragyo as a monumental player in Kill la Kill’s story. The use of the extreme close-up for her first onscreen appearance—and, most notably, the fact that viewers don’t even get a glimpse of her eyes, which are so often considered “the window to the soul”—both effectively shrouds Ragyo in a compelling mystery and communicates to the audience that this character is so crucial and game changing that she can’t even be fully revealed yet. Watching this tiny, tiny moment, viewers are encouraged to wonder about Ragyo and anticipate her future appearances.

But it’s not just the visual language of the scene that conveys the sheer power of Ragyo Kiryuin. The dialogue and sound also contribute; Ragyo’s opening line is rich with implications, and though “Blumenkranz” is played briefly in the series’ first episode, and has its instrumental accompaniment quietly in the background during the moments leading up to Ragyo’s reveal, it is only after Ragyo speaks that the audience finally hears the chorus of the song. Satsuki had been the “top dog” of the show up until this point, but with just one line, Ragyo asserts herself as being a step above. At any time, Ragyo can question Satsuki’s decisions, completely without warning. She has a kind of strength and influence that even Satsuki doesn’t, and the music only adds to Ragyo’s authority. “Blumenkranz” is big and bold and says, “This person should be paid attention to.”

And, of course, the visuals continue to wordlessly emphasize Ragyo’s significance. As “Blumenkranz” kicks in, the camera zooms out and out and out. Viewers see Ragyo’s back against a white window, and then see that the window is part of a large building, and then realize in the end that this building is a very large building indeed. Ragyo’s power stretches far and wide. The scope is seemingly greater than even Honnouji Academy.

The focus then shifts away from Ragyo, but Kill la Kill ain’t at all done with building the audience up yet. As the scene moves to the following day, viewers are met with quick, close-up shots of Uzu’s note to Ryuko, timed right to the beat of “Blumenkranz.” Uzu wants to duel, and we soon get to see his full request in an engaging low-angle shot where Ryuko looks up to this sign looming over her. The weight and gravity of the situation is effectively conveyed: the smooth transition from Ragyo to here, as well as the music and shot composition, let us know in no indirect terms that this fight isn’t something to be brushed off. Uzu’s duel is a big deal, and it’s very much connected to Ragyo’s expansive empire.

And the tension just keeps growing. Ryuko’s reaction to Uzu’s note is presented with a dramatic canted, high-angle shot. The camera—which is just slightly tilted—peers down at both Ryuko and the sign, communicating a sense of danger and unease. Viewers already know that the upcoming battle is important, but here, we also understand that it’s not going to be easy.

In the last moments of “Blumenkranz,” the anime skips ahead in time once more, moving to the gym right before Ryuko and Uzu begin their duel there. Establishing shots show that a huge crowd has formed to watch, which once more emphasizes that the match is highly important without saying anything at all.

But more than that, the choice to switch straight from Ryuko’s encounter with Uzu’s sign to this filled-up gym is simply good storytelling. We don’t go through Ryuko’s day. We don’t get to hear students whispering about the duel before it happens. We don’t get our time wasted. 

Kill la Kill piques our interest and goes right into the action, saying everything we need to know with just a few shots. We understand that the students had to be talking about the fight and that Ryuko had to deal with this pressure on her all throughout her classes just by seeing this crowd. The storytelling here is simple, clear, effective, and so dang well done.

I think I’ve mentioned in the past that if someone were to watch any parts of Kill la Kill, they should watch episodes 5 and 6. It’s moments like this 45-second clip that really showcase why at least episode 6 is well worth the time. The villain introduction is fantastic, the buildup is so ridiculously compelling that a “meet me after school for an ass kicking” note feels grand and epic and powerful, and the storytelling is just plain good.

[diveronarpg]

Congratulations, GRACIE! You’ve been accepted for the role of LADY MACBETH with an approved FC change to Melissa Barrera. Admin Jen: God, I just can’t get over the beautiful, captivating vision you’ve presented to us, Gracie. One can’t think of Lady Macbeth without thinking of the power that she encompasses, and not only did you capture that with such fascinating plots and stellar imagery, you added depth and a crucial touch of humanity to it. She's not just a pawn in a game greater than herself, and she's not just a woman consumed by her wants and desires, either. She’s so much more than that, and we absolutely cannot wait to see her flourish on our dash! Please read over the checklist and send in your blog within 24 hours.

WELCOME TO THE MOB.

OUT OF CHARACTER

Alias | gracie

Age | 25

Preferred Pronouns | she/her

Activity Level | I am pretty around - work has slowed down majorly and I am looking for a new rp to fill the hole in my heart <3 I am almost always on mobile to plot and chat and I try to write at least every other day

Timezone | EST

How did you find the rp?  | scoping out the tags!

Current/Past RP Accounts |

IN CHARACTER

Character | Lady Macbeth, Lucrezia Eleonora Falco nee Capuccio - I’d like to change her face to Summer Bishil pretty please!

What drew you to this character? | I have always held a soft spot for Lady Macbeth. Why are the traits that would be seen as positive, almost heroic, in a man the ones that doom her in the end? Why is she punished for her ambition and cleverness, the willingness to do whatever it takes to get ahead? Lucrezia to me answers the question of what if Lady Macbeth wasn’t condemned and drowned in guilt, what if she was able to remain as much of a force to be reckoned with throughout the whole play, not just the first two acts. Strength, competence, and ambition have far too often been seen as faults in women - in Lucrezia they are her crowning glory. By no means does that make her a good person, it makes her all the more interesting and dynamic. I also truly love that there is no deep violent or horrible reason that she is the way that she is. No tragic villain origin story. It was a deliberate choice, one that I feel she made freely and intentionally, to give into the longing for something more that the rose colored world she was born into. Something interesting and dark, to explore the innate cruelty that anyone can be capable of. I want to play with the darkness and with the idea that a girl could be given everything one could possibly want and still demand more.

What is a future plot idea you have in mind for the character? |

Give my rage back to me, I know how to hold it - Men have always sought to own pretty things, and he is no different. Til death do us part, you said with more than a little irony. Who’s death is still uncertain. Your husband wanted you because you were just out of reach, all poison laced smiles and velvet rage in a pleasing package. He held such promise in those days, made the game almost interesting enough for you to want to see it out to the end. And now that he owns you, slipped that diamond shackle on your finger and tattooed his name on your soul, did he really expect you to be happy one step behind him? You are never happy, you force his name higher and farther than he could even dream. But when you plunged your hand into his chest, the organ you pulled out was feeble and pathetic, not nearly strong enough to fill the emptiness inside your own ribs. You are a creature of rage, he knew what he was getting into. His heart did not satisfy your hunger, in fact it only made you all the more starved. You will taste every heart in Verona if you have to, and he has no one to blame but himself.

[ I love a twisty and toxic relationship! Mikael did not gave her a taste for blood and destruction, but he increased her lust and refined her palate. Lucrezia wants to play with her food and conquests, twisting the knife deeper and deeper until their heart slips freely into her stained hands. Rage is her tool and I want to explore her being held back and fighting against her husband or anyone who tries to tame and control her. I also want to see the consequences of reaching too far or biting into a heart that is perhaps more poisonous than her own ]

All that hard, glossy armor - You watch them call her names you yourself wear like badges of honor and see her flinch at every verbal dagger. You are not one to care for other people, you never have. Perhaps you see yourself in her, or what you might have become if you did not learn early to love the darkness for what it was, not what you wished it to be. You crafted your armor, lovingly cultivated this reputation into a weapon. You attack first, and if they are dumb enough to hit back they find anger and armor all the way down. She needs your help, a decision that surprises even you. Maybe you are bored, and think it might be interesting to try and create someone for once instead of destroying. You will teach her to take their venomous barbs and learn to love the sting until she has built up her own armor. And what if, in the middle of this, she discovers a tiny crack in yours?

[ Gals helping gals we love to see it! This is an opportunity to explore Lucrezia’s armor and reputation - how she built it and what might threaten it. I want to play out what happens when someone finds a chink in hers - originally based on the Delilah connection, but could work for anyone who can get close enough. The inner turmoil of her trying not to care then realizing that she does and dealing with the repercussions of this is something I definitely want to explore! Give her a weakness, or someone else to see past what she projects and tries to be, maybe they can use this to hurt her or maybe they actually care. I want to test the strength of all that hard, glossy armor. ]

Then why does it feel like I’m losing my mind? - Madness sings from the blood of every woman, your mother once said, imploring you to resist its call. Can there be such a thing as too much love? Too much attention and coddling? Maybe you learned to love the cruelty and darkness just to spite them. They obsessed over the porcelain doll they thought you were, smothering and controlling and loving all too much. You learned to crave the thrill of chaos, the high that came from taking this love and holding it over their heads like a whip. And they made it so delightfully easy, tracing out the lines so clearly they were practically begging you to cross and smudge them. Because despite all that they tried to teach, all the loving words and sickly sweet affection, you knew you could never be enough. Even if you did exactly what they asked, dampened down the parts of you that were dark and interesting, resisted madness and her pretty call; you would never be enough. Perfection is utterly unattainable, to strive for it is a type of madness itself. If you are going to miss the mark, it might as well be deliberate and enjoyable. But guilt is a ghost who has followed you throughout your life, singing her own sort of haunting refrain. You tried to cut that part of you away and were mostly successful. She still finds you in quiet moments, crashing in with an alien emotion, methodically clawing away at that armor. You will not allow this imagined weakness to threaten everything you have built and so you double down on your devotion, cutting away that traitorous part of your mind again and again until maybe there is nothing left.

[ Guilt and madness and paying the price for ambition are huge parts of Lady Macbeth’s play arc and I want to explore Lucrezia fighting against these. “Madness” and “losing ones mind” seem to be the end, the punishment given for reaching too far. But what if they are a choice one makes to get there? Another tool like beauty and sex used to get ahead. I want to play with Lucrezia balancing right on that line between control and the loss of it. Likely her own actions and weaknesses will lead to some sort of confrontation, maybe an internal battle that leaks out to threaten her plans and ambitions. Is the idea of madness a choice one can make or simply the result of other choices? I want to see what happens when she is forced to deal with the consequences of her actions and choices, a reckoning for her rage. ]

Are you comfortable with killing off your character? | Yes probably but I am fairly attached to her so I’d like to have plenty of time to play first. I don’t really want her to meet the same end as her literary namesake, ie if Lucrezia is to die, I would like it to not be by her own hand.

IN DEPTH

Please choose between the interview or the para sample (or both, if you like!)

In-Character Interview: The following questions must be answered in-character, and in para form (quotations, actions written out if applicable, etc). There is no minimum or maximum limit for your response - simply answer as you would if you were playing the character.

What is your favorite place in Verona?

“Twelfth Night Museum in the early morning,” she responded without hesitating, the truth flowing almost as easily as a lie. “I like the stillness and the silence, there’s a sense of peace that is hard to find elsewhere.” At this Lucrezia smirked at her questioner, peace was rare in such a tumultuous city. And for those who knew her well as an agent of controlled chaos (and even those who only knew of her), even the word peace sounded unnatural on those red lips. It was meant to be an offhanded question by some eager tourist looking for the locals perspective - ( Note: since when did she give off the approachable ‘ask-me-for-recommendations’ vibe? Lucrezia needed another espresso and quickly ) - but it lingered even after he was long gone. It wasn’t peace, she decided, there had always been a bit of unease in the empty museum, like she was intruding on a sacred crypt for the gods. Those moments in the early mornings seemed to exist outside of the normal confines of time and space, Lucrezia could walk through all ages at the same time. She almost expected to see the old masters adding a final touch while the elements whether away details on a nearby marble bust. Maybe that was why she loved it so much, a place both haunted by the weight of history and expectations while utterly, achingly empty. The museum held some sort contradictions as Lucrezia herself, and perhaps she wanted to co-exist just as beautifully.

What does your typical day look like?

“I certainly hope there isn’t a ‘typical day’, that would be so boring,” she resisted rolling her eyes, “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting something different is a type of madness, is it not? So I would hope to never be typical.” Still, the questions seemed to have been asked in good faith, so Lucrezia sighed a bit dramatically and continued. “I guess I have to wake up every day, sometimes early sometimes late - it depends.” She had never been good at sleeping well, the task of quieting her own mind daunting but not nearly as exhausting as she wished. “And then I go to work. Or I go to the museum, I always make sure to find time to be alone and surrounded by beauty - art, music, places, maybe another person.” Her smirk was laced with honey but her eyes flashed in a warning. “Work is never boring, there is always something new.” Lucrezia did not expand on this, her companion did not need all the details regardless of how she longed to brag. Because she was very good at her job and thought that was something she should be praised for. Charm was second nature, she was expert at the delicate blending of flattery and threats. More than that - it was a game, the give and take of honeyed words balanced with a sudden shift to cold cruelty. And Lucrezia loved to win. “And then I come home to my adoring husband who loves to take me out.”

What has been your biggest mistake thus far? (Tw self harm kinda)

Lucrezia laughed harshly, “Getting married at eighteen” She spun that huge diamond around her finger, a nervous habit, feeling the bite of the gem in the well worn callous on her palm. She loved the ring, she liked the sharp edge. The pain kept her grounded, reminded her of the goal. She would sometimes count - one turn for every year with him. Ten to right, then ten more to the left, and she was back smile in place, momentary lapse in control gone. Mikael served a purpose, she knew this, even that young she wasn’t so stupid as to throw her life away on something as meaningless as infatuation that could be mistaken for love. His name gave her access, status her father’s could not. And he so prettily sank to his knees for her, feeding into that innate desire for power - her driving force. The strangest part? She’d made the initial mistake of showing too much, of letting him see too much of who she was, the rage and cruelty and force. And instead of running, instead of longing for the pretty smile and charming mask - he saw her for who she was, and wanted her even more for it. Lucrezia looked down at her hands, the ring still twisting - eight, nine, ten - and then back up at the questioner. “I just mean I was too young, we should have waited a bit more.”

What has been the most difficult task asked of you?

“Oh, I don’t know,” she waved an errant hand, as if to dismiss the question. “Probably some negotiation with a particularly horrible client. I am sure it was difficult and tiresome, but I persisted and won, naturally.” A lie, they surely knew that it was, but she wasn’t about to attempt to unpack the particular traumas of a picture perfect childhood. Because the most difficult task had always been the first one asked of her, the most spectacular failure of her life. Little Lucrezia Capuccio with her chocolate curls and wild gaze tasked with lessening herself, carving out anything interesting, shrinking and molding herself to fit into their expectations - the porcelain doll daughter they thought they deserved. She was a creature of rage, even then. And when they begged her to stop, to peel away parts of her self to please them - Lucrezia set fire to anything good and pure that might have remained inside her. They had it wrong, though, when they pleaded for her to be their little angel. Angels had always been vengeful, violent spirits - sent by God to punish, to kill, to make an example. There is nothing soft, simpering, or good about a creature who’s wings have always been dipped in blood.

What are your thoughts on the war between the Capulets and the Montagues?

“War seems like a bit of an exaggeration, don’t you think?” She took a sip of her drink, “it is not so far reaching and tragic as all that.” She knew her side, had chosen carefully. Mikael had been her way in, but she’d long ago outranked him. But she had never had time for such dualities as black and white, good and evil; the battle-lines were far messier than the poets would have you believe. And that was the best part about choosing, she wasn’t bound to a side with anything as weighty and meaningful as blood or history. Lucrezia chose, and she would continue to chose - the next right thing, the next fortuitous position. One could only ever truly be loyal to oneself, any other pledge would alway eventually become a lie. “This situation,” she chose this word carefully, “provides opportunity for those who are able and willing to take it. We all want the same thing, right? What is best for those we love and our dear, fair Verona.”

In-Character Para Sample: Again, write as much or as little as you need to get your interpretation across.

(Tw mention of violence, tw blood)

On her wedding night, the newly minted Mrs. Mikael Falco considered killing her husband.

There wasn’t any particular reason, it was just the fact that she could. She wasn’t unfamiliar with violence, having dipped her toe in those depths more than once, but the particular sin of murdering one’s husband called out like a deliciously dramatic turn of events. Lucrezia thought she might make an excellent widow, she’d perfected false tears that still left her beautiful long ago. She could play vengeful, demanding the city run red with the blood of her husband’s killer. It could be a nice spark, instigating more chaos and violence between factions, an opportunity to climb even higher, not to mention how entertaining it would be to watch.

He looked so peaceful sleeping like this. Lucrezia watched the rhythmic rise and fall of his chest with every breath. She felt a sudden desire to touch him, to trail her fingers lightly along the outlines of his muscles, to trace the marks her nails had left earlier and then to press down harder and harder until he awoke and forced her to stop. Instead she grabbed the glass of wine from the bedside table, cradling it in both her hands to take a too large sip. Some heavy red, she remembered, not her favorite. Surely he would have learned her preferences by now, beyond the exquisite things his hands and mouth could do to her body. Then again, she might not have ever told him what wine she liked. Not that ignorance was an excuse she would accept.

Was being served the wrong type of wine offense enough to warrant the death of one’s husband? Asking for a friend.

Lucrezia took another sip of the disappointing wine and idly wondered if he’d ever thought the same of her. She wasn’t afraid of him, he wouldn’t have the balls to go through with it he was far too devoted - something she’d made certain of before saying yes. It was the headiest type of high to watch him carve it out himself and willingly place his protesting heart in her hands. She often tried to replicate that initial thrill and occasionally she got close, but never quite the same heights. Taking his life would surely do it, an incredible rush buzzing across her skin if she were to actually stain it with his blood. But it would be just as short lived as the last.

Since she was indulging this little fantasy, she might as well consider the details - she was nothing if not a very thorough planner. It wouldn’t be with a gun, the weight and heft of the weapon always felt wrong in her hand. And that was such a clinical, distanced way to harm. Lucrezia preferred a knife. Their intimacy had always teetered just on the edge of violence, he might not even realize her intentions until it was too late. And maybe, she let her self think for a fraction of a second, it was how he wanted to go. Mikael knew her better than anyone else, he saw her for exactly what she was and loved her anyway. It was almost frightening.

Fear and guilt are sisters - or so Shirley Jackson told her.

She finished the wine and reached over to place the glass on the table. Her husband stirred, his fingers twisting in her dark hair and Lucrezia let herself be pulled back into his arms.

“What are you thinking?” Even his half asleep whisper sent a spark of something down her spine and she smiled that arcane, cruel smile she knew drove him mad.

“I was wondering if I could be strong enough to kill you if I needed to.” Her honestly startled her, something about him caused intimacy and vulnerability. Or maybe she’d had too much to drink. He laughed then moved swiftly, rolling over on top of her while pinning both her wrists above her head with just one of his hands. The other gently caressed the side of her face and she met his burning gaze, wondering if her own eyes looked empty. He did not ask if she’d decided. She didn’t know if he thought she was joking.

He kissed her, hard, biting down on her bottom lip until she tasted her own blood and let out a gasp of desire. No, Lucrezia thought, I don’t think I could kill him. She reasoned that she would never be able to top that power rush, that he could still prove useful and the sex was excellent so best to keep him around. But really, she would be lost without his devotion, his obsessive love.

The gods only die when there is no one left to worship their names.

Extras: If you have anything else you’d like to include (further headcanons, an inspo tag, a mock blog, etc), feel free to share it here! This is OPTIONAL.

Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.com/gracieewrites/lucrezia-f/

[charmingpplincardigans]

m ANYWAY please tell me your top five favorite new songs that you've discovered in the past year-ish?

Oh man, this is probably going to be boring because I’ve for sure posted all of these over the year, but it’s what I’ve got! I feel like I’ve gotten very bad at finding new music. These days I mostly let Spotify rec me things, or I pick up on something in a movie or recced by a person I trust and then just claim it as my own. Maybe I should make one of my new year resolutions to make a more concerted effort to find new music.

 Anyway, here are some songs, which are not new! And some whys, which might be!

I Need Never Get Old – Nathaniel Rateliff & the Shapeshifters

I think this is one of the ones that Spotify recced me. I sometimes just put on Roots Rock or Southern Gothic playlists in the background if I’m feeling aimless (a habit I picked up when I was living in Massachusetts and missing the South) and then Spotify will pick up on that general vibe and spiral out from there. Which, I guess is the whole point of it. You don’t need me to explain that. Anyway! This came from there and it is A JAM. Like, talk about a barnstormer. This shakes the whole damn house. There are ways in which it reminds me of the Three Dog Night and Blood, Sweat, and Tears albums I grew up with, and also ways in which it is thoroughly modern in sensibility. Also it just makes me want to MOVE.

This ended up on the Summer in Ascenvallee playlist, which is the playlist I made to go with the Steampunk novel I work on off and on with a friend. But of course, it also got attached to Crowley in my head, because everything gets attached to Crowley these days.

I needed to tryNeeded to fallI needed your love I’m burning awayI need never get old

Let This Remain – Alana Henderson

I think I found this the same way I found the previous song, but on the first listen I identified it so strongly with one of the characters in the Steampunk that I immediately just started playing it on a loop. (Because let’s be real, also, cello. I’m so weak for them!) The character, Amelia, is a young woman growing up in a time just before huge change and she’s sort of struggling with the future she wants for herself and her country. She had been betrothed to a young man she grew up with. And she does love him, but she’s not in love with him, so at the point where the story picks up she’s acting this out by being a bit of a gadfly and hanging out with bad influences and falling in love with the owner of the opera house who grew up In Society but is in a bit of disgrace for his choices. She’s uh, got some decisions to make about which parts of herself she takes with her and which parts she lets die in the inevitable fire.

But you could be the only one I don’t regret yetBe the only one I don’t regret yetAnd even if we don’tThe idea and the will just grow into a greater wantAnd it will manifest in waysLet tonight be a stutter midst the eloquence of days

Jenny – Erin McKeown (The Mountain Goats cover)

So, confession, outside of my tradition of singing This Year with @anachronistique every New Years (very poorly, on my end, Naomi sings fine), I’ve never really listened to The Mountain Goats. I knew of them, and I’d always hear a song here or there and think ‘ah yeah, I get the devotion’, but I never let myself fall into it. You know what I will let myself fall into though? A podcast about how creative work gets done. So I started listening to I Only Listen to the Mountain Goats even though I do not, in fact, even sporadically listen to The Mountain Goats.

Friends, it’s a Real Good Podcast. The first season is more structured than the second, and in that first season they had folks do covers of every song off All Hail West Texas and well, I fell in love with this one. It’s such a vivid slice of that character’s life. It’s fun to sing while speeding down the highway with your windows down imagining you are on the back of a motorcycle with your girl. Also, Erin McKeown’s voice is downright lovely and even though I’d never heard of her before I now also listen to her stuff all the time. Do recommend!

I hopped on the back of the bikeWrapped my arms around youAnd I sank my face into your hairAnd then I inhaled as deeply as I possibly couldYou were as sweet and delicious as the warm desert airAnd you pointed your headlamp toward the horizonWe were the one thing in the galaxyGod didn’t have his eyes on

Meticulous Bird – Thao & the Get Down Stay Down

I have also been sleeping on Thao Nguyen, but like, YOU GUYS. SHE’S GREAT. EVERY ONE OF THESE ALBUMS IS SOLID. I’M SORRY I’M SO SLOW. A couple months ago I was bored and looking for something to listen to while brushing my teeth, so I queued up a few episodes of Song Exploder for unfamiliar artists and the ep for “Astonished Man” was one of them. The song is about her estranged father, so I could relate to the difficult relationship there, but also it just has a sound I really respond to. It’s a little pop, a little dirty in the mix, a little electronic, a nice solid bass line. Anyway, from there I realized that I’d been hearing “Holy Roller” all over the place lately and then I just listened to only her for like, three days.

This song in particular has been attached to some of the Apres Moi Le Deluge characters in my head. Most importantly Ana, who is supposed to be a cleaned consciousness that was placed into an android body to be used as a thief by some Not Great Guys, but because she’s been rebooted more than the other consciousnesses—who are usually just tossed away after tbh—she’s starting to crack and remember her life from before. She starts the novel in opposition to our protagonists, but teams up with them pretty quick when she finds out the scope of what’s been done to her.

I, I resent the inventionListen, listen pay attentionI know the science of the fictionOf conviction of the henchmenI am here for the mastermindsThey told us that you sold usOh my oh my oh my godWe didn’t know you’d get ferocious

Manifest - Andrew Bird

Look, I don’t know if this latest album is actually Andrew’s finest work yet, but it’s pretty good. I love Andrew Bird’s music a great deal, have done since I experienced the Sonic Arboretum showing at the ICA, which is the extent of the importance for this one. Some days you just need a fiddle and a story. Or a fiddle and a canyon. One of the two.

I can hear your tendrils still diggingFor everything that’s walked this Earth once livingThen to be exhumed and burned to vaporCan you save her?Now she’s in the airRadical and freeNeither here nor thereShe’s obliged to no one 

Uh, and those are some songs! I hope someone gets a dance out of one of them. Or enjoys my rambling. Or something!

[Send me a sleepover ask.]

[elexuscal]

Good Omens’ God: a book and series comparison

God. The head honcho. The one who’s orchestrating everything. (Maybe). 

With Good Omens being in part a commentary and philosophical discussion on Christianity,  He/She/They are obviously a central figure in both the original book and the television adaptation. But something I noticed is that there’s... quite a lot different about Them. Or, well, not them. But how the text approaches Them.

What first got me thinking about it was this Stuff You Like video by Jill Bearup. I’ve enjoyed her videos for a long time now- they’re really positive but still nuanced analysis of media, and she’s still willing to discuss what parts Don’t Work for her. She had one particular critique of the GO adaptation that made me pause: She didn’t like the inclusion of Jesus. 

Jesus isn’t in the novel. As far as I recall, the closest to a mention is a description of Adam as the ‘anti-Christ’.  Even then, it’s pretty easy to forget that there must have been an original Christ for Adam to be the antithesis of. 

Which should be this huge, gaping absence, considering the subject material... but really, it isn’t. Because the themes of Good Omens is how Heaven is, in its own way, just as bad as Hell. That neither side really understands, or even cares that much about, the humans that they manipulate and control. That humans’ free will gives them the ability to be both far more terrible and more wonderful than anything Divine or Hellish.

And then you have Jesus. Who was Divine, but also human, and cared for them very very much. That would kind of... undermines the rest of book’s themes.

So, yeah. I think slapping the Jesus scene into the book wouldn't�� have worked. but yet, I thought it fit really well in the TV adaptation. Why? Because it handles God as a whole differently.

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“God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of His own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players [i.e. everybody], to being involved in an obscure and complex variant of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time.”

This is part of the opening narration in both of the book and the series. There’s a couple of differences. One’s the gender, yes. But more crucially here: it went from third person to first.

The narrator in the novel is very much a Narrator. They aren’t explicitly anyone in particular. While they’re apparently omniscient, they aren’t God. Or, well, you could probably make the theory they are, but it’s just that. There’s no real evidence for or against it in-text, and looked at in the broader scope of the authors’ works, it particularly reads like Pratchett’s typical Narrator from Discworld or some of his other novels.

But in the series, God is the Narrator. Explicitly. And that fundamentally changes the text’s relationship with her. 

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God isn’t present in the book.

Oh, there’s a lot of references to Him. Lots of people speculate on what His plans are. Lots of people claim to be speaking for him. But taking the poker analogy, not only can you not see Him, but the only reason you even know He’s there is by the sound of Him dealing the cards.

There’s a lot more mystery to God there. And beyond that, he’s portrayed a lot more... hmm. Not ‘negatively’, I don’t think , exactly. At the end of the day, GO is still about the value of humanity, and humanity couldn’t have existed without God. But the text seems more critical of Him, and all the awful stuff it took to get us here. I think this is particularly well illustrated in one of my favourite passages from the novel:

Aziraphale had tried to explain it to [Crowley] once… the whole point was a human could be as good or bad as they wanted to be. Whereas people like Crowley, and himself, of course, were set in their ways from the start. People couldn’t be truly holy, he said, unless they had the opportunity to be definitively wicked.

Crowley thought about this for some time, and around 1023, had said, Hang on, that only works if everyone is equal, OK? You can’t start somebody off in a muddy shack in the middle of a war zone and expect them to do as well as somebody born in a castle.

Ah, Aziraphale had said, that’s the good bit. The lower you start, the more opportunities you have.

Crowley had said, That’s lunatic.

No, said Aziraphale, that’s ineffable.

Sure, God has this great big ineffable plan, and maybe it really Is for the Greater Good and going to work out wonderfully in the end. But until then, there’s going to be a lot of very unfair suffering for the people who just had the misfortune of being born in bad situations. 

The TV show has some commentary on this (I think the bit pointing out the unfairness of the Flood and Noah’s ark is the clearest). But while we still have space to wonder what God’s whole ineffable plan really is, there’s a lot less mystery. 

Because God is there, in every episode, talking to us, as the Narrator. She offers commentary on the angels and devils and humanity and everything in between. You have Aziraphale trying to reach God, only to be rebuffed by The Metatron. You have Crowley, praying, pleading for God not to test humanity to destruction. 

In this moment, they’re all even wondering; what’s the point? Is She even listening? Does She even care? 

But here we have the answer: Yes. Yes She is.

Even the idea that God’s Plan will be humanity vs the Forces of Heaven and Hell is more clear her. While it’s certainly implied in the book, there’s more wiggle room, more space for doubt. In the show, Crowley just says it, and it’s very much framed that he’s probably right.

That’s why I don’t find Jesus’s inclusion jarring at all. I’m not an expert on Christian theology, but Jesus is God, or some facet of Them. So when the show focuses on the more loving, understanding, and human aspects of God, then it makes sense to spotlight Her literally human form.

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Which Is Better?

Neither. They’re different takes, certainly, but I can’t say one is better than the other.

Personally, I enjoy the book version. It feels like it puts you closer to the characters’ mindset, and certainly mirrors my own relationship with the concept of God. Is God there? How can we know? And based on all the evil baked into the world, if God does exist, why should I trust Their plan? That anger and confusion and doubt resonates with me, personally.

But... there’s a lot to love in the show’s Narrator God, too. For a start, I think it almost makes a lot of the jokes funnier. It’s no longer just a nameless voice discussing divine dancing styles and pranks pulled on paleontologists. It’s literally God!

But also- this God is personable and warm, and embodies the idea that even if you can’t sense Her presence, she’s always there, looking out for us. That’s a really appealing idea. Isn’t it one of the reasons that so many people believe at all?

Maybe the show’s God is still a dealer for a poker game in a pitch black room. And even if she won’t tell you the rules, she’ll at least tell you some jokes instead.

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TL;DR

Book Good Omens’ God is more mysterious, and His portrayal (or lack thereof) focuses more explicitly on themes of religious doubt and uncertainty. 

Show Good Omens’ God is more present, comedic, and ‘human’, and embodies the idea of God as a benevolent force who’s watching over Her charges. 

Both are interesting in different ways!

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Michael in the Mainstream - Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest

The sequels to Curse of the Black Pearl are, in a word… divisive. Some think they’re pretty good. Others think they’re pretty bad. Still others argue over which ones are good and which ones are bad, saying there’s a noticeable drop in quality after a certain point, while some such as Doug “The Nostalgia Critic” Walker go as far as to say all of the sequels suck and only the first is any good. And while I’m certainly willing to admit most of the sequels are bloated, messy, and if not bad at least not up to snuff, I will go with the popular consensus here: the second film is a damn good film.

Now, of course, it has some serious problems, problems that would eventually consume the franchise. This is where the abundance of slapstick set in, the major focus on Jack, and the bloat of numerous subplots. However, unlike later films (especially the fifth, which tried to juggle way too many subplots), I think this is less of a huge issue here. It definitely is a bit more goofy than the first film with a lot of physical comedy being a lot more overt and a lot more jokes being in the script, but I think it works generally speaking, particularly in regards to Jack. And speaking of Jack, while he definitely hogs the spotlight more than ever in this film, at this point he is still amusing and entertaining, and there is actually solid focus put on the old characters and the new ones. Characters like Norrington return and get enjoyable expansion to their character arcs, while new additions like Tia Dalma and Bill Turner make their mark on the franchise and earn their place in the series.

The one thing I can’t particularly excuse is the bloat, as this movie does have a lot going on, but at the same time it is FAR less than the sequels. Still, runtimes don’t lie, and this film is two and a half hours long and feels it. Some of this definitely has to do with some sequences that could have been easily trimmed down or cut out without effecting too much, such as the detour to the island of cannibals or some of the scenes in the middle of the movie. Hell, even if it is plot relevant the trip to Tortuga seems a bit tacked on. Still, these detours do lead to a lot enjoyable sequences, so even if they do drag the movie on a bit, am I really going to complain? How mad can I get at the cannibal sequence when it has the iconic image of Jack being chased by natives? Am I really gonna get mad at Tortuga when it gives me the sight of Norrington chugging rum he steals off people in a big pirate bar fight while Jack steals people’s hats during that same fight?

The other thing I dislike, though it is relatively minor, is the rather forced love triangle between Jack, Will, and Elizabeth. Despite what some fans made it seem like, this wasn’t really a huge part of the plot, and it certainly doesn’t overwhelm the story, but this film certainly does not do itself any favors by setting up such a contrived source of drama. Speaking of contrivance, this film really has a lot of characters conveniently wander right where they need to be to partake in the story, and it gets a bit corny after a while. Still, these things are dumb but they don’t overwhelmingly ruin the film in any meaningful way.

One of the things I think this movie does genuinely well is ease the series into more high fantasy aspects. While I am a bit sad they couldn’t stick to the simpler, low fantasy elements that made the first film so cool and unique, it’s hard for me to be mad when they craft such a rich, intriguing mythology. This movie introduces The Flying Dutchman and its undead crew; they were originally to be little more than ghosts, but it was decided by cooler, more intelligent heads that they should all be a bunch of horrendous aquatic abominations, which leads to some unique and grotesque designs. The fact the ship can also summon a kraken is nothing short of awesome, and the mythical beast is put to excellent use in this film

Of course, the very best thing about this film is easily Davy Jones, the grotesque and cruel captain of The Flying Dutchman. I mentioned in my review of the first film that he is easily the best villain of the franchise, and I stand by it due to three factors. The first is the writing; while it is definitely expanded upon to great effect in the third film, here is where the foundation is built for the ultimate tragedy of the character. Davy Jones is a broken man, a man driven by his own pain and bitterness. He lets the suffering that ruined his life consume him and in his anger he lashes out at the world, taking his anger out on others. The second is the fantastic motion capture. Even now in this day and age, Jones looks fantastic and even realistic to a degree. You can tell that the team who worked on him was proud of him, because they really showed off with bringing all of the difficult textures to life, from his slimy tentacles to his barnacle-encrusted coat. Jones is a character who looks and feels like he’s there, and he’s the sort of motion capture character I think others should aspire to. Of course, the third and biggest reason he’s amazing is Bill Nighy’s fantastic, hammy performance. The animation can only do so much to bring Jones to life; you need a fantastic actor to really seal the deal. Bill Nighy is that actor. He gives Jones a hammy Scottish accent, he swaggers about, he moves and twitches and gives the perfect inflections and mannerisms to make Jones a truly memorable antagonist.

While he’s overshadowed by Jones – and let’s be fair, who wouldn’t be – Lord Cutler Beckett definitely establishes himself as a cunning antagonist. He’s much less of a physical threat and in this film is more set up as a greater-scope villain, but since I imagine they wanted him to be established as a smug, condescending bastard you want to see get taken down, they definitely did their job well. He’s definitely better in the next film, but I think they do a decent job of establishing him.

This film also carries on a lot of the good qualities of its predecessor, namely the wonderful action scenes. Things are far more over-the-top and even silly this time, such as the iconic water wheel duel between Norrington and Will (contrary to what you might believe, Jack is not on top of the wheel; that image is one you may have picked up from Epic Movie), but I think generally speaking it works here. The score is, of course, fantastic, the sets are wonderful, the costuming is great, and the special effects are very good and hold up well. This is a very solid film that I think succeeds at it’s main goal despite its problems, and that goal is giving audiences more wacky adventures with Jack Sparrow.

This is certainly no perfect film, and it’s not on the same level as the first one, but I think this is a great film all the same, and it’s frankly a shame the sequels could just not keep the pace up. I think this is one of the rare times where a movie that is clearly and obviously setting up a lot for a sequel is still an enjoyable standalone film in its own right; it’s sort of like The Empire Strikes Back, just… well, not as good obviously. This is the last truly great Pirates film, and while I do have fondness for at least two of the sequels, neither are as good or memorable as this or the first.

If nothing else, this movie has some of my favorite stories about the development of the franchise. The first is Jack’s little “jar of dirt” song, which was unscripted and left in; you can see Orlando Bloom looking to the director, wondering if he’s going to cut the scene. The second is the ending; everyone thought Zoe Saldana would be walking down the stairs in Tia Dalma’s hut, but Saldana was never coming back and had almost quit acting due to her negative experiences on the first film. So when you see everyone looking on in shock as Geoffery Rush’s Barbossa descends those steps and takes a huge, cheerful bite out of that apple, that’s their genuine reactions.

And you know what? It really is a perfect ending right there. It still gets me to this day, it’s just so effortlessly cool. And I think that’s what makes this film truly great even with its baggage. It still finds ways to just so effortlessly be cool that you forget some of the dumber bits bogging it down, excuses that the later films just couldn’t muster up. Oh well, at least this made sure Barbossa was in those other films.

[brightandblossom]

My thoughts on Shane Dawson’s Documentary with Eugenia Cooney

Whenever I see a popular media platform highlighting Eating Disorders, my own ego gets in the way and I get nervous. This is because I am worried that it will:

1.)    Display those with ED’s in the wrong way, and if anyone who knows that I have struggled with a similar thing will think that it applies to me and my own experience.

2.)    It can be so annoying to see biased or missed information that makes my situation feel even worse and hopeless than I sometimes feel.

However, I realise these are quite selfish reasons, and at the end of the day…things that start the conversation around this illness do add to a growing understanding of a very complex topic!

I have decided to write just my initial thoughts on the documentary, with the things I thought were missed, and the parts I loved!

 Before I begin, a quick catch-up for anyone unfamiliar with you-tube.

Shane Dawson? = A talented top content creator who has been making top trending pages on you-tube with his incredibly well-made documentary videos.

Eugenia Cooney? = A 24-year-old woman, who enjoys making videos on you-tube, and gained millions of followers…however a great deal of the attention caused by her videos was brought on due to her appearance. Her low weight caused a LOT of controversy and concern over her health. It also brought on a great deal of criticism for Eugenia and many said she had an eating disorder and was promoting one by being a “you-tube” presence with her underweight appearance.

 My honest opinion of Shane’s Latest documentary was that it wasn’t the best, and I wish he touched on some points more….but overall I thought it was fantastic. I am pleased to see such a well-known presence raising awareness for this subject in a very non-judgmental and understanding way!

The things I wished were investigated in greater depth

A more in-depth look at how habits and behaviours can become ingrained and the OCD – like nature of ED’s.

I would love to know if Eugenia is starting to notice her life becoming fuller, or if she found her interests and abilities limited before…as I would have loved for those without any awareness of ED’s to gain greater understanding of how small and limited an ED can make your life. No matter your weight.

Possibly less focus on her weight? I feel the weight is never a cause…simply a bi product of her struggles.

OF COURSE – this is just my personal interest. This is already a huge step for Eugenia and she can share as-much as she wants about her own journey.

The parts I loved

That girl has received people commenting and making SO many assumptions about her…and she has remained kind, good natured and has finally faced up to one of the biggest challenges of fighting her inner struggles.

Neither Shane nor Eugenia used a label to describe their experience. This was (in my opinion) fantastic. I think labels really constrict someone’s experience and the methods they find available to them in recovery. Also, Eugenia and Shane are not allowing a title to become part of their identity, which I fully support.

The therapist touched on the scope of how eating disorders can vary. Yes, I did like how it was made clear that they can vary from person to person, however I wish there had been more awareness of how great these differences can be!

 Now this was of course a documentary on Eugenia, not eating disorders, so my personal interests can not really get in the way of what was a successful and interesting video!

Thank you Shane for using your platform for such a positive thing, and thank you Eugenia for being so open with your experience so far, and I wish you all the best and a full and happy life.