#Bad writing is also always possible but retcon just feels like the better fit to me

[miraculouslbcnreactions]

Honestly the episode for me that proves they did not plan the Sentimonster shit early on is Feast.

Mayura is capable of sensing and threatening to remove Feast's Amok despite the fact that she didn't create it and doesn't have the original thing the Amok is tied to.

She should have been able to tell Chat Noir was a senti immediately, which would have instantly given him away!

(Also the entirety of Gorizilla doesn't need to happen, he could just order Adrien to give him his ring but you could argue that at that point that would have been a step too far for Gabriel and he hadn't gotten desperate enough beforehand so that feels less of a slam dunk)

Feast is weird and a little confusing just like everything about sentimonsters. My understanding of that episode is that Nathalie couldn't sense the sentimonster, she could only sense the amok that Feast had swallowed:

Nathalie: I felt an amok within. This isn't a statue, it's a dormant sentimonster. Very old and very powerful. Gabriel: Which means you can destroy it, or bring it back to life. Nathalie: But since I wasn't the one who created it, I won't be able to control it.

At the same time, if she can only sense the amok, then how does she know that Feast is a sentimonster? Why doesn't she think that it's just a statue with an amok inside? How is she able to awaken it, but not able to control it? If any peacock wielder can destroy a senti, then why didn't one of the guardians transform and do that when it was rampaging in the temple? What does she mean that she can't control it? Since when did that have anything to do with who created the senti? Isn't it just about who has the amok? None of this makes any sense.

Because of that, I don't give it as an example to prove the retcon. The lore is just too unclear to go that far. Gorizilla is way more telling to me for the reasons you gave. I actually don't think that the "he hadn't gotten desperate enough beforehand so that feels less of a slam dunk" excuse holds water because canon never presents using the rings as an act of desperation.

We don't see a scene where Gabriel puts the ring on for the first time, lamenting that he has to use it. We don't see Nathalie question if this is the right move. We don't even see Gabriel get annoyed at Nathalie for undoing his commands, leading him to demand the return of the ring because she's putting Adrien at risk. They just randomly start using the rings mid season four with nothing to indicate why this choice was made because, as far as they know, Adrien's pretty freaking obedient even without the rings. We never even get the obvious setup of Adrien pulling some crazy defiant act that changes Gabriel's mind on Adrien being allowed his freedom. The rings are just here now.

Remember, this is a show for little kids and the writing is rarely subtle when it wants to get a point across. We get a whole season five episode dedicated to the fact that Gabriel's condition is worsening even though that was pretty freaking obvious just from looking at him. It's hard for me to believe that the writers would be blatant about stuff like that, but extremely subtle about the ring use being an act of desperation. That argument doesn't even have a throwaway line to back it up! It's just a logical way to write this, so a lot of fans have headcanoned that to be the reason even though the much more logical read of canon is that the rings aren't an act of desperation. They're just a retcon.

[spatio-rift]

just some thoughts i guess

the difference between ares and orion that makes me look back so fondly on ares and ONLY ares is that like. hmm... for how bad it actually was its just pretty easy to find ways to "fix" ares and make it more enjoyable (saying fix makes me sound pretentious but you get the idea) like i would say its bad mostly because it doesnt really let its protags shine. or rather maybe that the protags are VERY MUCH asuto+haizaki+nosaka instead of raimon as a whole.

like the premise is essentially the same as s1 its a team of nobodies competing in the football frontier trying to get to the top. but unlike the og s1 here they spend so, SOOO much time focusing on other teams. in s1 the opposing teams in the FF are never secondary protags of the episode (except for teikoku, but they had kidou who is part of the protag trio so that makes sense). like the entire match and episode are very much from raimons perspective, and focused entirely on raimon. but in ares its like you dont know who to root for exactly, since you see both perspectives?

which would be fine with seishou (haizaki) and outei tsukinomiya (nosaka) since theyre the teams of the other protags but eisei? teikoku? there really was no need for it. like the matches end up feeling more about the opposing team than raimon and thats just not very good to set up new protags.

WHICH! this is exactly the main problem of aresorion essentially. way too much focus is given to the old characters instead of the new ones. but this is also where ares can be good and orion fails completely because in ares we have a wonderful example of old and new characters coming together to make something even better: haizaki and kidou!!!

kidou is a prominent old character in ares but it works because its not about HIM. everything he does is to support haizaki, to push haizaki to grow etc it serves haizakis character and not his. and because its set immediately after s1 when kidou separated from kageyama and kageyama didnt yet come back to haunt him (fr) hes at a point where its fine for him to not get more development bc hes pretty solid now. set after s2 this would be awful because there would be loose ends to tie up, but after s1? its okay. (just okay, because to be perfect they should not have brought back kageyama and left kidou completely uninvolved. but kageyama being there for no reason and not doing anything is just extremely bad writing so im ignoring it LOL!)

but yeah like essentially its easy to think up a better ares by just putting the old charas and opposing teams a little more on the sidelines, give back the spotlight to raimon, and focus a little more on the actual scales of ares program plot because there was barely anything about it lol. <- which can really be felt bc of how involved kageyama was in every single problem raimon faced in s1 yet here ares is simply kind of a distant threat, and they completely fail at presenting nosaka in a menacing way before the reveal that hes actually an okay guy. iirc raimon doesnt even really struggle because of it its just haizaki wanting revenge for something thats already happened, and outei tsukinomiya using painful tactics i guess. like theres nothing?

but orion. ORION!!! not only does it fail to focus equally on all of inazuma japans members (showing that many of them were only selected for fanservice and not of any actual use in the story) but when it does focus its always about 1) the 4 new protags 2) the old characters!!! i love endou and he is the pillar of inazuma eleven but this is not HIS SHOW ! you know?

add to that a completely nonsensical plot, every possible plot point from the og show reused but somehow worse and sped up to the max to fit in 2 episodes instead of developing over the entire season, complete RETCONS of the established situation in ares (mizukamiya is an entirely fucking different character. get out of here yaoi boy!), disgusting nurse crossdressing kink sequence (THE KIDS ARE IN MIDDLE SCHOOL. THEYRE THIRTEEN/FOURTEEN!!!!!) etc etc etc. like there is just SO MUCH BAD about it that you cant possibly fix it. you can focus on one angle to make it better but like, the rest is still shitty. it is just completely unsalvageable. and i dont say this to be mean because there are some (very few! but some!) things i like about it but the rest is just completely insane. half of an episode cant make up for 50 more of flaming bullshit you know?

basically. ares has some good ideas even if the execution wasnt great but it can be fixed easily enough in your mind without changing too much about it. but orion is so wholly awful its impossible to fix without rewriting the entire thing

[htmlerror]

☕ + wfa

i do not like wfa with ham, i do not like it, sam i am.

I have a lot of problems with Wayne Family Adventures. The idea for it is solid enough, but the execution is. bad. I've put my thoughts below the cut because this got long, so I hope you don't mind me going in depth on my feelings.

Duke Thomas as a POV character - I'm plagerizing heavily from my convo with @phamtai about this. Def check them out for more info and better insights than mine into the character. Duke is extremely well established in canon despite only having been around for a decade or so. Remarkably, it's taken until WFA to butcher his character. Duke in this series is too polite. He's too clueless. He's been presented as the Relatable Kid archetype that he doesn't fit. In canon, Duke has never not been self-assured. He's a relatable character, yes, but not because he doesn't know what's going on. He has experience as a hero long before the batfam became involved. And since then, he's bonded with them. WFA doesn't show his connection with Cass, his dynamic with Bruce or Jason, and completely ignores his conflicts with the family. In a supposedly family-focused product, those are damn near cardinal sins. He may as well be a totally new character. Duke has been watered down so much for the sake of this series. WFA could be a vessel to explore so many things about him that we don't see a lot of on the regular page. We could see a dive into the parallels between him and Bruce, the full psychological impact of losing his parents, epecially in contrast to Jason, how his world view and morals differ from Batman's, the daily consequences of his powers, or the fallout of his mourning independently for the friends he's lost. But those would be interesting angles WFA doesn't seem eager to explore. If you can't imagine a version Duke punching a cop just because they're a fucking cop, you're doing it wrong. Another issue is, unfortunately, Duke's role as the only Black batman member. I shouldn't need to explain why it's problematic to be showing his as constantly less knowledgeable and presumably skilled as the other bats. (No, it doesn't matter that Dick and Damian are drawn with dark skin. Dick has been written as a white man for nearly his entire existence. The person who retconned that is notoriously racist and has spent years defending her inclusion of sexual assault in her writing. I have no issue with Dick being Romani, but just changing the color of his skin is not the way to do it.) DC has recently had a push towards inclusion, on the page an behind the scenes. This is good, of course. Though if they really are committed to representation and inclusion, it needs to be an effort seen across the board. Faux pas like this paint a pretty obvious picture.

The Webtoon format is shit - Webtoon is a great platform for indie writers and artists. It's not my style of content, but I get the appeal. IMO, it's ridiculous to accept a professional comic publisher shitting out 12 page fluff pieces. Yes, the weekly comic format has been phased out for a reason. Yes, halving the workload is a possible way around that restriction. But there just isn't a good enough reason to do it. It's a pretty obvious ploy to seem "hip" and "get in with kids these days." It's lazy and frankly kind of embarrassing. For anyone who doesn't know, a standard comic book is usually 24-28 pages. This isn't an arbitrary number, it's part of the format for the art form. That length allows for necessary plot developments in a serial story line while also giving the characters, themes, and artwork time to breathe. Furthermore, it's what most comic readers have come to expect over the decades. Halving that wouldn't necessarily be a problem, there are plenty of examples of well made shorts out there, but coupling that WFA's love affair with single panels and splash pages is a major issue. Say you make a 12 page comic with 4-6 panels per page. You have 48-72 panels to work with. You can sit a compelling story into that, with or without heavy dialogue. But bring that down to 12-24 panels, and you have one of two options: either 1) ultra-compress your narrative or 2) reduce the plot to compensate. Ignoring the formatting choices, WFA is a convenient reason for DC to keep the worst of the status quo in the bat titles. There's no need to acknowledge criticism of Bruce's treatment of his family when they can simply point and say "Jason's throat hasn't been sliced open here! And look, Damian hasn't been left with the crushing guilt of his grandfather's death! We even let Tim exist as his own character!" WFA doesn't change anything, it shows that DC is aware of its problems but would rather outsource them than put in the work to fix it. There's a special kind of rejected feeling that comes with being told "I hear you, I just don't care.

Fandom isn't bad, but - Everyone is familiar with the incorrect quotes format by now. Sometimes they're funny, most of the time they tend to over-saturate. WFA is like if a incorrect batfam quotes blog was a comic. It's a steady supply of one-liners and references, sure, but it lacks any real substance. If that's what you like, I can't fault you for it, but it's not going to be everyone's cup of tea. The way the batfandom has piled onto the "this is the best thing ever" bandwagon is concerning to me. There has been good batfam content in canon, you just need to know where to look for it. The lack of critical analysis of the project and dismissal of critiques is always an alarming pattern, but the way WFA has come to be the odd face of the fandom is just bizarre. It's everywhere, as you know if you've ever tried avoiding it. Thinking about WFA being the default interpretation of these characters makes me nervous. They lack the depth their canon counterparts. I don't care if you enjoy WFA, I do understand the appeal of it, but for the love of the gods, take it down from it's pedestal.

WFA is... fine. It's yet to commit any sins too egregious, but, like all DC properties, it's a ticking timebomb. I won't be surprised when it goes off, and I can't say I'll be sad to see it go. Ao3 has better content, anyway

[fancyfade]

Honestly, i think the more petty and insecure stuff is how Tim taunts Damian in 2011 Batman and Robin like??? Tim wtf???

From issue 10. Like Damian does make the first comment but he's also a 10 year old and Tim (at least 18 at this point) just keeps dunking on him for no reason. It's especially weird because at this point, Jason and Tim are sort of buddies so like Tim can get along with someone who tried to murder him. Idk I'm not a Tim stan, i read about 100 or so issues of his solo run, and all of Young Justice 98, and he just doesn't appear to be this petty with anyone but Damian. Their rivalry is really dumb and looks bad for both the characters- it gives DC a way to keep regressing Damian's character and is just plain OOC for Tim. Idk i have a little brother who has the same age gap and just like yeah no i don't think this is remotely realistic (yeah i know everything in the DC universe isn't realistic but this rivalry is just trash and seems it's being used a way to show their character as struggling to fit in with the family without actually doing it in a nuanced or realistic way).

Thanks for chiming in! I will confess Tim does wind up looking kind of petty to me but also :P I like Damian and am neutral on tim so I was wondering if I was biased.

I do agree that the rivalry is kind of dumb thats why I’m trying to think of how to resolve it in my verse. I know I got one reply on my post saying the red robin run tim was uncharacteristically violent but possibly explained (but not excused) by tim’s extremely fragile mental state at the time. which was my interpretation of it at the time sort of (that he was projecting damian as an avatar for all the things going on wrong with his life)

getting around to new 52 i have no clue why the writers decided to persist in it. it definitely does make tim look pretty petty at this point especially since they write him on decent terms with jason who did also try to kill him. my only guess would be if they retconned jason trying to kill tim but not damian for some reason.

though tbh i always assumed that as a superhero, tim would be more offended that jason killed people after tim broke him out of jail than that he tried to kill him.

image under cut

[image: a comic page from batman and robin 2011 taking place in wayne manor featuring tim drake, damian wayne, alfred pennyworth, bruce wayne, and an unnamed painter guy. the family is standing across from teh painter guy and bruce is standing up and touching the chair. BRUCE: Can I lose the chair and simply standi n the middle of everyone? PAINTER: Whatever you prefer, Mister Wayne. Last I checked, you are the client. Dick, Tim, and Damian are all clustered together. DICK: We should pull the shades, have him paint us with night vision goggles in our natural environment. DAMIAN: I think caravaggio would be better suited to capture us in our element. TIM: DIdn't he play for the yankees? DAMIAN: He was a 17th century italian painter. Thanks for reminding me what a complete lack of culture you possess, Drake. TIM: ANd thanks for reminding me what an arrogant idiot you are, Damian. Dick smiles and tries to step between them. DICK: C'mon. let's turn those frowns upside down.

the five characters are now all clustered in front of the painter with bruce in the middle.

BRUCE: Okay, this feels better, don't you think, more natural, less... dictorial.

DICK: Yeah, we wouldn't want anyone thinking you like to be the boss, Bruce.

PAINTER: Everyone get a little close, please. I need to reposition you.

Alfred kind of hunches his shoulders and points to the side and Damian runs off panel.

ALFRED: Maybe no is a good time to reassess my inclusion in --

BRUCE (putting hand on alfred's shoulder): This is a family portrait, Alfred, so stand still and be quiet

DAMIAN: We forgot a wayne!

Damian comes back with his great dane, titus. He has titus sit down right next to everyone.

DAMIAN: Sit, Titus. TIM: You got a new pony to ride, huh? DAMIAN: He's a great dane. One word from me and Titus can take your throat out. TIM: I forgot killing's your specialty --

end image]

[robbyrobinson]

OWL HOUSE X CTHULHU MYTHOS: GODS AWAKEN (Pt. XI)

It was an uneventful night for the Blight family. The Blight twins were already in their rooms, and Amity was still awake looking over her homework for the next day of school. As she was finishing up her homework, she decided to look on Penstagram for updates. It struck Amity as odd that her former friend Boscha hadn't posted onto the site for some time since her fight with Willow. It wasn't to say that she missed seeing whatever her ex-friend posted, because after all, she did cause her to be bedridden with a fractured leg for a few weeks. But given how obsessed Boscha was with the site, it was uncharacteristic of her to ignore it for days.

Instead, it mostly consisted of posts from her other classmates like Skara and the like. She was just about finished with her browsing when a news flare got her attention. Looking at it, her jaw nearly dropped on her desk. "Palisman tree has been killed?" she said to herself.

The revelation took the air out of Amity's lungs. It was every witch of the Boiling Isles' dream of having their own staff and palisman. Now, she, and every other witch-in-training, would be denied that chance. Her; her siblings; Willow; Gus; Luz...

Amity's heart skipped a beat at the slightest thought of that human girl. Ever since that dance they shared at Grom in order to defeat Grometheus, the witch girl had found herself falling hard for Luz. Just thinking about her for one moment was enough for Amity to completely forget what she was doing, a more unfortunate consequence of being bitten by the love bug (when those insects were not in season that year). And yet, the most sufferable thing about it was Luz's obliviousness to her growing feelings. Amity wanted to hate herself for feeling that she was speaking to a rock, but Luz's stupid tendencies were also endearing.

Amity glanced at the papers on her desk realizing that she was writing something on one of the papers. She brought it up to her face seeing that it was addressed to Luz. Amity blushed a tomato red and promptly crumpled up the paper and through it in the garbage can.

"That was close," Amity thought to herself, "I don't know what I'd do if Luz read that."

A twinge of tiredness befell the young Blight. Yawning, she stretched her arms and was about to prepare for bed.

Knock, knock.

Amity turned towards her bedroom door. "Edric? Emira? What do you want now?" She crossed her arms and stomped her foot impatiently. "If it has to do with that bat that Edric wanted to keep, a frog ate it."

"It's me and your mother" the knocker replied.

Amity froze up at the realization of who it was. On the other side of the door were her domineering parents Odalia and Alador Blight. What possible reason did they have to knock at her door during that time of night? It'd better be urgent. Amity shook off her wondering thoughts and opened the door. Both of her parents were dressed in black, matching cloaks that covered their feet. Odalia looked like a spitting image of her young daughter; the only difference was the pure emerald green of her hair vs. Amity's brown spot that stuck out like a sore thumb. Her hair was tightly held back in a bow. The shoulders of Odalia's cloak arched in pointed triangles.

Alador had a noticeably grizzlier appearance. Short brown hair was on his head complimented by his goatee-styled beard. Thick, long eyebrows hung over as a canopy for his eyes but also contributed to his vaguely-goat attire. Like his wife, the sleeves of his cloak came together in arched shapes. There was a peculiar look coming from him one of contemplation. Amity couldn't help but notice that he gave passing glances to his wife then to the door. With the sporadic movement of his eyes, it gave off a sense that he truly did not want to be there or would frankly want to be anywhere but here.

"Yes?" Amity finally said, "what do you want?"

"Dear," Odalia said, "how did your week of school go?"

Amity raised an eyebrow at the sudden words. "Still at the top of my classes."

She was fully expecting some praise for her accomplishments, but her parents only responded with silence before turning their attention back to her.

"While at school, was there anything that you were trying to keep from us?" Odalia asked.

"No?"

"Oh, you don't?" Odalia said.

Amity shook her head.

"Let me rephrase the question then," Odalia announced, "was there anyone in particular that you were conversing with?"

Amity turned to look away at the judgmental eyes her parents were giving her. "No, of course not."

"Amity, don't try to assume that I am a hopeless imbecile." Odalia waved her finger in the air and withdrew a purple scroll. She took her finger and skimmed through her notifications. Amity and Alador looked at each with a shared look of curiosity until Odalia put her finger down. "What is this?"

She directed the scroll towards her daughter and pointed at something on it. Amity's heart sank from what she was seeing: a picture of her; Willow; and Gus. They were talking with each other in the school's library. Amity tapped her fingers in a nervous fidget to find an explanation.

"We had told you to stop associating with that half-witch," Odalia said strictly, "can't you see that you are squandering your status in the social order?"

Amity nodded. "Well, I can see why you think that."

Odalia crossed her arms. "Think? I know; you had kept that promise of yours for years now and yet you now decide to see Willow behind our backs?"

Amity clenched her fists. "Willow is special to me." She unclenched her fists with more conviction. "I told her that I would keep her safe."

"From who if you don't mind me asking?" Alador asked.

"Boscha," Amity responded with little hesitation.

Odalia's eyes widened. "We had struck up an agreement with her mother that you would befriend her, and yet, how long have you spoken to her?"

"I did not speak to her in weeks."

"I will have you know that Boscha had been missing for weeks," Odalia mentioned, "did she do something that caused Boscha to disappear without a trace?"

"Willow would never do that," Amity said with conviction.

"Whatever the case, we are concerned that you associating yourself with Non-Blights is affecting your mind," Alador said.

How offensive, Amity thought. Those were her friends they were criticizing and shamelessly belittling without their knowing.

"The last few days with all of them had been nothing short of amazing; I don't care if Willow is a half-witch or that Luz is a human. This is the first time in my life that I felt legitimately happy."

Odalia rolled her eyes. "That's great that you are happy, but do you know what bad precedent this would put on us?"

"No."

Odalia walked away from the room and disappeared. It was only Amity and her father in the room. He sat down by the side of his daughter's bed looking away. What he said next would surprise Amity.

"I'm actually kind of pleased with how you stood up for that half-witch."

"What?" Amity said.

"I was never fully on board with your mother's suggestion that you severe ties with Willow; I could see then – and now even – that you care deeply about her, and maybe forcing you to befriend Boscha was just our way of ensuring that you were strong."

He pat Amity's covered foot. "But look at you now; the top of your class; actually going against Boscha even though it would be foolish in the eyes of others; and your loyalty are all great attributes; if only there were a way to go back time where your mother and I chose to let you do what you want. Only then you would've become a witch more powerful and feared and it would be your success to reap."

Amity didn't know what to say. She always assumed that Alador would be against Willow because of her status and developing prematurely. But this was the same father who was now retconning everything her old dad had tried to establish. She was reminded of how she secretly wrote in her journal how she didn't want to be mean but only did so to not show weaknesses. This was likely the same tactic that her father does. At the same time, Amity couldn't shake off the notion that Alador still went along with her mother's demands was still a spineless blunder.

Odalia walked back into the room carrying a thick book. She held it up with her hands to show what she had. "It is a book of the history of the Blight family."

She opened it up and skimmed the pages until her finger landed on a picture. "Your great-grandmother Audrea was one of the most powerful witches of the family." She flipped to the next page of the yellowy-wrinkly book. "There's Ozpin demonstrating his first time using his Abomination."

She flipped through more pages whilst ignoring the dust kicking into the air. "Can't you see all these amazing people?"

"Well, I have read small parts of the book," Amity said, "but what are you trying to say?"

"I AM saying that you are besmirching the proud family name by continuing to squander your attention by continuing to see Willow against our back."

"Well, I don't even want to BE a Blight if it means that I will have to throw Willow and the others away like a griffin's hairball."

Odalia slammed the book shut and placed it on the floor.

"What of your dream of entering the Emperor's Coven?" she inquired.

"Lilith left it," Amity noted, "do you think that there was something horribly wrong enough to make her bail?"

Odalia scoffed at the point. "Lilith is a traitor; only a full would turn their backs on the privileges that Lord Belos would bestow to them." She placed the palm of her hand on the door frame. "Let only death be the harshest punishment that a traitor deserves."

Her mother was right about one thing: witches were forever indebted to Belos and to leave would be an act of treason fitting only those who practiced wild magic. Amity couldn't help but feel worried for her former idol, but she also felt a sense of karma for her due to her almost killing the love of her life.

"But dear," Alador said, "at the least Edric and Emira are approaching the age for the coven."

"I don't care if the twins are likely better qualified," Odalia said, "please reconsider everything you will be sacrificing and do the right thing."

Amity shook her head. "I am through with you controlling me."

Odalia's pointed ears perked up. "What was that?"

"You heard me loud and clear Mom: I am never going to leave Willow the way she was again."

Odalia turned around and pointed her finger at her daughter. "And I do not want you to associate with that human girl."

"Her name is Luz, Mom," Amity said.

"I don't care what this human girl's name is; if anything, she is some rat with a lot of gall to believe that she can be just like us."

Amity raised her finger. "She can perform magic; just...in a way that I have never seen it being done."

"That is not magic," Odalia insisted, "that is utter mockery of what the Titan blessed us with; I will not have it up to here with a talentless mongrel like that."

Amity passively shot a fireball at her mother in the heat of her anger. Odalia narrowly avoided the ball which immediately ran out of fuel. Odalia's eyes twitched.

"So, we have a failure to conform?"

Amity immediately clasped her hands together. "I'm sorry, Mom, I didn't mean to..."

"Enough!" Odalia raised her hand. "Maybe a trip to the Conformatorium would be beneficial for both of us."

Amity's eyes bulged at the announcement. "No, anything but that!"

Odalia bent down and collected the family album book. "I am giving you this one chance: either you do as we say and abandon Willow, or we would be forced to have you taken and you would be stripped of the Blight name."

Amity looked down to hide her hurt expression.

Odalia put her arms on her sides. "Understand?"

Amity nodded without another word.

With that, her parents left the room and quietly shut it to avoid the twins being woken up by their ramblings. They walked down the hall and entered their bedroom: there was a white sheet that split the room in middle on both sides being matching beds made with the same material. They both sprawled on the bed and said nothing for a few minutes.

"Odalia," Alador started in a hushed tone, "maybe you are being a little too...over-exerting?"

"No, that is foolish thinking," Odalia replied, "this is her future we are talking about."

"Maybe that's the problem?" he answered back "maybe you're projecting yourself onto our daughter?"

Odalia rolled over. "I tried my best to become a part of those elites, but my chances were always taken from me; I just want what is best for our daughter."

"But you also try to die her hair green when you know she's a natural-"

She hit her fist against the wooden bed post. "What was that?"

"Oh, uh, nothing, dear," he said. "Goodnight."

Both of them were still very much awake, but they opted to not speak of this any further. At least until the morning.

Amity was under her bed covers rolling around a few times. She could not believe her mother. After years of taking her abuse, she finally had her chance to tell her mother what she felt, but now she was weighing down harder for her. And Luz...she could not bear to listen to her mother speak of her shamelessly. Human or witch, it didn't matter: she felt at home with Luz and the other misfits. She took her pillow and pushed it over her head.

"UH! Why is life this complicated!?"

"I know, right? What a drag."

Amity bounced forward in her bed to scan her surroundings. "Who said that?"

"Up here!"

She looked up at the ceiling and, to her horror, she saw a black-eyed man staring down at her. She tinkered around with her desk and tossed a book towards the man. It squarely hit him in the face.

"Ugh! Hey, be careful with that!" he yelled back.

"Who are you?" Amity said. She was reaching for something else to grab.

"A friend of your human girl," he replied, "I am Hypnos."

Amity had grabbed a few scrolls and was positioning them in the direction of the man. "Did you do something to her!?"

Hypnos slid his arms through the ceiling in a defense stance. "Rest assured, she is fine; but she needs your help."

Amity dropped the scrolls to blush profusely. Luz needed her? Her little heart could barely take it. "Yes! Who do I have to kill?" she said absent-mindedly.

"I appreciate your enthusiasm, but I'd like you to dial it back a couple knots."

Amity put her face in her hands. "Yes, yes; I apologize."

Hypnos appeared in front of her bed and held out his hand. "Well? Are you ready?"

"I don't know," Amity said, "what about my parents?"

"Oh, I just went into your siblings' minds to instill in them to keep your parents busy and away from the door at all times; no matter how ludicrous."

With that, Amity took his head and they were off.

Meanwhile at the Emperor's Coven, Belos was sitting at his throne his mind wondering. His spy had returned from spying on the residents of the Owl House and reported of some suspicious behavior. "So, Hypnos is assisting them?" he thought to himself.

He was alerted to a knock on his door and left the idea of an Elder God assisting the mortals on the backburner. "Yes, come in."

Kikimora poked her little demon head from the other side of the door. "My Lord, you have a visitor."

Belos flicked his fingers causing the metal to shake. "Send him in."

Belos was in the middle of opening up another palisman when he suddenly dropped it. The figure came in with an odd walk to him. He was a tall man who eclipsed Kikimora. A dark, swarthy man, his head was shaved bald yet no light gleamed off it. He resembled an Egyptian from the ancient times (some insisting that he had native blood flowing through his veins). The man possessed a lean appearance and well-built frame. Around his lower body, a skirt of misty colors manifested. Aside from hair, he had a long, pointed beard hidden behind a metal case.

Emperor Belos got out of his throne and bowed before the figure. "Master! It's been far, far too long!"

Nyarlathotep held up his hand. "No need for such fluffy worship; I see that you have kept the Isles in top-knotch shape for years now."

"Yes, and the Isles are flourishing as a result," Belos responded.

"If only you had little free will to do that," Nyarlathotep mumbled.

"As you can see, the portal is ready as we speak," Belos announced, as if expecting some praise from his master.

"Excellent work; once the book is found and I receive my powers, everything will be different."

Belos nodded. "And I can get some due vengeance...I have...misgivings with the Earth."

"I did not come here to observe your process," Nyarlathotep stated, "I have a demand."

Belos tilted his head. "What is it, Master?"

"In the festive village of Bonesborough, there is a particular family of talented witches. I am sure you know of them."

Belos answered quickly. "The Blight family?"

"Yes - I am glad that you are putting that brain of yours to good use – in the family, I want the matriarch to join your ranks."

"But Master, Odalia Blight had already tried to enlist the ranking years ago and lost her chance; I cannot allow her to join."

Nyarlathotep walked over to the Emperor, fire dancing in his eyes. "Is that a sign of disobedience?"

Emperor Belos quickly clammed up. "No, sir."

"Good. You will have Odalia join the Emperor's Coven, and she will be my pawn...at least until she bores me and wears out her use. I will send my protégé to the school of Hexside; there is a certain man there who does know the whereabouts of the book's copy on the Earth. If push comes to shove...well...think of any unpleasant fate that could befall him and his students."

Belos understood the veiled threat. "Very well; I feel that I should also inform you that the human girl is likely planning something to jeopardize our plan."

Nyarlathotep laughed. "Ah, Luz? She's a lovely girl and has become a favorite chew toy of mine."

Nyarlathotep turned to walk out of the throne room. "Please also allow Odalia to gain access to your weapons."

"Bu-but..."

Nyarlathotep clenched his fist causing the Titan's heart to beat rapidly. Belos plopped on the ground to grasp at his chest. His breathing was becoming slanted; with little push, Nyarlathotep could crush the heart with whatever unholy power he had at the moment and that would be the end of Lord Belos. Nyarlathotep released his grip on the heart and exited the throne room.

"The Day of Unity is upon us," Nyarlathotep announced.

Alone in his throne room, Belos' regular breathing returned. He clutched weakly at one of the arms of his throne and picked himself from the ground. He looked over his shoulder to see if Nyarlathotep was truly gone. After giving it a few minutes, Belos went behind his throne and knelt down. There was a secret compartment behind it. He steadied his breathing and opened the compartment. Inside of it was a spear that housed a crazily angled rock. He clasped it in his hands and studied it carefully.

"It'll soon be time."

[coleisunderrated]

Season 11: The Destruction of Zane Julien

You read that right. Season 11 ended up doing nothing more but destroy everything about Zane that made him who he was and was one big middle finger to all the character development and hardships he went through. Follow the cut for why and my biggest rant yet and the bane of my time in this fandom

Making one of the ninja evil was kind of a given seeing how much the fandom wanted it. I wouldn’t have had a problem with it either but the writers decided to ‘play it safe’ by using Zane simply because he’s a robot who can just be reprogrammed. It really dehumanized him, especially after he struggled time and again to be just as human as the rest of the ninja. I know Ninjago’s writing has never been stellar but there was a whole bunch of problems with Zane being the Ice Emperor. What was the point in making him evil if he had no real reason other than a shoehorned case of amnesia? which was the laziest way to go And why would they do it if they won’t go into the undoubtedly traumatic effects it will have on him or even the changes that could’ve happened within the team?

And worst of all, all the damage from that lazy and bad writing has been done. Season 11 ended up completely destroying his character.

Before season 11, Zane was the sweetest person of Ninjago. He grew and learned about himself and the world just like any other human. He was always the odd one out but soon earned his place in the team. He had a very sweet and loving relationship with his father and even if it’s been retconned, he was also accepting of his brother Echo. He found his true potential by embracing who he was and knowing the love he had for his friends. He even sacrificed his own life to stop the Overlord, dying as a true hero. He was a true protector and went through way more than any ninja did (besides Lloyd) to save Ninjago time and again. Even if he was a robot, he was, in a way, more human than many other characters in Ninjago. His story has been told and the only way to add more was to explore more of his past such as his encounter with the previous Master of Ice or his life between his father’s first death and meeting Sensei Wu. But all of that, all the character development and growth he had, and all the suffering he endured to uphold his duty, has been rendered meaningless and thrown down the drain the moment Zane was revealed to be the irredeemable and monstrous Ice Emperor.

Zane was made to protect those who can’t protect themselves. As the Ice Emperor, he did the exact opposite by ruling not just a city like Garmadon did but an entire realm with an iron fist. He also killed countless innocent beings. He committed genocide on Krag’s species and most likely many others who weren’t lucky to have any lone survivors. The formlings and the villagers being frozen wasn’t treated as such because ‘oh hey they’re still alive, they just can’t do anything’ but it was really no better than if he actually killed them. For the formlings, their culture, way of life, and knowledge of shapeshifting, had been wiped out for countless years. He killed so many people and living things, brought so much suffering to a whole realm, and committed countless atrocities that are absolutely unforgivable. Nothing could ever make up for what he did. He jumped beyond the moral event horizon further than any villain in Ninjago ever did and yes, that includes Harumi.

Much of the fandom and even canon put all the blame on Vex and while he can be considered the true villain of the Ice Chapter and him manipulating Zane to do his dirty work for him made him all the more vile, what is often overlooked is that Zane still did these terrible things out of his own will. The scroll corrupted him but didn’t erase his will and tyrant or not, he could still disagree with Vex, make his own decisions, and even did things Vex had no say in such as imprisoning Lloyd.

And then the writers only made it even worse with the way they ended it.

When Boreal was defeated, the other ninja finally realized the Ice Emperor is Zane yeah Ninjago has never been good with subtlety I’m actually disgusted that they, especially Cole, took him back. They knew he was a genocidal tyrant who caused decades of suffering to the whole Never Realm yet they don’t have to do any fighting and let Lloyd take all the credit and welcome him back to the team like all that never happened. They all took a backseat throughout the whole Ice Chapter so Lloyd to get all the spotlight and do everything himself yet again (which is a whole other issue in of itself). And once they meet up with Zane, all of his crimes and atrocities they know he did are forgotten just because he’s their friend and the protagonist who should always be treated as a hero no matter what he does. And Krag doesn’t even seem to be scared or angry when he sees Zane, who killed his kind. And then he gets to be with the ninja for a bit before they go home while the denizens of the Never Realm don’t seem to react at all to his presence. Even if he never really showed his face up to this point, the ninja and Vex would’ve surely said something but no, he's not an evil dictator anymore and was a good guy all along so he won’t have to face any repercussions or fess up to all the horrible crimes he committed. Then again, what’s the point if nothing could ever redeem him after all that?

And the message at the beginning of the Ice Chapter has also ended up being irrelevant. It strongly implied that not only is Zane no longer the good-natured nindroid we all know and love but that there will also be no going back. The only way it could’ve had any impact at all was if Zane was actually going to be gone for good. The possibility of it being the key to restore Zane’s memories also a waste of potential. Speaking of which, it was unrealistic and a blatant deus ex machina that Vex only had to say ‘protect’ and boom! Zane’s memories are back and he returns in a flash and everything is all good and normal again. He didn’t have to struggle one bit to recover his memories. Regaining memories is not that simple and Zane didn’t even acknowledge all the harm he caused nor does he really do anything to Vex other than freezing him for a bit. At this point, he has devolved into nothing more than the unsympathetic and unforgivable karma houdini he now is.

All this makes me think of a Twitter post I saw earlier of how ‘we were not ready for the ending’. With Nya learning to control ice at one point, the writers seemed like were seriously going to kill off Zane or write him off permanently and replace him with Nya. What could’ve also happened is somehow, if Zane survived, the First Spinjitzu Master’s spirit may sense what Zane did and would be so disgusted by his actions he takes away his elemental powers and pass them on to Nya or Zane himself does so. With Zane powerless and traumatized, he ends up leaving the team for good. He certainly won’t be able to stay in the Never Realm either given all the harm he caused and everyone there would most likely want him dead. If he didn’t die, he either shuts down permanently or leaves for some completely different realm and never comes back. I remember when the whole fandom was scared something like that would happen but looking back now, those would’ve been way better than that awful finale we got. Killing off Zane for good or him leaving permanently would’ve been a very huge move and Ninjago is no stranger to this stuff but that leads to another problem. The problem isn’t whether or not the writers will make any big moves, it’s that they often end up doing a bad job at it.

And the finale. Goddamn the finale.

The finale only made Zane look even more unsympathetic and undeserving of the happy ending or anything resembling it. You can forgive the monster who killed and harmed countless innocent people and caused a devastating eternal winter to a whole realm simply because they happen to be your corrupted friend who doesn’t remember you but they’re memories came back in a snap and you can fix them in an instant with the Power of Friendship(TM)! That is complete and utter bullshit! And it completely destroyed his place in the team. He can’t be seen as a ninja or a good guy anymore and the ninja know they’re siding with a murderer and tyrant who’ll never have to face any consequences for all the terrible things he did and will most likely never address all the trauma he’ll now have. And while I may not ship Pixane, can you imagine how devastating it would be for Pixal to know what Zane did? If the Pixane episode doesn’t address any Ice Emperor stuff or her trying to help him, it’s gonna feel very... off. Honestly, Zane’s relationship with the ninja and even Pixal is now very toxic.

And no, Zane apologizing or the ninja helping him being 'behind the scenes’ just won’t cut it. We can only get so much from what actually happens in the show. Even if it appeared in the show he’s done way too many things that are too terrible to deserve even an ounce of sympathy.

Gonna diverge a bit here but am I the only one who thought Vex also got off way too easy?

Anyway, with all said and done, Zane now feels completely out of place in Ninjago. The writers most likely had a different ending in mind that would result in Zane being gone for good but they changed it at the last minute and as a result, it doesn’t feel right with him there. It no longer feels like he’s part of the team and while the ninja still serve their purpose and have more of their story to tell, Zane doesn’t seem to fit in anymore and is... just there. The Ice Chapter completely threw away all the development he had and made his story a total waste. I’m also starting to fear this will affect Pixal, who (as far as the writers are concerned) is most relevant as a love interest, not a samurai or even her own character.

The only way the writers could salvage Zane’s character at all is to consider this season nonexistent and they’re doing a pretty damn good job at that and that isn’t really a good thing. As for the next season, I’m feeling ‘meh’ about it and while Cole seems to finally get some attention after that, I have some bad feelings about what’s gonna happen. Besides all that, Zane’s presence and status as a good guy now feels unearned and forced. And if he goes into any ‘protecting others’ spiel, what was once a core element of his character has become hollow and now makes him a massive hypocrite. That’s how bad this season ended up being for Zane, his story, and everything that made him who he was.

All in all, congratulations Ninjago writers. You took one of your most beloved and well-developed characters who deserved the world and completely ruined him beyond repair. I can’t wait to find out who will be the next character you’ll destroy.

[geopolicraticus]

Some Recent Low Budget Science Fiction Films I Enjoyed

There have been a lot of very bad big budget science fiction films in the past several years, but rather than talk about how bad these bad films were, I’d rather talk about low budget and lesser known films that I enjoyed. None of the films mentioned below are perfect; indeed, I would even hesitate to call them “excellent,” but there were enjoyable and entertaining and moreover they fulfilled what is for me the essential element of science fiction: they presented an idea that gave me something to think about. 

Time Trap (2017)

Already from the title you know this is going to be a time travel movie, and it was. In a good time travel movie you expect to be surprised by some unlikely twists and turns, and this film delivers in this respect.

One of the things I liked about this film was probably one of the cheapest but nevertheless effective special effects, and these were the creepy abandoned vehicles, revealed later to be abandoned because their owners had unexpected gone time traveling. But this is only a small detail.

Unlike a lot of other, higher budget time travel films, this time travel film really captures the weirdness and the epic scope of time travel, and people from one era meet people from vastly different eras and predictably misunderstand each other. There are awkward moments, but many of these confrontations are handled competently.

The Gateway (2018)

Gateway is a story of travel across alternative universes, some of them nearly identical to our own, close enough that we could mistake one for the other, but more often other universes with sinister differences from ours, which invite us to extrapolate the scenario to even more sinister possibilities, which are implied in the final scenes. There are a few good twists in the story, as one would hope for from intelligent story writing involving a number of closely similar universes.

Travel to other universes is made through a device only just large enough for a person to fit themselves into, which is set in a small laboratory. My guess is that these sets, while satisfactory for the viewer, were not expensive to build, and this was really the only technological element of the film. All of the rest of the story is writing and acting and direction—the bare bones of cinema, and here these are well handled. This isn’t a perfect film, but it is pretty darned good in my estimation.

The Endless (2017)

This film is as likely to be called horror as science fiction, and may even be identified as Lovecraftian cosmic horror; just because I am writing about science fiction films here I will include it as though it were science fiction, regardless of any other classes it may fall under.

The Endless is weirdly compelling in a good way. Clearly there is a problem, perhaps many problems, and there is some big, terrible secret that the audience is not being told. Like a mystery, the film gives clues as to what the big, terrible secret is, and, in the case of The Endless, the buildup is worth the wait. The big, terrible secret is truly big and terrible.

As with Gateway (above), the story has some good twists, both large and small, and even after I figured out the basic idea of the film was about, I was kept interested to the end, so the science fiction element of the film isn’t just a gimmick; once you get the gimmick, there is still much of the story that remains to be unraveled, which leads one to the horror that is wrapped in the science fiction gimmick.

Skyline (2010) and Beyond Skyline (2017)

Beyond Skyline had a budget of about 20 million, whereas most of the other films I’ve discussed here had a budget closer to a million dollars, so that is an order of magnitude more money, and it is obvious from the film that they spent the money on effects. One of the things I liked about Skyline and Beyond Skyline is that you don’t just get to see human beings kidnapped by aliens, you actually get to see inside the alien spaceship and the horrible things that happen to the unfortunate human beings who get taken up into that alien spaceship.

When I watched science fiction films when I was a child I was always disappointed that more wasn’t shown of aliens and alien spaceships, though many people feel that a film is more effective for what you don’t show, but rather only suggest. A perfect example of this was Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which (in the original version) ends as soon as Richard Dreyfus walks into the alien spaceship. Another version of Close Encounters was later released, in which they gave some teaser images of the interior of the alien spacecraft. I wanted more, and so this film was kind of like a satisfaction for my younger self, who wanted to see the otherness of the other manifested in a radically alien spaceship interior. For this reason alone I appreciated these films, though the writing and story aren’t at the level of The Gateway and The Endless, discussed above.  

S.U.M.1 (2017)

S.U.M.1 is a creepy film, made the more creepy by the fact that it came out at the same time the lead actor was on Game of Thrones as Ramsey Bolton, who was hands-down the creepiest character on Game of Thrones. So he not only fit the role, he magnified the creepiness, which in this case added to the intensity of the film.

There is a pervasive sinister feeling to this film, which I assume was intentional, which makes it verge on being a science fiction horror film, like The Endless (above). One could define a spectrum of cinema with pure science fiction at one end (with, say, the classic exemplars being films like This Island Earth or Logan’s Run) and pure horror at the other end (with the classic exemplars being a film like Dracula). Given this science fiction/horror continuum, Frankenstein is close to the horror end, but has science fiction elements; Alien and Predator are near the middle of the continuum; S.U.M.1 is near the science fiction end, but still has a number of horror elements, including the undercurrent of anxiety that keeps the film moving forward and keeps the viewer interested. 

Extinction (2018)

Extinction is built around one major twist in the story, and, once that twist is revealed, it doesn’t continue to have the same level of interest as The Gateway and The Endless, which also feature major plot twists, but it isn’t a bad film, and can be enjoyed on its merits.

I Am Mother (2019)

Several of the films mentioned here have been Netflix productions, and I Am Mother is one of those Netflix productions. Netflix seems to have more-or-less taken over the market that used to be cheap made-for-tv science fiction films. To Netflix’s credit, their science fiction films are pretty good, and much better than than their predecessors in the 70s, 80s, and 90s (back in the days of broadcast television—yes, I know I’m old). Part of the improved standards of science fiction is due to the greater affordability of good quality special effects, but part of it is also due to the maturation of genre. As science fiction becomes more mainstream, it becomes less bound by some of the familiar features of the genre, which is, in all honesty, a mixed bag. Some of these familiar features were good, and some of them were silly or stupid. Thus capturing the best of science fiction means transcending the genre conventions by retaining what is best and dispensing with the most cringe-worthy aspects.

As with all the films mentioned here, there is a twist in I Am Mother; if you’ve watched enough science fiction films you will probably try to guess how the plot twist will highlight the central idea of the story; sometimes it is obvious, and sometimes it is a genuine surprise—better yet if it is a shocking surprise that makes you jump in your seat. If we make having a plot twist in the central idea definitive of science fiction cinema (or definitive of one kind of science fiction), then we can trace this tradition back to The Cabinet of Dr. Cagliari.

As I noted above, I don’t consider any of the six films mentioned above to be great films, however, compared to the big budget flops, these films are great entertainment and far more enjoyable that the big budget science fiction films that I have seen of late. The most recent Predator film was truly terrible, a worthless film, Disney has not merely made bad Star Wars films, but has vandalized the entire mythology and so retroactively weakened the earlier films by retconning them. In this dismal context I did not even bother to see the new Terminator film, which by all accounts was as pathetically bad as the new Predator film. These films are my basis of comparison, and, with this basis of comparison, the films that I have discussed above are eminently enjoyable and well worth watching. So forget the big budget disasters at the theater and find the above films on DVD or on some streaming service. Maybe after the studios have been punished by financial loses, they will come to understand that spectacle cannot substitute for story.

[land-of-brains-and-chocolate]

god it WILL NOT stop bothering me until i talk about it. the way we got here. it’s not just about the book anymore, not at all, and it’s certainly never been about “shipping”, at this point it’s how helpless the tactics of the guy make me feel.

step one: refer to people who have read previous venom books and noticed the trend throughout the nineties to portray eddie and the symbiote as a man and an agender alien in an ambiguously or not-so-ambiguously romantic relationship, which was picked up on and completely unambiguously canonised in the very last run, consistently refer to these people as “shippers”, lovingly condescend to them, do not ever treat “the ship” as existing beyond their imagination

[I LOVE THAT YOU GUYS EXIST]

result: make people forget that this is a complete misrepresentation and he has received no criticism whatsoever for “not making a ship canon” because that is not what he did, he decanonised it and then denied doing so and painted everyone it ever meant something to as essentially deluded - and, considering that that’s all they are, he’s being awfully kind and accommodating, isn’t he?

evaluation: a reason to harass him? no! really kind of manipulative? yes!

step two: actively seek out these no-good shippers on tumblr! tell them that you’re watching them! read their detailed posts in which they express their grievances about your comic book to their friends and misrepresent their points on your twitter so your bajillion followers can affirm that Those People are categorically wrong about everything!

[EDDIE IS CODEPENDENT]

people are mad at him because he said eddie was codependent! not because he’s reframing the extremely rare story of a troubled queer relationship that was ultimately still a redemptive force in these characters’ lives as an unhealthy compulsion that corrupts, hm, what a fresh and unfamiliar take, no reason why this would strike a nerve - and, recently, of course, as something inherently abusive, every bit of hope and change for the better vile and fake.

literally just start vaguing about people’s personal tumblr blogs on your professional twitter account with the little, little blue checkmark and everything, use that to make passive-aggressive references to people’s posts! why not!

[LOVE EACH OTHER]

people talk about how they like a symbiote and its host getting along (and they did, that very night, talk quite a lot about ngozi)? that is so dumb and lame.

[EVERYTHING IS AWESOME]

people get sick of edgy shock factor writing that throws one dark theme after another at them without treating any of them with the consideration they deserve? people expect some moments of levity in a venom book?

they’re asking for stories with no conflict where nothing bad ever happens! but it’s okay, he knows better, he knows you just don’t know what you want! it’s not like endless sadness is just as likely to be dreadfully boring or unintentionally hilarious as endless happiness!

result: o w n e d god he sure is shutting down every point no one has ever made

evaluation: a reason to harass him? no! really kind of manipulative? yes!

step three: literally get so mad at people on tumblr talking about your comic that you not only boil their opinions down to THE SHIIIIP but literally say that their opinions don’t matter because they literally would never say it “to your face” literally because it’s “easy to be brave on tumblr”

literally

say these words

[IT’S EASY TO BE BRAVE ON TUMBLR]

call people chicken shits for NOT talking to you directly! and then! BLOCK everybody who talks to you directly! or quote retweet them so your followers can descend like vultures! actually acknowledge that it takes bravery to interact with you if you’re in the Tumblr Demographic, you know, one of Those People, and frame yourself as in the right for it???

am i losing my mind???

[SIX PEOPLE ON TUMBLR]

get so mad at people on tumblr talking about your comic that you not only claim they’re the only people ever to talk badly of it but imply that you’re one step away from namedropping the specific perpetrators. that’s not ominous at all!

it’s an age-old question: how many times does one of marvel’s top writers with legions of fans have to imply his antagonistic awareness of your specific existence before you’re on a first name basis? and also paranoid?

result: stir shit. be a shit stirrer. faint when your shit stirring does in fact stir shit. you can’t go “you would never” and be surprised when people do, you... can’t...

evaluation: a reason to harass him? no! really kind of manipulative? yes!

step four: whip out your ally card... to whip the people you’re supposed to be allied to with it. try to use your knowledge of queer issues to shut down actual queer people.

[I DON’T THINK IT’S APPROPRIATE TO ASSUME GENDER]

either that, or straight-up make a “did you just assume my gender” joke. i can’t find the original tweet anymore, so it’s possible it was that and he deleted it because it was too blatant, lol.

result: MAYBE YOU GUYS WERE THE PROBLEMATIC ONES ALL ALONG

evaluation: a reason to harass him? no! really kind of manipulative? yes!

step five: remember that interview where he outright stated that he just wants to, just to be the definite venom run? just to put the biggest dent in canon he can? just to break everybody’s toys and emerge victorious as the one person with the valid take on venom?

yeah, those things become more noticeable in the actual book, over time, and acceptance of that is, uh, not universal? not everybody’s up for him spending several issues in a row on e s t a b l i s h i n g  d o m i n a n c e by having eddie sit around as other characters tell him that a ton of stuff other writers from michelinie to thompson to costa to kaminski to slott to jenkins have done actually sucked and was wrong and fake and never happened? through retcons that make no sense, like, factually don’t fit?

people don’t like you walking back character and relationship development to further your end goal of recasting the symbiote as the personification of addiction and abuse instead of itself a survivor of extreme abuse who has been constantly denied personhood in a way that is frighteningly resonant and who has been going through a genuine redemption arc for years now?

people don’t like you acting like eddie never had a reason for being who he is before and you had to make one up? one that doesn’t fit the character at all, which you didn’t realise because you apparently thought the character had no characterisation before you came along?

you can imagine how these things might spark nerd rage?

and you can probably imagine who this nerd rage was blamed on, yeah?

these criticisms inherently require knowledge of venom canon, because they’re largely about disrespect for it, these criticisms are not related to shipping of any kind - but of course the only thing people could possibly be mad about is the "ship", the only ones making a fuss are those “shippers”, those casuals, Those People who only care about One Thing and don’t understand the real gritty reality of the, god you get it i’m making fun

[I KNOW WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT]

you’re the only one, don. it’s true.

and i know, i know for a fact, that he’s been aware of criticism from other groups all along, that he was, for example, witness to this livestream that spends like a solid hour a month mercilessly dragging him through the dirt, and you know what the extent of his response was?

thanks for checking the book out.

that’s it. that’s all. this guy hasn’t gotten any less loud about criticising him, either. wishing for his book’s cancellation and retconning. but nothing more. he gets to keep to himself. he is #valid.

people have been taking the piss out of him on youtube, on reddit. only tumblr ever earned his ire. only tumblr gets namedropped at convention panels.

and now, now more than ever? you better believe your regular run-of-the-mill nerds, straight, male, utterly uninterested in the icky stuff, everything, are mad. almost everyone who’s truly tits deep in venom lore is mad.

and so he’s said he’s received threats. and i’m sure he has. i’ve received threats. you’ve received threats. it’s never okay. it sure as shit never helps to send them.

he’s gotten a lot of fucking inappropriate personal vitriol! lots of it actually “ship”-related! i’m categorically against contacting the guy for any reason!

but who is to blame? who do people accept as being to blame? who do news outlets report on as being to blame? when, i presume, not every single one of them actually went “i’m doing this specifically because i’m a (thunder clap) shipper”? when large-scale retcons are literally always met with nerd rage? when a shipper-less fandom probably still would’ve had threats?

[THIS IS INSANE]

[IT’S THE SHIPPERS]

result: if all criticism = “shippers”, and “shippers” = harassment, then everyone who has no actual idea of what’s going on but who doesn’t like “shippers” is automatically on his side and nobody who isn’t a “shipper” wants to risk the association by criticising him.

get this stuff out to his followers, to news outlets, to people completely uninvolved and contextless, and watch the bile run over everywhere because lots of people are ready to accept this narrative in comic book spaces.

have people in the replies and comments eagerly discussing how this is more proof that c+o+m+i+c+s+gate was right and they’re the only reasonable ones. how disgusting and crazy "shippers” are. how donny should keep doing his best to trigger the gays. there’s no pushback against these ideas.

and i’m so fucking stuck between wanting to defend the man, wring my hands and apologise on behalf of the other These People, because i don’t see anything justifiable in their actions, and in being... just... just so frustrated... with everything... with throwing everyone out to the dogs... and claiming that he doesn’t mean to... when he has this whole history of belittling "shippers” specifically... of making sure their public image is that of people who just don’t know what they’re talking about and are in no way worth empathising with... of only drawing attention to the aggressive ones and blocking the reasonable ones

when he literally only stands to benefit from doing all this. 

this is massive amounts of free positive pr.

this makes him essentially immune to criticism of any kind.

evaluation: a reason to harass him? no! really kind of manipulative? yes! 

i forgot! somewhere along the line, he did do something very good and disavowed association with co/mics/ga/te!

[C0M1C5G8]

why the fuck am i censoring? tumblr search stopped working decades ago.

anyway, it should come as no particular surprise why these people assumed he would side with them. not that any high profile writer who values his standing would, really. are there any? maybe there are, i’m not up to date on this drama.

i just think it’s funny - genuinely not his fault, but hilarious - that this was apparently enough to inspire a “boycott”? and it was a fart in the wind?

which is the least surprising thing ever because there is actually nothing whatsoever to hold these people’s ire to be found in venom? excluding aliens, there has been one real and present character who isn’t a white guy in 11 issues? it is actively less queer than it was before? donny has never caved to the essjaywoo pressure in any way, shape or form? what were they... thinking? it’s almost like these people are dumb?

all they've done is ensure that, without it actually doing anything, venom gets the commendation for being A Comic The Gators Don't Like?

anyway.

what do we do moving forward? i don’t know. nothing. not harassing anyone. keep being salty on tumblr. do not engage him. i think i’m more about stalling the chain reaction he’s caused than the man himself. if you’re not a “shipper”, of course, keep posting your criticism, maybe stand up for “shippers” who are being dogpiled over genuine criticism, don’t let people say This Is All Proof Of How You Can’t Have Queer Content Because Queers Are Crazy.

and be nice to mike costa.

[thesinglesjukebox]

LADY GAGA - STUPID LOVE

[6.42]

Far from "Shallow" now...

Brad Shoup: Thudding sixteenths and vocal chop straight out of a Todd Edwards remix... it's always great when she visits. [8]

Wayne Weizhen Zhang: It must be exhausting to be Lady Gaga. Here's a short list of her accomplishments since 2013's ARTPOP: winning a Grammy for a jazz duets album, winning a Golden Globe for her role in American Horror Story, headlining the Super Bowl, co-hosting arguably the best Met Gala in years, winning an Oscar for A Star is Born, getting a number one Billboard single from the soundtrack, launching a vegan make-up line, and starring in a Las Vegas residency. And yet, the dominant critical narrative has still essentially been: Gaga is absent from pop music. (For comparison, Katy Perry has been a judge on American Idol.) Of course, her self-mythologizing is partially to blame for this, but it's unclear what could have possibly satisfied her critics and die-hard fans outside of re-reinventing music à la 2010. So what's her move given the weight of the world's impossible expectations? To make simple, unpretentious pop music on her own terms. In a recent Billboard interview, she laughed while stating, "I would like to put out music that a big chunk of the world will hear, and it will become a part of their daily lives, and make them happy every single day." My first reaction upon reading this was: yes, we should hold Gaga to a higher standard because she's Gaga, but how can we balance that with the potentially damaging effects for her mental health and sanity? So on "Stupid Love" when she sings, "Now it's time to free me from this chain/I gotta find that peace, is it too late?" I like to hope it's meta-commentary on her rediscovering the joy in her music and being, free of expectation. Gaga tracks are often described as "huge" or "epic", but none has ever so perfectly embodied "fun." I'm definitely excited about how this track sounds -- an ebullient return to her earliest disco pop roots, at a time when radio is dominated by trap -- but "Stupid Love" stands out to me because of her embrace of radical self-love. This is the Gaga that I've always loved -- and she's always been enough. [9]

Leah Isobel: The production filters back an entire decade's worth of Stefani's influence into a three-minute Fruit Gusher burst of tang, but the lyrics are decidedly forward-looking, all declarative statements of "now is the time!" bullshit. In the middle of this past/present/future time-play, as the beat drops out beneath her, she asserts the key line: "all I ever wanted was lahv." If it's a disappointingly shallow retcon for an artist whose initial breadth and ambition was the entire point, the promise of it lingers in my brain. After all, it's not too far from a similar pop megalomaniac realizing that she "traded fame for love without a second thought" about 20 years ago. That rich vein of popstar self-examination writ large is so suited to Gaga's talents as an artist -- a provocateur, fake-deep philosopher, musical theatre nerd, and hook-writing master all at once -- that I have listened to this song five times in a row pretty much every single day since it, uh, appeared on the internet. My paws are reluctantly up, Stef. Don't fuck it up. [7]

Jessica Doyle: Fun, and otherwise unremarkable. If you've been a Gaga fan for a while -- if you're invested in the narrative of this hardworking woman, who has been through downs and ups and downs and then ups again -- I imagine the fun is enhanced by a certain comfort and relief in seeing her have fun; in imagining her feeling strong and secure enough to release a fun song that doesn't have to upend anything. But I am a heartless, acontextual consumer, for whom the marginal cost of listening to something else is zero, and I miss "Bad Romance." [5]

Tobi Tella: For an artist who at her peak overstuffed everything with too many ideas, there's really not much happening here. It's loud and upbeat, sure, but the lyrics are barely the thread of a coherent song, and the production reminds everyone who wants "pure" pop to come back to be careful what they wish for. Maybe that A Star is Born "pop music bad guitar music good" cynicism rubbed off too much? [4]

Katherine St Asaph: Just when I thought Gaga was lost to the land of Real Music™, or worse, flailing attempts to be chill by the least chill performer in pop music (yes, including Taylor Swift), she goes and releases this, 50,000 firecrackers on a Eurovision stage. The thicket of hooks is packed, with Black Midi levels of referential density. The whole thing sounds like "Born This Way," which is to say it sounds like "Express Yourself"; there's a juddering sequencer out of "Do What U Want" (reminds me more of "Weekend" by Class Actress, but which is more likely to be the actual inspiration?) and a touch of, of all things, September's "Cry For You." Gaga fills every crevice of the song with singing, throaty and belty and huge: a relief after years of songs filled only with half-assed #vibes. If it feels frivolous against much of Born This Way and The Fame Monster and some of Artpop, and far less ambitious, it at least pulls her out of the "Shallow" piano muck. [7]

Vikram Joseph: Perhaps a stupid song about making stupid choices is the Lady Gaga lead single we both need and deserve in 2020. The battering-ram synths feel like running down a hill into a gale-force wind; the best thing about "Stupid Love" is that Gaga sounds like she's having a lot of fun, and by extension so are we. [7]

Alex Clifton: "Stupid Love," much like "Born This Way" before it, is ready-made for pride parades, grown from the same mystical lab that gave Lady Gaga her incredible melodic sensibilities. Unlike its predecessor, though, it has more euphoria in it, presumably because it's not making a political point. Gaga's more focused on having fun here, and you can tell. The verses aren't my favourite, but the chorus hits as an overwhelming rush of dopamine, and now I can't stop dancing in my computer chair. Between this and Dua Lipa's album, we're in for a hell of a good time for pop music this spring, and I am extremely excited. [7]

Thomas Inskeep: She was doing this better a decade ago. A lot better. [2]

Joshua Lu: The narrative surrounding "Stupid Love" regards it a return to the Pop Gaga that's been mostly absent since 2013: A revival if you're a fan, a regression if you're not. The issue with this narrative is that "Stupid Love" lacks any key similarities to the Gaga of yesteryear; the only real sonic link is how the bassline brings to mind the since-redacted "Do What U Want" beat. Instead we have something that's somehow not a Kygo song, with vocal chirps that got old last year, serviceable but clichéd hooks (the entire pre-chorus has all the charm of a Taio Cruz album track), remarkably basic lyrics filled with platitudes, and a title that has no bearing on anything in the song -- there's nothing lyrically or aurally stupid about anything here, and Gaga has shown a deep capacity to be stupid in her past pop works. In reality, what we have here isn't a return to anything, but rather the continued flagging of Gaga's desire to develop genuinely off-beat or interesting pop music, whether intentional or not. Gaga's talents as a vocalist elevate the song beyond the usual pop pap, but it's not nearly at the level I once hoped she could remain at. [6]

Alfred Soto: Kudos to Jamieson Cox for catching an obvious forebear: the rattling sequencer recalls 2013's forgotten "Do What U Want," which was all set to do some business until radio programmers remembered R. Kelly had been a menace for years. Amiably confusing lack of affect with simplicity, "Stupid Love" flexes its pop strength with the expectation that fans will admire it. [7]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: The synths pack a punch but they never quite get me to where I should be. I wanna feel desperation, exasperation -- that love is worth looking stupid for. All I get is a familiar, quasi-stoic performance that sounds like Gaga's doing some excellent karaoke. [4]

Kayla Beardslee: Sure, it's competent, but Gaga is capable of so much more. Many other blurbs will discuss the song's aggressive datedness and bland lyrics, but what really bothers me is that the two halves of "Stupid Love" -- the dramatic vocals and the unrelenting gallop of the synths -- don't fit together. Gaga is giving her all with those signature "laahv"s, but there's just not enough empty space left for her in the production. Her performance ends up laying flat on top of the track, adding nothing except a sense of laziness from her producers and engineers. [5]

Pedro João Santos: Serviceable Max Martin bopathon scams its way into my brain again -- no matter how direly in need of an incubator this whole structure is. Gaga's weakest lead single feeds you Kygo, threatens to ascend during "All I ever wanted was love", and still can't fight the aura of afterthought. [6]

Jibril Yassin: "Stupid Love" is a giddy rush of EDM-pop fun, but it's the first time experiencing a major Gaga single entirely devoid of surprises. Bracing yourself for a twist that never arrives or a strange turn of vocals rearing its head from nowhere, "Stupid Love" makes up for its unremarkableness with a masterclass in songwriting. What Lady Gaga hasn't forgotten how to do is translate the feeling of having your initial gut feelings completely validated. "Stupid Love" makes its magic in casting the act of love as necessary and dare I say it -- radical. [7]

Jackie Powell: On "Stupid Love" Lady Gaga achieved a corollary. By trying to put her healing process into simple poetry, she also created an accompanying sound that's comparable to an analgesic. The function of the track is to heal and liberate. (Truth be told, Little Monster or not, the song has helped me get out of bed in the morning.) Gaga's latest cut is packaged into a familiar formula, and that's part of the reason why this track serves as a formidable lead single and symbol for the upcoming Chromatica. The equation is one that mirrors the "best of" Stefani Germanotta. What's brilliant about "Stupid Love" is that its visual and lyrical messaging and surrounding sonic arrangement and melody bring what Little Monsters and casual music fans with a Gaga fascination expect. And that's okay. She has told Oprah that her goal now isn't just to shock people but rather to exude authenticity. She stirs elements from all of her pop eras into the most hearty and flavourful version of Gaga soup (and that does include Joanne contrary to popular belief.) Each ingredient works and is soluble. She tossed in the elements of the The Fame that made fans want to Just Dance and sprinkled some catchy Swedish-sounding pop melodies (Max Martin, hello!) and sung onomatopoeia from The Fame Monster, à la the "hey-ah, hey-ahs." A suspenseful build, uniquely potent and soaring vocals are ounces of Born This Way. Don't worry, ARTPOP is doused on this track not only in color, but in sound. There's a reason why that sped up "Do What U Want"-esque bassline works. There's a contrast between her bright vocal performance and the electronic bass' darkness. Joanne comes across in the allegorical concept which once again can be interpreted to reflect the current American experience. Music video director Daniel Askill confirmed that Gaga wanted to portray the "warring tribes as a metaphor for the state of the world today." So, Mother Monster is on a mission to introduce the world to her new brainchild, ever-developing ideologies and honest ways to examine life. "Stupid Love" isn't the end-all but merely the beginning. Paws up and welcome to Chromatica bitches. [8]

Nortey Dowuona: NOPE! WAIT. wait. This is actually a welcome back for... the bass, who is joined by his drumming sister, his synth bros and Lady Gaga, who has come here from the Make A Wish Foundation to take him around New York. They have a wonderful day together, with the synth bros getting their percussive background vocal girlfriend an NYPD hoodie, and the experience convinces Lady Gaga to make bright, happy pop music again! (The bass, in the midst of a happy dance, got hit by her limo and had to go back to the hospital.) [8]

Scott Mildenhall: Between its hyperventilating over-excitement and ever-exciting hyper-sincerity, Gaga seems to have finally created a pop emergency. The false alarm of "Applause" was overstuffed and underpowered, but "Stupid Love" redresses that balance by going harder and clearer, like a newly thawed cut from a cryogenically frozen, course-correcting Artpop Monster edition. Time might seem to have turned in on itself, but no: the greater lyrical directness arrives in a way that feels culminatory. The plainspokenness of that indelible "all I ever wanted was love" makes it almost an epitaph, grounding it in a present in which all experience has been lived, and all realisations are realised. Undeniably, Lady Gaga is not dead, but this is what she knows. [8]

Will Adams: I defended "The Cure" and lamented the immense pressure on Gaga to make every release the Next Big Thing, however even that soured when it turned out to be part of A Star Is Born's ~superficial pop~ world. So where to next, when she's caught between turgid rock balladry and ill-fitting trop-pop? On "Stupid Love," we get the best possible outcome: whizzing past Joanne, making a brief stop at Artpop but ultimately landing on the dazzling excess of Born This Way. Like any good synthpop number, the synths display a wide range of textures: they tunnel, they drill, they poof, they gleam. Gaga is more than willing to match their energy. Noteworthy, though, is that she takes a brief pause only on the pre-chorus's "all I ever wanted was love"; even the way the title scans it almost sounds like she could be singing "I want just to be loved." This is the essence of pop: amidst the big dumb fireworks display, a human message at the core. [7]

[wheatbeats]

I ended up rewatching all of RWBY Volume 3 tonight (sort of by accident honestly) and, as someone who hasn’t rewatched any earlier volumes since Volume 3 finished, here are some assorted thoughts:

I remember a lot of us feeling cautious about the team switching over to Maya for Volume 4 and beyond, but looking back at Volume 3, probably the best that Poser could do, I think it was the right call. The character models, the expressive animation, the BACKGROUNDS, are all so much better now than they used to be. The look of Poser has its charm but I think overall we’re far better off with Maya.

Putting aside the inherent issues of making the only committed revolutionary fighter in the series an abusive murderous ex, the major thorn of Adam’s characterization remains his first interaction with Cinder in episode 7. The rest is decently well laid; from Blake telling the team about how someone close to her changed, to Adam’s reaction to Blake leaving during the events of the Black Trailer (also in episode 7). It’s not pretty or polished but it fits well enough, except for that one scene. It kind of shoots his whole arc in the foot. Also Adam’s voice actor has done a much better job with his nasty, creepy dialogue than he ever has with his noble freedom fighter dialogue and I think that deserves recognition.

Speaking of which as a whole episode 7 is really good the structure and pacing feels really unique for a RWBY episode. I don’t think they made another quite like it until The Lost Fable in S6.

This whole season is really good at moving its camera, and I’m tempted to lay that credit with Monty Oum. There are lots of interesting shots of characters’ legs (that sounds weird but both Cinder and Ironwood have great shots of a room framed between their feet from behind), and I still love how when Qrow is first introduced at the Crow Bar the camera wobbles drunkenly with him when he stands up. It adds a level of engagement that the animation quality might have otherwise robbed.

Speaking of Qrow, this volume is his introduction and it struck me how, even though he’s always been a bit of an immature bastard, in V3 he still very much feels like an adult, and Team RWBY very much feel like children. I’m used to V6 Qrow, who whines like a baby and is generally useless. The dynamic has shifted so much and I think that’s genuinely intentional so good job, CRWBY.

This is a bit of a nitpick but why is Ironwood the one to tell Yang that she’s disqualified after she blasts Mercury’s knee? That’d be like if I cheated at a high school track meet and Obama shows up to kick me out; Ironwood is a head of state from a different country and the headmaster of NEITHER of the schools involved in the fight. Why is he here?

It’s sort of odd watching this season lay groundwork for worldbuilding that’s already been retconned away. Ozpin’s gang leading Pyrrha through the vault for the first time really make it seem like the Maidens are the be-all end-all of magical power in the land, and that their little troupe was made solely to protect them. Now Maidens are just a small cog in the machine, shoved to the back burner in recent episodes in favor of the relics. I know that RWBY’s worldbuilding has almost always been “go off of what we told you last and forget everything before that”, but it feels oddly disconnected to see the ghost of the original plan peeking through in the earlier volumes.

Also it’s really odd seeing Ozpin on screen I kind of forgot that he used to have a body that isn’t Oscar.

There’s a bit of heartache seeing Pyrrha again, once my favorite character. Her journey in this season might still be the best season-long arc RWBY ever told, and while I still yearn for the reality where she lives and we get to see the fallout of everything she went through, her sacrifice in the finale is still one of the most genuine emotional moments in this entire series and I’ll always applaud that.

In connection to Pyrrha’s arc, this season has the Perfect amount of Jaune used in the best possible way, and I wish he could always be like this. Jaune in V3 is kinda funny, pretty brave, and very sweet and heartfelt. He and Pyrrha talking alone in episode 8 is still one of my favorite moments of the whole show. Jaune is at his best when he’s a loving and supportive friend, not a hero or a leading man, and I hope the series is finally starting to understand that.

As a whole the entire Battle of Beacon is really fucking impressive. For one thing, it’s LONG, about 45 minutes of one big conflict, and it balances the bits and pieces between Ruby vs. Torchwick, Ozpin and Pyrrha vs. Cinder, and Blake vs. Adam really well. The editing is top notch and the score is incredible, and there are some amazing moments of choreography (Ruby vs. Neo and Torchwick is still one of my favorite fights in the series). The whole thing manages to stay pretty breathless and exciting all the way through and I hope that RoosterTeeth can craft another finale this thrilling for Volume 7 and/or something later.

The end of Heroes and Monsters is harrowing, to put it simply. Seeing Pyrrha screaming in pain in the aura transfer machine, Amber being shot suddenly without warning, Blake getting stabbed, and Yang losing an arm all in quick succession is a huge fucking gut punch, made all the harsher by the music choice (that... music box style music they put on haunts my dreams, damn you Alex Abraham and Jeff Williams). 

It’s sort of refreshing to see Ruby Rose herself in such a central role this season. They got better at putting her in focus in V6 but she’s still sharing the spotlight with a solid 10-12 other major characters. In V3 Ruby spends a lot of time alone, doing important things for the plot. I kind of miss that.

Also, Ruby collapsing into tears and then numb shock when she sees Penny die? Excellent content, it breaks my heart, I wish we could see important emotional moments and reactions like that from Ruby all the time.

Torchwick is fucking incredible and I’m so salty he’s gone. He still has maybe the best vocal performance in the entire series and his monologue right before his death is my pick for the best ever string of dialogue from a series that’s historically had problems writing it. I really hope they pull a Hannibal Choi from Pacific Rim and bring him back later, if only to see how hilariously outclassed he is by the newer, bad-er villains. Normally that sort of thing would bug me from a narrative perspective but I love Torchwick so much that I’m literally begging for him to return. Please RT hear my prayer.

When it Falls is the best OP song and Divide is the best ED song of the series and you absolutely CAN fight me on this maybe I can finally put my music degree to use

[canonicallysoulmates]

Supernatural 14.20 (Season Finale)

After watching this episode, and if I’m being honest for the last couple of episodes, I can fully understand why j2 decided to end this show and while it’s still painful and I’m still not ready to let Sam and Dean go, sometimes letting go of the things we love is for the best and I think this is one of those cases. The love and thought and quality is not there anymore from the EPs/writers, so I’m thankful j2 decided to end Supernatural. I’m sure it wasn’t an easy decision because I have no doubt in my my mind that they love this show but it was the right thing to do. It’s time to say goodbye to this show, I’m just sorry we have to say goodbye to it with Dabb at the helm. 

I don’t know where to begin and I have a lot to say so this isn’t going to be very linear, in fact, it’s going to be the opposite and I apologize in advance for that but hopefully, I will be able to express what I feel and my points in a way that is understandable. 

I’m going to start this opinion post off talking about Chuck being turned into a villain and what I feel is a very unpopular opinion cause I didn’t like that, I know for a lot of y’all Chuck has always been the villain of this story that’s fine and dandy, I’ve never subscribed to that, and I can understand why some would be excited or find it interesting that God is the last big bad, go big or go home and all that, but I take issue with it cause to me this character has never been a villain and making him one is changing who he is, now I’ve never hidden that I like this character just as I’ve never hidden the fact that my views of this character are slightly influenced by my own personal beliefs nonetheless I am going to try my best to explain why I’d never seen him as a villain without getting into those beliefs. 

There are two ways I see this character: as a character and as a representation of Kripke/the showrunner. In neither of these views have I ever seen Chuck as anything other than flawed but loving his creation. 

Looking at him as a character only, I completely understand the argument some might make that Chuck has played Sam and Dean like puppets, but I’ve never seen it that way, to me he’s never been this master puppeteer who has controlled every aspect of Sam and Dean. I’ve always viewed him as a flawed but complex character that regardless of whether or not he put things in the boys path or how many those things were, which is not an argument I’m going to get into in this post, he’s rooted for them, he wants them to make the right choices and win - cause he’s always given them free will, even in this episode when they don’t play along and do what he wants he still didn’t take away their free will even though he easily could have, and in Swan Song the whole point of it the beautiful aspect about it is that the boys chose each other, that Sam and Dean’s life was theirs, that they playing or not playing along with heaven and hell’s plan was up to them and they chose not to play along-, and in a way he loves them like to put it in the most basic of terms before this episode where he’s turned into a villain I would have said Sam and Dean were his favorite creation. 

So, I’m not just not ok with the implication that this whole time Chuck has been controlling everything, that everything that has happened has been because Chuck wanted it that way, or that Sam and Dean never actually had free will, I’m just not ok with any of those things. I don’t like it.

If I look at him as the representation of Kripke and stop looking at him as a character, I can understand even more why he is the way he is and be more...forgiving I guess; he was an accurate representation cause Kripke did write Sam and Dean to be in those situations but at the same time he loved his creation. 

I feel like I made no sense so to put in hopefully more understandable terms: 

As a character: I have put you in or let you to some of these situations but I have given you the free will to choose how you handle them and I’m rooting for you to make the right ones and win.

As the representation of a writer talking to their creation: I have put you in these situations but I did it because I love you and I needed you to grow and take a life of your own. 

Not sure that’s any more understandable, my thoughts on this character are very difficult to explain but the gist of it is, I’ve never seen Chuck as the bad guy. 

[And, as to the argument of why hasn’t he stepped up more to help the boys, if he did there’d be no show. He’s an all knowing all powerful character if he appeared to help every time the boys had a problem there would be no show cause he could solve the problem with a snap of his fingers so I can understand and forgive the writers for not...using him?]

Anyways, to me, his personality in this episode doesn’t make any sense and Dabb changed him to make him into a villain [Note: I do not believe for even one second that he was always intended to be a villain, Chuck was introduced by Kripke back in s4, Kripke had no plans for this show to go past s5 and nobody expected it to reach s14 so saying him being a villain was always the plan makes no goddamm sense to me so save your breath]. I will say however it’s fitting that Dabb would turn Chuck, a representation of the show creator/showrunner, from flawed but loving, into a villain who throws a temper tantrum and undoes all of Sam and Dean’s hard work, I didn’t know Dabb was so self-aware!  

I don’t know, maybe if this character had never been introduced, or if he had been written differently or if I didn’t see him as a representation of the show creator/showrunner, maybe then I could get behind the idea of him being a villain but as it is I got issues with it. 

From a story POV I’m also not the biggest fan of God being the last big bad, I actually don’t find it that creative. I think it would have been a lot more interesting and creative if they had actually killed him and they either had to deal with the repercussions of that or even more fun if Sam had been the one to kill him and turned into God. Which I actually thought was going to happen for like 3mins after Sam shot Chuck (I watched this epi live and there was a commercial break in between I can be given some leeway for this), well to be honest, I thought he was either going to become God or King of Hell or return of his powers, either way, any one of those three would have been 100% more fun than what we actually got, but I guess I should have known better than to expect Dabb to ever give Sam a storyline, it was probably torture for him to write Sam doing something as badass as shooting God in the first place. 

Now, to be fair, we might still get Sam with powers or King of Hell!Sam, the shows not over yet but I’m not going to hold my breath for it. And maybe something cool will be done and I’ll warm up to the idea of Chuck being the villain but as of right now that’s not the case and I don’t see my view changing anytime soon. 

That being said, it was great to see Rob Benedict again! He’s looking good! 

Moving on from all that, this episode could have been so much more. It should have been so much more, this is the last season finale ffs! But this didn’t even feel like a season finale, the only time it did was at the very end during the last, I’d say, 5mins. the rest felt more fitting for a pre-season finale; take the last couple of minutes away and this would have been more fitting as 14.19. Or even as a standalone episode it would have been better, cause there’s a concept used at the beginning of this episode, that imo would have been good for a standalone, and it’s that Jack made it so people can’t lie, I think that could’ve made for a fun standalone and it’s a pity that instead it was thrown in here cause it didn’t contribute to the plot if anything it actually played a large part in making this feel like less of a season finale. 

I’m not gonna lie to you guys the ending with all the monsters and the zombies appearing did make my jaw-drop and for a minute I felt something akin to excitement for s15, but as the scene continued that excitement started dying down and something about it started bugging me. It wasn’t until the episode finished and I started thinking about it and what that ending could possibly mean that I realized why that was and it’s because that little spark of excitement I felt when the woman in white appeared was because of nostalgia. 

It’s because I saw her and the creepy af clown and bloody Mary and I didn’t imagine current Sam and Dean fighting them, my mind saw them and immediately went to s1 and s2, that little spark was because I was reminded of the show I love so much, the show that is now coming to an official end and never coming back, and again I won’t lie, for that minute my mind considered the possibility that s15 would be a throwback an homage to the beginning but as the scene continued on I realized that while s15 does have that potential to be something beautiful that pays tribute to the early seasons there’s a way bigger opportunity for it to be a destruction of the legacy j2 have built. And now that the opportunity is there, there’s a big chance that s15 will be a revolving door of secondary characters instead of being about Sam and Dean. 

I’m worried that instead of Dabb doing something beautiful that pays tribute to the early seasons it’s just going to be a lazy retelling full of retconning. And it frustrates me that he undid everything Sam and Dean have done, that instead of original new stories we’re bound to get a retelling of the ones that we know and love and are already perfect. 

Also, I fucking hate that feathers is gonna be around for the last season especially if the last season is meant to be an homage to s1-s2 cause that useless prick wasn’t introduced till s4...maybe they can start with s4, work their way backward and kill him off. 

I won’t deny that there were good moments cause there were! When Dean was about to shoot Jack that was legitimately tense, Sam shooting Chuck was badass, I loved Sam standing up to Dean and telling him that he couldn’t lose him and Jack, I liked the conversation between Sam and Chuck in the Bunker, I loved Dean making weapons for him and Sam at the end, so there were legitimate good moments scattered throughout but for me in the overall scheme of things those moments, as much as I enjoyed/loved them, are not enough for me to consider this a good episode and sure as hell, not enough for me to consider this a good season finale. Especially considering this is the last season finale and even more, if I compare it some past season finales like my beloved AHBL. 

If you liked this episode, that’s wonderful I’m happy for you, but...I don’t like the way it left me feeling. It left me feeling hollow, and frustrated, and angry and conflicted and worried about s15. 

I wish j2 the best of luck in making s15 a good one, they have an uphill battle ahead of them. 

As for me, I’m happy this season is finally fucking over and I’m looking forward to the break before the last season begins. 

[msbeccieboo]

Arrow 7x17 brain dump

So, this week’s episode was ok. It wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t great. I had expected to not really be fussed by this week’s offering and as such wasn’t deeply disappointed. I really missed my Olicity babies in this episode though. The upside of the episode being a bit meh, is that this review didn’t take me 57 years to write, which whilst sick, was a bonus haha!!

Olicity

Olicity weren’t the focus of this episode, but we still managed to get some cute little moments and touches thrown in there. Felicity’s praise when Oliver came back to the lair looking like a prize fighter, was too cute! I love how smitten she still is with him even after all this time, and how bashful and blushing and gorgeous he gets in response is just 😍😍

Source: olicitygifs

We also got a lovely little comfort scene once Oliver realised that Emiko was in fact evil (shocker, I know). Felicity cupping Oliver’s face whilst stroking her baby belly was so damned adorable!!

Source: oliverxfelicity

Continued under the cut

Oliver

Oliver being so open and trusting and just happy to be training with Emiko was so lovely and so heartbreaking because you just knew she would let him down. He mentioned Thea (yay!) and said that she’d always wanted a sister 😭😭 Why does this leave me feeling like Thea is gonna come back and try and kill Emiko??

I also loved seeing Oliver telling people the truth straight up, when asked how he knew about Emiko, listening to Dig’s advice (if not his wife’s) and just being an all-round hopeful bean!!  The growth he shows is amazing, it’s just a shame that his hope and faith in his sister didn’t pay off. He so badly wants to be in her life, to help her be good, and in turn redeem the Queen family name in her eyes. His line “If I abandon her now I’m no better than my father” just made me so sad. His parents were so important to him he wants them redeemed, so in turn it can redeem him too (not that he needs it). I don’t think he does, or will, find out just how much of a shitty Dad Robert was to Emiko, which is a shame, as I think it would give him some peace that some things just cannot be redeemed and that it isn’t a reflection on him. He had such faith in Emiko being good, he still didn’t think of her at first when he found the signal jammer in the lair. Even now I think he will continue trying to bring her back, despite Dig’s advice and reminder that sometimes evil siblings are just evil siblings 😂 I hope this isn’t foreshadowing Oliver having to kill Emiko like Dig did with Andy?

Bonus: Oliver shooting all the drones was so damn hot 🔥🔥

Source: legends-of-today

Felicity

Our girl didn’t have a huge role this week, but what we did get was fabulous! Felicity’s little pep talk to herself at the beginning of the episode about having it all was too adorable for words! 

Source: felicitysmoakgifs

We got to see the beginnings of Smoak Technologies, along with the first name drop of the company I think? I love that she brought Alena in to be CTO, she gets to have a friend in her company that won’t try and mansplain everything to her at last!! Alena’s reaction is all of us!

Source: felicitysmoakgifs

It was so nice to see her back as Overwatch on the comms, and just generally people being back in the lair! We even got a couple of OTA moments! I loved her “computers will never replace people” line too!

Bonus: Felicity being cute in the lair gives me life!

Source: ebett

Emiko/Robert

This was really Emiko’s villain origin episode. We saw her as a child being evicted and abandoned by Robert, who yet again, proves to be the scum of the earth, and the true villain of the entire series. Upon overhearing that Robert was kicking them out of their home and would no longer support them, the only words of comfort he had for her were “Life isn’t fair, we don’t always get what we want”…Robert Queen was a prize dick!! His reasons for abandoning his family? Moira will take his company, money and kids if he doesn’t. GTFO you philandering old bastard, you made your bed…lie in it! Ugh he was the actual worst!

So as a penniless and possibly homeless 11 year old in Starling City, Emiko naturally turns to a life of crime in order to support her and her mother when she meets Dante. (For the record, I found the younger Emiko far more compelling to watch than the adult version 😬) Dante evidently enrols her into the Ninth Circle, who present her with a gift, as her final induction…the plans to blow up the Queen’s Gambit. She goes back to Robert with a business plan for a new subsidiary of Queen Consolidated, a chance to prove herself to her family and earn some money, and despite the solid plan, Robert wants nothing to do with it, telling her that QC is Oliver’s legacy and that she needs to remain a secret, before leaving her again for his trip on the Gambit. Crestfallen and angry, she doesn’t show him the plans and lets him leave to meet his fate.  The horrible irony here is that Emiko would have failed the Ninth Circle’s ‘test’ and saved Robert/Oliver/Sara, had Robert not been such a massive douchenozzle.

I like that they managed to link everything with Emiko back to the Gambit, and they did so without retconning. Malcolm still had the yacht sabotaged, but it looks like he did it via the Ninth Circle.  The big ‘twist’ we see at the end of the episode is that Emiko is now, in fact, the leader of the Ninth Circle, not Dante, and as such appears to be the season’s Big Bad. Part of me is like yaaaasss female Big Bad woohoo! But then the way it has come about has been lacklustre to say the least, and we weren’t given the time (or the writing) to get to like Emiko in order to actually care or feel the impact or shock value of her turning on Oliver. Instead we’re just all left feeling a bit meh.

Emiko still seems to have a soft spot for Rene (someone has to I guess) and with both of them being Oliver/Team Arrow traitors, they make a good fit 😜  We also found out that she still hasn’t found her mother’s killer. Maybe if Oliver could help her solve her mother’s murder and Rene keeps making eyes at her she will come back round to the good side??? Doubtful haha, but just a suggestion. The season’s theme is redemption after all!

Black Siren

Whilst Oliver is at home, preparing dinner for wifey (adorbs), he gets a visit from an injured Laurel, looking for Felicity. Instead, she tells Oliver about Emiko killing Diaz, and not being as squeaky clean as he thinks. This, as to be expected, leads to a confrontation between the two, which is interesting, because we all know that Laurel is telling the truth. When accused of having a blind spot for his family, Oliver hits back with “it’s called loyalty, I know that’s a concept you don’t totally understand”. Burn. Their scenes are so much better when they are open in their dislike for each other! Much as I have enjoyed Felicity and BS friendship this season, the petty bitch in me still laughs at Oliver’s clear disdain for her…he didn’t even help her with her wound, just gave her some supplies and left her to it 😂😂 He ‘helps’ her here purely for Felicity’s sake, which is lovely though!

Next, Dinah gets on her arse about doing things by the book, which ordinarily I would agree with, but Dinah is a vigilante herself! And although they are now sanctioned by the SCPD, Dinah has herself coerced witnesses, stolen evidence and violated the law in about a dozen other ways in her pursuit of justice.  This is the premise of the show people! The hypocrisy is real! BS is just a little further behind on her journey than Dinah. Dinah later accuses BS of killing the gangster guy (I wasn’t really paying attention to who he was), bringing up her killing Vinnie, which immediately gets her back up. BS says that she has earned the benefit of the doubt, which I agree with to an extent. Dinah then effectively washes her hands of her.

I can empathise with BS for trying to do the right thing, and not being believed/trusted by anyone. I think it was intentional to not see a scene with her and Felicity this week, so as to keep her feeling isolated, whereas Felicity would have believed/reassured her. Felicity even defended her in the bunker to Rene. The episode finishes up with Emiko ‘outing’ her to the press, and ‘setting her free’ to be evil again. This will all set up her apparent return to her evil roots next week. I think she will ultimately end up being redeemed. We know (I think we know?) she is leaving for good after next week’s episode, so hopefully she will go back off to Earth 2 or something like that to become Black Canary there, and she can take all her little comic book friends with her, and everyone will be happy!

Other stuff

The drone attack in this episode was a practice run. Is this sarin gas attack going to be the thing that brings down the city, and causes it to turn on Oliver and the team?

Was the episode synopsis written whilst on crack?? I know we all laughed a little bit when we first saw how it was worded, but after watching the episode it was literally nothing like what actually happened??

Why on earth did they bring in Highlander, just for him to end up being Emiko’s lackey?? It’s like Cayden James/Michael Emerson being usurped by Diaz all over again!

Source: arrowdaily

I miss the flash-forwards!! I need me some Mia/William/Felicity goodness now please!!!

Anyway thank you as always to the gifmakers. Fabulous work as ever! 💗

[fuckyeahcharmcaster]

An Ode to Omniverse!Charmcaster

OV’s Charmcaster is the non-Man of Action-involved Charmcaster that doesn’t entirely suck, and she has as much good points as bad points, all of which I’m analyzing in this post. 

PROS:

Sensible progression in her story - Charmcaster’s story in OV went from point A to point B and so on in a logical way, a far cry from how it went in UAF. We understand why she first gets involved in the show to start with (because the Alpha Rune was stolen by Zs’Skayr while she was busy contending with Darkstar trying to steal magic from her realm), why she goes to Friedkin University (to take the family heirloom staff from Hex in order to replace the Alpha Rune as a power source), why she goes for the power of Bezel (she hears about it while trying to get the staff again and decides it’d be an even better power source), and why she seems so much more rational and reasonable in the game show episode (she’s been deprived of power for a while, and this has a healing effect on her mind). It all adds up.

A return to form in villainy and point of character - The original Charmcaster was all about seeking various sources of power for the validation of her own ego (she has a Inferiority Superiority Complex), with the point being that she did so in place of seeking love, which she subconsciously wants but consciously considers a weakness, a contrast to Gwen who is just as ambitious in the pursuit of growing stronger but does so with love and support from others. After UAF’s version of Charmcaster completely dropped this angle, it’s nice to see it restored with the OV version, who is blatantly portrayed as a troubled young addict to magic power that is too hung up on getting back at people she hates, only hurting herself in the process.

A fantastic design - Derrick Wyatt may have not had any interest in Charmcaster as a character, but he knocked it out of the park with her design, combining her OS design with aspects of her UAF design and topping it all off with stitches in her coat, giving the sense of someone broken trying to put herself back together. The purple hair highlights are cool too.

Badass magic powers - I was far more impressed with OV Charmcaster’s skill with magic than I was with UAF Charmcaster’s. The writing also backs this up, returning to the OS fact that Charmcaster was “always the better sorceress” compared to Gwen, rather than the bullshit retcon about Gwen always being the stronger one because she’s “made of magic”.

Kari Wahlgren’s performance - Just listen to it here. Kari sounds like she’s actually having fun with the role again, as opposed to the drab take on the character she performed in UAF.

Great character interactions - Charmcaster got to have some fun and interesting interactions with Darkstar, Adwatia, Zs’Skayr, Ben, Rook, Hobble, Hex, Gwen and Bezel...she even had non-verbal interactions between many of the other female contestants in the game show episode (providing plenty of crack ship fodder as a result). That was highly appreciated.

A far better ending - UAF’s Charmcaster ended on the worst note you could possibly leave the character on: alone, unloved and mentally broken inside of her awful home dimension. It was a slap in the face to her and to any fan who wanted better for her. OV’s Charmcaster ends in the custody of people who love her on Earth and is mentally recovering. Despite UAF’s Charmaster being the one saddled with the name of “Hope”, there’s actually far more to be hopeful about regarding OV’s Charmcaster. Seriously, just look at the difference here.    I am forever thankful that this is where we left the original continuity’s Charmcaster* on.

*The original Ben 10 continuity before the reboot, known as the Prime Timeline, was a timestream, made of three different branches: OS, UAF and OV.  So the OS and UAF branches and their Charmcasters technically still exist separately from OV, but not as part of the Prime Timeline. The Prime Timeline’s Charmcaster thus started as OS!Charm, shifted into UAF!Charm, and then finally into OV!Charm which is what she is left off as. Complicated, eh?

CONS:

Mischaracterization - I’m not going to say that I didn’t find the zany, cheerful, energetic, high-on-magic Cloudcuckoolander personality OV Charmcaster had entertaining. I did. But the fact remains that it’s not the personality Charmcaster is supposed to have. Take away all the witchy trappings, and Charm is a “thug life” girl. Strip her of her magic and she’d be ready and willing to throw down with her fists. She’s sarcastic and tough-talking, insolent to authority figures, competitive and kind of tomboyish. Basically, she aspires to be the kind of woman Rojo is: the baddest bitch around who nobody oughta mess with, and she’s constantly frustrated when her own awkwardness gets in the way of this and she is unable to back up this egotistical self-image, though she often blames the likes of Gwen for it instead of herself. UAF’s varying depictions of her as a sultry femme fatale, high school alpha bitch, sadistic and obsessively vengeful murderer, sympathetic outcast and freedom fighter, troubled daddy’s girl, or whatever the Hell she was supposed to be in “Couples Retreat” were not the right characterization, and neither is what was done with her in OV no matter how much more enjoyable than those UAF characterizations it may be. Only the reboot got it right.

Her story hinges too much on UAF’s crap - Just when you’re enjoying OV Charmcaster’s story, you suddenly hear things like “Ledgerdomain”, “Alpha Rune”, “Spellbinder”, “Adwatia”, or “Darkstar” get brought up, and you zone out thanks to the bad memories that are awoken. OV Charmcaster would’ve worked better without all this baggage from her previous self.

Unfortunate Implications - Some of this connects to the previous point, as it exists solely due to the UAF crap (ex: OV Charmcaster’s story means denying the route of Charmcaster becoming a better ruler in Ledgerdomain, sending the message that women aren’t capable of being good rulers because they just aren’t mentally up to the task). Others are just OV’s fault, particularly where Hex is involved - I get what they were going for with him, but to do so they had to whitewash the fact that he and Charmcaster weren’t a loving, mutually evil family; Hex abused Charmcaster in order to drive her to evil. To make Hex sympathetic by having him reformed and upset at his niece’s self-destructive behavior that ends up harming him while dancing around the fact that said behavior was Hex’s own damn fault to start with is gross.

Her relationship with Gwen is a non-factor - OV didn’t butcher the dynamic between Gwen and Charmcaster the way UAF did, but this is mostly because it barely did anything with that dynamic at all. The third act of “Charm School” is the only time the two actually get to interact, and it’s as basic as you can get, with Gwen being all “Charmcaster, you’re not well, stop this so that we can help you!” and Charm being all “How dare you get in my way? I wasn’t even looking for a fight, but now I’m gonna finish you once and for all!” They fight, Gwen wins, Charmcaster retreats, and that’s it. In “Third Time’s a Charm”, Charmcaster turns Gwen into a stone totem right at the very beginning, paying little thought to her for the rest of the episode. Gwen, meanwhile, doesn’t really have anything to do with Charmcaster until the very end of the episode, with her line about hoping to finally make friends with Charmcaster now. For a character who is meant to be Gwen’s foil, Gwen barely mattered to Charmcaster here.

No character development - UAF attempted character development for Charmcaster and did it badly. Once again, OV’s answer was to simply not even try. OV Charmcaster is static to an irritating degree, with the exception of her final appearance, in the game show episode, where she appears to be mentally healed...which naturally happened completely off-screen, since putting it on-screen would mean taking Charmcaster’s mental issues seriously, which OV was not willing to do...after all, it hardly takes anything seriously. I think that this was a missed opportunity, as it could have made OV Charmcaster’s conclusion even stronger.

Horribly paced, minimal appearances - Charmcaster appears in 5 out of 80 episodes in OV. Worse still, her first appearance is a brief cameo toward the end of episode 42, showing up afterward in episodes 47, 63, 75, and 78. This means that Charmcaster and her story is primarily a factor in the episode 61-80 period, which is considered by many to be the worst period in the whole show!  It is transparently clear that the people behind OV did not have any real interest in Charmcaster whatsoever, she didn’t fit in with their preferred focus on Ben, Rook, the Plumbers, and stupid shit like “harem” antics and Blukic/Driba shenanigans. 

The spin-off that never happened - A justification as to why Charmcaster was so underplayed was that Gwen was not a regular on OV and thus too many Charmcaster appearances without Gwen would feel weird. As it stood, an OV spin-off focused on Gwen at Friedkin University was being planned, and Charmcaster would have been a regular character on that show. The problem is that this spin-off didn’t happen due to OV bombing and the franchise getting rebooted, so Charmcaster having few appearances and no character development in a story arc dedicated to putting her in place for her role in that spin-off just ends up feeling like a total waste. As painful as it is for me to admit this, even UAF Charmcaster ultimately felt more meaningful to UAF than OV Charmcaster does to OV thanks to this misguided decision.

[kcwcommentary]

VLD1x04 – “Some Assembly Required”

1x04 – “Some Assembly Required”

This is probably my least favorite episode out of the first two seasons of the show, and I don’t like saying this, but it’s because of Allura. I really don’t like her arrogance and lack of empathy in this episode. I don’t like how the narrative tries to retcon it being her plan all along to unite the Paladins through their annoyance/anger against her. It’s not that that isn’t a viable plot – it’s certainly been done in other stories – it’s that this show makes it a whiplash heel-turn at the end. If the narrative of this episode had been openly setting that up so that we viewers knew she was doing that while the Paladins themselves didn’t, it would be totally different. The suddenness of her change from being overly demanding to pointing out how the team unified as a result of her being their common (temporary) antagonist is just too narratively dissonant.

This episode isn’t anywhere near all-bad though. It gives us Shiro doing pushups in his spare time.

Allura’s first rant is that they didn’t all get to the bridge fast enough for her fake red alert. Unless she has had a meeting with the team before hand to tell them that she needs for them to be ready to go on a moment’s notice, then it’s unrealistic and unfair to then complain that they weren’t ready and waiting on their own. Realistically, there are always degrees of alert status. And no one, for their own psychological health and well-being, can remain at red alert constantly. Now, if Allura had this expectation but was eventually called out on it by another/other character(s), or if the narrative resulted in her realizing on her own that this doesn’t work, then that would be a different story. As is, the narrative is written as if she were right when she’s not.

“Coran and I have been up for hours,” Allura declares. Congratulations. You’re not currently in an active combat situation, so there is this thing called duty shifts. Maybe this is a manifestation of unrealistic American society that perpetuates the idea that a person is supposed to be working constantly to the point of absolute exhaustion, but this is not sustainable. At the very least, unless it had been established among the crew that they needed to be on duty at a certain time, complaining that they were sleeping is just wrong.

Hunk tries to call Allura out and get her to recognize the significant change the Paladins have gone through from being students on Earth to being combat pilots in a universe-spanning war. Of course, Allura doesn’t even slightly try to empathize with them.

“Negative, Number 5. I have you ranked by height,” says Coran. I think this might be one of my favorite Coran jokes. I don’t remember us ever hearing him call any of the other Paladins by number though.

The sequence of the Paladins transitioning to their Lions makes the process look ridiculous. Allura was complaining about the amount of time it took the Paladins to get to the bridge, well then what about the amount of time it takes for them to get from there to their Lions? That route/journey through the ship to get to each respective Lion is way too long and is indicative of poor engineering/ship design. Realistically, fighter pilots would be on duty near their craft, not on the bridge. And of course, this show has to make another, this time extended in duration, fat joke about Hunk.

Forming Voltron is put in terms of ill-defined feeling-like-a-team, and not a mechanical process. If that is indeed how Alfor designed and built these ships, then that is bad design. I get it, the show wants to be about teamwork and the Lions forming Voltron works as a symbol that the characters are functioning as a team. It might be written in poetics, but only being able to access higher functions of a computer system/weapon when you have well-running psychology is not realistic.

I like the call-back to “I’m a leg!” from the previous episode.

“Shiro’s the head!” Keith says aggressively. “All the time?” Hunk responds. It hurts to hear Keith being so supportive of Shiro and his position of leader, knowing that this show unceremoniously rips Shiro from that position and tosses him aside.

“Feel the bonds with your Lions. Now channel your energy into forming Voltron.” This non-defined “energy” is definitely in my list of disliked tropes in fiction. It is cheap writing wrapped in pretentiousness as if it’s profound.

Allura’s callous decision to attack the Lions without prepping them for such an assignment is bad leadership. “…and inspiring you! I believe in you, Paladins. Let fear be your guide,” she says. This is ridiculous. This isn’t how you get people to trust in you and your leadership. She’s blatantly proclaiming, all with a smile on her face and a laugh in her voice, that she wants them to feel afraid for their lives. That is a dangerously dissonant perspective for her to have. Again, if this episode was about her learning to not do these kinds of things, I could be okay with this, but the episode treats her behavior as if it’s right.

Meanwhile, Zarkon is a tyrant. Haggar is creepy. They’re cartoon villains.

The Paladins are taking a break, and Allura gets annoyed. Actual training requires breaks, but Allura acts like that’s an absurd idea. Unfortunately, the show tries to assert the idea that no one is allowed breaks through Shiro in this scene too. Ugh!

Second reference to Shiro as “the Champion.” I like that the show uses several episodes to build up to the reveal that Shiro had to fight gladiatorially to survive.

On to the training deck. First up, the protect your teammates from drone attacks. Given that Hunk is surprised that his suit can create a shield, clearly the team was not prepped for this exercise before-hand. This is not how training actually works (it’s almost like it’s become an unintentional theme with this episode). Then, the invisible maze. The maze sets up its being used in later episodes by Pidge as a defensive maneuver against attacking Galra sentries and to provide a cloaking system for the Green Lion (why she never installed a similar cloaking system on all of their Lions is baffling). I think there could have been so much more to the maze scene; it had the elements needed to actually put some character development in the episode.

Back in the Lions, nosedive. “This is an expert-level drill that you really shouldn’t attempt until you’ve been flying for years,” Coran says. If that truly is so, then, again, this is not how training works. Also, if Coran can remotely black out a Paladin’s helmet so they can’t see, then that system can be hacked; it’s a point of vulnerability for them if some outside influence can make them suddenly unable to see.

The animation sequence of Shiro and the Black Lion’s eyes and faces aligning was a really nice visual way of representing the psychic connection possible between a Lion and pilot.

Then we have the clear-your-mind scene that gives us holographic displays of what each Paladin is thinking about. This scene does some characterization work. Keith thinks most about his small home in the middle of nowhere back on Earth. Lance thinks about his family. Hunk thinks about food, which honestly is not characterization work but borders again on a fat joke. Pidge’s image of her and her brother, which at this point because of the dialog regarding that photo between Hunk and Pidge in the first episode we’re supposed to interpret as Pidge and a girlfriend, juxtaposed to Coran’s narration about not keeping secrets is sign that we’re supposed to realize what we think we know about that image isn’t correct. And Shiro is focused on the Galaxy Garrison and its space missions; his deep desire to be an explorer is so endearing! If this visualization training has been available this entire time, then this is precisely where the team’s training to form Voltron should have begun, and they shouldn’t have progressed to actually attempting to actively form Voltron until they were successful at this exercise. Working on this exercise first would have been realistic training.

“I’m just… I’m just tired, okay?” Pidge says (with really good voice acting!). And Shiro (unlike in the previous break scene) recognizes the appropriate need for a break. I so love the animation of Shiro sitting cross-legged on the floor with this look of adorable curiosity on his face about the beverage that Coran hands him. Even Coran in this scene recognizes the need for a break. But…

In walks ridiculous Allura who yells at them. That Allura was a dictator in that alternate reality in 3x04 “A Hole in the Sky” is entirely plausible given how she behaves here. Juxtaposed with Zarkon in this episode, she and he have a lot in common. If Allura had been like this for the whole show, I would not have been able to stand her.

Now to fighting the Gladiator. Shiro’s PTSD results in his going up against the Gladiator triggering traumatic memories of him fighting for his life against Galra sentries, distracting him and letting the Gladiator nearly get him. Keith comes to his defense (I love their friendship!). It’s nice that at least someone has enough interpersonal insight to be able to see that something happened to Shiro. But then Allura again. Ugh! “That combat simulator was set for a level fit for an Altean child,” she says. Several things, one, she failed to notice Shiro’s psychological distress, two, I don’t see her demonstrating she’s capable of hand-to-hand combat and thus in any way credible to critique others’ fighting skills, three, she’s being beyond arrogant here. These Paladins are humans, not Alteans, so even if that combat was what Altean children do then it still has nothing to do with what humans are capable of. A good leader would easily recognize this. And again, if this episode was about showing Allura having to grow as a leader through recognizing the capabilities and limits of this team and adjusting herself to better work with that, then the episode could have been good. But the episode never calls her out as wrong on any of this. As much as she complains that the Paladins aren’t working as a team, she herself never demonstrates herself as capable of being a team-player.

We get our first look at a Robeast in this episode. It’s just a bit, and it’s nice seeing the show being willing to pace itself with action from the antagonists given how out-of-control the show’s pacing is in the last two or three seasons of the show.

And finally, the food fight scene. “Do Earthlings ever stop complaining?” Allura asks. I don’t know about Earthlings, but Allura certainly doesn’t ever stop complaining. Shiro starts the process of calling her out on it, but unfortunately the narrative is written to make Allura right. Again, if this had been written so that we knew she was trying to get them to bond through their anger at her, then it would work better. Instead, the reveal is sudden and only here at the end, written almost more to excuse her behavior than to explain it. As is, it’s a failure of narrative structure and a disservice to Allura’s character.

[themattress]

Wow. Tomoko Kanemaki SUCKS!

I decided to be masochistic and read back through the KH2 novels by Tomoko Kanemaki. And I just have to say: that there are actually people out there who like her writing and consider it to be in as good or superior to the games astounds me. These books are awful.

When they just straight-up adapt the game to text like the KH novels and the COM novels (except for the R/R one, but R/R sucks anyway), it’s fine. They even do the visits to Land of Dragons, Beast’s Castle and Olympus Coliseum better than the KH2 manga does, plus swaps in Agrabah for the far more important Port Royal. But that’s the only good thing I can say about them. In literally every other regard, the game and manga are infinitely superior.

The main problem is simple to sum up: Kanemaki is a fanfic writer. A pretty stereotypical KH fangirl. This in of itself wouldn’t be a problem if she weren’t adapting the games, but she is, and when she combines the game adaptations with her own fanfic based on what she wants to see, there is inevitably going to be a clash between them. The story written by Kazushige Nojima that she is adapting to novel form does not gel at all with what she writes, and as a result she has to either change that story (to the detriment of both it and its characters) or she neglects to change it even when it directly contradicts her own writing. This happens so much that it really makes for an excruciating reading experience. So let me list all of my problems with these novels point by point, to clarify just why Kanemaki’s writing fails so hard.

- I’ll get the biggest one out of the way right off the bat: Kanemaki is obsessed - and I mean obsessed - with the existential plight of the Nobodies, which includes the Draco in Leather Pants treatment to Organization XIII (”Is it really wrong to seek what you’ve lost?” is asked at one point, as though it’s a profound question. Um, when you’re doing so by inflicting that exact same loss upon millions of innocent people, yes it is!) The worst part is that characters (usually Namine, but Axel, Riku, Saix, Xemnas and even Ansem the Wise get on it at some points) are constantly repeating the exact same angsty inner monologues and internal (and sometime external) quasi-philosophical debates about Nobodies. I’m not kidding, it’s usually word-for-word. “Is it right for Nobodies to exist?” “Nobodies have nowhere to go or call home”. “Do Nobodies really lack hearts?” “What defines a heart?” “If Nobodies don’t have hearts, then why do they feel such-and-such?” “Why were Nobodies even born?” “Nobodies aren’t meant to exist, but does that still mean...?” And so on and so on, blah, blah, BLAH. Hearing this over and over and over and OVER again throughout my reading of the novels doesn’t make me more sympathetic of the Nobodies, it actually makes me less sympathetic and want them to go away so I don’t have to keep reading the same damn woe-is-me grade school-level existentialism! I want to keep reading about Sora, Donald and Goofy, damn it!

- Three characters who were mostly on the sidelines in KH2 somehow get a majority of time and focus here: Riku, Axel and Namine. They are even forced into an apocryphal trio together. They are basically treated as the de-facto secondary main characters next to Sora, Donald and Goofy, with their actions and development being given equal importance. Actually, that’s a lie - Riku, Axel and Namine are honestly given more importance. There is so much wrong about this - not only does the trio not feel organic and reek of bad fanfic, but each character in it isn’t well portrayed at all compared to the game or even the manga.

- Riku had the most potential, since he’s always a major character and a more talented writer could’ve come up with more feasible things for him to have been doing off-screen during KH2. But what Kanemaki has him do is ridiculous. If it’s not just stalking Sora, Donald and Goofy as a silent protector (which is the least interesting thing you could do with him), it’s bullshit with Axel and Namine, or fighting Saix midway through even though Kanemaki still keeps Saix’s later line of “Didn’t Roxas take care of you?”, or having him fight Xemnas in the Old Mansion only for Ansem the Wise to show up and Xemnas then just...retreat for no reason, letting Ansem live and thus ensuring the later destruction of his Kingdom Hearts like a dumbass!  And through all of this, she frequently makes Riku default back into snarky, arrogant asshole mode, which doesn’t fit his character at this point at all. Also, while I saw no deliberate yaoi bait in the writing of the KH2 game, it’s definitely present in these novels.

- Axel. Oh my God. Anyone who hates what was done with him as Lea in the games, you should blame Kanemaki, since she actually ran with that kind of writing and characterization for him in these novels long before that happened in the games. He is treated as a totally trustworthy good guy who is a great friend to Roxas, Riku and Namine. The one dick move Kanemaki has him make is quickly backtracked on and then swept under the rug. His whole villainous role is whitewashed at every turn, from both what he intended with Roxas (legit deciding to kill him is changed to attempting a murder/suicide so that he can die with his best friend) to everything concerning Kairi (no, he didn’t kidnap her at all, that point is hammered in frequently, he was going to take her to Namine and they’d then see Sora together! And he didn’t want to turn Sora into a Heartless, that was a wrongful assumption on Saix’s part! And Saix summoned those Dusks on Destiny Islands, not Axel! Axel is chivalrous and heroic and does everything possible to protect and save Kairi! Gag me.) It’s so obnoxious, and beyond removing all of the character’s edge, it’s a blatant case of giving a character a major role in a story that they aren’t supposed to have one in just because he’s a favorite of the writer.

- Namine is an equally blatant case of this, but her case might be even worse. Not only is she THE source of the repetitive woe-is-me existential Nobody monologues and debates, with her whole character arc being changed to revolve around this which honestly makes her unintentionally unsympathetic and annoying, but this portrayal of her has a negative effect on her in both fandom and canon. In terms of fandom, a cult of bad apples (usually yaoi fangirls who already hated Kairi) arose around Namine following KH2, declaring her as superior to Kairi in every way and worthy of being the real main heroine of the KH series. Not only is this false, but it arguably got started because of these novels (translations of which had made their way online long before they were localized), where a character who literally only got 10 minutes of screentime in the game literally gets transformed into the main heroine and one of the most frequently appearing characters in general, even if her “character development” is horribly written and amounts to her being a mouthpiece for Kanemaki’s views. Then again, maybe they just projected onto Namine due to her introverted, fond-of-drawing nature, and Kanemaki was just one of them and thus produced something that kept them going. It’s a Chicken/Egg type of thing, I guess. But whatever the case, what it did in canon was worse. Kanemaki was the first to write for Namine after KH2, in 358/2 Days, and her characterization of her translated in game form to the stagnant caricatured plot device that Nomura then realized was easy to write for and convenient for making other convoluted plot turns happen. 

- Come to think of it, Kanemaki’s partnering up with Nomura for Days probably did a lot more harm than just with Namine. Because her obsession with the “What Measure is a Non-Human?” trope never truly leaves the series after Days. It doesn’t pop up in BBS, since that was being worked on before Days, but everything afterwards is sure to feature it in some abysmal way or another, whether it be Nobodies, replicas, data copies or beings of pure darkness. The “Nobodies have hearts after all” comes straight from her writing (even if she had it as a needless overcomplication of the original idea that strong hearts can share feelings with those without it and thus serve as a heart for them too, while Nomura’s retcon is just “Nah, the body can regrow a heart, Xemnas lied”.) A lot of KH3′s worst writing might have not existed had Nomura not picked up on Kanemaki’s fixation with woobified “non-beings”.

- Sora honestly feels like an afterthought for Kanemaki. She’s so eager to write new fanficcy material for other characters, but not for the actual main protagonist, who only gets straight-up game adaptation. Oh, except that some of his lines that were “mean” to the Nobodies (and thus “OOC”, as both KH2-hating anon and Kanemaki seem to think) are changed or cut out.

- Y’know how the KH2 manga made Kairi even better than her game portrayal? Yeah, well this novel makes her far worse. First off, her defiant “you’re not acting very friendly!” to Axel is cut because Axel is whitewashed in that moment (he even readies himself to defend Kairi from the Dusks which Saix summons). Later, she does not get away from Axel because he was never kidnapping her to begin with here. She then realizes that he’s really a good person before Saix kidnaps her, with Axel desperately trying to protect her. She then only shows up toward the end when Axel once again comes to be her hero (again thwarted by that dastardly Saix), with her moping about how she can do nothing to help the brave, noble Axel. (I feel sick just typing this...) In the finale, not only does Kanemaki not take advantage of the potential Kairi development that the game relegated to optional text boxes, but she actually destroys Kairi’s entire arc long before BBS did by making one of her few additions to Kairi be an inner monologue she has on the shore of Destiny Islands alongside Mickey, Donald and Goofy just before Sora and Riku make it back, where she’s just wishing with all her heart that they’ll come back because “We’re here waiting for you. We’ll always wait for you.” BULL-FUCKING-SHIT. Kanemaki, just like Nomura and Oka, clearly has no interest in Kairi as a character on her own. She is used here as a plot device for the character development of Axel and Namine, characters she is interested in, even though Kairi had more significance and screentime than them by far in the actual KH2 game. Geez, even Nojima tried with her!

- Roxas is written just fine during the prologue, since his scenes are just lifted from the game. But when he resurfaces in the final novel, added material make Axel be the most important thing on his mind. Even his final thoughts as he makes the full merging with Sora is that he hopes to meet Axel again. More deliberate yaoi-baiting, and more shoving Axel down our throats. Hell, that last novel is even named “Anthem - Meet Again / Axel Last Stand”. God damn it, Kanemaki, Axel was not important to KH2. It’s not his story. Get over it already!

- Hey, remember how in the game DiZ/ Ansem the Wise did a total character 180 due to offscreen reasons when he came back after the prologue? That was dumb. The novels add new scenes for him, so Kanemaki could actually rectify this issue....OR she just repeats it, since the first new scene she gives him also has him in 180 mode due to offscreen reasons! 

- Xemnas and Saix both have their levels of menace neutered thanks to the existential angst of the Nobodies affecting them too, with none of their inner monologues bemoaning their fates really adding up with their actions. The game let you make up your own mind as to whether you found them sympathetic despite their monstrous behavior, but Kanemaki is clearly trying to force the sympathy angle, and it really lessens them, especially Xemnas. 

- Really, only Xigbar, Xaldin, Demyx, Luxord, and the trio of Hayner, Pence and Olette were written completely accurately out of the KH-original cast. Nothing felt out of place with them.

- Other nonsensical fanficcy events besides what I’ve already mentioned include bringing stuff from COM (like Repliku) back up frequently instead of keeping focus on the story at hand, a totally different version of how Namine and Axel split from Riku following the prologue (one that continues making Namine unintentionally unsympathetic), Riku having Mickey make the promise after the prologue before Kanemaki’s own 358/2 Days retcons this to happening before it, Riku meeting with Maleficent in Hollow Bastion, Mickey meeting with Axel in Hollow Bastion, Axel being the one to wake Goofy up after his “death”, Axel having a sort of odd friendship with Pluto, Ansem the Wise being the one to provide the box of clues for Riku to give, Axel pretending to betray Riku and Namine so that he gets let back into the Organization and thus be able to rescue Kairi, meetings between the Organization where they talk about totally different and less interesting matters than they did in the game, and having Namine stalk the group throughout the finale as she thinks her last pretentious inner monologues. Also, given its subject matter and how it plays during Days’ opening, I swear to God that Kanemaki created the Axel/Roxas ghost scene that Nomura added to KH2:FM. That it shows up in the last novel, word-for-word, a month before KH2:FM’s release, proves this.

- The misplacement of Disney Castle. This one REALLY bothers me. She places Disney Castle between Beast’s Castle and Port Royal in the third novel. This makes no sense whatsoever, since not only was this meant to be Maleficent’s re-introduction to Sora, Donald and Goofy, but now it comes after Maleficent already made an alliance with Sora and his friends at Hollow Bastion! And then all of a sudden, she’s no longer keeping the Nobodies at bay and is back to self-interested villainy! And there isn’t any dialogue explaining this away or anything!  We still have Maleficent saying “If it isn't the wretched Keyblade holder and his pitiful lackeys!” as if she hadn’t agreed to temporarily join forces with said wretched Keyblade holder and his pitiful lackeys! Way to ruin one of the best Disney world visits, Kanemaki!

- The whole finale and especially the ending itself, which were so powerful in both the game and even the manga, has no power in the light novel style of writing Kanemaki uses. Part of that isn’t Kanemaki’s fault, since so much of the finale’s greatness is visual and that obviously can’t be recaptured in text form. And yet she still makes some baffling pacing decisions, with stuff like the aforementioned Namine stalking passages throwing the whole thing off, LOL moments such as Riku himself outright admitting that he has no idea where he got Kairi’s Keyblade also breaking the immersion, character alterations like to Xemnas and Kairi ruining the effectiveness of things they do, and a truly WTF-inducing final chapter where the entire Secret Ansem Report is put before a novelization of both the credits scene where Sora sees Kairi’s drawing in the Secret Place and the epilogue scene where they get the King’s letter.

Overall, these novels just don’t feel like Kingdom Hearts II to me. Even the KH2 manga, the middle of its first half notwithstanding, felt like it. This does not. And that’s because whatever the faults in its narrative, KH2′s story was first and foremost a fun Disney/Square crossover adventure starring Sora, Donald and Goofy, with angsty existentialism merely being one of its themes and meant more for players to think about and discuss rather than the characters. The novels tell a story about angsty existentialism starring characters who think about and discuss it, with Sora, Donald and Goofy’s adventures being a passionless afterthought. That there are people who honestly think that Kanemaki doing this “fleshes out the characters” is shameful. Constant angst and grade school-level philosophical circle-jerking is not character depth. It is pretension of depth, hence the word “pretentious” which fits perfectly here. It takes a lot more than talking and expressing feelings at length to constitute character development. It requires meaningful actions, and it requires some form of growth and change. Kanemaki’s characters are largely static, simplistically characterized beings who spin their wheels in terms of both actions and growth. Riku does not change: you can barely tell he has any kind of depression or has experienced any kind of humbling. Axel does not change: he’s a great guy from the start and has no internal problems to overcome, only the external one of being separated from Roxas. Namine does not change, she goes through the same questioning and angsting over her existence and the existence of other Nobodies until the last minute where the answer just suddenly comes to her (in fact, it was apparently in her all along and she just forgot it. Shades of Sora’s dumbass “Power of Waking” arc in KH3 here...)  Any actual development that happens with some characters (like Ansem the Wise) comes straight from the game...and Nojima didn’t write that all too well either!  There is just very little that’s enjoyable about the KH2 novels to me, and Tomoko Kanemaki’s writing is to blame for that.

In the words of Lemony Snicket: I highly advise you to not read these books.

[traincat]

i just found out about the gwen and norman babies and i’m just wondering what the fuck

“What the fuck” is a pretty accurate summary, but okay, so. Story time, because while this ask refers to the developments of a story called Sins Past (Amazing Spider-Man #509-#514), in which it was revealed that Gwen Stacy had twins fathered by Norman Osborn, to grasp the full story here we’ve got to go back to a little bit to before the death of Gwen Stacy.

In Amazing Spider-Man #93, after George Stacy’s death, his brother Arthur invites Gwen to come stay with his family in England. (This is notably where The Amazing Spider-Man 2 gets its “Gwen moving to England” storyline.) Peter had been planning to propose to her, but freezes up under the knowledge that Gwen blames Spider-Man for her father’s death:

Gwen takes it as a rejection, and leaves to go stay with her aunt and uncle in England. One thing I don’t think gets touched on enough with Gwen is that she’s very empathic, and good at picking up on all of Peter’s feelings and cues – it’s just that she doesn’t have the full context to interpret them. This also isn’t the first time Peter’s been in this situation; after he graduated high school, knowing that Ned Leeds had proposed to Betty Brant, Peter also had planned to propose to her, somewhat secure in the knowledge that Betty would’ve chosen him over Ned. (She would’ve, and in fact when Betty’s marriage to Ned began falling apart much later, she and Peter briefly engaged in an affair.) But when Betty says she could never love a man who was an adventurer, “a man who risks his life each day”, Peter realizes that as Spider-Man it wouldn’t be fair to propose to her and storms out.

(He notably did not take into consideration that he was a high school graduate with a freelance job who still lived with his aunt in the “to propose or not to propose” dilemma. Typical.)

Gwen would return to New York in Amazing Spider-Man #98 – a whole five issues later. Coincidentally, this also marked the return of the Green Goblin, Norman’s memories of Peter’s secret identity as Spider-Man having returned. The Green Goblin was briefly stopped when Peter used the sight of Harry – who was suffering from a drug overdose – to shock Norman out of the Green Goblin persona. With Norman once again unaware that his son’s best friend and roommate was Spider-Man, Harry on the mend, and Gwen back from England, everything was coming up Parker and, though no specific details had been ironed out, Peter and Gwen were set to marry. (I think it’s important to note with PeterGwen how serious they were, and that they were planning to get married.)

But, famously, that didn’t last – Norman did remember, during a particularly nasty overdose of Harry’s, and he kidnapped and killed Gwen in Amazing Spider-Man #121. 

So with all that in mind, let’s talk Sins Past itself. This got long. More under the cut.

Alright, so, all that said and done – in Sins Past, the story is flipped on its head. In Amazing Spider-Man #509, Peter receives a letter from Gwen, allegedly written while she was in Paris, indicating that when she died she did so with some kind of secret. The letter arrives incomplete, the secret unrevealed.

Furthermore, two mysterious (and super-powered) shadowy figures are trying to kill Peter, but that’s just like, a Wednesday for him. Along the way, and with a stunning admission from Mary Jane, it’s revealed that the two shadowy would-be assassins are Gwen’s twin children, and that their father is Norman Osborn. 

Yeah.

The twins – Sarah and Gabriel Stacy – are aging preternaturally fast because of the Goblin serum Norman had dosed himself with. They were also born after only seven months – but the infants weren’t premature. It’s revealed that that’s why Gwen left for Europe, not, in fact, to stay with her father’s family, but to secretly have her children.

Yeah.

The twins were brought up in France by Norman, kept isolated from the world, and raised as trained fighters who believed that Peter was their father, and that he had abandoned them and killed their mother. So now they’re here to kill him.

Yeah.

So we’ll pause here to take some questions.

1) “What? Why? What?”

So initially, writerJ. Michael Straczynski wanted Sarah and Gabriel to be Peter’s children with Gwen. This was nixed by Marvel, under the belief that having two adult children would age the character too much. I mean, they’re actually like, seven years old, but okay. Denying Peter the status of fatherhood because it would “age him” too much is a frustrating pattern in Spider-Man canon: Norman notably orchestrated the murder of Peter and MJ’s baby several years before. Instead of chucking the story out of the window altogether, which you know, would have been my first pick, it was reworked so that Norman was the father of Gwen’s children, because that was so much better than Peter discovering he had children with one of the people he loved most in the world. Comics are here to be a frustrating experience for everyone.

2) “So Gwen cheated on Peter?”

This is a frustrating take on the situation I’ve seen on more than one anti-Gwen post, painting Gwen as the villain of the piece for sleeping with Norman, instead of as a vulnerable young woman taken advantage of by the father of one of her best friends, a disturbingly realistic scenario before you ever even add in the fact that Norman is a literal supervillain. When Gwen recounts her one sexual encounter with Norman to Mary Jane, she herself seems confused about how and why she ended up in the situation. While I don’t think the intent was to have the encounter be out and out nonconsensual, there’s more than enough room to wonder. 

This is a very emotional time for the cast of Spider-Man; George Stacy is dead. Gwen blames Spider-Man and Peter is dealing with that and the way he is dealing with it is making Gwen doubt his love for her. Both Harry and Norman are falling apart in very different ways. Sometimes, things happen and situations arise and there’s no planning involved; “naive young woman is seduced by the darkness inside of an older man” is a tired trope, but a prevalent one. In any event, even if Gwen did deliberately cheat on Peter (which, no matter how you read the issue of consent in Sins Past, is clearly not what Gwen describes to Mary Jane), she was taken advantage of by an older man in a position of power over her, and after she had his children he turned around, killed her, and raised and abused her children to believe that the man Gwen wanted to raise them had abandoned them and murdered Gwen. So there’s no version of events here in which Gwen Stacy is the bad guy, and using that argument to prop up one of Peter’s other love interests as a better person than her is a bad take. There are no “good people” here: these are fictional characters who have been handled by many different creators over the years. They cannot make their own choices.

3) “Wait, J. Michael Straczynski? Isn’t that the guy whose Spider-Man comics you’re always telling people to read?”

Haha yeah it sure is!! It can be rough recommending a whole run, because the longer they get, the greater the chance there is of there being that one story in there you reaaaaally don’t think is for everyone, which is Sins Past. And this is tough, because as much as I don’t think Sins Past should be in continuity, JMS’ amazing voices for both Peter and Mary Jane never falters.

There are a lot of different kinds of bad stories in mainstream superhero comics: bad plot, bad characterization; good plot, bad characterization; bad plot, good characterization – and those are just some of the possible bad story combinations. I think Sins Past is a bad plot that’s very disrespectful to a female character whose legacy was already her brutal death at the hands of a supervillain. Reframing that death so that, instead of merely being at the wrong place at the wrong time and paying the ultimate price, Norman purposefully hunted down Gwen before she could tell Peter about her twins, doesn’t help. As a fan of Gwen, I don’t like her part in this story and I personally don’t think it should exist (as the story it currently is, and I’ll touch on that later) in continuity. I think it should be explicitly retconned out in a way that brooks no argument. (JMS himself has said he wished to retcon it out, but wasn’t allowed.)

That being said, have I read this like eight times? You bet. I think the art is stunning, I think JMS’ is really an incredible talent when it comes to writing Peter, who can be, to put it simply, a difficult character to get. I find the PeterMJ scenes are beautiful, as are Peter’s melancholy-tinged memories of Gwen. Also, I love comic book garbage. Skrulls? Clones? Robots? A character’s long lost children, artificially aged to adulthood and back to kill their supposed father? Oh my God, that’s so stupid. I want twenty of it.

So my feelings here are really mixed. I don’t like the rewrite of Gwen’s history. I don’t like that this is in serious continuity (and I’ll touch on that in a moment). Additionally, I don’t think the timeline really works – I’ve never felt Gwen was abroad for quite that long, even with the sped up pregnancy, and when she does come back, there’s quite a lot of time for her to tell Peter, which was something Sins Past had made clear she’d intended to do. But whatever, retcons are retcons, they rarely if ever are perfect fits. I do like the characterization of Peter and Mary Jane, and I like it a lot. If I had to pick a story that in my own opinion perfectly highlights how Peter experiences every single strong emotion, it would be this one, which is unfortunate because, well, everything else about this. It is unfortunately totally believable to me that Norman would have slept with Gwen and then killed her, but tbh if I was picking a member of Peter’s social circle who would willingly sleep with Norman, it’d be Flash, who briefly worked for Norman and was quite enamored by him – before he waterboarded Flash with whiskey, strapped him into a semi-truck, and made him crash into Midtown High, landing him in a coma. Oh, and then, way later, also murdering him. Norman’s gonna Norman.

Like I said: mixed feelings.

3) “Wait, but is it in continuity when it’s almost never brought up again, and nobody, not Peter or Mary Jane or Norman, mentions it even when it would make sense to and also nobody wants this in continuity anymore?”

Hhhh yeah it unfortunately is, and I’ll outline why, because it would have been so easy to take it out of continuity. So Sins Past takes place shortly before One More Day, wherein Aunt May was shot following the events of Civil War, during which Peter had revealed his identity on national television and the Spider-Man cat was out of the bag. In One More Day, Peter’s offered a choice by Mephisto: his marriage for his aunt’s life. Ultimately, unable to live with himself if he says no, Peter agrees. The marriage (although notably not the long term committed relationship – in the altered timeline, Peter and Mary Jane were still together from the date of their wedding to just after Civil War) was erased from the timeline, Aunt May was saved, and Peter’s identity was once again hidden from the world and from many of the people who had already know, like Felicia Hardy, the Fantastic Four, and most notably from Aunt May. There were also some additional changes made: most notably, Harry Osborn, who died in Spectacular Spider-Man #200, the best issue of all time, was alive. Clearly, the changes to the narrative’s web, if you will, extended beyond the framework of just Peter and Mary Jane’s marriage. Like I said: basically nobody talks about this story. It shows up on lists of the worst comic book plots of all time all the time. The characters almost never bring up Gabriel or Sarah – there is a sequel story called Sins Remembered: Sarah’s Story (The Spectacular Spider-Man vol 2 issues #23-26), written by Samm Barnes, where Sarah sends for Peter’s help in Paris and he does his level best to be her dad.

But of course all is not as it seems blah blah. I won’t say it’s the worst comic I’ve ever read. 

It would have been easy, then, to retcon Gabriel and Sarah out with Brand New Day, since nobody ever talks about them or wants this story to be in continuity, including its original writer. Right?

Wrong. In the American Son miniseries, which is post-Brand New Day, Gabriel Stacy makes a prominent reappearance, although Sarah’s whereabouts are unknown.

I’ll be honest: I personally don’t consider this series of events to be canon. I never mention or include it. As far as I’m concerned, it’s extra-canon material, not to be counted. But that’s just me personally as a reader. If I was asked whether or not this was actually canon, in that it was published and not retconned back out – the answer is yes, the twins exist in canon. Not my personal canon, but the actual canon.

But we could fix that.

4) “Well, Traincat,” said nobody, “how WOULD you fix Gabriel and Sarah Stacy so that the twins could be kept in continuity without everyone screaming?”

Great question, me! I would fix it with the greatest out Spider-Man storytelling has ever given us: clones. It’s very notable that Sarah looks exactly like Gwen…

Gabriel was specifically drawn with a strong resemblance to Peter. Look at that. The Osborn hair doesn’t spare people that way. The answer then, becomes simple: keep the story. Keep Gabriel and Sarah. But have them be revealed as two of the Jackal’s Peter and Gwen clones. It’s a better explanation for why Gabriel and Sarah would be adults than “the goblin serum did it”, and planting the twins, who could fully believe they were who they said they were with the use of artificial memories, in Peter’s path as a form of psychological torment fits with many of villains – presenting Spider-Man with the children of his lost love, fathered by one of his greatest enemies, as a form of torture. As for Mary Jane’s recount of when she found out, well – the same thing: implanted memories. There are more than enough characters on the Marvel landscape who are capable of that. It’d be pretty easy to pull off, since Marvel seems stubbornly set on keeping Gabriel and Sarah on the playing field, and honestly, it makes a lot more sense. Clones! (Let me pull it off, Marvel!!)

One final note: Sins Past outright alleges that Gwen and Peter never had sex, because Peter knows from the start in the story that they couldn’t be his children. To which I would like to say: lol yeah right.

So that’s (probably more than you wanted to know about) Sins Past!