#Even if all three versions have their differences due to their distinct backgrounds

[burningexeter]

Here's an entire pitch that I came up with for a spin-off video game called "A Tale Of Darkness" that brings together Tangled and Frozen in an unconventional way.

It's a dark fantasy action adventure video game that is a Tangled/Frozen female-led crossover in a different continuity, has Devil May Cry-influenced gameplay and has a mixture of high-quality computer animated cutscenes that advance the story in their own different and unique ways.

Premise:

"A Tale Of Darkness" tells the story of Anna, the sweet and kind-hearted but klutzy and socially awkward young peasant woman who is too clumsy for her own good, always leaving a mess of a trail behind much to her frustration and is seen as an outcast. It's then on one night after humiliating herself at the "Fall Harvest" due to an incident with a pig that her life is turned completely upside-down when living shadows abduct her mother and 10-year-old sister and take them into the deepest and darkest part of the forest.

There, Anna finds herself in a hidden but deadly magical world right under our noses in an attempt to rescue them against all the odds as she now has a hardened armor attached to her body that gives her pale white skin and incredible fighting skills which she now has to use in order to survive and save her mother and sister.

Along the way not only must Anna overcome the highest stakes possible ranging from the numerous macabre creatures to this hidden world's leader whose responsible for everything occurring to said leader's female soldiers with the same armor, pale skin and skills but also find it in herself the courage, maturity and strength she never knew she had.

However in doing so, Anna ends up unintentionally attracting the attention of a certain soldier by the name of Elsa who later towards the final act offers to team up with Anna after not only being impressed with her skills especially in their previous encounters but also finding out her leader's true intentions.

Notes/Trivia/Details:

• The gameplay will be heavily influenced by a lot of the free-world and combat of the first Devil May Cry game and even The Nightmare Before Christmas: Oogie's Revenge while at the same time taking what made those gameplays distinctive and making it all its own.... and also fixing all of the problems RebelTaxi had with Oogie's Revenge in his review.

• As for the aesthetic, like I said it will have the same quality of animation that the films, short and special all have with the cutscenes and aforementioned gameplay being done by WDAS. But at the same time, it will also have a gothic and macabre style to it that is almost Tim Burton-reminiscant especially with the backgrounds.

• Kristen Bell, Idina Menzel, Mandy Moore and Eden Espinosa will all reprise their roles of Anna, Elsa, Rapunzel and Cassandra. The latter three characters are now in this version or continuity part of the army of soldiers with Cass being a maniacal and manipulative one who later uses it for good, Rapunzel being the good-natured one who always gets pushed around quite literally but finally has enough and finds her own inner strength and Elsa being at first the loyal mook who follows any order that she's told and only breaks them when she feels or thinks it's for the better but then teams up with Anna when she finds out her leader's real plans.

• Three new characters are three grey-skinned female vampires with their own bombastic and enjoyably twisted personalities - Cherry, Elise and Athena - that just like Elsa, Rapunzel and Cass will turn around to the good side through their own means. Influenced by the Brides from Van Helsing in their winged bat forms minus the wings and less over-the-top as they were.

• Anna, Elsa, Rapunzel and Cass will have the same type of armor that Cass had in Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure S3 when she fused with the Moonstone, pale skin and all while at the same time keeping the colors of their hair so said color pops - Anna's hair is brown, Elsa's hair is white, Rapunzel's hair is golden blonde and Cassandra's hair is black. Meanwhile with their armor - Anna's armor is brown, Elsa's armor is white, Rapunzel's armor is purple and Cassandra's armor is black.

• The game will have a dark and intense, scary edge to it that shows us the dangers and stakes that all of the characters, especially Anna, are in and to balance out the lighter aspects. For example, when Anna accidentally ends up falling on Elsa.... Elsa devours her whole. Only for Anna to blast her way out of Elsa's stomach using something she ate way earlier and for later, Elsa puts herself back together in one.

• As for the villain of the video game, the leader that I've mentioned is named Eris and is a cunning, cold-hearted and ferocious master who is later on revealed to have a code she goes by when push comes to shove while at the same time never losing her menace.

• SPOILERS: How it ends is that after going through hell and back and a larger climax than you think, Anna is reunited with her mother and sister only to find out when they're asleep that she still has her armor and that Elsa, Rapunzel, Cassandra, Cherry, Elise and Athena all followed her into her world with Elsa proposing that they use their skills for good and that her and Anna become a couple. Without any other choice, Anna's forced to agree with Elsa embracing her.

Remember, different continuity. They are not related here as they honestly should've been from the getco.

One final thing that should be interesting is without it being obvious is that every now and then there are a few easter eggs that heavily imply a retroactive shared universe and it could be in a shared universe. It's through objects that Eris collects.

[masseffectechoes]

How do you continue the Mass Effect series in the Milky Way when the original trilogy is so antagonistic to anything being canon?

I'm not talking about Mass Effect 3's ending choices, those are just the tip of the iceberg. Mass Effect’s choice-based design means there are millions upon millions of Shepards, with different names and sexes and races and backgrounds well before we get into the colossal number of choices big and small that shape each playthrough. How do you pick just one of those to be canon?

My "sequel" concept both sidesteps the issue of continuity and embraces the spirit of choice to proudly proclaim that they're all canon. Ludmilla Shepard, the Engineer who cured the Genophage but got her whole crew killed, is canon. Hakeem Shepard, the Vanguard who kept Grunt in a pod and never got drunk with Dr. Chakwas, is canon. Even Shepards who didn't date Garrus or Tali are canon. All of them are canon, because all of them take place in an alternate universe, with similar but distinct variants that make each player's experience unique.

Mass Effect Echoes takes place in a universe much like the one the Original Trilogy introduced us to, reshaped by a single seismic difference: when humanity activates Relay 314, it goes unnoticed by turian patrols.

While this change alone assures a very different reality than the one we're used to, everything changes in 2186, when millions of alternate Shepards' timelines converged with the release of a catastrophic burst of energy. Regardless of what each Shepard chose to do with this energy, the effect is so potent and simultaneous that ripple effects are felt in the Echoes reality, resulting in three major events: all relays shut down temporarily, every keeper in the Citadel dies, and the Reapers, who haven't even begun their conquest of the galaxy, are destroyed.

Mass Effect Echoes begins in 2192, six years after the Surge upends galactic politics. Committed to finding the source of this shutdown out of fear the relays may fail again, a team of scientific ships are combing the galaxy for answers and solutions. And while they dodged the ultimate bullet of the Reapers, the denizens of this galaxy must contend with threats old and new as fear dominates the Milky Way.

As a further meta-commentary on this game’s relationship with the Original Trilogy, a major theme of the game is rebelling against expectations established by the classic games. Your squad is full of oddballs and revolutionaries, and your ship’s resident Spectre is David Anderson’s old friend and colleague Saren Arterius, who thanks to a different First Contact War is now chummy as hell with humanity despite his occasional ruthless streak (tamped down due to lack of radicalization, but still present). That said, my goal is creating a realistic alternate timeline, which means characters who were very young before the timeline split will have radically different lives and will likely not be seen beyond maybe a cameo (sorry Garrus!), and any character born after the split will not exist (sorry Tali!); to use Tali as an example, while it’s certainly possible that her parents had a child in this timeline, and even named the child “Tali” if it was a girl, this version would be more like a sibling than the Tali we know, as the odds of getting the exact same kid are statistically impossible (as twins show, not even identical circumstances of conception guarantees the same appearance or personality). The butterfly effect can be cruel.

A final goal is to explore new sides of the Milky Way in a similar way that Mass Effect 2 provided; your crew includes a raloi (an offscreen race whose introduction to the Council was cut short by the war) and we finally get a batarian squadmate to gain perspective about their culture. It’s frankly weird as hell that the Original Trilogy features only a handful of female turians (DLC-only) and zero female batarians, drell, volus, or elcor (unless we count voice lines from Blasto); the dearth of female salarians and krogans at least gets explained on a cultural level. Andromeda does a decent job rectifying this where it could, but for some reason forgets the position of codified societal power that female salarians have over male salarians (somehow one of them is a receptionist?). All of this will be fixed! We’ll see what an actual galactic civilization would look like without the bizarre absence of folks who aren’t adult men, which means we include children as well here and there (we’re gonna see tiny elcor with slow helium voices if it’s the last thing I do).

If this at all sounds like your cup of tea, read on! I've got a full set of squadmates, three games in a trilogy plotted out, and the nitty gritty of gameplay details (new classes! new powers!) all written up. Enjoy!

[jeoseungsaja]

♚ HOW ART IS SEEN

Art is something that the current three versions of my muse share. All of them appreciate it and/or embrace it in different shapes or forms. 

VERSE ONE: DEATH WILL FIND YOU.

◍ In the show, it is seen that Reaper, during his life in Goryeo as the King Wang Yeo, draws and paints a picture of the Queen, Kim Sun, years after she passes away. It’s, in a sense, seen as a way for him to express his deep pain and regret toward what he did when he was younger. He spends hours upon hours trying to get the perfect drawing; makes a mess with other failed drafts until he gets to the one pictured above. Kim Shin takes the painting with him and keeps it safe throughout he centuries; becoming an important piece that leads Reaper to know more about himself and the sting he carries.  ◍ Based on this, I’d like to think that Reaper unconsciously has a link with art, even if he no longer remembers that he used to paint and draw. He appreciates paintings, feels a sort of calling toward them but he cannot explain why.  ◍ Of course, his painting skills won’t be as they used to, since he has no memory of them. However, if someone were to teach him and guide him on how to paint, he’d be able to pick it up easily, as if he was born for it. This is because his life was once tied to this type of art. Not that he’ll learn within seconds, but perhaps he’ll be capable to have a fair grasp in a shorter period of time compared to average.  ◍ In modern days, he doesn’t really do any drawings or paintings. He does visit art exhibitions from time to time because he likes looking at the art others display, but hasn’t really tried to create his own. One of the things he does on paper, though, is write in Hanja with a writing brush and black ink. He actually has scrolls upon scrolls in his room and these papers are usually crowded with messages holding his thoughts about who he could’ve been in the past. 

VERSE THREE: I DREAMED OF A HAPPY ENDING.

◍  In this verse, Hyuk is also tied to his past life even if he doesn’t know it (or...even if he hasn’t deciphered that his nightmares are connected to his past life), and so, some things were carried over, such as his ability to draw and paint.  ◍ This is one of the few hobbies that Hyuk actively pursues and it helps him to relax and distract himself. The painting technique he usually uses the most is watercolor; sometimes he’ll combine charcoal with the watercolor once it’s fully dry; do some blending if needed.  ◍ His sketches consist of faces, mostly.  He can certainly draw other things, but he prefers to do portraits the most. Hyuk really finds the diversity in faces interesting and beautiful; how every single person is different in their own way, not only physically but also in how they build their lives. As well, in this verse, he deals with people who aren’t exactly the best, especially when it comes to solving cases and being witness of gruesome things, so to find the beauty or believe there’s still good in people sort of inspires him and gives him ease.  ◍ He tends to draw the faces of people he’s fond of. Also, he’s made drawings of the faces he’s seen in his nightmares, since some are very (and inexplicably) vivid. He also creates his own ‘characters’, just a mixture of features that come to mind and such; lets his mind run freely when needed.  ◍ This detective here has a lot of sketchbooks and notebooks full of painted pages, all saved in specific drawers. He also has a small area where he gathers all his paint tubes, brushes; all the items and materials he needs to paint. ◍ He doesn’t really share the fact that he paints/sketches/draws. It’s like a ‘hidden hobby’ that only people very close and dear to him might know about. Since he pursues this hobby as a form of catharsis, he prefers to keep it private. 

VERSE FOUR: VERMEIL GUARDIAN

◍ Wang Yeo used to pursue the art of painting and drawing back in his times as a King. It’s something that I mention on this post as well. ◍ He draws whenever inspiration strikes and likes to do it as to capture memorable events or people in his life, as well as important information that’s easier to identify through drawings.  ◍ He can paint about any topic, but his top two are nature and the faces of people he’s fond of.  ◍ When it comes to nature, he’ll make sketches about flowers, trees, herbs, etc. He actually has a series of journals that he started making years ago, where he’s been drawing medicinal and useful plants. All of these drawings have notes with their importance and uses (sometimes they have recipes or how to use them when dealing with particular situations). The drawings featured in these journals were sketched with pencil and/or ink brushes.  ◍ When he does more intricate drawings, sometimes he likes to add color and will also pursue the watercolor way; following softer hues. Most of the times, though, he leaves his drawings in a black and white format.  ◍ Out of the three, Yeo is the messiest with his hands because he likes to blend charcoal with his fingertips and when he adds color, chances are his fingers and knuckles are going to end up with temporary paint freckles.  ◍ Another type of art Yeo does is Oshibana, which is the “art of using pressed flowers and other botanical materials to create an entire picture from these natural elements.“ (thnx Wikipedia). He also uses pressed flowers to arrange them in frames and put them in resin; creating small ornaments for his cabin. 

[cryptidmads]

good evening nsr community, i went through the ama from today and came back with an armful or two of lore. there’s a bunch more than last time, and i included bbj as well as the npcs. cozy up, check under the cut, and prepare for a long read. enjoy!

today's ama featured wan hazmer and daim dziauddin again, as well as concept artist ellie and animator ben fong.

BUNK BED JUNCTION (FT. DK WEST)

- mayday and zuke live in the sewers because they're an underground band. it's a pun - there were originally two variations of bbj leaving the sewers - one with mayday hi-fiving gigi (which had a 95% chance of happening), and one with zuke awkwardly fumbling and attempting to hi-five gigi (which had a 5% chance) - one of the inspirations for mayday and zuke were the two main characters of samurai champloo (zuke was jin, mayday was mugen) - someone asked about if the rest of the cast had their own shadow puppets. ben suggested a lemur for mayday, while ellie suggested a zucchini for zuke. she may have been joking. - mayday's guitar solos were done by different people, but zuke's drum solos were all done by bruno valverde. - zuke was the one who implemented the canister thing into mayday's guitar. - someone asked who of the cast are the introverts and who are the extroverts. mayday is an extrovert, zuke is an introvert. - the team does have a bit of lore for mayday and zuke and how they met, but they want to save it in case of a future project. - mayday was inspired by both genevieve from company of thieves and the unbreakable kimmy schmidt. - ben did the animation for mayday swinging the hammer in the workshop. - haz recalls seeing some fanart of mayday being brought up as a rich girl. he doesn't remember the artist, but he does like the idea. - the japanese version has zuke say he has a phd rather than a master's degree. this is apparently a mistake. - the pattern on zuke's pants was inspired by jolyne cujoh and prosciutto from jojo's bizarre adventure. - zuke's toilet seat collection came partially from a story from one of the environmental artists where one of their high school friends pranked another friend with a toilet seat. - zuke does a lot of reading and is naturally inquisitive about things like tech and mechanics. - dk west's shadow puppet abilities might run in the family, and zuke may have it as well. - both zuke and dk west are connected by percussion (zuke with the drums, west with the hand claps) - zuke and west weren't always designed to be related -- west was originally designed as "some guy who comes and goes," but was made into zuke's brother later on in production - dk west is an extrovert.

DJ SUBATOMIC SUPERNOVA

- djss' dj name is obviously a stage name, but the team didn't have a real name for him in the script or anything. - haz joked that his name is bob salad. that's not canon but from what i seen the chat loved it lol - haz brings up the symbolism of djss spinning the planets around himself and how it represents that he thinks of himself as the center of the universe. - ellie helped design the districts, and something she noted about dj's is that it's supposed to look the "slummiest" because he cares more about himself and less about things like blackouts. - dj had some lines cut from his boss fight. those lines? mini lectures towards bbj during every phase. they were cut because the team felt like they were too much for the game, but they want to share them one day. - daim says that dj could be either introverted or extroverted becuase of how much time he spends alone looking at the stars. - dj was never planned to have an approach segment, but funk fiction wasn't told that, so he made him an approach theme anyway. - dodo ice pops are traffic light flavoured, which is a popular ice cream in malaysia. it's strawberry, pineapple, and lime flavored.

SAYU AND THE NERD SQUAD

- three of sayu's creators were based on staff members at metronomik. remi (voiced by ben) was based on one of the programmers and one of the environmental artists (ellie calls him "the lovechild of two dudes"), tila was based on (and voiced by) ellie herself, and dodo was based on danish mak (another environmental artist who also voices him). - sofa wasn't based on anyone in particular, he was more of a "general otaku guy" according to ellie (though haz joked that ellie could just say he was based on him). - dodo is daim's favorite npc -- he also designed him! - sayu was ellie's favorite character to design. she loves drawing mermaids. - the progression in sayu's fight where you go deeper into the "ocean" is supposed to be a metaphor for going deeper into the internet/the deep web. - ellie suggested that if sayu were to have a shadow puppet, it would be a cat. - as for the introvert/extrovert debate, daim says sayu is technically comprised of 4 introverts. sayu herself is the extrovert mask they wear. - sayu's ahoge is a submarine periscope. remi looks through it in one of the cutscenes. - sayu's not a mech. she's remotely controlled by her creators from their computer room. - the backstory between remi and tila is meant to show that artists can come from all sorts of backgrounds.

YINU AND MAMA

- yinu's promotional video was one of the first ones done before they brought in lzbros, so it originally looked different from how it looks in the game now. - yinu's mother's eyes are yellow because she spends most of the fight focusing on yinu (who is mainly yellow). when her eyes go blank white, it represents that she's momentarily forgotten what she loves the most. when her eyes become yellow again after the fight, it means she's remembered yinu and her piano playing. - the way ellie describes natura is that yinu is a plant and her mother is very protective of her, and one of the distinctive features is that there are a lot of domes with plants inside, particularly on the roofs of the houses. - yinu's commercial was not intended to reference little miss fortune. the commercial was shown in 2018, while LMF came out a year later. - yinu's mom turning into a giant tree monster isn't exclusive to her just being angry at bbj. apparently the whole plant thing runs in the yinu family.

1010

- 1010's concept as a boy band had been around since before the team started production, but they were the last to be fully designed -- their designs weren't finalized until way later on. - 1010 were ellie’s least favorite characters to design. she doesn't like drawing guys OR robots. - 1010's early designs had them wearing tuxedos. - 1010 do have memories. - the inspiration for the butt plates came from one of ben's gundam figures from his collection in the metronomik office. thanks ben. - ellie's favorite member of 1010 is purl-hew/blue. - eloni/green is apparently the rapper of the group. - the jingle you hear from the carousel in metro division is a carnival remix of 1010's boss theme. - the numbers underneath 1010's names on the autographs are completely random.

NEON J

- neon j is a dancer. daim explains that in addition to being in the navy, dance has always been his true passion. - in the final phase of 1010's fight, he was originally supposed to control the dance moves of the factory as he was fighting you, but it was cut due to limited resources. - daim designed neon j based on ellie's designs for 1010. - neon j's factory's dance moves were all animated by ben -- no mocap needed. the factory was also his favorite thing to animate. - daim says that "neon j is to tatiana as soundwave is to megatron." basically he is extremely loyal to tatiana. - neon j was one of earliest members of nsr. - neon j seeing 1010 as his sons wasn't planned, but daim loves the concept so much that he could see it being canon. - daim says neon j's brain is "probably" still inside the monitor head. somehow. - neon j is an extrovert. - haz likes the idea of neon j being blind and using his sonar to "see" things. ben joked that the screen worked like giant glasses. - neon j originally had red dots that would pop up on his face when the sonar moved by that were meant to represent acne, and that would've been the reason why he's mostly behind the scenes.

EVE

- in mayday's side of the room when eve splits up bbj, the hands all over the walls are meant to be there to show how eve is angrier at mayday than she is at zuke. - the time signature for the music in mayday's room during the fight is 6/8, whereas in zuke's room it's 4/4. - ellie suggested a platypus shadow puppet for eve. the rest of the team seems to be on board. - eve was ben's least favorite character to animate. he said he struggled with animating her dance moves because it was something he'd never done before, and he still doesn't think he did a good enough job. - eve was born with her split skin tone. - apparently eve's near scrapping had something to do with costs. haz was the one who stopped it from happening. - eve's outfit was partly inspired by beyonce, while her jacket was partly inspired by ariana grande. the team took some inspiration from bjork, as well. - the sleeves on eve's jacket were apparently limbs at one point. - eve is an introvert.

NPCS/OTHER CHARACTERS

- part of tatiana's symbolism is how she used to be a rock star, but her flame/passion slowly burned away, and now she's just a rock, referencing how she was literally on fire as the rock star kul fyra, but now looks burnt out. - daim thinks kliff is older than tatiana, probably over 50. - in addition to the neon j dance lore mentioned above, kayane rambling about neon j after the 1010 fight was supposed to be connected to her watching neon j dance. - ben and haz's favorite npc is mia, and ellie's is dj zam. - dj zam was inspired by one of ellie's college friends, who she says "makes you feel comfortable to be around". - ellie thinks dj zam's neck tattoo says "i love mom". - amal the unicorn was inspired by lady amalthea from the 80's animated film "the last unicorn". he was originally written to be a real talking unicorn, but it was changed partially because his horn wasn't in the right spot on his head. - zed was based on game designer dzaid and has hyperacusis, a hearing disorder that makes it difficult to deal with everyday sounds. - yiruk's name is an anagram of kiryu, the protagonist of the yakuza games. - chef sunshine's design is a homage to julia child. she originally had a bigger physique, but was changed to match lylia's bubbly performance.

[wedreamedlove]

Xu Mo vs. Mo Yi [Character Study]

I can never get over the aesthetic of these two pictures placed side by side LOL. But, anyway, the point of this post is to nip any undue comparisons in the bud and claims of copying organize my thoughts and compare these two characters to highlight their similarities, differences, and further explore each character through these contrasts.

Q) If you like Xu Mo, would you like Mo Yi?

Honestly, I think this depends on what you like most about Xu Mo. I already knew beforehand that I gravitate towards characters who think 5 steps ahead, are predominantly logical, and scholars/gentlemen, so it’s not surprising I bias both Xu Mo and Mo Yi.

However, as I got to know Mo Yi further (Themis is around 6 months old now), I find that he’s distinctively different from Xu Mo on three crucial points that’ll determine whether people from either camp will like the other character.

1) Stance on Others

In a post for Xu Mo, “Into Your World”, I argued that Xu Mo is an alienated genius who had troubles getting along with others, until he mastered the social game as an adult. However, you can still see glimpses of this as he tries to understand MC’s world and shares his own.

To be fair, Mo Yi’s past is still under wraps but I feel confident in saying that, while he was probably highly intelligent compared to his peers [SR Sculpted Heart], his isolation doesn’t seem to come from his innate nature but rather his social position (there’s heavy implications that he’s like some sort of noble or something) [SR Snowy Pine Fairytale].

IMO, these backgrounds really shaped the way these two men interact with the world.

Xu Mo has a detached and indifferent view towards other people. They simply exist and don’t bring anything positive or negative to him. His ambition to ensure the survival of humanity reflects this too because it’s pure utilitarianism; everyone (apart from MC) can be sacrificed equally for the greater good. If anything, he probably finds other people to be interesting subjects to study, no matter what kind of person they are. IIRC the only time he expressed dislike to people, or a group of people, was when he told Hades he enjoyed killing thieves LOL.

Meanwhile, Mo Yi has an elitist streak to the point where he and his MC actually clashed opinions and debated each other [SR Warm Fingertips]. It’s incredibly ironic because he’s a psychiatrist who treats his patients without judgment, but at the same time he looks down on so many things and people (PUAs, people who betray love, hypocrites who only seek power and fame) [Ch2; Personal Story Ch1-3; SSR Moonlit Ball].

One of the things I noticed early on is that Xu Mo draws from the Eastern scholar archetype, “Xu Mo Character Study”, while Mo Yi actually draws more from the Western gentleman archetype.

So, just to summarize this section, Xu Mo is detached from the world naturally and likes to observe people and try to blend in. Mo Yi deliberately draws a line between him and others and, at times, has the casual cruelty of someone born as nobility (arrogance is carved into his bones, even if he tends to keep it low-key because he generally has a “gentle and polite” attitude).

2) Stance on Love

Xu Mo didn’t understand love, or really even emotions. Love is grown between him and his MC (there’s multiple analogies throughout the game about how their love is like a seed). I think [Ch25] pretty much sums it up for Xu Mo, where he goes through that emotional rollercoaster and muses about how, at the end of human evolution, emotions should be discarded. He also admits that MC taught him the “fear” of a normal person, because now he has someone he cannot give up no matter what, which goes against his previous utilitarian beliefs.

Compared to this, Mo Yi fell in love at first sight. Yes, you read that right. The “scientist and logical” archetype fell in love at first sight LOL. Not only does he acknowledge it right off the bat, but he fully embraces it too and believes that real love makes people better versions of themselves [Personal Story]. Mo Yi is a through and through psychiatrist in that he never underestimates how primal emotions (and love) can be.

Heck, not only is this central to his personal story, but we also have hints that one of Mo Yi’s parents fell in love at first sight with the other person (and he inherited their predisposition for that). Unfortunately, their love had a tragic end and Mo Yi seems to have a huge grudge against his father for whatever happened to his mother (again, Mihoyo is keeping this a mystery LOL), but Mo Yi explicitly confirms that even if his love leads to a tragic end he will still walk down this road and attempt to change it [SR Cool Summer].

IMO one other difference between them re: love is this exchange that lives rent free in my head which I saw in a Xu Mo/Reader/Mo Yi fanfiction LOL. Bear with me here.

Mo Yi: Wearing a mask for a long time will tire you.

Xu Mo: It’s enough just to wear one in front of the necessary person.

Xu Mo and his MC make great efforts to understand each other’s worlds, but this understanding comes from the doors he chooses to open to her. He reveals himself as much as possible, but I think he’s an inherently private person (and there’s all that Ares stuff) so there are times where he hides things so that he doesn’t worry his MC. I think this is enough to count as a “mask”. Sometimes he pretends he’s okay when he’s not.

On the other hand, while I think Mo Yi shares the sentiment in not wanting his MC to worry unduly, he tries to reveal himself as much as possible. There’s an amazingly relatable conflict in him here where he wants her to know every side of him, but he’s also terrified of how she’ll react if he shows her his ugliest sides and imperfect sides (he has some sort of phobia or fear about imperfection, but Mihoyo has been keeping mum on the exact details of this so far) [Personal Story; SR Sculpted Heart].

It’s pretty ironic that Mo Yi wants to be perfect, but he realizes that the more perfect he is the more of a sense of distance there’ll be between him and his MC because of the subconscious pressure someone “perfect” brings LOL [SSR Border of Light and Darkness].

3) Stance on Growth

If you haven’t realized that one of Xu Mo’s greatest themes is the phrase “Take your time in growing”, then what have you been reading? Jkjk, but seriously this gets repeated in multiple places, although my brain always goes back to [Blossom Date] for this.

Even if he and his MC start off with fundamental differences (she believes all people have inherent worth and can’t be involuntarily sacrificed), he wants to personally watch the journey of her maturation. He also subtly guides and teaches her. Unfortunately, due to circumstances of the main story, he doesn’t get his wish and she grows up a lot out of his eyes, but their relationship still revolves around him wanting her to have as much time as possible to grow.

He’s, for a lack of better word, extremely gentle about this (setting aside as much of the Ares and story parts as we can, because LovePro’s story is tragedy on tragedy LOL). I think [Autumn Blaze Date] shows a good analogy for this, because he holds the bicycle steady for MC until she can get going on her own, and he also catches her the first time.

Meanwhile, Mo Yi... ha ha ha. I just came out of chapter 3 for his [Personal Story] and let’s just say his philosophy is tough love. It’s ironic because, in many of his other dates, he wrestles with an internal conflict to protect his MC but also to let her experience all sorts of things to both test and temper her.

This is going to touch on the previous topic about love for a moment, but a part of Mo Yi’s love at first sight experience is also “testing” the other person through all sorts of situations and, after seeing all their different sides, he can determine whether his love at first sight is one that’ll last for the rest of his life or if it’s just a fleeting moment of beauty and emotion.

He also extremely respects his MC’s sense of justice and pursuit of the truth in the world, no matter what she encounters, and I wouldn’t be surprised if this is what drew him to her in the first place. But MC’s occupation and beliefs will make her confront a lot of dark and dangerous things and so, whenever possible, Mo Yi lets her confront these in “controlled” situations to train her. If I had to make an analogy, IMO, he’d let his MC ride the bicycle and pick her up only after she falls, or when she’s like 0.1cm away from the ground LOL.

Mo Yi is (perhaps rightfully) called out on this by another character, who believes Mo Yi is too arrogant in believing everything is under his control and he can prevent MC from getting hurt whenever he lets her get into dangerous situations, and I’m interested to see if Mihoyo will let him experience failures with his philosophy so he can grow more, like the things Xu Mo went through re: his personal beliefs [Ch24].

Overall

I don’t know how well I explained myself, especially for people who don’t know anything about Mo Yi, and each section goes back and forth between the two characters LOL so here’s another section that attempts to describe their overall atmosphere.

If, like I said in my Headcanon Notes, Xu Mo makes me immediately think of all the words for soft, gentle, light, still, water, etc etc., then the words I constantly think about for Mo Yi is messily human. He’s like a bundle of contradictions, but coherent because it’s being intentionally done.

Mo Yi doesn’t discriminate against his patients, yet he can be elitist and looks down on others. He wants to let MC have dangerous experiences, but also wants to protect her. He wants to be perfect, but he also wants to reveal himself entirely to his MC because that’s real love.

In contrast, Xu Mo has a very clean and orderly personality LOL. You can draw clear cause and effect lines from his personality to his actions.

So, anyway, these are two interesting characters who start off with similar archetypes as scientific logical men of scholar/gentleman dispositions, but yet they’re also on opposite ends for a lot of things such as their approach to emotions and the world.

Oh wait, lastly, because I don’t have a good place to put this—but I think it’s funny—is that both characters are pretty possessive and greedy, but while Xu Mo does things in a sneaky, cunning and fox-like way Mo Yi gets ridiculously open about his jealousy and it’s hilariously cute but also almost childish? I often forget Mo Yi is older than Xu Mo by a year, because Xu Mo honestly feels a bit more mature than him LOL. If we count them actually aging by when their game came out though, then Mo Yi is 28 and Xu Mo is 29 now.

[candythemew]

🔥 SkekLach (can be AOR Lach, Manga Lach, or JM Lee’s Lach)

OH BOY GET READY FOR AN ESSAY!!

(Also old post I’m getting back to, but for context this was for TDC Hot Takes. She asked for my favorite version of SkekLach.)

     Whenever I see SkekLach, it is such a joy regardless of iteration. I don’t know what it is exactly but I absolutely adore her. Although this wasn’t always the case! Originally I was indifferent to her and found her to be physically repulsive. I literally couldn’t look at her for extended periods of time. But through re-watching the series she’s really grown on me! ...But I think you all know about that by now! (Search her up on google and you’ll find SO much of my art.) ◬☾——– ≪ °✾° ≫ ——–☽◬      Each iteration has it’s own strengths and weaknesses, but I adore all of them. If you want to spare yourself a fangirlish analysis, I like AoR!Lach the best, but Manga!Lach is extremely cool. Although everyone shares traits, it’s more like comparing apples and oranges rather than [ X ] is better than [ Y ] . There is some overlap and bleeding between characters, but ultimately these are all vastly different timelines with different circumstances and characters. I’ll be dissecting each of them under the cut! ◬☾——– ≪ °✾° ≫ ——–☽◬

     As said above, There are three versions of The Collector. In order, the first one to be created was the Legendsverse/Manga SkekLach the Collector. Followed by the J.M. Lee/ Novel SkekLach, and finally AoR SkekLach. Who we see in age of resistance, and is the Collector of the main canon’s timeline. When I write for her, I tend to do a bit of blending with her various other versions. But even in the show, she’s a lot more keen and intelligent than she lets on to be. You just have to look for it! A lot of her character traits are subtle. I only really grew an appreciation for her after my first re-watch of the series! ◬☾——– ≪ °✾° ≫ ——–☽◬ Another thing to notice when it comes to the Collector is that unlike other alternate versions of canon characters, most main characters are relatively unchanged. SkekLach however has the most diversity in her character differences and alts.

◬☾——– ≪ °✾° ≫ ——–☽◬

𝕷𝖊𝖌𝖊𝖓𝖉𝖘𝖛𝖊𝖗𝖘𝖊

◬☾——– ≪ °✾° ≫ ——–☽◬

◬☾——– ≪ °✾° ≫ ——–☽◬      Manga!Lach has a much more muscular build. Even for his old age. He is adorned in ornate armor rife with symbolism and battle scars marring his flesh. These quirks to his character design reflect both his intelligence, and physical prowess in combat. His armor is stylized to look like faces. Both intimidating and fearful expressions decorating him in a display of intimidation. Fun Fact: in the manga, SkekLach was the second tallest Skeksis. With the Ritual Master being the true tallest of course. SkekLach was also a bit of a beastmaster. He had a loyal pack of Arduff always by his side ready to snatch up any unfortunate gelfling (or skeksis!) who got in his way. As well as a group of small, crawlie like creatures called Spy-eyes. He would have these creatures attatch themselves to a victim, and they would be allowed to see and hear anything said victim did. Anything they knew, The Collector would know too. He used these creatures to ensure Lahr’s co-operation in his plan for securing his place as Emperor SkekSo’s favorite and to foil The Chamberlain and Garthim Master’s plans against him. Oh yeah, did I forget to mention that he’s also a tactical mastermind?

◬☾——– ≪ °✾° ≫ ——–☽◬

𝔍.𝔐. 𝔏𝔢𝔢 𝔜𝔬𝔲𝔫𝔤 𝔄𝔡𝔲𝔩𝔱 𝔑𝔬𝔳𝔢𝔩𝔰

◬☾——– ≪ °✾° ≫ ——–☽◬

◬☾——– ≪ °✾° ≫ ——–☽◬

     Novel SkekLach is much more toned down, calm and (no pun intended) collected. Although he shares some qualities with both his manga and AoR counterparts, he’s kind of his own thing. He’s portrayed as more skinny and lanky. With a beak more similar in shape to SkekOk’s and wearing what appears to be a crown on his head. This Lach is much more directly involved with politics and wants to see his job through. Or at the very least just to get things over with. Oddly enough, unlike his previous version, he performs the Gelfling censuses. This trait would be later carried onto his canon successor. He was often blunt and to the point like AoR Lach, but didn’t really have the same punch that she has. In the novels he also has an animal companion. Much like Manga!Lach. A Royal Blue Phegnese. An avian mount creature that we never get to see, but we do get a loose description of. This was his preferred mount of choice. He was also good friends with SkekOk. They would often write to each other and even got drunk together. This is likely what inspired their close bond in AoR.

◬☾——– ≪ °✾° ≫ ——–☽◬ 𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝔇𝔞𝔯𝔨 ℭ𝔯𝔶𝔰𝔱𝔞𝔩: 𝔄𝔤𝔢 𝔬𝔣 ℜ𝔢𝔰𝔦𝔰𝔱𝔞𝔫𝔠𝔢 ◬☾——– ≪ °✾° ≫ ——–☽◬

     And finally, our girl, AoR SkekLach! Everyone pretty much knows what she looks like by now. Incredibly diseased with oozing pustules that cause her constant pain every second of every day. Short snouted with dulled down tusks that were once razor sharp, and even sharper goldenrod eyes. (A glimpse back to the glory days perhaps?) Also since her introduction, she is the shortest skeksis in the series. Taking SkekOk the Scroll-keeper's orginal title of shortest by being about a head and a half shorter than him. Although she’s a female Skeksis, she’s not traditionally feminine. An interesting aesthetic choice for a female presenting Skeksis! Most of her colors being toned down blues and greens, Although she does have lots of bows that adorn her robes. Predominantly on her sleeves and shoulders. and in close up shots you can see that her puppet model has very distinct and pretty eyelashes. She’s very dirty as she doesn’t care much for her hygiene anymore. She doesn’t make an effort to change things as she has already tried multiple times to improve her condition, and has failed every time. The way she acts and presents can help us know that she's been through a lot. You can especially see this in the way she talks to others as well as herself. Adopting a mindset of: “Things either always stay the same or get worse.” This causes her to stay demotivated. To the point of not doing much of anything. She idolizes the glory days of her youth and desperatley wishes to go back to them, but she's a bit more self aware than her peers. Even she mocks her them for thinking that they can truly return to their former splendor. Although speculation on my part; it’s more than likely that in her prime she was similar to her manga counterpart. As she’s deceptively observant and oftentimes makes snide remarks in the background. Although she doesn’t care for showing it off. Being apolitical in the court, she sees no point in it. …Aside from the occasional drama or rumor she hears from either the Ornamentalist or Scroll-Keeper. As she's part of their little circle. Although speculation, she might even have some battle scars under her robes. As she’s talented when it comes to battle. Evidence to support this is when SkekVar the General asks for her assistance. Specifically when the Emperor ordered him to deal with the Gelfling. He picks her out of all of them. When she denies, he asks again reassuring her with an encouraging, “Come now! It’ll be fun!” While she replies with a disbelieving, “Ugh, I DOUBT that…” …And SkekVar was right. SHE DID HAVE FUN!

…And she got acid spit in her face which must have hurt 1,000 times more than it would for someone else as she’s very sensitive in her face due to her pustules. But hey! She got to kill a spitter and her mood changes pretty drastically for the positive going from that. Although she won't be able to enjoy it for too long since she dies 2 episodes later. Also when she drinks essence with the rest of the court during the scene where Skeksil watches the rest of them to make sure the Grunaks did their job, if you listen in the background she just straight up yells "I'M GONNA FIGHT A LANDSTRIDER!!" She wants to punch a horse. Good for her! So basically I just talked about all three of them at length for no reason but I hope you liked my ted talk. I have no idea where I was going with this, but yeah. I really really like SkekLach.

[squeeneyart]

Breathe in the Salt - Chapter 19

AO3

Beta reader is @thesnadger​!

Social interaction has its pros and cons.

Martin considers a way to pass the time.

Technically, there was no call that night.

Martin had had months to familiarize himself with the strange predawn that added a little color to the sky each morning. His home was on the western coast, so of course he didn’t see much of it until he’d made the trek uphill. With some cloud cover and dense fog, though, the light would scatter and cast a cold blanket of grey light over his corner of the world.

Early on he found it sort of nice, seeing the world ‘wake up’. He’d even started to get up earlier than necessary, just to make himself some tea and look out the window for signs of birds or other creatures who made their lives at dawn and dusk. There were some lines of poetry about it somewhere in his notebook, something about the magic of a quiet morning in solitude.

He’d lasted about a week with that. Turned out his life was already quiet and full enough of contemplative solitude, and warm blankets were much better than cold kitchen tile against his feet.

It was during this little sliver of morning when his mobile, vibrating against the wood of his bedside table, dragged him back to consciousness. 

“No…” he groaned, nuzzling into his pillow. It could only be one person. “Don’t make me come in early. Don’t make me come in early, you prick-” 

He reached over (god it was cold) and grabbed the offending object, keeping as much of himself under the blankets as possible and slipping the mobile back under with him. The screen was bright and painful in his cozy darkness. His eyes adjusted, and on his lockscreen the time read 4:06 a.m.

Before he could convince himself to let the damned thing ring itself out, he glanced at the caller ID. If anything it should’ve given him even more reason to let the call go, but Martin’s finger was already pressing the answer button. 

Attempting to whisper, his voice came out rough and croaky. “Jon?”

“Martin. Glad you’re still up,” Jon said in that distant way of someone paying attention to another task entirely. Keyboard clicks could be heard in the background. “How are you doing?”

Still up? Bleary and confused, Martin replied as if he’d just run into Jon at the store, “Fine, I guess? How are you?”

“I’ve successfully whittled down my assignments enough to have personal research opportunities.” There was a weary but nevertheless triumphant edge to his words. “If this is some sort of test of my abilities, I’d say I deserve a raise.”

“Impressive,” Martin yawned. “Does that mean anything for me, or…”

“No, not yet.” He could feel Jon deflate on the other end. “I’ve only just started looking, and Elias is still acting rather blasé about what we found. I hadn’t pegged him as the type to put business relations over the mission statement, but if that’s the case then-”

“Why send you out here?” 

“Precisely.” Jon clicked his tongue. “So I’m going to pry in that direction while digging through old reports. I assume the others will do the same once they’re caught up.”

Well, progress was as good as anything to wake up to. He reluctantly pulled the blankets from over his head and peeked out at his window. The frost was just visible at the edges, its frigid hands creeping across the glass. Perhaps a little while longer under the covers.

“Anyway, I’m glad I caught you,” Jon continued, filling the space Martin had left empty. The keyboard taps had ceased. “I’d decided to give you some breathing room, but you were quiet during the call with everyone and I thought- well, I wanted to make sure you were okay. As much as can be expected.” 

A small, halfhearted smile found its way onto Martin’s face. “Thanks. I appreciate it.”

“So… are you okay? I know you said you were, but it sounded like you were being polite.”

Martin looked up at his ceiling. “I mean I was being polite, but… Yeah, I’m okay. As much as can be expected, like you said, but okay.” 

“Hm.”

“Hm?”

“What? Nothing, it’s good. I’m gl- I’m happy that you’re… doing okay.” Midway between this thought, Jon seemed to switch the mobile from one ear to the other. “If you aren’t, I just hope you know that you can tell me if something is going on. Sometimes there are emotional aspects that contribute to an event-”

As Jon spoke at length, Martin noticed a distinct tumbling feel in the way Jon spoke, like his thoughts were coming faster than his mouth could follow. Not alcohol, surely? No, a different idea had been bothering Martin since Jon had first called.

“-can’t speak for Tim or Sasha about hours, and if you’d rather just talk one-on-one, I’m sure-”

“Right, hours. Jon, I don’t mean to pry, but have you slept at all?”

The stream of consciousness halted in its tracks. “What?”

“You seem a bit… out of it? Have you checked the time recently?”

A moment passed. Then another. Then- “That can’t be right.”

Weakly, Martin replied, “Good morning to you, too.”

“I-” Jon began. He then made a small, irritated noise. “I woke you up.”

Martin ran a hand over his face and pressed it to his upturned mouth. Into it he mumbled, “You really need to sleep.”

As if the hours had finally come crashing down upon him, Jon’s voice dropped low and soft and properly tired. “I could’ve sworn it was earlier.” 

“I mean, in a sense-” 

“You know what I mean.” A yawn finally broke through, but he fought it back down. “I hope it wasn’t too much earlier than your normal wake-up time?”

“Nah. You’ve seen how early my day starts. Besides, my alarm isn’t the most pleasant thing to wake up to, and you could’ve been Peter calling me in early.” It was like getting up to enjoy the morning, but he was still in bed and someone else was there (sort of). As far as he was concerned, the pros outweighed the cons. 

“Then I’ll hold my apology for a later date, if you don’t mind.” He spoke bluntly, but possibly in a way that was meant to be funny. Martin was still working out when Jon was being blunt in a rude way or in a friendly way, and his gut pushed him toward the latter. “I also won’t apologize for my work ethic. I work better at night, without distractions or other people.”

Rubbing the bridge of his nose, Martin asked, “Okay, I can play along with that, but when do you sleep?”

“We have a cot.”

Martin scoffed. “What, at work?” An image of the three researchers finding different corners in some dark back room to snooze on company time was almost too much.

“Working after-hours is implied in the description of any academic job. If we didn’t steal some of the day back to sleep, we’d all have dropped dead by now.” For a moment his voice strained as if he was stretching, dipping into the background before returning to normal. “Though this past week has been a bit more extreme due to circumstances. I’m not always up until dawn, calling people in a stupor.”

“First time for everything?” Martin said helpfully, pushing down weakly against the rising guilt. “I know it’s a bad situation, but I’m sorry you all have to work so hard.”

“No need for that. I can choose to sacrifice a few nights for something important.” 

Slowly, very slowly, Martin pressed his burning face into his pillow. Maybe it was too early for him after all, to handle anything approaching concern. The heat was surely enough to melt the ice right off the window. Ignoring the ridiculous reaction happening in his cheeks, he turned his face back upwards and mumbled, “Thanks.”

There was a small rustling of papers. With the same damned softness, Jon continued, “I’m sure Tim and Sasha would say the same.”

A quiet thing clung deep in Martin’s throat, and in his nose, and he imagined a version of himself from the night before, scared and powerless and ready to dump any and all his feelings on the first person who would speak with him. Would that have been something Jon was prepared for, if he’d called at a sensible hour? Or if Martin had called first? But it was nearly morning, and he was well rested, and eventually the thought fell away in his wakefulness. 

Without a response to go on, Jon said, "I’m not going to be as… outwardly optimistic as before, but…”

“You’re making progress,” Martin finished, coughing lightly. “I know. I’ll be patient, and careful. It’s hard after the weird stuff we did last week, though.”

“I’d like to say it was all due to extreme circumstances, but we are just like this.” 

“There go my hopes of you all getting proper rest when this is over.”

“S’not impossible, but terribly unlikely.”

Martin sighed, checking his screen clock again. Still some time left. “Is it safe to assume you won’t be sleeping at this point?” 

“Won’t be long until I can go to the archives. I’ll wait until then and avoid being groggy on public transit.” A pause. “Also my last energy drink is still working.”

“Mm.” Letting his forearm fall across his eyes, Martin gave up that particular battle. “Anything new set off your ‘fake’ alarms recently?”

“You’re in luck. Just yesterday a man came in to tell me about his experience with ‘spy birds’ that even you can’t devil’s-advocate your way through.”

“I’ll be the judge.”

It was a tough sell, even for Martin whose own situation made a lot of things seem possible. Midway through he even began to resent the person for wasting time better spent solving Martin’s problems, but that was an emotional rabbit hole for another time. By the end he had to concede that it was more of a conspiracy than a supernatural encounter, if they were going to get into the semantics of it. Still, Jon made it easy to be contrarian.

“When we’re not busy with all this,” Jon said, accepting that Martin wasn’t yet ready to forgo the benefit of the doubt, “I’ll be happy to sit outside and film birds all day for the sake of science, but the man finds perfectly normal birds unsettling.”

With a silly kind of bullheadedness, Martin replied, “Plenty of seabirds around here. Maybe that’s what I’ll do while I wait for something to happen.”

Jon snorted. “I expect a full report by Monday.”

Before Martin could respond, his phone made an all too familiar and dreadful noise. He really should’ve picked a song or something, he thought as he dismissed his alarm. “Well, it’s that time.”

“Yes, I should be getting along with my morning as well. Good luck with your birdwatching,” he said with joking scorn.

“Have fun sleeping on the bus.”

“Ha ha. Goodbye, Martin.”

“Bye.” 

Dropping his arm onto the bed, mobile in hand, Martin ignored the numbness in his fingers and considered how invested he was in writing a fake report about birds just to see the reaction it would get. Maybe he would text Tim about it.

The idea sat in the back of his mind as he got dressed, as he made breakfast, as he put on his shoes and coat and hat. When he opened the door to meet the cold that had settled in overnight, he couldn’t help but wince at the extra bit of sting the wind delivered, but he clung to his fanciful little idea all the way up the hills and through town. 

Creative writing had never been his strong suit. It was debatable if poetry was, but he’d reached a point where it was more of a comforting activity than a skill. Still, as he got to work in the blessedly empty lighthouse, he thought of the little notebook he’d stashed into his bag. If it all came to nothing, he could end up with scraps of text to rearrange into poetry someday.

It was a mess of a book. Technically bound, it was still cheap with some pages starting to come loose from his handling. He’d long ago given up on the idea of a nice looking notebook, especially as it had become personal enough to count as horribly embarrassing. It was inevitable for any poetry notebook of his to become more akin to a scattered, flowery journal of sorts, and this one was no different. 

It was also a step up from previous ones in that it wasn’t some spiral-bound school notebook he’d found in the discount section of the general store. No, he had found it in a bookstore discount section. The stiff cover even had sort of a nice texture before he’d beaten it up by shoving it into a drawer a million times.

The day crawled by with no interruptions, leaving Martin on edge. Peter hadn’t come by once. Perhaps he’d assumed Martin had had any boldness scared out of him, an aggravating thought. He had the will to act. He also had some amount of self preservation left in him, that was all.

By lunchtime he was itching to talk to anyone, but texting the others was off limits and it was so dreary outside that going out to eat was a non-starter. He supposed he could stop by the grocery store. He knew some of the people from when he’d worked there. Most of the ones he’d worked with had also left, but maybe…

No, that was a stupid idea. He wasn’t seeing anyone unless they came to him.

No one did.

So in his time off the clock, he stared at his little notebook and hoped his brain would think of anything to say.

--

The weather had taken a more miserable turn by the time he’d left work in the evening. He only saw a few birds struggling in the gales, none of them particularly watchful. If he had to guess, they didn’t care much about what anyone was doing. Not great material for a report, but maybe for a poem when the feeling hit.

The streets were largely empty as people avoided the high winds and mist that sprayed against Martin’s glasses, making it a challenge to see anything around him. He had half a mind to just stow them away, but there was going to be water in his eyes no matter what he chose to do. Just another little thing to make his day worse that he couldn’t change.

Part of him considered that the weather often matched his mood, but it wasn’t hard for bad weather to pair with sour thoughts. Nearly all weather was bad and nearly all moods were sour. Correlation, etcetera.

As much as he’d wanted to check his phone as soon as work was over, the others could wait until he’d stopped feeling so damned sorry for himself.

And he did feel awful, though there was no inciting incident. It had been a long, tedious day where the words wouldn’t flow, the world was grey, and any residual happiness from his conversation with Jon had been slowly eaten away by the loneliness of the present. Why was it so hard to hold onto those good things? A good start was supposed to make the day better, not make the rest of the day look worse.

It had to be everything at the lighthouse. He’d always been moody as a person, but the stress had to be getting to him. His head shouldn’t have been hurting from holding back tears when nothing had happened.

God, the squinting wasn’t helping, either. He knew where he was going, of course, but the streetlights were barely helping. The sky had decided to paint itself over everything, a dark, grey blob of water and concrete and fog. The walk down the hill was going to be a slippery pain, even in his grippy boots.

Had he passed by the florist? He probably should have by now, but the main road hadn’t ended yet.

And even when he got home, oh joy, it would be to sit at a table and eat with his mother, and based on her tastes she would love to stand outside in the misery of it all even though it would be terrible for her health. What was the point of trying when another person wouldn’t even listen-

He’d been walking for too long. 

The road continued on, no longer heading into the surrounding trees but stretching itself past the point of impossibility. And at the end, in a place where it should not have been visible through the colorless mist, was a large, familiar house.

Ah, Martin thought. Someone had decided to talk to him today.

Looking behind him, the lighthouse was just barely visible. Looking to either side was a fool’s errand, as everything had been consumed by the grey.

He slipped the mobile phone out of his pocket and bent over to shield it from the rain. The screen lit up at his touch, but as expected any and all communication was blocked. Nevertheless, he opened the group chat and began to type.

Martin: i think simon wants to talk. everything is fog and i cant go anywhere else. hoping my phone makes it out so this makes it 

He pressed send, then mustered up whatever hope he had and added:

Martin: talk to you soon

[hopeymchope]

Godzilla Singular Point

I came into Singular Point with some trepidation because Godzilla’s history in anime is both very recent and extremely bad. The three anime movies released between 2017 and 2019 are easily the worst work of famed writer Gen Urobuchi and honestly contain more bullshit than I can even get into here. Those movies and this series were both Godzilla anime properties commissioned by Netflix, which didn’t get my hopes up very much. Thankfully, Singular Point is a very different beast from the anime trilogy. One could argue it’s very different from most Godzilla media, actually — at least from my perspective. And I’m still a pretty entry-level fan of Toho’s Big G, all things considered.

Let me just warn you right up front: This smartphone-based virtual assistant is basically the breakout star of the series. 

When you think “Godzilla,” you probably don’t think “incredibly dense sci-fi concepts,” but with the big G’s first-ever anime series, the writers clearly set out to change that perception. Before the first kaiju even appears, the lead characters are plucked from obscurity and dropped into a mystery that involves fourth-dimensional time travel, physical objects that look different from all sides, theoretical math concepts, self-propagating A.I., and a whole lot more. And it’s NEVER made clear how all of it connects to the rampaging kaiju! Although we spend a lot of time investigating a red dust or sand that is very obviously tied to the monsters in SOME way, no one ever makes a connection that explains the relationship. Maybe we’re supposed to wait for a later season to connect the threads... but let’s get into the idea of “another season” later.

I like to think of myself as someone who typically enjoys hard sci-fi, but even with the characters spending loads of time trying to explain the high concepts driving the story, I was never able to fully wrap my head around what was going on in the mystery at the center of GSP. I rewound and rewatched a few explanations, but I still walked away feeling lost. I eventually settled on some vague, loose understandings of most of the ideas mentioned, but those understandings were subject to being ripped apart in subsequent scenes when I was shown or told something completely at odds with what I thought I knew. I can’t say I was ever bored with the thick, dense scientific concepts on offer — trying to find purchase with these far-out ideas kept me glued to the screen — but damn, I sure wish I was able to comprehend them.

What do we want?! DENSE SCIENTIFIC DISCUSSION AND DEBATE! When do we want it?! AFTER THOROUGH RESEARCH, TESTING, AND PEER REVIEW!

Another weird thing about this show is that the lead characters remain in separate locations and on separate tracks for the entire duration. We have Yun — a mechanical engineer and programmer who has an amazing grasp on physics and human behavior. And we have Mei — a grad student who is deeply invested in theoretical science, UMAs, cryptids and other far-flung concepts. Both of them are basically geniuses in their fields, and even though they take opposing views of just how flexible reality is, their shared ability to think “outside the box” becomes the crucial component in solving the mystery at the core of the series. Because they don’t even know one another (despite being separated by like, ONE degree), they only ever interact via text messages and behind screen names, which feels pretty damn weird. At least  I immediately liked both of them, with Yun being the standout to me because of how his lowkey reactions to crazy shit generates a lot of humor.

This soundtrack cover LIES; you will never see these characters in a room together like this. 

Alas, we don’t get to know the characters a whole lot beyond what we learned of them in the first two episodes. It’s not long before they’re trapped in a series of complicated exposition dumps, endlessly attempting to explain the high concepts of the show to other characters as well as my dumb ass in the audience. The fact that I liked them in the first couple of episodes carried me through more than half of the show, but I was always hoping to see them share more of themselves or just display more emotion. Anime as a medium excels at emotional storytelling. But despite the major, world-altering events the characters are constantly warning us about, none of them seem to have many emotions about said events. 

Further complicating matters is how, when major events finally occur in this show, they are often kept off-screen. One character shockingly dies, but the portrayal of that death is so piss-poor that I didn’t even realize it’d happened until someone mentioned their death in the next episode. After that vague death, I was particularly sensitive to anything that looked like it might possibly be lethal. Yet a later event that is played up as a tragic, fatal occurrence ends up... fine, somehow? It’s not clear how the character survives, because — even after one of our heroes is left screaming their name in despair as they seemingly die — nobody ever talks about or explains how he’s just fine a couple of scenes later. And near the end of the series, there’s a major transformation that occurs for one of the characters, and we never see it happen nor do we understand HOW it happened. It’s just that suddenly, this character is extremely different due to off-screen reasons that are only vaguely verbalized.

I guess these two really bonded at some point for some reason? And what you are seeing here is literally the height of emotion shown in the entire show.

Even though the overarching story of the series so far pretty clearly wraps up in episode 13, we then get a post-credits tease for a potential second season. So the question becomes: Would I watch that?

Well... Godzilla Singular Point is a series with a lot of issues that kept me at arms’ length from it — tons of extremely confusing dialogue, highly frustrating choices in direction that lead to baffling storytelling, characters who are mostly exposition-dumping — and yet there’s still some foundational work here that I appreciated a lot. When the action occurs, it’s pretty cool/fun. And when urban destruction occurs, it can be awe-inspiring. The human characters, though little-explored, have likable and interesting foundations to them that could be expanded upon. And I didn’t even mention the soundtrack, which features a variety of musical styles combined with the classic Ifukube theme music and an OP that is an absolute banger. (I have a weakness when it comes to music; a good soundtrack can carry me through even the blandest series sometimes.) Even the core idea of centering a Godzilla series around hard science and mathematical concepts is a compelling one, I think! I just hated the execution of it; they went waaaaay too far on poorly explaining incredibly complex, mind-bending concepts for my pea brain to handle it. They spend so much time trying to explain things, yet somehow they never succeeded for me. 

Ultimately, I’d probably give the show another chance. But if I do give another season a chance, it’ll be on probation. I wouldn’t watch the entire season unless I could see within four episodes that they’d definitely improved things.

Would I recommend that anyone watch the series as it currently stands? I mean... not really? I guess if you really dig complex math, hard theoretical science, and/or Toho’s stable of monsters, then maaaaaaaaaaybe give it a shot. But otherwise? Naaaahh. It’s not good enough at anything to make it stand out from the anime crowd. I didn’t hate it like I hated the Godzilla anime films, but Singular Point is still something that both casual viewers and most fans can comfortably ignore for the time being. It’s not a complete disaster, and it’s not without its highlights... but it’s definitely disappointing in my opinion.

OKAYOKAYOKAY, so let’s talk about the kaiju for a bit! 

Below will be SPOILERS revealing all of the kaiju that appear in Godzilla Singular Point and giving my feelings on them. 

Godzilla — It’s interesting to see a version of Godzilla that borrows some ideas from Shin Godzilla. Shin G has been incredibly unique until now, but this Godzilla manages to fold some of Shin’s distinctive aspects in with the more classic/typical versions to build a fun new depiction. Be forewarned that Godzilla doesn’t show up until the series is halfway over, and he doesn’t get a ton of screen time, either. He’s used quite sparingly and kept in hazy settings, often framed from the neck-up when they show him. It’s a little frustrating that they felt the need to shroud him so much, but I respect the fact that whenever Godzilla is shown, the destruction he causes is on a scale far beyond anything that the rest of the kaiju ever do. He is pure devastation. 

Rodan — He’s easily the biological kaiju with the most screen time in Singular Point. Rodan is first introduced as one gigantic pterosaur, but if you’ve seen ANY trailers for this show then you already know that his depiction transitions into an asston of smaller pterosaurs, all of whom are also called “Rodan.” (Apparently the word Rodan is both singular and plural, like the word “buffalo.”) Although he looks kind of cool at first, pretty soon Rodan showing up isn’t special or threatening anymore. Rodan appearances go from “a big goddamn deal” to “some bland background noise” before the series is even 1/3 finished. The design might be a little too far removed from the original for my own taste, but even if I didn’t think that, I wouldn’t be able to care for this Rodan simply because he’s rendered so unimportant and unimpressive.

If you go out in the woods today, you’re sure of a big surprise... 

Anguirus — Now check this guy out! Anguirus gets one of the coolest fights in the show and also demonstrates some powers that are well beyond anything we’ve seen him do before. Because he sticks to unpopulated areas, we never see him do much damage to Japan, but he is definitely holding all the attention when he’s on-screen. He’s a highlight for me — a total badass who is very unique in his abilities. And the stated origin for his name is goddamn adorable.

Manda — Yup, Manda is in this series... but I don’t have much to say for him. It seems like the creators of the anime didn’t have much to say about him either. His role amounts to little more than a repeated cameo, and in most of those cameos you only ever see his tail. When we finally see his full body, it’s done so briefly and kept at a distance, leaving me with no real impression. I had to look up his design online and... yup, that sure looks like Manda. Final score: MEEEEHH.

Kumonga — I definitely did not see this appearance coming! Kumonga is much smaller here than you may be used to, but she gets to star in the most suspenseful sequence in the series and easily earns the most exciting cliffhanger moment at the end of an episode. I was utterly glued to the show during her screen time, which comes with a lot of icky twists. Good ones! I honestly like Kumonga here more than I ever have previously.

NEW PHONE WHO DIS

Salunga — Uh, who? This is the one monster that isn’t based on a classic Toho kaiju but instead is a brand-new creation. I suppose that everybody who touches the Toho Kaiju franchise wants to make their own mark on it in some regard. But a big part of the fun of this series for me personally was the anticipation of seeing new interpretations and designs of classic Toho monsters. And so, given that he kind of resembles both Baragon and Gabara, I never stopped wishing they’d just used one of those guys as the basis and namesake. Taken on his own, however? He’s... pretty neat. Not unique or exciting, but solidly above par.  He resembles a cross between a lizard/dinosaur and an ape, plus his head has some nifty coloration. 

Our Jaguar!

Jet Jaguar — I guess Jet Jaguar isn’t exactly a kaiju in the traditional sense because he’s a Giant Robot. However, if you want to consider him one, then I wager he probably gets even more screen time than Rodan! We meet him almost immediately when the series begins. Initially an odd pilot-driven robot that was constructed at the whim of a quirky old factory-owner with too much disposable income, Jet Jaguar grows and changes over the course of the show, ultimately undergoing a transition in episode 7 that makes him pretty damn impossible to dislike. In fact, I utterly adored him by then. This is definitely the best Jet Jaguar I’ve ever seen. His design is recognizably similar to the original yet utterly distinct, too. Like many of the other kaiju here, he’s not nearly as big as he was when he was first introduced to the movies, but his size is ideal for battling the smaller-scale monsters that we spend most of the series on.

[fanficparker]

Under My Umbrella | Tom x Haz one-shot

Pairing: Harrison Osterfield x Tom Holland

Word count: 5.5k words

Warnings: Swearing, angst, lots of tears, alcohol

Summary: The one where Harrison did the audacity to kiss his life-long best friend or his twin sister’s boyfriend.

A/N: Life is short and this is just a piece of fiction, why stop myself from posting it on my own blog?

PART 1 ♡

(Tom's POV)

"I am so sorry. OH GOD, I AM SO SORRY!"

I hear Harrison screaming on the top of his voice. My vision is blurry, the rain isn't allowing me to see much, although I am sure there is much more than just the rain pouring down his face; his tears were also streaming down along with it.

He had taken five steps away from me after kissing me in the rain and my world has already fallen apart. He is pulling at his curls so aggressively. He will hurt himself. I take a step towards him with my hands reaching out but he takes another step back.

He is drifting away from me. And I am drifting apart from myself.

I freeze on my feet. My heartbeat feels non-existent. I am confused. Am I dead or alive? If I am dead then where am I? Is it heaven or hell? It kind of feels like both.

Harrison has just kissed me. His taste is still lingering on my tongue. My head is spinning without even a single drop of alcohol. His touch did this to me. And now I am starving. Starving for more.

"I shouldn't have. I shouldn't have. Shit! I SHOULDN'T HAVE!"

"No... No... " I try to stop him but he's already running. My ankle is aching. I can't run fast, I can't catch his pace. Then, he slowly vanishes away from my sight.

"HARRISON! HARRISON... PLEASE STOP! Please stop... Please..." I scream, sinking down to the footpath. I was too late to scream. I was too late to stop him.

He's gone. He broke the promise.

***

I can hear those distinct lyrics as the soft music resonates in the air. It's the Ember Island's version— our favourite version. I am sitting here waiting for the interviewers to arrive but my mind keeps drifting off to the song.

"This is our song!" Harrison says as we are lying down on the bed.

"Umbrella? Really?" I ask, surprised.

He turns on his side and faces me, I do the same. His head rests on his elbow while my head is still on the pillow. We were looking at each other.

"Yeah..." His voice is soft. He hums and looks back at the ceiling while the music plays from his phone. He starts lip-syncing along with the lyrics, "Cause in the dark, you can't see shiny cars. And that's when you need me there with you, I'll always share. Because..."

"When the sun shine, we shine together. Told you I'll be here forever---"

"You are singing." RDJ chuckles sitting beside me. And I realise that I was actually singing. My stomach twists into a knot and my face gets warm.

"We can sing it together, kiddo!" He says, enthusiastically.

"I... er..." I try to stop him but he is already singing.

Why am I always late?

"Under my umbrella, ella, ella, eh, eh, eh..." RDJ is singing, he is nodding his head sideways and is peaking at me occasionally.

The song is the same but the voice is different. The lyrics mean different when Harrison sang them. In Harrison's voice, they meant something but right now they are just raw. Hollow.

***

We are on the same magazine cover.

Oh my god.

We are on the same freaking magazine cover!

'The Spider-man 3 star tells us about his secret power food', The Hollywood Reporter headline reads with my gym photo-shoot as the background.

There are three more sub-headlines to the cover, placed near the right margin. The second one says, 'Harrison Osterfield: The young British actor tells us about his inspirational journey as the young face for Agent 007. (Pg. 3-4)'

The rumours were true. He has done it.

Oh my god. And I am not even there to congratulate him.

"I am so proud of you. I knew you would grab it!" Harrison bounces on his feet while I stand near him, blushing furiously.

"My mate is Spider-man! My mate is THE Spider-man!!" He proudly yells and keeps his palms on my shoulders. When I look up into his blue eyes, they are glossy and act like mirrors. I can see myself reflecting through them. Then I notice a little pinch of sadness shining through them.

"Don't forget me though..." He says slowly. His energetic voice started sounding cracked. It made me think for a moment.

I gulp, "You can be my assistant. I-It will help you... gain experience in the industry." I was planning to ask him this since my role was confirmed because how was I even supposed to step into my new, more chaotic life without my biggest support system?

He pulls back his arms from my shoulders and looks at me with wide eyes.

"What?"

"Yes!... Also, you know... I-I am kinda afraid going on the journey alone." I bite at my lower lip.

Just say yes, I pray silently.

"Oh, div! You'll not be alone there. You'll have big stars. All those fancy people, fancy life-style and those fancy---"

"These fancy things will never come in between us, Harrison," I cut his rambling off. He pauses and glances at me.

"I am alone without you..."

I am always alone without him.

I regret not saying always, even though it doesn't matter anymore.

My fingers flip through the pages, my eyes land on his half-page portrait. He was wearing a black and white formal suit; his index finger is pressed against his forehead as he is bent forward while his were eyes boring into the front. They are staring into my soul.

My breath hitches in my throat. It's just his portrait but those eyes. Those eyes. I avert my gaze from the picture to the text. He talks about his journey from school to landing this role. He talks about his family, he talks about his journey as my assistant and then he talks about me. I can hear his voice even when it's just plain text.

'I cannot thank Tom enough. He pushed me harder whenever I slowed down. He pulled me up when I fell down. I really look up to him.'

No Harrison, you are wrong. You pushed me harder when I slowed down. You pulled me up when I fell down. It's me who looks up to you.

"Oh em jee!" The teen girl squeals seeing me at the airport. Harrison and I were walking, dragging our trolleys. I was wearing a cap, sunglasses and even had my hoodie on yet she somehow spotted me. She ran towards me.

"You are Tom Holland! I am such a huge fan of you!!!" She is still squealing as she takes out her phone, asking me for a picture. I was really sleepy and sleep-deprived at the same time, but it still made me smile. I lowered my hoodie and took off my goggles.

Harrison was standing beside me, grinning too. I was ready for her to take a selfie with us but then she walks up to Harrison and points her phone to him.

"Huh?"

I see a little confusion appear on his face.

"Take our picture," She says almost disrespectfully. I feel a pang in my heart, I can't even imagine what he must be feeling. But then he looks at me, takes the phone and smiles.

The girl stands beside me, and Harrison is standing in front of us.

"Smile..." He whispers, looking at me in the eye, his face breaking into a bigger grin and I can't stop the smile that spreads across my own lips seeing him smile.

But I know he was sad from inside and even when I was physically present there, I wasn't still there to make him really smile, the one that makes his eyes crinkle.

I am really sorry for making you feel left out when all you did was try to make me feel included. Sorry for every time I left you alone. Yet, you always kept smiling. How do you do that?

I seriously need to learn a lot from you...

***

I had stopped stalking him on social media weeks ago. It was taking a toll on my mental health. But much to my dismay, I had a notification of him mentioning me in his Instagram story. My finger hovers over the unseen story. I click to see it.

The story was completely black, he has even tagged me in black. This story is exclusively for me. The song plays in the background.

No. No.

He can't do this to me.

He can't fucking do this to me.

"Now that it's raining more than ever, Know that we still have each other, You can stand under my---"

I threw my phone at the wall and the song stops playing abruptly. I am sure that I broke the device. But at least the song has ended.

I hate him for this!

How can he do this do me? How can he go so low?

I sunk down to the floor of my room. I am not just crying, I am screaming. Just like that night when I sunk down to the footpath...

Harrison and I were walking on the wet footpath. The rain was only getting heavier but none of us cared. The occasional honking of vehicles or the whooshing sound of tires against the wet concrete didn't bother us either.

Our shoulders were bumping against each other while we talked and laughed at stupid things. We sometimes did it, went out to have an ice-cream and talked about everything. It cleared off our minds and provided us with a break from our busy lifestyles. Harrison was holding the umbrella over our head as he was the taller one. A small portion of my other shoulder was slightly wet even when we were super close to each other. The umbrella was small, so I shifted closer to him. But I accidentally twisted my ankle due to the slippery path.

"Ouch!" I stop, putting my arm across his shoulder to balance myself, lifting the injured foot in the air.

"What happened?" He asks in a voice full of concern, stopping his motions.

"My foot. I think... I got a sprain."

"Oh, Tom. I tell you to be careful." He says and hands me the umbrella while I shift towards the wall, supporting myself. He crouches down on the empty footpath and unties my sandals, holding my foot in his hand.

"At least I didn't break my nose this time." I chuckle but it ends up as a whimper when he twists my ankle.

"It looks mild," He declares, re-tieing my sandals and stands up. I smile at him in gratitude but he wasn't smiling back. My expression changes to reciprocate his'. Then I realise that he wasn't properly standing up. His knees were slightly bent and his face was at the same level as mine. We were staring at each other. He took a step closer to me and suddenly all my senses were shutting down. The only thing I could feel was how close he was to me, how the scent of his aftershave was the sweetest smell I have ever inhaled, how his eyes were staring at mine, how they flickered down to my lips, how they closed, how the sound of his shaky breath made my heart shiver, how his lips were feeling against mine, how his breath tasted of vanilla and chocolate...

My limbs lost all their strength and the umbrella fell down, drowning us both in pouring water. His hands came to hold mine as he interlaces his fingers through mine, giving them a little squeeze.

He was kissing away the water droplets off my lips. I didn't do anything. I just let him. Or maybe I was kissing him back but it was all... so natural. I have never felt so calm and protected in my life. The way his lips rolled over mine... I was completely intoxicated.

There was something intimate about rain. Something soothing. Your ears are drumming with the pitter-patter sound that you can't hear the regular hustle-bustle. For once I felt like Harrison and I were absolutely alone in this world. I liked that feeling.

But we weren't.

That's when the reality hit him and he panicked.

I was dating his twin sister.

PART 2 ♡

(Harrison's POV)

It's 5 am and I am still not sleeping. My headphones are plugged into my ears while I feel like an absolute piece of shit. Not just I have done the forbidden audacious task of falling for my best friend but also the heinous crime of kissing my sister's boyfriend.

Lily doesn't even know why Tom broke up with her after a relationship of over a year and that too, over the phone. She has no idea that the person she trusted so much for consoling her, the one she chose to cry in front of, the one she chose to hug, the one she chose to share her pain with was actually the sole creator of the pain. Her twin brother was nothing but a snake.

The day after I kissed Tom, there was a knock at my bedroom door in the middle of the night. As soon as the door opened, I stumbled back with what force Lily hugged me. She was crying into my t-shirt. Her behaviour confused me and an instant fear of something bad happening to her settled at the bottom of my heart; my brother instincts made my fists clench. I wouldn't hesitate to kill anyone who had hurt her this way.

"Tom broke up with me," She utters in between her sobs. Her words acted like salt being rubbed over my open wounds.

Turns out I was also a hypocrite. I didn't kill myself.

I was helpless. I felt both like the criminal and the victim at the same time.

I hugged her back tighter, hiding my face in her hair.

"I am so sorry, Lily. I am so sorry," I whimpered and kissed the top of her head as she snuggled closer to me.

She thinks my sorries were of sympathy. No. They were my apology. But they feel hollow just like my heart and existence...

***

Out of so many editions, The Hollywood Reporter apparently, chose to put me and Tom on the same one. Seems like nature has decided to pull me inside the deepest guilt trap possible. I lock the magazine in my cupboard. I no more have any desire to look inside of it.

I haven't slept for the past twenty-four hours. I am so nervous. I feel so insecure. I want to talk about me landing a significant role to him. I know it's just me playing James Bond's younger version in a long flashback and not the real James Bond, but still...

He is the only one capable of calming my nerves after my mum. But sometimes mum couldn't, sometimes it's not her field of expertise. Sometimes only a friend could help you.

Tom was roasting marshmallows in this garden when I entered and sat beside him.

"What's up champ?" He says, not even looking at me.

I was quiet and looking down at my lap when he finally notices and turns to look at me.

"How's it going?" He asks. I look up to meet his soft brown eyes, instantly melting at the sight.

"Not well... I dunno... I feel weird. I don't know if you will want to hear my rant but--"

"Just vent to me. My ears are always open..." He says, patting my knee.

I nod my head. He knows exactly what I want. He listened to all my rambles with zero interruptions even when my mouth was stuffed with marshmallows, without judging me or passing any opinion...

Turns out the asking for help from Tom option doesn't exist anymore, considering he had blocked me after me mentioning him in that blank music story and now my and his names are bouncing all over- #1. The old fashioned, not being used for what it was first designed for: Instagram; #2. The infamous, super political, the lifeline of democratic announcements: Twitter; and #3. The safe from boomers, modern version of fanfiction dot net: Tumblr.

The fans think they know better about our situation then what I and (probably) Tom knows.

'Tom Holland and Harrison Osterfield have unfollowed each other on Instagram!!!' reads one of the fan posts.

I didn't unfollow him, it's him who blocked me and that's how Instagram works. Our mutual following, likes, comment and tags on each other's posts are automatically removed.

'No, they haven't unfollowed each other. One of them has blocked the other!!!' reads the reblogged version.

Holy Shit! This user is far more observant (or a stalker) and knows how Instagram works. I know Tom isn't very good with the working of social media, but it also turns out that he doesn't know how this tabloid fan culture works too.

P. S. All these triple exclamation marks on the fan posts are making me freak out.

Also, I am so grateful that they all are unaware about Lily and Tom dating and their break-up, else they would have dragged her into the controversy too.

Thank God.

I have blocked the supposed tags they tag me with and limited my comment section, so I don't have to deal with any kind of questions, speculations or hate in general.

I feel bad for Tom, he hasn't done that yet. I don't even know if he knows there's an option for it. It can seriously degrade his mental health.

I wish I could tell him.

***

It's kind of awkward when people are watching you eat and in my case, my mum and my two sisters are gawking on me instead of eating their own food. Woman's stare is always intimidating and I am blessed with three female pairs of eyes on me.

"You know... You don't have to block Tom just because he broke up with me." Lily says, sitting across the dining table.

That almost made me choke on my food and drop the fork on the plate. I could already feel the glimmer of interest sparking in mum's and Charlotte's eyes. It is as if they all were planning to have this conversation with me for a long time.

But wait... Does she think that me deleting Tom from my life is because of her break-up?

Oh my god!

Was there too much miscommunication between us?

Wait...

There was no communication from my side.

"Harrison?"

It was my mum this time. She keeps her hand over my shoulder, her voice sounds super worried.

"What is it, Hazza?" She asks, lovingly. She speaks as if she knows it is more than Tom and Lily's break-up. But I don't know how to tell her...

The next moment, mum has shifted her chair near me and had engulfed me in a side hug. Soon Charlotte and Lily walked up to me and were covering me from all sides. That's when I realised that I was crying. No. I wasn't just crying, I was sobbing. It was even difficult for me to breathe.

I need air.

I excuse myself and got up. They don't ask anything, maybe in an attempt to go slow with me. I really appreciate the gesture.

***

That's how I end up in this pub, pouring my heart out to a stranger. He's carefully listening to me, while occasionally sipping his drink and nodding his head. It really feels good to be listened to. I am telling everything to him from the exact beginning and how I fell for my best friend and then he started dating my sister and then how everything came crashing down...

"That's really fucked up, friend!" He comments in his Indian accent.

He was a trans-man who found me sitting in the corner with a cigarette in my hand. I wasn't even smoking but lost in thoughts. The stick was almost going to burn my fingers when he came and slapped it away and now he was listening to everything I was saying.

And then he's narrating his own sad love story to me and oh my god it's so much worse than me, yet he's pretending that I am the worse affected.

"And that's how she killed herself and I couldn't do anything..." He finishes as I blink. Like a fish, my mouth opens and closes, I instantly gulp my beer in one go in order to not look like a fool who has nothing good and uplifting to reply.

"That's really sad..." I somehow manage to say.

"Yeah. It is..."

I seriously need to go, else I will breakdown crying. I excuse myself and leave, I am not even drunk enough which sucks.

***

There is a guy walking in front of me on the pavement and he's really really drunk, unlike me. I really want to reach home fast and lay under my soft blankets but this guy is walking, occupying the whole pavement, stumbling on his feet with every step. He stumbles harder this time, about to fall face-first on the concrete. I rush forward and catch him.

My hands feel as if they were made of hard ice when I see his face.

He chuckles, "I know you are not Harrison... but I am seeing him everywhere. So funny... haha..."

"Tom..." I whisper and he starts to cry. He seriously looks like shit. His shirt is all wet and hairs are super messy. It's hard to even see him like this. I throw my arm around his shoulder and place his hand around my neck and get him straight on his feet. I try my best to walk him to my house.

Mum was terrified of seeing Tom like this, so were Charlotte and Lily. Although, Lily helped me carry him to my room, while he was babbling some unintelligible stuff.

We lay him over my bad.

"You should change his shirt, it's really dirty," Lily suggests and walks out of the room, giving us privacy. I intake a sharp breath as I drag the half-asleep, completely drunk Tom to sit up on the bed. And before I could pull his shirt up, he's puking over my chest. I back up.

"Sorry..." He mutters and falls over the mattress.

I gotta' change my shirt too.

My hands reach to the edge of my shirt as I try to pull it up but then I see Tom, and suddenly it feels wrong. Hasn't he seen me shirtless like thousand times before? And he's not even completely conscious... Yet, I turn my back to him and change into a new jumper. Then I struggle to get Tom changed too, making him wear one of my hoodies and then throw both our dirty clothes to my laundry basket.

"You should wash your face and brush your teeth. It will feel nice..." I suggest, not sure if he was even listening to me. I again get him down on his feet and carry him to the bathroom where I splash cold water over his face. He drinks some water too. And then he's brushing his teeth, a little messily though.

As we complete, he refuses to go back to my room and instead, tries to sit on the bathroom floor, too tired to walk back. The next moment I find myself lifting him up with my arms tucked below his knees and the back of his neck. He's heavier than I anticipated but when he holds my shoulder and snuggles close to my chest with his warm breath hitting directly over my neck; my knees feel like noodles. I try my best to not look down at his face or fall down and successfully carry him back to my room and get him back on the bed.

"Haz, I need to talk about something..."

I flinch hearing Lily's voice. I turn on my feet and see her standing by my door. Warmth rushes to my face, realising- she must have seen me carrying Tom in my arms...

I swallow and walk towards her as she walks outside the room and shuts the door behind us.

She takes in a jitterybreath, "I really think..." She hesitates for a second, "Tom likes you... more than a friend and more than how he likes me..."

"I-I-I---" I try to speak but only a ragged stammer comes out, not expecting this conversation at all.

"He always talks about you and when he finds me wearing your clothes..." She fidgets with her fingers, "He gives me extra attention and... asks me not to remove them while we have... sex..." She pauses, looking embarrassed. I try not to react and stay still, listening carefully.

"I think the only reason he was dating me was that I look like you..." She finishes, knocking out all the air from my lungs.

"Why-why are you telling this to me?" Out of a million things I could say, I chose this.

"Because..." She looks straight at my face, "No one looks at a person as you look at Tom unless they are madly in love with them."

"But then why did he date you?" I ask with a heavy heart.

"... Cause it's easy to be... straight?" She speaks, her lips pressing into a thin line. I think for a moment.

"B-but what about you---"

"It's all about you and him right now. And anyway, he loves you and not me. You don't want your sister to end up with a man who doesn't really love her, right?" She asks, hopefully.

I inhale and nod.

"And I won't want my brother to not end up with the man he really loves..."

***

For the first time, I don't feel guilty, rather I feel some burden lifting off my chest. I walk inside the room, remembering my conversation with Lily. Tom was fast asleep on the bed and that makes me smile. I take out a blanket and cover him with it, switching off the lights. As I was trying to move away, his hand grasps my wrist making goosebumps rise over my skin.

"Can't we even... not share the bed anymore?" He speaks, sounding tired.

Suddenly, I am again feeling guilty. I turn on my feet, his hand was still gripping my wrist when I get into the sheets beside him. I prevent looking at his face. I am too weak for that stuff, especially when he sounds already half-sober.

His hand slowly slips off me and I clench my eyes shut.

***

I am sure that I was lying on the bed unable to sleep for several hours now. It's raining outside, pouring heavier with each passing minute. But it's better than the silence because seriously when the raindrops weren't tapping against my windowpane, all I could hear was my jittering heartbeat, heavy breathing and the sound of Tom's own breathing.

I shift underneath me, turning on my side to finally look at Tom.

Now that he's sleeping, he won't catch me staring, right?

He was sleeping on his side with his arm tucked below his head, facing me. My fingers slowly slide across the skin of his face as I breathe in deeper and rest my palm over his cheek. My thumb softly strokes his smooth skin while my pinky was playing with his ear.

His eyes flutter open, lashes resembling butterfly wings. Those freaking pools of chocolate. Once again, I was frozen on the spot.

How fair it is that people can be naturally born with eyes as soft and as brown as those?

"Haz..." He whispers my name and I feel the knots in my stomach tying.

"Why did you run...?" His voice is quiet but sounds serious. He seriously demands an explanation. But I am just staring into his eyes, not speaking anything.

Because I did some outrageous friendship destroying shit and running away was my way of escape, albeit, it just made everything much worse...

"I am sorry," That's what I say, finally. He huffs at my words.

Then he shifts closer to me, my heart clenching tighter than ever, my armpits sweating disgustingly.

"That's not the question I asked..." He says, wriggling a hand out from under the covers and putting it over my face, stroking my skin and playing with my ear, just like I was doing a few moments ago.

I lick my dry lips, swallowing softly.

"Okay, wrong question..." He smiles lightly, "Why did you kiss me?"

His grin appears to tease me. I am already overwhelmed by the closeness when he's asking me such questions. I try to divert the question as I avert my gaze, suddenly unclear of how long an eye-contact should be maintained.

"I thought you would be mad at me... You blocked me and---"

And then Tom shoves his head forward, pressing his lips against mine. My mouth splits open at the contact, an embarrassing puff of air escaping.

Tom's other hand is quick to find my arm from below the sheets as he slips his fingers through mine, while his other hand is busy tracing a thumb across my jaw. It's weirdly soothing. The sound of the rain tapping against my window makes it even better.

My eyes are shut as he tilts his head, pressing his lips tighter, his tongue licking at my bottom lip. He squeezes my hand, making me gasp. He sees the perfect opportunity, sliding it inside my mouth while I am a whimpering mess. His breath smells and tastes of mint from the toothpaste, eliciting tingles in my abdomen.

I lurch forward, trying to kiss him back but he's swift to pull away, lips separating with a soft popping sound. My eyes flutter open at the loss of contact.

"Ask me why I kissed you?" He mumbles against my lips with a big, confident smirk.

Son of a...

How can I ever forget about the surge of confidence levels in him after there is some alcohol in his system?

"Ask..." He repeats, more forcefully this time making me look directly into his eyes.

I breathe in, "Why..."

He raises his eyebrows and I fight the urge to roll my eyes back.

"Why did you kiss me?"

He chuckles and softly pats my cheek, pulling away his hand from my face but the other one continues to hold my hand in his.

"... 'coz I wanted to. I wanted to kiss you."

"Did... Did you think of Lily?"

His face turns serious at the question, almost sad. He shakes his head.

"No..." He pauses, looking at me sternly. His Adam's apple bobbles in his throat, "When you are with me I forget about everything else."

A tear escapes his eye, sliding though the side of his eye and falling directly over the pillow. He clenches his eyes shut, squeezing my hand tighter.

Drunk Tom is also emotionally unstable...

"I am sorry Haz. I can't love her when I am already in love with you." His voice sounds so wrecked, so broken... I just pull him to my chest, pulling my hand out of his grip and wrapping it across his torso.

"I understand why you ran... And yet I kissed you again," He speaks in between his sobs.

I don't know why but his words made me smile. Maybe because he understands, yet he did it. It's so courageous. He's so brave. Like it's us against the world.

"Lily understands," I tell him. He stops sobbing abruptly, his body freezes as if he's unable to comprehend my words.

"Huh?" He asks in disbelief, pulling away from my chest and looking into my eyes.

"Yes. She does. She just told it to me." I smile wider, swiping the tears off his face while he blinks.

"Really?" He utters, voice creaky.

"Yes!"

He keeps staring at me like a frightened animal. He is still not believing me. It made me chuckle.

"Yes, div! Come 'on just believe me!" I insist.

His mouth parts, tongue poking out. He's silent for a minute as I notice the changing expressions on his face.

"She did not!" He exclaims.

"She did!"

"Oh god. Am I this obvious?" He laughs, probably assuming my conversation with Lily to be something funny. Not his fault though. I cut him some slack, considering all life he's been surrounded by three brothers in an easy relationship not the complicated and competitive one I share with Lily. Although with Charlotte it's all super smooth.

Still, the sound of his laughter feels good. I can't complain.

This time I pull him into a kiss interrupting his giggles. I am going to keep kissing him till his lips swell. But all we both are doing is smiling into the kiss, unable to hold the contact even for a few seconds.

But then again, now I have plenty of time to kiss him like that later. Right now, it's this moment that matters. It's Tom who matters.

No more holding back...

_______

Taz taglist: @hazmyheart​ // @justasmisunderstoodasloki​ // @tommysparker​ // @just-a-littlebit-of-everything​ // @thenoddingbunny-blog​ // @calltothewild​​ // @viagracex​ // @httplayer​ // @slytherin-chaser​ // @perspectiveparker​ // @catkeeperthetall​ // @god-knows-what-am-i-doing​ // @its-a-leap-of-faith-kid​ // @emmaloo21​ //

[meirmakesstuff]

Hello! My group of Wayfarers has now built themselves a building which serves as a general meeting place, as a prayer space, and a last resort retreat in case of monster attacks. Which, if wikipedia didn't lie to me, is not unlike a Synagogue. So I was wondering if men would wear a kipah/other hat inside even if they're just gathering to eat. There're also strangers regularly entering the same space to eat. Would that make a difference?

Oh, spectacular. I love this question because it has so many different layers to it. Once again you’ve asked a deceptively simple question that’s going to take me several paragraphs of background to address, and I’m going to expand it to include Jewish head covering practices other than men wearing kippot while we’re at it, as well as touching on the nature of Jewish sacred spaces. 

First of all, congratulations on naming your Jewish-coded culture! Wayfarers is a fascinating name and opens interesting implications about your world. I remain incredibly curious about the story you’re telling.

Second of all, my usual 2J3O (Two Jews, three opinions) disclaimer applies, especially this time, because I’m going to be talking about a lot of different Jewish practices with regard to head coverings, and while I’ve spent some time in a wide variety of different Jewish spaces and movements, I’m not deeply immersed in all of them, so for Jewish readers, if I make an incorrect generalization about practices in your movement I’d love to read your corrections. I’d also like to point anyone reading this toward Kermab’s previous ask for context on this conversation. 

As it happens, two years ago I conducted a series of interviews across denominations about head covering practices and feelings for a book I used in my fourth through sixth grade classroom. While I don’t have legal permissions to share those interviews for any purpose other than classroom teaching, I’ll be referencing them as we go along here. 

The first and most basic question is who covers their heads, and when. Your ask shows some basic and reasonable assumptions: men cover their heads in the synagogue. That’s not untrue, but it doesn’t tell the whole story.

You might remember from the other ask that rabbinic Judaism, which most of us practice today, didn’t develop until the sacrificial system was becoming unfeasible and eventually impossible to maintain. At that point, it seems that a cultural convention was for men and women to cover their heads at all times, with the similar explanation of modesty. Modesty seems to take on a different connotation when we’re discussing men or women--avoiding self-aggrandizement for men, sexual rectitude for women--but in essence covering one’s head was universal. I haven’t made a particular study of the shifts in this custom over time, but I can note that many examples of historic Jewish women’s costume from different regions includes one or another type of head covering--as did the non-Jewish women’s fashions of many of those places. At some point it became accepted that only married women needed to cover their hair, that since a woman’s hair was to be understood as a symbol of her sexuality, an unmarried woman’s visible hair was a way of communicating her availability. Men’s headwear meanwhile shifted as well, as did other religious wear such as tzitzit and tefillin. Tefillin settled into a tradition of being only worn during weekday morning prayer. Tzitzit developed into two garments: a tallit katan worn under a boy’s or man’s clothing at all times, and a tallit gadol worn over the clothing only during the morning prayer service. In communities where it was becoming uncommon for non-Jewish men to cover their heads, especially in places where the Christian convention was to remove one’s hat upon entering their houses of worship, it became expected in a synagogue that men might need to be told that the convention was to cover their heads, and kippot began to be provided to them there. 

However, the convention isn’t actually to cover one’s head out of respect for the building. As you learned in your research, a synagogue building isn’t a locus of holiness but a location where holy activities take place. The expectation that developed was that men should cover their heads when engaging in religious activities. What are religious activities? Prayer, certainly, but also any activity that includes prayer, such as lifecycle occasions, home rituals, and eating. 

There’s a memorable scene in George Eliot’s famously well-researched novel Daniel Deronda in which Daniel sits down to a Shabbat meal with a Jewish family. Eliot describes the family and their guests pausing before they ate, the men putting on their hats, and a benediction Eliot and her character do not understand taking place before the meal is eaten. From my perspective as a modern American, it was notable to me that they didn’t put on kippot but resumed the hats any Victorian man would take off upon entering their home, which these men had apparently also taken off, but put back on for the brachot before eating (Eliot doesn’t specify, as far as I can remember, whether they kept them on through the meal). 

Daniel Deronda makes passing reference to the split that was already underway at the time in European Jewry, the development of the Reform movement. Early Reform practice developed out of a desire to be as little distinguished from the surrounding Christian culture as possible without actually worshipping a tripartite deity. Changes included, among others, abandoning all unique cultural garments, including tefillin, tzitzit, and any indoor covering of heads. At the time Eliot was writing, “Reformed” and “Rabbinic”--now Reform and Orthodox--were the only two distinct movements of European Judaism, though Hasidic groups, under the heading of Rabbinic Judaism but each having developed unique traditions, were many. My knowledge of what non-European Jews were doing, sartorially, at the time is very slight and I would welcome knowledgeable input. 

The development of the Conservative movement is generally credited to the 1880s, when a disagreement within the Reform movement about how far to assimilate and which traditions to abandon culminated in the famed “Trefa Banquet” at which those who wanted to conserve practices such as keeping kosher are said to have walked out due to the flagrantly non-kosher menu. The symbolic incident speaks to the differences in practice between the movements: Reform Judaism in the 19th and early 20th centuries might have been indistinguishable from Christianity in all but theology, while Conservative Judaism would have been indistinguishable from Orthodox Judaism in all but a few liturgical and practical leniencies. Today, Conservative Judaism is dwindling due to a lack of clear leadership or identity, while the Reform movement rediscovers practices they had once abandoned, and certain Orthodox communities make motions of various kinds toward the center as well; nothing is simple in the story of Jewish life, and nothing is ever finished developing.

Here’s where the gender thing complicates, because in the mid to late 20th century Jewish practice began to egalitarianize in Reform and Conservative Judaism. I won’t go into the step-by-step development of women’s prayer attire and the path to women’s ordination and full inclusion from a historical perspective, but my own experiences are pretty illustrative about the development of practices from the 1990s until today:

I grew up in an Orthodox congregation, a university Hillel, a Conservative congregation, and a Conservative parochial school. The Conservative congregation was the only one of these that owned its own building; the school rented the top floor of the JCC and both the Hillel and the Orthodox congregation met on Saturdays and holidays in all-purpose rooms on the university campus, and when those were unavailable in whatever spaces they could secure. In all of these communities, boys were required to be wearing kippot at all times; in the Orthodox congregation men sometimes wore hats, while in the school there was a clear distinction between hats, which were impolite to wear indoors as a function of 20th century American culture, and kippot, which boys were required to be wearing at all times on school property; a boy who forgot to bring his own kipa had to walk to the office, deposit 25 cents in the tzedakah box, and take a plasticky black kipa to wear for the rest of the day. In the conservative synagogue, men were required to wear kipot, and women who were taking an active role in the service of any kind were required to cover their heads as well, with a kipa, a hat, or a provided lace doily. Women in the pews were permitted to make that choice themselves. 

As a girl*, I was and remain uncomfortable with that dichotomy, in a way that is separate from the fact that I turned out not to be a girl after all. An Orthodox adult offered the paltry reasoning that women were simply closer to God than men, and that being thus not required to take part equally they were therefore barred from doing so, which at eleven already read to me as Victorian essentialist nonsense.  As an adult I know women for whom that reasoning or a softened version of it is spiritually meaningful but I have also known many, so many women for whom that logic was a source of frustration and hurt. 2J3O. 

I began wearing a kipa at the age of eleven, at first only as a form of protest against the principal’s daily “We will begin; all boys put on your kippot,” and later because wearing it became meaningful to me in ways I still struggle to put into words. I began to wear my kippot at all times that a boy was expected to do so: at all times on and around the JCC where the school was, on school field trips, at the synagogue (we had by that time tapered off participation as a family in the Orthodox congregation and were splitting our attendance between the Hillel and the Conservative synagogue: I later learned that this was because my mother was concerned that my brother would adopt the sexist attitudes she had overheard from men in the campus Orthodox group; all I knew at the time was that the communities I was in were struggling with how much and in what contexts to adopt egalitarian practice. 

I was not the only girl* who formed our small brigade of kipa-wearing heritors of our mothers’ feminist battles, but we were not many. At school, the principal still opened the prayer service with a reminder that all boys were required to put on their kipa--and as we moved up into middle school, tallit and tefillin--and every day I stood up with the crowd of grumbling boys and wrapped myself in the tallit I had sewed and tied with my mother’s assistance and the tefillin my parents had bought me at my request. Once or twice I forgot my bag at home and went without, and the principal said nothing, though boys would have copped a lunch detention. Once I lost my kipa somehow on the bus to school and marched myself to the office to put my quarter in the tzedaka box and take my shameful plasticky kipa; the office manager watched me and said nothing. Boys struggling to put on their tefillin began to ask me for help rather than other boys or the principal; I was the only one in my grade clearly doing this by choice; I got an early taste of what it is like to teach and began to learn to lead without judgement or blame. 

My bat* mitzvah celebration took place on a Sunday rather than a Saturday. I wore my tefillin with a fluffy floral, crinolined Easter dress and a kipa my mother decorated with fabric flowers. I spoke in my sermon about feminism, about equality, about arguments for a gender essentialist practice that I had heard and rejected already as I took the traditional first steps into Jewish adulthood. Besides me, men and women participated equally in the service: the Hillel rabbi shopped around among the Jewish professors in my parents’ social circle and created a breakdown that satisfied us all. A few of my father’s cousins declined their invitations, but no one I was actually acquainted with. 

I went to public high school and for the first time was spending my every day in a context where boys’ heads--and therefore mine--were uncovered and Jewish topics rarely came up in conversation. I made close friends, I dated Jewish boys my friends recommended, that I should have instead made friends with, and I wondered who I was. The summer before Sophomore year I came back from a week at Jewish teen camp and did not take my kipa off. I have worn it every day since then, for more than twenty years. 

My mother, who had been my model and cheerleader in exploring my Jewish, feminist development was initially uncomfortable. I remember a morning when her discomfort escaped in the form of snark: “[Meir] thinks she’s* going to a religious occasion.” I snarked back, adopting a theatrically pious tone for my “Life is a religious occasion,” but snark aside that’s actually the way I experience it. Wearing the kipa every day, whether I’m teaching Hebrew or taking out the trash, is a way of expressing that my religious life is not compartmentalized in certain actions and locations: I am the same Jewish, trans, complicated me, wherever I am and whatever I do. 

In graduate school I worked in a Reconstructionist synagogue, and I do again now, and the practice in the school I taught in then was to require all students to wear kippot at all times in the synagogue: that’s been the case when I’ve taught in Reform congregations as well. When I taught in a Conservative congregation I was permitted to encourage but not to require girls to wear kipot, but I was asked to require the boys to do so. Since that wasn’t a community where I felt I could be transparent about my trans identity, I wasn’t able to bring my personal experiences to use there, and that’s what set me on the road to creating my book of interviews with as many different kinds of Jews as I could gather. 

My interviews with other Jews about their head covering choices revealed a wide diversity of feelings. I had a cis male Conservative rabbi/professor tell me he only covers his head when he is specifically teaching on religious subjects (he also teaches history, I believe), and that when he was a child in an Orthodox parochial school his rabbi advised the boys to wear baseball caps to cover their heads on the subway so that if they misbehaved it wouldn’t reflect badly on the Jewish community. I had the son of the same rabbi tell me he wore his kipa at all times as a matter of habit, but his fiancee had asked him to pocket it or wear a hat if they were going to a restaurant on Shabbat, because that was contrary to the practice of both of their youth (traditional Shabbat practice forbids using money and cooking or instructing someone to cook for you). I had a cis male Reform rabbi tell me that he wore a kipa at all times because, although he didn’t keep kosher and didn’t refrain from going out to restaurants on Shabbat, he wanted to make the point that those too were legitimate practices of legitimate Jews. I had a cis male Conservative rabbi tell me that he preferred to wear a bandana rather than a kipa unless the occasion was too formal to allow it. I had a Lubavicher woman talk to me about the deep and the practical meanings she found in different methods of covering her hair and why she had shifted those practices throughout her lifetime; I had a non-Hasidic ultra-Orthodox woman say almost identical things, and I had a third Orthodox woman tell me she had worn hats that covered most of her hair when her children were young so that they would be able to fit in, but now that they were adults she wore the smallest hats she could find without actually being a kipa, to the mild agitation of her community. I had a hospital chaplain, not a rabbi, tell me that he used his kipa with a team logo on it to connect with patients, but that he rarely wore it outside of work situations. I had a gender-fluid person talk to me about different ways she has covered her head, or her hair, at various times in her shifting personal identity, to fit in with various different communities. I had so many women clergy and lay people tell me about harassment they had experienced from ultra-Orthodox men and non-Jews for wearing a kipa in public that I couldn’t use all of them. Some of the women talked about having given up covering their heads except in the synagogue or Jewish holiday meals. Some talked about wearing hats to look more like Orthodox women, or wearing beaded kippot that could pass as hair accessories. Some talked about defiantly wearing their kippot despite the aggression of Orthodox men demanding that they conform to Orthodox proscribed gender performance or non-Jews demanding that they engage in discussions of Israel politics while grocery shopping, or using public transportation. I had a Black Lubavicher woman tell me that when she wore a tichel (headwrap) she was frequently mistaken for Muslim, but that when she wore a shaitel (wig) she was frequently mistaken for Christian. In particular my students were moved by that tension: for so many of the interviewees in the book, the benefit and the drawback of their head covering choices was being identifiable as Jews, and here was someone covering in extremely mainstream ways and going unrecognized even within her own community. 

Every single person I interviewed who was in any way a parent, teacher, or community leader talked about the hope that, whatever their practice was, it would inspire children who look to them to do the same. 

Among interviewees who wore a kipa as part of their practice but not all the time, there was a general agreement along the lines of “I wear it when I engage in prayer, learn or teach Jewish subjects, or eat with a Jewish group.” The practice isn’t tied to the location but the activity. However, there are some locations that are so strongly associated with those activities that one might be expected to cover one’s head there regardless of the specific activity. 

Looking specifically at the Wayfarers’ gathering-house (a literal translation both of the English term “Synagogue” and the Hebrew “Beit Knesset”), I would certainly say yes that they would cover their heads in one way or another when sitting down to eat; you can make a call about whether they would do so to engage in community politics or conduct diplomacy, and I would imagine there might be other priorities on their mind in the event of a monster attack. I will say that the border between religious practice and cultural practice, when it comes to Judaism, is not really meaningful, so if the community comes together for, say, a wedding or a holiday party, modern Jews who wear kipot would almost universally put on a kipa for such an occasion. It’s your call as to whether the gender divide is a meaningful factor in your imaginary culture; I will say that from Rashi’s daughters wearing tefillin to Rabbi Regina Jonas tending to her community in Nazi Germany to the ordinations or admissions into rabbinical school in the past few years of openly nonbinary clergy or prospective clergy in the Reform and Conservative movements, it has never been truly black and white. The choices you make in that regard will tell a story about who the Wayfarers are and how they fit into the larger history of your world. 

*A note on gender: like Jews, trans people have a wide diversity of opinions and attitudes, including toward their childhood selves. What is comfortable for me is not necessarily comfortable for other trans people. Referring to myself as having been a girl is honest with regard to the way I experienced things then; referring to me as a woman now would be an aggressive act of rudeness. Referring to someone as their assigned gender when speaking about their childhood is not and should not be the norm unless the person has specified that it’s their preference: I only do it in certain contexts and do not prefer that others talk about me as having been a girl. I chose to do it in this context because I was discussing choices I made at a time when I would have described myself as a girl. Today my pronouns are exclusively He/Him and it is not my practice to reveal my previous name. 

[sunnetrolls]

Project FLORA: Botanical Bioenhancement

Commonly referred to as a “plant symbiote,” Project Flora’s Empire Approved botanical bioenhancement is a symbiotic growth that utilizes trolls as hosts. The host is transformed into the ideal apex predator, primarily for use as an enhanced soldier.

(condensed version at the very end) (Google Docs link)

Three distinct generations of symbiotes can be utilized for different effects, all with their own benefits and drawbacks. These three generations are as follows: 

GEN 1: The first prototype symbiote. Hosts commonly experience moderate to extreme physical growth, including the alternation of limbs for grasping branches and efficient high-speed running. Rarer effects include loss of eyesight and other senses. This generation experiences far less aggression than intended and is not recommended for military use.

GEN 2: The second prototype symbiote. Hosts experience much more extreme growth than what is caused by first generation symbiotes, some subjects growing to ten or more feet tall. Hosts may potentially also experience aggressive, animalistic, or otherwise “feral” behaviors, as well as an extremely increased appetite. This generation is recommended for military use, but is not ideal.

GEN 3: The finished form of the symbiote. This fully realized form is solely recommended for military usage, as hosts develop extreme aggression and begin to lose a sense of self. All infected hosts display intense aggressive behaviors and have not demonstrated further instincts beyond survival. The only exception observed is hosts often killing other living creatures for entertainment rather than hunting.

DEVEOPMENT

Symbiote development occurs in three distinct stages: primary growth, settling, and residual growth. The full process occurs over one to three sweeps, with settling as both the most variable and longest stage on average.

PRIMARY GROWTH PHASE The primary stage of symbiote development occurs from initial contraction to when the host begins external plant growth. This stage can take anywhere from only a few weeks to one to three months, but very rarely any longer than three months. This stage is characterized by the development of the symbiote body generally on the host’s back. The symbiote is invisible to plain sight, but can be jostled to detect growth in the lower back. Symbiote development in other bodily regions must be terminated; it requires access to the spinal cord to begin the settling and residual growth stages. This stage ends when the symbiote ceases core growth and begins “branching out” with plant development, entering the settling phase.

SETTLING PHASE The settling phase of symbiote development occurs from initial plant growth and continues indefinitely. This stage is only terminated when the host regains physical control over newly-formed plant appendages, and can vary in length greatly between individuals, but generally lasts a minimum of 10 months to as many as three sweeps. During this stage, symbiotic growth is uncontrolled and must be monitored by an outside person. If left unchecked, symbiotes may cause irreversible damage to “weak” aspects of the host, potentially causing intense pain and lasting negative effects. Hosts with symbiotes of any generation are advised to ensure to have a caretaker for the settling phase to ensure lasting damage is avoided. This phase includes host growth and potential bone reconstruction in addition to plant growth. A majority of tested hosts experienced altered bone structure especially in the legs, often resulting in an avian appearance. This is unavoidable and cannot be reversed. The precise trigger for ending the settling stage is unknown, but some hosts have reported that intense fear reactions relying on plant use have proven efficient in ending the settling phase. This is called the “moment of control.”

RESIDUAL GROWTH PHASE The residual growth phase refers to growth past the moment of control until eventual host death. The core symbiote will produce additional growths at a much slower rate until host death, and generally requires frequent upkeep to ensure maximum efficiency. Trimming of hosts is not only recommended, but required of all military-employed persons. Consult your local botanist to decide what level of growth is appropriate for each host, as every symbiote will manifest in a unique way and has unique upkeep requirements. Only active growths require upkeep.

Symbiote development can be influenced by a variety of factors, including the host’s living environment, initial temperament, body type, and blood caste. Symbiotes will mimic the biome a host is held in during development; for ideal results, hosts should be kept in a carefully curated space for the entirety of development to ensure that undesirable growths do not occur.

Temperament of hosts can also vary between each individual, but the second and third generations of symbiotes have proven efficient in eliminating most “good” natured traits from individuals to ensure proper soldier development. First generation hosts have reported increased feelings of calm and compassion, but have also experienced far more unstable and violent tempers.

HOST CAPABILITIES

Host development is separated into two categories, active growth and passive growth. Not to be confused with the third developmental stage, active and passive growth refers to the types of plants a core symbiote can spawn.

There is an additional category of growths that refers to native items that are not directly spawned due to symbiote development. These are referred to as external growths.

Active growth refers to all growths a host can utilize after the moment of control. This section is typically limited in variety and each host rarely gains more than one or two types of active growths.

Back-spawned tendrils

Back-spawned carnivorous flora

Other bodily tendrils

Motile leaves or fronds

Passive growth refers to all other bodily growths that cannot be controlled by the host. The only limit to passive growth development is the biodiversity of the habitat the host develops in, and is not restricted to the following categories. 

Mosses

Leaves

Flowers (sweep-round)

Barks

External growths are anything beyond these categories that spawns on a host.

Mushrooms

Lichens

Other fungi

Active growths are arguably the most important development on any host, but also the most sensitive. These require frequent upkeep to ensure peak health and capabilities. Core symbiotes will continue to spawn active growths for the entire host life, but without proper supervision, these growths can begin to crowd the hose and limit functionality.

Generally, active growths are utilized for motion, but can be additionally used as limited extra limbs. Most categories of active growths are prehensile for this purpose. However, a majority of active growths are only revealed when the host experiences significant external injury. These internal growths function to pull injured flesh back together with the effectiveness of medical stitches.

The appearance of active growths is reliant on the host environment, and can have any number of additional features depending on native flora. A vast majority of bodily tendrils generally appear as vines or roots, as these structures easily accomplish the necessary tasks of mobile tendrils.

Passive growths accomplish tasks that are generally completed as background activity for hosts. All symbiotes are capable of photosynthesis via passive growths, but generally lack the efficiency to survive without dietary supplement. To complete this, hosts generally develop intense sunlight resistance and report increased desire to sunbathe.

Lastly, no natural deaths of symbiote hosts have been reported. It is theorized that through developmental supplementation from structures not present in hosts the FLORA symbiote allows hosts to survive indefinitely.

PROJECT FLORA: SPARKNOTES EDITION

Project FLORA is a plant symbiote that makes a troll into essentially a supersoldier. Its growth can span anywhere from about a sweep to more than three depending on the host troll.

This development has three stages: primary growth, settling, and residual growth. Primary growth is when the parasite develops, settling is when it grows plants, and residual growth is the slow growth after that. Settling is fun because the symbiote just grows and the host has no control over it- the border between phase 2 and 3 is called the “moment of control” and usually caused by a fear reaction.

The growth a host gets is determined by where they live during the settling phase, so it can vary a lot, and varies even more depending on the host’s physique and blood case. The host’s temperament can also change a lot but that also depends on if they have an early or later developed parasite.

The types of plants on a host fall into two and a half categories- active and passive growth, then external growth is the stuff that grows not as a result of the parasite. Active growth is stuff like back tendrils and movable plants, while passive growth is everything else. Mushrooms or other fungi on passive growth is external growth.

On top of this, hosts have active growths that are like baby tendrils all around in them that act like auto stitches if they get injured, basically pulling themselves back together. Hosts can also photosynthesize with passive growth but it’s not very efficient and they still need to eat other things.

Lastly, hosts are functionally immortal as supplemental growth from the core of the parasite reverses aging to an extent.

[utilitycaster]

Accents of Exandria

I’m doing this more by accent rather than by location first, due to accent diversity in major cities and racial ties to certain accents.

One thing to note: accents in fiction are important signifiers of class and background based on our own preconceived notions, and it’s worth keeping that in mind. For example, most people associate an RP British accent with being upper class and educated, and the characters who speak in this accent typically are either nobility, wealthy, educated, or all three, even if they come from very different regions. It’s a common shorthand in media and that includes Critical Role. Consider Lord of The Rings - Sam and Frodo are of the same race and in the same region with the same native language, but they have very different accents to show that Frodo is wealthy, worldly, and highly educated, and Sam is more working-class and provincial.

Obviously spoilers for both campaigns all over and I’m sure I’ve left plenty of things out - feel free to send me suggestions! I’m sure I will write a follow-up at some point. 

And finally, I am just a nerd who loves accents. I took a few linguistics classes in college and learn about them in my free time, but I’m no expert, so if you are one or have corrections let me know!

Scottish: Dwarvish, and by extension places primarily populated by dwarves. Examples: Kraghammer.

RP British: a large number of elves (including many drow), educated/upper-class people (especially humans). Examples: Percy, Vex, Vax, the elves of Syngorn, High Bearer Vord, Lieve’tel, the Briarwoods, Taryon, Zahra, Yussah. Artagan seems to have this too, further indicating an elvish/fey influence. Vex and Vax have a bit more of a drawl than Percy’s more clipped accent, which could partially be a personality difference and partially their more humble, frontier childhood in Byroden. This also seems to be Fjord’s original accent, indicating some level of education (which we know is the case - he’s quite intelligent and trained in history).

Mid-Atlantic: The Old Hollywood one, not the Tidewater one. Sort of in between RP and US Neutral (hence the name Mid-Atlantic - it’s seen as a blend between British and U.S. accents). Also seen in a lot of educated/upper-class people who aren’t elves, and people imitating them. Examples: most of Emon’s upper class including the Tal’Dorei family and Allura. This is probably not Gilmore’s native accent, but it’s his accent now. I’d put Scanlan here as well, which fits, particularly since this accent was the ‘theater’ accent in the first half of 20th Century America.

United States ‘non-regional’: Westruun, the Air Ashari, a lot of regular middle-class humans, halflings, and gnomes, a lot of Firbolgs, Shady Creek Run. Examples: Keyleth, Beau, Caduceus, Kima, Pike, Kerrek, Kashaw, Thorbir, Lyra, Keg, Tova, Twiggy, Yeza, and a whole lot more. The Doylist explanation for this is that all of the main cast and most guests speak like this normally, and not all guests are comfortable playing an improv-based game that many of them have never played before while also doing accent work; as such it’s sort of a catch-all for a lot of average people. In Westruun in particular it sometimes skews a bit midwestern (slightly flatter vowels - compare Kima’s accent to most of the other people on the list).

United States southern: unclear but my guess is based in the north of the continent, perhaps along the Empire’s borders: Starosta Wyatt, a halfling in Zadash, has this accent; Fjord has a deeper version which is in turn an imitation of Vandran; Lorenzo and Wursh both have it as well which raises the question whether this might be related to ogre/orcish languages. Note that the accents many people would class as Southern in the US encompass a pretty broad region. IIRC Wyatt sounded a bit more Appalachian whereas Fjord (so Vandran) sounds more Texan.

Irish: I think we’ve seen this most consistently in Kymal (notably in Kaylie), but Molly also has an Irish accent so I wonder if it’s particularly common among entertainers? On the other hand we have no reason to believe Molly didn’t have this accent in previous lives as well.

German: Zemni Fields. Explicitly linked to a region of the Empire and to a language that is distinct from Common or any of the racial languages. Zemnian as a language is still alive and well, and the Zemnian people are as far as we’ve seen well-integrated into the Empire’s fabric - Caleb’s parents were very pro-Empire, Zemnians are found in high positions, Dairon notes that a Zemnian accent in Xhorhas would be recognized as Dwendalian, and Zemnian words are used in Zadash pretty regularly (Zauberspire, for example). As a result this seems to indicate that while the Empire took over Zemni Fields, they let Zemnians maintain their culture. Examples: Caleb, Trent, Ophelia Mardun.

French: Menagerie Coast, Bisaft Island. Unclear exactly where on the coast. Examples: Avantika, Vera. Interestingly, other French-based accents (like Cajun) are also seen in this region (eg: Orly) which might imply that there’s a fantasy French equivalent (a la Zemnian for German) spoken in this region with varying dialects.

Eastern European: Unclear, but actually this is not uncommon in Tieflings - not only is it Jester and Marion’s accent despite them having a somewhat French-sounding last name, but it’s also seen in Campaign 1 for both Vanessa of the Slayer’s Take and Lillith. But Cree (Tabaxi) has it as well. Eastern European is also a pretty broad term and IRL Eastern Europe encompasses a whole lot of different languages, not all of which are related. Anecdotally, Jester’s accent reminds me of a few native Romanian speakers I know. Overall, seems to be mostly Tieflings and Wildemount.

Russian: in the notes Matt’s published, this is stated to be Oremid Hass’s accent as well as some others in Zadash. Seems to be specific to the Empire - some of the towns (eg: Nogvorot) have Russian-sounding names, but the region is unclear.

Scandinavian: thus far only seen in Yasha, so this may be specific to the Iotha marshes of Xhorhas.

Working Class London-ish accent: rough types more so than any region. It’s Grog’s accent and the accent of the Herd of Storms, but we also see similar accents among some of the criminal types in Zadash, along the way to Shady Creek Run, and at the Sour Nest.

Southern European: I’m not positive about the Kryn Dynasty upper-class accent found among many members of the consecuted Dens, but it sounds a little Greek or a little Spanish, depending (thanks,the International Dialects of English Archives!) Examples: Zethris Olios, Leylas Krynn, Shadowhand Essik.

[eve-context-log]

essay on yve’s tang and rene magritte (W.I.P draft)

The artist I have chosen that really does inspire my work is the French born artist Yves Tanguy who was a surrealist painter who was and is well known for his abstract landscape pieces that just make me happy looking at? He has a very unique style of painting which was unusual for the time and was completely different from other surrealist art at the time. Yves didn’t start off wanting to do art, like most of us he kind of floated around in life not knowing what to do, he joined the navy in 1918 and afterword’s into he took up jobs until he came by a painting by the artist Giorgio de Chirico and was deeply inspired by It and was inspired to become an artist due to it. He got right away to painting, fully being absorbed right into it like it was his calling he was waiting for. He would only work on one piece at a time which could probably be due to how small of a studio he had at a time which would only have enough room to work on one piece. He was introduced to the surrealism style by his friend prevert showing him the work of many surrealism artists who revolved around André Breton.

 His style is very unique and distinct, a far departure for what other surrealist artists were doing at the time, his pieces show off mostly empty vast landscapes that are mostly occupied by nonsensical objects that maybe act as a metaphor for the brain. The brain is normally shown to be a calm desert so maybe these objects represent thoughts? He uses a very limited colour palette in his pieces, mostly consisting of normal colours for the sky and sand but more unnatural colours are used for the abstract objects so they stand out way more than the desert its self. Due to these colours, they stand out way more which is good as the abstract shapes tend to be either small in the background or super close in your face with the angels he paints. He either paints his objects as very loose, fabric like making them look like draped cloth and in contrast he paints a lot of objects also that are ridged with very strong looking structures that make them appear almost like concrete or clay. What he does with these shapes is very unusual, with his cloth like shapes he tends to make them either bend in the non-wind almost like they’re stretching to the heavens and with the ridged shapes he tends to leave them as is most of the time which helps contrast form between the both of them.

 The colour in his pieces is also placed oddly too, most of the time there’s one colour almost bleeding into another, for example: in the piece Through Birds, Through Fire, But Not Through Glass 1943 he tends to make the orange red in the highest top object slowly shift into a bright yellow which is just subtle enough that you don’t notice on first glance but really start picking it up when you look closely. He tends to go for very heavy shadows, not adding much in the ways of transitioning into the darker parts of the shadows, he literally just tends to block in a thick layer of black to empathise his shadows which allows them to appear almost like a second object in itself. He paints a lot of sky’s in his backgrounds, I’ve noticed he really tends to like painting in fluffy light clouds or either a very slight fog which you also might miss on first glance but they help create both a calm relaxing atmosphere for his pieces but also a mysterious type of ambiance like anything could be hidden in that fog. I’ve just noticed he goes with the three main colours way of kind of selecting a colour palette, for example in one piece he will use faint blues, yellows and reds are his three main colours which has been a common reoccurring element in his pieces. Some of the objects he paints will sometimes not follow the laws of gravity and just float, this really helps further the dream motive of his pieces, almost like these objects are floating off into the white abyss above almost like a passing memory. Another thing that also helps with the motive of these objects trying to reach the great above are the objects that are the objects that seem to have a ton of blob like webs that almost look like they’re climbing up the structures and assembling into their own version of that object.

 Another surrealism artist that I like is Belgian born artist rene Magritte. Rene was a surrealist artist who was mostly known for his lighter more humorous pieces but also his more down to earth pieces which helped people think on issues and often depicted regular objects in strange areas. Rene has had a harsh life, when he was 14 his mother committed suicide by drowning herself in the river, this wasn’t the first time she attempted suicide. His early paintings which where around 1915 where in an impressionistic style, a style which was characterised by thin, small yet visible brushstrokes which often showed off a normal subject matter which is of course a huge polar opposite for what surrealism is and is what surrealism is agents. He moved from movement to movement a lot, going for more abstract movements with each change like, impressionism to futurism to cubism to then finally settling on surrealism which was the most abstract of them all. He starts surrealism painting when in 1922 he saw the reproduction of the painting “the song of love 1914) which brought rene to tears, he stated this was “one of the most moving moments of my life: my eyes saw for the first time”.

 He paints a lot of surrealistic stuff, he’s mostly well known for the portraits he would do with the objects covering a person��s face; however, he also created a lot of lesser-known abstract landscapes which often depict a lot of nature. He uses a lot of blue greens and browns to create a very earth like piece, he uses a lot of earth like imagery in his work which creates a much more intense dream like feel with his use of the vivid blue sky and soft fluffy clouds. He tends to focus on one main subject when he’s painting his surrealistic pieces, for example his most famous piece a man’s face being covered with an apple or a Boquete of flowers that’s ends are actually a bunch of old-fashioned pipes. With his pieces of people with they’re faces covered it might be referring to the fact that the brain cannot make up peoples faces when dreaming, we always have to see someone even for a second to see them in a dream so these pieces could maybe represent the unconscious brain trying to make up a face on its own. He uses a lot of clouds in his pieces to further the dream motive, they help his pieces also look a lot calmer despite all of the abstract pieces in his paintings.

 He tends not to add a lot of visible brushstrokes to his pieces, he opts to make pieces with thick well blended paint to go for a more realistic feel to contrast the abstract with the more realistic style of painting he goes for. The brushstrokes that he makes visible is to add texture to objects like rougher brushstrokes for bricks and lighter drier brushstrokes to help empathise the fluffy clouds he’s going for and even drier brushstrokes to help empathise the dry dirt and sand he paints. He’s very hyper detailed with how he paints, even for most realism artists he really pushes himself, for example he adds the tiniest of bumps and cracks in order to make a huge rock painting and the tiniest pieces of disturbed sand in one of his landscape pieces to add just that little more life to his work.

Comparing both yve’s and Rene’s work, Rene is the more realistic painter of them both, Rene opts for more minor details like details in the sand he paints where yve goes for a smoother look to his piece which makes his shapes more abstract but sacrifice detail. Rene also has a more verity to what he paints as he doesn’t just paint one thing like yve does, however, yve doesn’t really need much verity to his work as his unique trait really is that he paints mostly the same subject over and over again. There’s a lot more visible brushstrokes in yve’s work, he uses it a lot in the sand to add contrasting colours in it and he also uses it in his more fabric-based shapes to add a fabric like texture to them. Rene’s use of brushstrokes is a lot looser in application to Yves, but he makes them count, only adding them to the objects that could use the extra layer of detail like his use of sand and fabric. They both go for I believe the representation of the subconscious mind, yve’s with the thoughts in our mind and the passing emotions and Rene with representations of dreams and showing how bizarre they really can be.

 In conclusion, I very much prefer yve’s more simplistic surrealism, I just find it a bit more unusual where I feel like Rene’s just makes a bit too much sense for my liking, I prefer work when its at its weirdest and yve hits that spot. I also very much prefer the palette Yve uses as it’s much more muted palette which despite being very muted makes the strange objects he paint all blend into one giant mess of abstractness that just makes my eyes happy to look at.

[filmmakersvision]

Top 10 Hindi Performances of 2019

December 27, 2019

by Inakshi Chandra-Mohanty

1. Manoj Pahwa - Article 15

It is simple to play the good guy. When your thoughts align with the character’s moral compass, it isn’t too difficult to step into his/her shoes. But when playing an antagonist, it is impossible to blend into the character with the same seamless effort. In Article 15, Bhramadatt Sing, played by Manoj Pahwa, is the main antagonist. Not only is he a villainous character, he is also a realistic representation of a certain section of people who exist in society, people who take advantage of caste discrimination to commit crimes. In this case, Pahwa had to understand the character without allowing his own views to dilute it. With his performance, he manages to create a sense of appalled disbelief towards his character. There is no point at which his behavior and actions do not disgust the audience. Even before the character is revealed to be the main inciter of violence, his biased actions already predispose the audience to dislike him. Sing is that character that people want to believe doesn’t exist, but is in fact present all around. And Pahwa portrays this horrifying character with full sincerity.

2. Siddhant Chaturvedi - Gully Boy

Who knew that this young boy with no claim to fame except for a supporting role in a web series would become a sudden Internet sensation? When selected for the role of MC Sher in Gully Boy, Siddhant Chaturvedi probably had no idea his character would gain a cult following, superseding the film’s popularity. But Sher isn’t typical. The hero’s friend normally isn’t recognized, constantly living in the hero’s shadow. Sher, however, doesn’t let Murad dominate any of the scenes they have together, and Siddhant Chaturvedi’s performance supports this balance. He does not let himself get overwhelmed by his co-star, Ranveer Singh’s, 8 year long experience in films. At least he doesn’t show it. Despite having no background in rap, Chaturvedi’s rapping style is filled with the passion and force of an experienced rapper. He not only perfects the lingo, he makes people believe in him as a rapper, a friend, and a mentor. Unlike the clichéd companion, threatened by his friend’s rise in popularity, Sher is Murad’s supportive backbone. The nuanced creation of this character shows Zoya Akhtar and Reema Kagti’s brilliance in writing. But without a talented actor, like Siddhant Chaturvedi, it would have been impossible to bring this character to life.

3. Gulshan Devaiah - Mard Ko Dard Nahin Hota

While very common in the 1970s and 1980s, the double role has become a rare phenomenon in Indian cinema today. As the film industry has developed, it has become far more difficult for an actor to play two different characters in the same film convincingly. The most recent use of this concept was in Aurangzeb, with Arjun Kapoor playing twin brothers on opposite sides of the law. But this was a commercial and critical failure mainly due to Kapoor’s inability to create a distinction between the characters. Like the characters in Aurangzeb, Gulshan Devaiah’s characters in Mard Ko Dard Nahin Hota are at the two opposite ends of the spectrum. Mani is Supri’s guru and Surya’s hero, while Jimmy is his disgruntled twin brother. Devaiah’s performance controlled the conflict in the film. If he wasn’t able to convince the audience of the distinction between the personalities of his two characters, and of the enmity between them, Surya and Supri’s fight would seem futile. Devaiah has both the villainous smile and the innocent eyes that bring out the contrast between the two brothers, making the conflict strong, and the film worthwhile.

4. Rasika Dugal - Hamid

In Kashmir, there are many women labeled “Half Widows” because their husbands have disappeared (many taken by the army under suspicion), and they have no information on whether these men are alive or not. Rasika Dugal plays one such woman, Ishrat, who deals with her husband’s disappearance while trying to raise her son away from the negative influences of extremist violence in Kashmir. As the only member of the cast (apart from the soldiers), that isn’t Kashmiri, Dugal had to put in twice the effort to perfect the mannerisms and diction of Kashmiri Muslims. With the fluency of her enactment, it didn’t seem at any moment as if she was acting. But getting into character is just one aspect of a good performance. It is also necessary to create an emotional connect with the audience. The topic is such that just the simple facial expression of exhaustion was enough to captivate the audience. The years and years of wait have completely drained Ishrat, and she has lost the strength to even cry. The lightness with which Dugal played this role is remarkable and befitting to a serious film like this.

5. Geetika Vidya Ohlyan and Saloni Batra - Soni

For the first time, I am clubbing two actors together in the best performance list, as neither would be complete without the other. Soni is a film that thrives on the chemistry between the two female leads, as they both deal with different levels of sexism in their daily lives as police officers. The two characters, Soni, played by Geetika Vidya Ohlyan, and Kalpana, played by Saloni Batra, are two sides of the same coin. They both have different personalities that reflect in their work. Soni’s temperamental, rebellious persona is balanced by Kalpana’s thoughtful, controlled nature. But these contrasting personalities come together in pursuit of a similar goal, to stand up for woman empowerment. As a subtle take on sexism, the film required nuanced acting to recognize the inherent sexism present in the lives of all women. Ohlyan and Batra beautifully portray the struggle of women in their professional and personal lives, further supported by their chemistry. One cannot exist without the other. Together, the two women form the crux of the film.

6. Yami Gautam - Bala

In her seven year Hindi film career, Yami Gautam hasn’t had much success. While she was delightful in her first film, Vicky Donor, her roles after that were limited. The films in which she had a lead role, such as Total Siyappa and Sanam Re, were critical and commercial failures. She spent the remainder of the time playing supporting roles in films such as Batti Gul Meter Chalu and Uri, in which there wasn’t much scope for her to showcase her talent. With the release of Bala, the expectations from Yami Gautam weren’t as high as they were from her co-stars, Ayushmann Khurrana and Bhumi Pednekar, who have generated a considerable fan base with their consistent work in the past few years. But, Gautam outshone them both. Her performance as Pari Mishra, Bala’s love interest who is a model and Tik Tok star, is the highlight of the film. The film is a heartfelt, socially moving story told in a dramatic manner. Therefore it is necessary for the actors to create a balance between the two worlds: the realistic and the unrealistic. As a former Indian television actor, Yami Gautam knows exactly how to maintain this balance. Indian television is not just a platform for dramatic overacting, as many believe it to be. It’s a balance between scenes involving overdramatic tension and those with nuanced conversation. Pari’s identity as a Tik Tok star, means that her mannerisms in everyday life are much more dramatic than normal, but when everything settles down, she has the ability to have a normal conversation. Yami Gautam displayed this dichotomy with perfection. And now she has become the most appreciated aspect of the film.

7. Priyanka Chopra - The Sky is Pink

After a three-year break from acting in Hindi films, Priyanka Chopra is back with a bang. In The Sky is Pink, she plays the mother of a young girl diagnosed with a life threatening disease. Such a role is not only emotionally draining, it is also physically strenuous, as she has to step into the shoes of the real life Aditi Chaudhary. She has to be faithful to her, especially when it pertains to such a sensitive topic. Priyanka Chopra fully imbibes this role. She beautifully portrays the emotions of a distressed mother and at the same time a wife struggling to keep her marriage intact in the face of death. At first it seems difficult to imagine her as the mother of a teenage daughter, but the chemistry she shares with Zaira Wasim, playing her daughter, Aisha Chaudhary, leads to a passionate mother-daughter relationship, that completes the film.

8. Shahid Kapoor - Kabir Singh

When a film is remade, it is very difficult for the actors to live up to the expectations of the original. Shahid Kapoor steps into the shoes of Vijay Deverakonda, a Telugu superstar who delivered his career best performance in Arjun Reddy, the precursor to Kabir Singh. The passion and angst that Deverakonda brought into his performance is difficult to emulate. Which is why Kapoor doesn’t try to become Deverakonda. He does not attempt to match the original and instead brings his own flavor into the character, which sets Kabir Singh apart from Arjun Reddy. The one scene that perfectly demonstrates this is the Holi scene. In this scene, Kabir Singh is feeling a combination of emotions including anger, sadness, and passionate love, which all can be beautifully seen in his eyes. No other Hindi film actor can emote with his eyes the way Kapoor does. Even Deverakonda attempts this, but his performance in the scene in the Telugu version leans more towards anger and passion than pain. On the other hand, Kapoor portrays his character in this scene as painfully suffering bringing out another dimension in the character. This may not be the best performance that Kapoor has delivered in his career, but it definitely is his most impactful one.

9. Anjali Patil - Mere Pyaare Prime Minister

In Mere Pyaare Prime Minister, Anjali Patil plays a single mother, traumatized after being assaulted while using an outdoor bathroom. Patil has always chosen roles that lean towards the unconventional route. While she has dabbled in multiple languages, her Hindi films have not been successful, and her performances in supporting roles barely noticeable. With this film, she is finally playing a strong role in a Hindi film. Her character is one that is in mental and emotional distress after experiencing such a horrendous crime, yet cannot express it as she still has to fulfill her duty as a single mother. The restraint that Patil brings into her performance is beautiful. It is reflective of the balance between the heaviness of the storyline and the lightness of the mother-son relationship. Though this is not as powerful a role as Patil has played earlier in other language films, it is still one that requires effort, as it is not easy to play a sexual assault victim, especially when that victim is also a mother.

10. Kangana Ranaut - Judgementall Hai Kya

Kangana Ranaut is one actor that never fails to impress. With each performance, she exceeds her previous ones, making her one of the fastest growing actors in terms of talent. In Judgementall Hai Kya, she plays the feisty, socially awkward Bobby, whose mental health issues, make people disbelieve her when she claims an accident was actually a murder. The film was acclaimed for treating mental illness with sensitivity. At times in the film, the craziness of Bobby’s actions make her seem insane, which Ranaut does with perfection. But Ranaut is also able to show that the mental illness is a part of Bobby’s personality that does not make her abnormal, just different than normal.

Special Mention: Shweta Basu Prasad - Mard Ko Dard Nahin Hota

[2studentsoforeignlanguages]

CARIBBEAN ENGLISH

The Caribbean, a region of the Americas surrounded by immense beaches and islands, where gastronomy, nature, flora, and fauna are the main protagonists. However, what makes this region so special and multicultural is its history.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

From the early 1700s, thousands of people were transported as slaves to the Caribbean, particularly from West Africa, this resulted in a large number of pidgin languages being developed. We can define a pidgin language as a simplified language that is used and created by individuals from different communities who lack a common language. The majority of workers of the colonial plantations in the Caribbean would have spoken a variety of ethnic languages among them, using different sounds, vocabulary, and grammatical structures but slave owners would impose English. Thanks to this, nowadays we can say with certainty that the varieties of English spoken in the Caribbean give us a fascinating insight into the way language evolves due to the contact of different cultures.

FROM PIDGIN TO CREOLE

It is of the utmost importance to recognize that the pidgin language is not a mother tongue, this means that it has zero native speakers. Yet, if the pidgin language prevails as the main way of communication within a community for a long period of time, then it will become the very first language. For instance, on the plantations of the Caribbean. 

This pidgin language begins to increase in its complexity due to it is spoken in a wide range of different contexts among the community. Once this process starts to taking place it is transformed into what we called a creole. 

Creole is a new expanded in structure and vocabulary version of pidgin and has all the characteristics of other languages. 

Throughout the Caribbean, for instance, Standard English, though a Caribbean version, is the language of education, although Jamaicans, Barbadians, and others are rightly proud of their local patois as an important expression of their cultural identity.

CARIBBEAN CREOLE 

It can happen that sometimes the Caribbean creole could sound unintelligible for us, the outsiders. The same thing occurs with dialects since the presence of fine shades of differences between speakers, even though there are many elements that characterize most forms of Caribbean English. 

Talking in this specific context, we can highlight certain aspects of the Caribbean creole for instance: 

The little use of the verb “to be” in differents statements such as “She dreaming”. As Foreign Languages students, we know for sure that in Standard English it is “She is dreaming”. 

Pronouns may not be marked for subject/object distinctions and verbs might not always carry a tense marker as in the statement “him tell me dat yesterday” for “he told me that yesterday”.

On the other hand, we can find certain elements that can be considered common in Caribbean vocabulary. For instance, the word “pickney”which means “young child”, what makes this word particularly special it is the fact that it is known to exist in several pidgin and creole languages across the world.

CARIBBEAN ENGLISH PHONOLOGY

You will find below several examples of speakers using different pronunciations and grammatical constructions that are typical of speech in the Caribbean. 

All the audio clips were taken from recent BBC interviews and come from a spontaneous conversation that I found in this website: https://www.bl.uk/british-accents-and-dialects/articles/caribbean-english

They actually reflect the natural reflexes of Caribbean English. You can listen to them just by clicking on the sound file, here you will find an extract from a recording of a speaker using the target feature.

TH-STOPPING: In this extract in particular you will realize that the sound <TH> in words like “think” or “three” is pronounced using a <t> sound meanwhile in words such as “this” and “that” using a <d> sound.

 H-DROPPING: The words that contain an “h” at the beginning are deleted. Words such as “happy” or “house”. 

CONSONANT REDUCTION GROUP: Complex strings of consonants are generally simplified by excluding the final sound, in that order of ideas we can conclude that the word “best” becomes ‘bes’, “respect” becomes ‘respeck’ and “land” becomes ‘lan’.

RHOTICITY: The <r> sound is pronounced after a vowel in words like hard, corn and nurse. 

UNREDUCED VOWEL PLACED IN WEAK SYLLABLES:  The vowels situated in unstressed syllables are not reduced, to this extend speakers use a comparatively strong vowel on words such as about, bacon or arrival and even on grammatical function words, such as in the phrases lot of work, in a few days and in the kitchen. 

LINK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MH9yRatSE8

FACE VOWEL: A similar vowel sound as this one is used by speakers in Scotland, Wales, and the North East of England on words such as game, tray, plain, they, and great.

LINK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6N4Bj-b8D9A

GOAT VOWEL: A similar vowel sound as this one is used by speakers in Scotland, Wales and the North East of England on words. For instance, home, show, boat and toe.

LINK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxkPWBzR0Og

On the other hand, we have certain grammatical changes in Caribbean English:

NONEXISTENCE OF INDEFINITE ARTICLES: Articles such as “an” or “a” is often omitted. 

LINK:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bkSOw2B7wc

NO PAST TENSE INDICATOR: Some verbs do not have a past tense marker. However, some signals such as adverbs of time help you to understand about the timing of an event. 

LINK:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjpR1027Xpk

NO PLURAL SIGN: Nouns are left unmarked for plurality.

LINK:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0RgJoa60KQ

If you haven’t been exposed to caribbean culture before, you may face some troubles when it comes to understand the dialect acroos the different islands  even if you hear it in passing, or you're part of a full-blown conversation.

In order to avoid making mistakes, you will find below a short list that contains some familiar words and slangs. GOOD LUCK!!

1. "Pickney dem"→ Children/kids

"Dem yah pickney dem a drive mi mad!"→ These children/kids are driving me crazy!

2. "Deh'ya"→ Here

"Mi deh'ya a wait fi mi food done cook."→ I'm here waiting for my food to finish cooking.

3. "Lime" → Party

"Yes, man! We in di lime tonight."→ Yeah, dude. We're going to the party tonight.

4. "Pompasetting"→ Showing off

"Look pon di gyal pompasetting."→ Look at that chick showing off.

5. "Puppa Jeezas/Gawd"→ Father Jesus/God or My God!

"Puppa Jeezas/Gawd, mi nearly bun up di pot a rice."→ My God, I almost burned this pot of rice.

6. "Mi bumpsey"→ Oh shoot!

"Mi bumpsey, I nearly forgot mi keys"→ Oh shoot! I almost forgot my keys.

7. "Wah mek?"→ Why?

"Yuh neva nyam from mawning? Wah mek?→ Why didn't you eat this morning?

8. "Cheese on bread!"→ Wow!

"Cheese on bread! Mi phone just drop pon di ground"→ Oh wow! My phone just dropped on the ground.

9. "Sal up"→ Nasty/bad

"A nearly 20 dolla mi pay fi dis movie and it sal up!"→ I paid almost $20 for this movie and it was so bad.

I hope you have enjoyed a lot about this topic!

[incorrectmlpquotes]

My Thoughts on Equestria Girls: Rainbow Rocks

Or: Are we sure this didn’t come out in 2004 rather than 2014? Because the “battle of the bands”  story line feels super dated for some reason. I feel like almost every early 2000s cartoon had some sort of music contest episode, and I never liked them. I blame American Idol for making those popular.

Some History:

I’m under the impression that everything in this movie I dislike is a completely subjective thing that wouldn’t bother someone else. I know that, from a movie standpoint, this is much better than the first, but I just don’t like it as much. Everything that warrants complaint comes from a personal hangup that I have (such as: my lack of any musical ability causes me to not care at all whether their band is successful), so if you disagree, I completely understand. These are all my opinions, and I’m aware that this is probably the best of the four movies. (As stated on a previous post, I haven’t watched any of the shorts from 2017 or 2018 as of this entry)  

There were a series of promotional shorts released before the movie debuted that explains how the members of the Main 5 came to play their instruments in Rainbow Dash’s band, and some other random stuff. Here’s the link to the playlist on youtube. Here’s a quick rundown of what I think:

Music to My Ears : meh

Guitar Centered : funny, but kind of mean spirited

Hamstocalypse Now : Hilarious.

Pinkie on the One : exactly what you’d expect it to be

Player Piano: a masterpiece

A Case for the Bass: Applejack is one word, why would she have AJ embroidered on the strap? I know people call her that but those aren’t her initials

Life is a Runway: There’s a reason they didn’t let Rarity write the songs

Shake Your Tale: Bad.

This was a pretty clever way to establish some musical background within the group without taking up time in the movie. It also is some sneaky foreshadowing with Trixie, which I appreciate.

In the actual movie: My nitpicks are going to be less Why is no one in class? Why is doesn’t anyone have homework? Because I realize this is a movie and depicting high school as it actually is would be boring to watch. Besides, there are plenty of other things to complain about.

We open on a scene of this film’s villains. And yes I am going to refer to them as villains instead of antagonists because 1) they are actually a threat and we see them doing bad things, and 2) other people will serve as antagonists. A villain is different from an antagonist, even though the terms are often used interchangeably. 

The Dazzlings are so cool, they make a cameo four years later. Either this is some really deep foreshadowing, or by season seven the writers were so desperate for an ongoing arc, they looked to other properties. But we now know that the guardians banished them over 1,000 years ago. So they really are ancient magic. And now they have to go to high school. Talk about eternal torment… 

Way to take all the credit, Starswirl

We are shown how they are a sort of siren, who feed off of people’s negativity and discord and use their beautiful enchanted voices to cause mayhem. Kind of like a mix between Ursula the sea witch and Spectra from Danny Phantom. Oh my gosh, this is the second one of these reviews that I’ve brought up Danny Phantom. Maybe this is why Butch thinks he’s so popular.

The Dazzlings, we can infer, have been exiled to the EQG-verse from Equestria. So apparently this universe is like the pony version of colonial Australia, where they send all their criminals and miscreants. A solid plan that couldn’t have any negative repercussions. The sirens see a beam of light that must be the one from the last movie. This is good news for them, but bad news for me because now I have no idea how much time has passed the two films. Has it been a couple days? Weeks? Moons? This will make a difference in regards to why people still don’t trust Sunset. But why waste time setting up the story when we can get right into the remix title card?

At this point, I can only assume that principal Celestia threatened to expel students if they told the news or the FBI about the magical winged demon that attacked the school, because no one seems too concerned about that incident.

But they have plenty of time to hurt my baby’s feelings

I’m going to be honest, when I first watched EQG I thought that Sunset was faking her remorseful act after being defeated. As cool as that would have been, she makes a much better reformed bad guy than an antagonist, because she really wasn’t in the last movie that much.

List of “evil” things Sunset Shimmer has done: send fraudulent text messages and emails that honestly could have been pretty easily disproved, made fun of Fluttershy, made fun of the steamers in the gym, somehow divided the school into cliques, ran a mostly unsuccessful smear campaign against Twilight’s bid for dance princess, threatened to destroy the portal to Equestria, transformed into a demon to hypnotize the students, and she dissed the Apple cider. 

Ok, that last one is pretty evil. But what really makes this and all subsequent movies great is that we get to see her learn and grow and change from the experience into a real friend.

I am glad to see that the Main 5 have forgiven her, but no one is quite ready to absolve her of guilt. Like, I might not think she did all that much bad junk, but the students of Canterlot High seem to think she was one tier below Mussolini  in terms of maniacal dictators, so I don’t blame them for being cautious. It takes a lot to earn back trust.

Back in Equestria proper, the Mane six plus Spike are sitting around waiting for the plot to affect them. They kindly provide some exposition and once again setup the fact that only Twilight can go through the portal, because the others can’t interact with themselves. So we think. I will be bringing this up when we get to The Friendship Games.

Back through the portal, Twilight  gets looped into the fact that Sunset has changed her ways. It’s fair to be a little apprehensive to trust someone who, the last time you saw them, was an actual literal demon. (Don’t worry though, Twi, you’ve still got two more unicorns to reform. It’s kind of your thing.)

Don’t reject her love Twilight, it’s all I have to live for

And now it’s time to discuss the small blue elephant in the room. I feel like I really need to explain why I dislike the addition of Flash to any of the plots. He’s kind of a waste of a potential. You want to add a male character: fine. But make them an actual real fleshed-out character. The show has proven that they can do it and do it well. Sunburst and Thorax are great characters who feel like a good addition to the story. And we got a real sense of who they were in one or two twenty minute episodes. I have no clue what this guy’s purpose is except to be a love interest, and this is not the show to do that with. With very few exceptions, the main characters of MLP have not sought out romantic partners, Twilight included. Why would she choose to do so now? I mean, I get why he’s into Twilight: she’s taken the form of a cute teenage girl. But he’s a species that doesn’t even exist in Equestria. She just fell through a portal and instantly got the hots for some weird otherworldly creature…

Wait a minute. Wait just a minute. Perhaps this isn’t compulsory heterosexuality. Perhaps Twilight Sparkle is just a Monster Lover™. I can respect that.

Moving on.

It was so very smart of the writers to have the Dazzlings brainwash the principals in order to get away with this scheme. That makes so much more sense and covers any plot holes that could arise (such as, someone claiming to be a new student despite having no transcript, no grades, and no knowledge of how to hold a pen).

Does time work differently between these two universes? Has it been months in Equestria but only a week in this world? (It really threw me off that the first four season of MLP took place over one year, and these movies don’t help that). And the sad thing is, this could be easily hand-waved away by a single throw away line, but it isn’t.

The Dazzlings are already better villains than Sunset, even from a character standpoint. We know their powers, we know their motivation, and we know they are capable of bringing about an actually believable rift between friends.

Then the best song, best montage, and possibly best scene in any of these films happen: the Dazzling come into the lunchroom and hypnotize everyone. This song is beautiful and eerie and exactly what you would expect a magic spell to sound like. I also enjoy the visual representation of the bands competing (and not just because I didn’t want to hear any of them perform) that we’ll see later. To give credit where credit is due, this movies has some great visual sequences.

Give ‘em the o’l razzle dazzle

At first I thought it was unrealistic that this many kids had bands, but I realized it was probably an effect of the spell. But I might not be the best judge: I think I know maybe three people, plus myself, who don’t play an instrument. I’ll just assume that the Disney channel exists in this universe, and all these children just really want to be famous.

It’s worth sitting through this movie just to see everyone’s pajamas. That’s not weird, right? No really, the scene of them all having a big slumber party is everything I ever wanted from this series. They managed to capture everyone’s personality from an article of clothing. Now THAT’s good character design.

I get the distinct impression that the writers of this don’t like Rainbow Dash.

Oh good, references to technology that couldn’t possibly date this movie in the slightest. Wait… this is Pinkie’s house. Aren’t the Pies supposed to be like Amish or resembling Amish-type folk? What is the human equivalent of rock farmers? Not actual farmers because those exist in the pony-verse. This really confuses me, but Maude’s cameo is fantastic.

The scene with Twilight and Sunset is one of those really well-done moments that reminds me why I love the show so much. It feels really genuine, and supports my argument that it was worth having Sunset as a crappy villain just to reform her.

Ah yes, the sweet, lingering glances that totally platonic female friends share with each other late at night. I know them well.

Our girl Twily seems to be having trouble writing a spell that can double as a catchy pop song (She’s no Lana Del Rey), so they go with an old set list. How long has this band been operational? Weren’t they in a huge feud for several years?

Mac is a close second for best cameo

So we get to watch the band audition, and it goes about as well an actual high school talent show. The CMC are in the outfits from Showstoppers (which is hilarious) and Snips and Snails rap (which is disturbing). In order to keep my goblin brain from exploding while trying to figure out the ages of everyone, I’m just going to assume that this is a combination Middle School and High School. So, if Sunset won fall dance princess four years in a row, she would be in the tenth grade now, so they would be about 15-16. The Equestria Girls Holiday Comic shows Rarity driving a car, so that could be a possibility.

A. Daft. Punk. Reference. Wow. Just wow. (Note: this was more shocking before season five, when there was a character that was basically Lady Gaga. And by basically, I mean very obviously Lady Gaga. Remember when the pop culture references in this show were subtle?)

Dash’s song is quite possibly the most cringeworthy thing I have ever heard. The only defense is it does sound like something a high schooler would write.

On that note, why is Rainbow Dash the lead singer of the group? I mean, I know why, but WHY? (and yes, I am aware that her voice actress is a singer. But Ashleigh Ball uses her normal voice when she performs. Think back to all the songs RD has sung in the previous four seasons before this aired. There are not a lot of solos or high notes. When she sings as Applejack, it is beautiful, but Dash’s voice is grating sometimes)

Really? A battle of the bands is the greatest thing you’ve done at the school? That whole “stopping an actual demon with magic” was just a regular Friday for you? I’ll chalk that up to the brainwashing, otherwise I might go full on rage and throw my laptop out a window.

I guess our merry band of protagonists weren’t paying attention to big cafeteria scene, because they just now figured something suspicious is going on.

Still haven’t fixed the lights in that dim corner of lockers. Fortunately, there are many dramatic confrontations to be had.

I think we’re supposed to see Rarity’s obsession with the outfits as a ridiculous thing, but I think it’s important to distinguish this universe from the one with the professional seamstress who has unicorn magic at her disposal. This is a teenager who has school, extracurriculars, and parents to contend with. If I went through the trouble to hand-make seven costumes for my friends, then found out no one would wear them, I’d be pretty ticked off as well.

Now this is how you montage. We get to play a fun game of “guess which characters are in which band,” and seeing their “humanized” designs. Lotta bootcut pants in this show.

I’m just going to leave this here...

This is some actually effective villainy. The whole school has turned against each other. Maybe they need to learn about the magic of friendship. Unfortunately, the gang is too busy squabbling over band stuff, and Twilight is too distracted to give an overly emotional speech.

No one in the rule book does it say magically turning into a pony is grounds for disqualification...I would assume.

If we’re being honest here, the Dazzlings are better performers than the Rainbooms.

And we’ve come to the crux of things. The scene where they’re locked under the stage is the perfect example of my biggest issue with this movie. I do not like to see Mane 6 fight. I don’t like Trade Ya, I don’t like Putting Your Hoof Down, and I despise Look Before You Sleep. Seeing this otherwise close group of friends constantly have petty arguments, even if it’s for completely valid plot reasons, make me want to turn the movie off. This isn’t a criticism of the screenwriting, it is just a reason why I personally dislike Rainbow Rocks more than the other films.

Of course, they make up because this is about the magic of friendship and what not, but notice how no one actually apologizes for their behavior. No, “I’m sorry that I minimized your contribution to the group or made fun of something you were passionate about.” I realize they were under the influence of magic, but they also knew that! They knew the Dazzlings had the power to turn people against each other! An apology is just a preamble to fundamental behavior change, and if they don’t realize why they were being bad friends, how can they learn from anything?

And the real kicker is, they knew what the Dazzlings were capable of. Twilight read a book about them immediately before going through the portal. It’s not they they just learned that they spread chaos. Why are we fighting? Gee, I don’t know.

DJ-ex-machina. I’m ok with this.

To the movie’s credit, the finale really has one of the best song of the movie. And by that, I of course mean Trixie’s song. Trixie is the most fun addition to the cast. She makes for a fun antagonist, on her own and as a Pawn to the Dazzlings.

Fight scene! Fight scene! We’re gonna have a fight scene!

Now that they’ve put their petty squabbles behind them, it’s time for a big music battle. The Dazzlings pony up harness the energy of the audience to project their Equestrian selves to...I don’t know. Take over the world or something.

This isn’t even their final form

Oh. This design looked better in book form

Sunset is Magic. That’s the show.

So the stones auto-tuned them, and that made everyone mindlessly antagonistic. I’m sure there’s some clever commentary there.

T’was the magic of friendship that killed the beast.

No, you don’t get to just rejoin the plot

Thank you, Trixie.

The real story here is how Principal Celestia will pay off the press.

Thus Twilight goes back to the land of horses, Starlight has been truly forgiven, and my Netflix suggestions will never been the same again.

I want to give a big shout out to the person who put all the captions on the image gallery for this movie’s wikia page. They are funnier than I could ever hope to be.

Some general thoughts:

The scene of Twilight awkwardly yelling “Friendship is magic!” to a room of confused teenagers is the cringiest thing I’ve ever seen, but it got a good laugh out of me. Look at the Dazzlings faces in this scene. “Ok, we legitimately didn’t see that coming.”

One of the reasons that I am so drawn to the show is that they are able to create conflict and drama without being mean-spirited. I have to deal with that kind of nonsense so much in my daily life, I just don’t want to subject myself to eighty minutes of it. But i get it: from a narrative standpoint, this is the most cohesive. There’s some good set up and pay off, and an actually intimidating villain who is actually present in the plot.

I love Trixie so much, I should be dead. She really is the star of the show. I forgot how little we saw of her before season six.

The stinger, oh the stinger. Forget what I said about the pajama party; it was worth sitting through this for the promise of an interesting sequel.

We’ll get to you soon, you marvelous lesbian disaster.

Starlight’s redemption is the best part of this franchise, and it’s worth all the nonsense to hear Rebecca Shoichet’s angelic voice.

From a purely film standpoint, this is probably the best one of the bunch. It has a clear structure, everyone’s motivations check out, there’s an actual climax that feels earned. I just don’t enjoy it. There are worse ways to spend eighty minutes 3.7/5

The worst thing to come from this, however, is the terrifying merchandise:

What Fresh Hell is This?