#I am all for the subversive but if more of this was brought to the surface things would just hit different

[spirit-meets-the-b0ne]

In the middle of my HotD rewatch

The gyroscope of interpretation on this show has been at the forefront of my rewatch along with now having read some of the script and read/watched cast interviews.

This one inference made by Olivia Cooke (via Sarah Hess) has plagued me for the first few episodes.

Now, now I know these waters are really muddy what with a few obvious conceptual things: "isn't this queer baiting" "if it wasn't it wouldn't be good sapphic representation anyway" "this is an actors interpretation" blah blah blah. I'm not arguing any of that.

Just that Olivia's head canon held against this scene hits SO MUCH HARDER

Because I gotta say MY GOD imagine how that strikes Alicent if at some point her mother caught them together. Before they even really knew what they were doing (objectively to the tune of they were 13/14 not fully clear on platonic/romantic love) her mother impressed upon them it was wrong. When they denied and in some way or another Alicent/Rhaenyra saying "she never touched me." Only for Alicent to hear it echoed back to her years later like this... Knowing that even in her naïveté she would recognize the truth. That Alicent’s mother, naturally, kept this contained. Which honestly plays more to truly making Alicent more complex by the way she saw what “scandal” her mother covered up for her only for her to act out some perversion of this with Aegon when she’s a mother. A learned behavior twisted in the worst way, because that's what she knew.

Listen I fully understand that this show is NOT taking this angle even though there seems to be a huge division between what some writers and actors are playing to and the editors at HBO imaginably being like "what's all this gay shit?" BUT

I think it's part of what this show missed about TRAGEDY and I mean come on you want drama???? These girlies were ready to hand it to you on a silver plater! In this context I needed:

Rhaenyra being devastated by the news that Alicent was going to be marrying her father. The sheer heartbreak of “this can’t be happening” and knowing she would have lost Alicent to a husband but not THIS. Show her with Syrax, confiding in her dragon because now she has no other friend to talk to - I’m just saying if they were going with the context of “Fire & Blood itself is an unreliable narrator and only shows certain people’s views” - then a scene like this disrupts nothing. Tell me how when they prayed together and Alicent told her to "kneel with me" that part of Rhaenyra prayed for that world where they flew off on dragon back and ate cake.

Alicent being devastated - having her heart torn in two, crying behind every closed door knowing she was going to break the heart of her best friend. The deleted scene does give a peak of that being the case - but again it could/should have been included. Show me Alicent begging Rhaenyra to forgive her and desperately saying she loves her. I think one of the things that Team Green argues the most could have been explored by this avenue, Alicent is a victim of her marriage - it would be inherently more compelling if in the process she is also losing the closest thing to a "first love" she had. Show me Alicent at her desk writing letters to Rhae once a week and then ceremoniously burning them in the braziers. Alicent leaning more into religion as a means of getting out from under her repressed desires and past actions.

Show me both women struggling in their adulthood to even remember why they held "such childhood affections" for each other. Knock the fucking wind out of me with a line like, "the worst part of it all was that they only ever wanted to love each other."

To me one of the worst parts of this production (of which there's a few) has got to be this was the apex of completely missed opportunities to explore. In the premise of "going by unreliable sources" their queerness would be suppressed information. I even think it plays into the dynamic between Rhae-Alicent-Criston in a kind of "Jennifer's Body" way where Rhae was really only interested in him as the object of Alicent's desires which I believe is made a little clearer in the books. A kind of "see this could have been us if you didn't marry my bag-of-bones father" for Rhaenyra who clearly had no aversion to consorts.

I'm sorry to go on this rant, and yes I KNOW - the counter arguments for many of these points. I would even argue some of them further such as the sapphic representation not being invalidated simply because both women do end up with men in the source material. If this was the case then why was "Portrait of a Lady on Fire" received so well? This at the very least to say if they made Alicent and Rhaenyra explicitly queer it would still be less controversial than what the queer men on that show got … Still its not even to say "it's a better way" to explore more of Rhaenyra and Alicent's characters but its at least A WAY to do it. More than we got. Surely both sides could agree on that.

Sorry, now I'm just being pedantic. As a queer woman naturally I have a bias but I still think this was objectively a missed opportunity to explore. Both girl's back stories could have been enriched and tbh a lot of HOTD fans I know also had the same complaint that the time skip came in too early. I think it also makes things less likely to be so divisive between TG and TB when you look at the central pillars of this conflict. You can truly grieve for Alicent and Rhaenyra and what they lost already while on the verge of losing it all. Anyway, I gotta go cry about my divorced lesbian war wives.

[alatismeni-theitsa]

In "KAOS" nothing is anything, and everything is wrong

Two disclaimers: I am no stranger to modern art, and I have no issue with queerness in shows, or in my own mythology (I'm Greek). I am also aware that KAOS is a comedy. It's in the gutter of British comedy, but still part of the genre. At least I laughed every time they said "Oh God!". I don't believe this is the same person who wrote the great and amusing "End of the F**king World"! The premise of "The gods in our modern world" appeals to me a lot, so that wasn't my problem either. My general issue with KAOS is its horrible delivery, bad writing, and piss-poor Greek representation.

This is gonna be long and full of stupid gifs, so sit comfortably, grab a coffee or some popcorn and... pame!

The "ILoveGreekMythology" Kid

Art without context is just a pretty thing to look at. Most of the time, this context can be found within the art piece itself, as the artist has taken care to weave it in. KAOS refuses to connect itself to any context besides the names and a few vague powers. It aims to exist outside of those "boring old stories of the Greek myth" and be entirely "fresh and modern". Something impossible when the entire show and the meanings are based on ancient recorded material. In other words, KAOS is so meta that it ends up being nothing. KAOS cannot stand on its own because you need more than the viewers being familiar with the Greek myth basics to pull such a show off.

KAOS tells us "See? I know all the names of the gods, and what they did, and I know all the locations, so I am qualified to tackle this". More or less like any Western kid who takes all their knowledge from PJO and Marvel and proceeds to unironically hate ancient deities and make a girlboss out of Medusa.

Here's a Greek word for you guys, ημιμάθεια, meaning "half-knowledge". Α Greek saying very well declares "Half-knowledge is worse than no knowledge". The confidence of thinking you know enough often leads you to grave mistakes whereas the humility of not knowing prevents you from touching shit that you shouldn't. When you have no idea what the original myth is trying to say and spit on its meaning, knowing a few names and locations is just smoke and mirrors. I don't believe the audience fell for that.

And don't get me started on the "subversions". A good subversion is intriguing and thought-provoking. In KAOS, every twist was hollow - Greek myth related or otherwise.

"What if Euridice doesn't love Orpheus?" I don't know, babe. What if??? What was the point of that? What did you show us? That women's stories are dominated by men and men don't listen to women, perhaps? And you chose to twist... the love story of Orpheus and Euridice to show this?? One of the best and most tragic love stories Greek mythology has to offer?? You just mocked the myth, you didn't make anything profound out of it.

The Greek Stuff (Nothing salvageable)

I was surprised to see they had a Consulting Producer (Georgia Christou) and an Assistant Script Editor (Isabella Yianni) who happen to be Greek. And I stress that because those people probably weren't hired or utilized for being Greek. We are not sure they were involved in cultural decisions because we have no evidence and because shows with no Greek elements can have more Greeks than that on their staff.

Okay, perhaps they took 5 seconds to ask Isabella about a greeting - which they proceeded to say in a wrong intonation 🙄🤌It's where Poseidon says "ya sás" in the Fates, by the way. How he said it sounds more like "for you (pl.)" than "health to you (pl.)".

Surprise! The only Greek actor present (Peter Polycarpou) has less than 5 minutes of screen time and plays the caricature of an immigrant with a thick (and inaccurate Greek) accent. He has a canteen, selling falafel which is not Greek, and Dionysus buys from him an unidentified tortilla wrap (which... is also not Greek, if you haven't caught up).

For the show they brought in actors of Maori, Nigerian and Sierra Leonean, Pakistani, Black American, Latvian-Jewish, Iranian, Egyptian, Indo-Fijian and Malay descent and you tell me it was impossible for them to seek and find an English-speaking, skilled actor of Greek descent in a show regarding Greek heritage. Sometimes I wonder, do y'all hate us so much?

They considered Greeks only to give us a simple (and wrong) greeting and a stereotype. Crumbs, we are supposed to be happy with. By the way, there are over 70.000 Greek immigrants just in the UK, usually in the urban centers, many of them students or fairly young employees in the corporate workforce. Not the largest minority but not hard to spot either.

Another plague of Anglophone shows: Almost everyone's Greek name is shortened. Yes, we know their full names but we are told that we will use the short ones. Greeks and their "long and difficult" names am I right fellas? Because saying "Ariadne" apparently requires 5 years of Greek language training, and no English word ever has more than two syllables.

Coincidentally, short names are cool in Anglophone imaginary universes and the "long" names are not. it's so strange Anglophones never make universes where it's cool for Greek names to be spoken in full hmmm... They don't even want to practice saying a whole Greek name for just 2 minutes in preparation for a show full of Greek names. And don't give me that "Greek is hard" shit when we only talk about a few syllables. If Greek kids can learn English since first grade and people here can sing English songs and spell English names, you have no excuse.

They also said the name "Fotis" means light, which is close enough but... ugh.. It's like saying Sebastian means "respect". I am not sure if they asked anyone or what their research was here. If I had the writers in front of me, I'd be like:

(This character from an all-time favorite Greek show is called Fotis)

They also made the flag of "Krete" an alteration of the Greek flag and the local Cretan flag. Which is the stupidest move, because they had to remove the religious symbol of the cross to make the flag fit the universe. These are flags created based on 1) Christianity 2) the Greek Revolution of 1821.

National Greek flag to the left, local Cretan flag to the right:

Flag of the KAOS' "Krete":

The only time they seriously took into account anything Greek, was the time when they decided to remove the religious symbol of our ethnoreligion AND (from what I could observe) keep the nine stripes?? The nine stripes of our national flag represent the syllables in "Freedom or Death". The colors are from the white foustanela of the mainland attire and the dark blue vraka of the island attire, the clothing of the Revolution fighters. (That's more of a meta explanation but the characteristics of the flag were decided during and nearly after the Revolution.)

I think I don't have to explain it more but it's not a homage to put the nine stripes in an ancient era where they have no meaning, and to replace a cross??? Let's... not replace religious symbols on national flags, okay? Thank you.

Another cultural element they changed was making everyone have a dedicated coin to pay Charon. Orpheus has Euridice's coin, "her coin", and he's meant to put it on her before she got buried. In Greek culture, any coin would do. Sorry that our culture restricts your script, dear writers. I guess you had to bend this too, in order to create a cohesive plot with a semblance of a twist.

Finally, the many "Kerberus" dogs were cute and I can understand the creative decision behind that. However, in a show full of inaccuracies, this made me roll my eyes a little. I think the showrunners know that Kerveros is not a breed of dog, and there can only be one of him because he doesn't have any other "Kerveros" to breed with. On the other hand, as demonstrated from art/writing on the internet, quite a lot of Westerners are not exactly aware of how our monsters work, so forgive my uncertainty 😅

Nothing is Anything

Every element KAOS played with ended up meaningless. In the words of a Lifo article:

“Zeus is a paranoid authoritarian dictator in mid-life crisis who fears losing his power and murders his aides to vent. Hera is a promiscuous goddess who repeatedly betrays Zeus and has mutilated mute priestesses for protection. Dionysos is a spoiled and immature zoomer who, apart from pranks, indulges in orgies with all genders. Poseidon a sadistic god of the sea, who tortures the crew on his ship for fun. Prometheus is gay and killed his lover so he could overthrow Zeus. Orpheus is a famous pop singer and Eurydice does not love him. Theseus is black and gay. The Erinyes are tough-as-nails mechs that look like they stepped out of ‘Sons of Anarchy’. The Fates resemble a three-member jury in a talent show. The Trojans are a terrorist group that acts against the gods. Crete is more reminiscent of California than the Mediterranean.”

The "River Styx" is a sea, the "River Lethe" is a lake, the gods are nothing more than spoiled humans, the Moirai are drag queens, the Cave is a club where you have to take a quiz to enter the underworld, and generally everything is modern, flat, mundane and anticlimactic. The producers aimed to achieve a work so meta that a "river" is now a concept, a metaphor, whatever you have in your heart. And those who want to see a river when we speak of a river are probably uncultured swines and don't understand postmodernism. Never mind that rivers are rivers in Greek mythology for a reason. That's not culturally interesting enough to explore compared to the new, cool approach of not assigning meaning to anything. That totally shows love for the original rich and meaningful material...

And the reason behind all this subversion? Probably the shock factor. They brought the characters to a point where they said "We have to save the world from Zeus" - Zeus! The father of gods, heroes and humans! - just because they could. It gives off a certain type of smugness that I personally don't like. I mean, I would like the smugness and cheekiness of KAOS if it wasn't a vapid and practically meaningless show. As nothing symbolizes anything anymore, we are just led from hollow plot point to hollow plot point.

If you cut it out of any cultural influence and see it as a story then it's... okay, I guess. But when you consider that it's meant to derive from certain material and it fails spectacularly, it's not a good story. It forgets its bases and doesn't play with the ancient elements at all. Disney's Hercules did it better, FFS!

Bad Writing (pt.1)

KAOS is not without recognizable themes but their demonstration is so juvenile and heavy-handed that it fails to influence a viewer of average intelligence. For instance, "Riddy" says to her religious mother "You dedicated your whole life to Hera, what about me?" Okay, KAOS, we get it. At the same time, this theme nulls itself because it turns out that Ridy's mother was right to do what she did, as she had a greater goal in mind. (And this, kiddos, is called Bad Writing, because your themes and scenes contradict each other)

The biggest theme I spotted was a criticism of religion and religious people who say "Do as I say, not as I do" and create exceptions for themselves. Only, it's not a criticism of anything real, in this case. It's a fact that some people in the clergy tend to preach peace and love and then they do harm, but we don't know, for example, that The Goddess of Marriage is a cheater and yet she pressures everyone into strict marriages. By focusing their wrath on divine beings who are not known for their hypocrisy, the creators missed the mark.

I can give KAOS props for how it handled Trojans to reflect real issues regarding how immigrants and war refugees are mistreated and blamed. I'd argue it was the only (nearly) well-done theme in the whole show because it had the least on-the-nose delivery and some genuine/serious scenes. But that's it.

More Bad Writing!

Jeff Goldblum's Zeus is shit. He'd crap his pants in an argument with a stern Greek dad/uncle his age. Is this character supposed to be intimidating? (Laughs in Mediterranean) That's not to say that Goldblum is not a good actor, but this role wasn't for him. The same can be said for the other actors, too. They are competent but they only give off the air of "The Greek gods if they lived in London, from the minds of people who think beards and body hair are an affliction". In addition to being misplaced, the actors cannot show their talent when following a script that resembles a children's book.

Why does THE GOD Dionysus have the maturity of a 15-year-old? I repeat, The God Dionysus. He's a freaking deity, and a very old one at that. He is not a teenager neither in appearance nor in experience. In our culture, he is mystical, mighty, wise. Why did they downgrade him so? Just for the plot? This is not Dionysus just because you named him so.

The dialogue rarely takes itself seriously to the point it has you wondering at times "Do people talk and behave like that?". In a comedy where everything is meant to be already extreme and parodied. Even in comedies, something must occasionally be serious so there is a healthy fluctuation in tone and the funny moments can hit you. In KAOS very few scenes treated their impactful dialogue as it should be treated.

The queerness and diversity (good elements, in general) were worse off for being in KAOS. Like, I want these elements to be there. I'm just sad about the whole situation. It's not enough that the show is shit, now you also give an additional reason for conservatives to shit on diverse and queer characters because they are part of a stupid narrative.

I'm the type of person who doesn't mind the queerness of Astyanax and Theseus being lovers in the context of this specific show but they're still the oddest pairing to me because they're from the most irrelevant myths and eras. Also, Astyanax in my mind is a baby who died tragically, for little reason if we are honest, so to bring him back and make him a love interest is... ekh.

In addition, isn't Astyanax supposed to be crippled after a fall from the city walls when he was a baby? Sorry to change subjects but the show is so convoluted and with so many issues that it's extremely difficult to stay on track with what's wrong.

To the person who thought this show was a good idea:

Whatever. Bye. I'm fucking done.

[tsyvia48]

Author & Mensch: Reflections on the impact of @neil-gaiman on my life, in essay and doodle

As a woman of a certain age, I am a well-practiced overthinker. Nerd, geek, know-it-all, intellectual, the names have been biting or praise depending on who wielded them. They’re all true, and I embrace them. 

In the early days of adulthood, when I was a wee 20-something overthinking nerd, geek, know-it-all, intellectual (20+ years ago), I became deeply interested in image and text and text-as-image. While friends were watching and arguing over Survivor, I was obsessing over Peter Greenaway’s The Pillowbook and Prospero's Books and Neil Gaiman’s Sandman. (To this day my copies of the Sandman graphic novels and the English translation of The Pillowbook of Sei Shonagon are proudly displayed on the good bookshelves—you know, the ones I want people to peruse.)

Sandman isn't merely good storytelling and good art, it teases at some of the fundamental questions to which my religion-major heart was consistently and reliably drawn. It modeled a way of rendering the questions—and suggested answers—I would never have imagined on my own.

In those days, I created an artist's book: an altered gift edition of Hamlet. I explored Ophelia’s femininity and the inevitability of her break with her mental health, caught as she is between Hamlet and her father. I imagined her story if she’d had true agency. I investigated the way art (fan art?!) had shaped my understanding of the play and my relationship to it. I layered in my story—my resonance and dissonance with hers—and my art, along with images of famous and not-so-famous paintings of Ophelia. I proudly named Greenaway and Gaiman as influences. 

I imagined myself an artist. And, truthfully, I suppose I was one. 

I read Good Omens back then, too, delighting over the religious tropes and subversions, the humor, and the fundamental faith in humanity that shone through. 

In the two decades since then, below the din of “responsible” choices (that have mostly moved me away from imagining myself an artist) there has been a melody quietly bringing me comfort, shifting my perspective, and reminding me who I want to be. When I stop to listen for and name the music, I realize much of it generates from Neil Gaiman. 

The Graveyard Book gave me comfort and hope as a new parent. 

Ocean at the End of the Lane reminded me of the layers and the depths⏤the archetypes and metaphors⏤present in everything around me, if I am willing to seek them.

Neil’s anecdote about meeting Neil Armstrong has been a talisman against imposter syndrome. Or, more precisely, it has been a permission slip for forgiving myself when the imposter syndrome inevitably surfaces.

The episode of Dr Who he wrote (“the Doctor’s Wife”) changed the way I understand the entire Dr Who experience before and since. 

Lucifer (tv), which his work inspired, gave me joy, comfort and distraction through a tough time in my life. 

When, a few years ago, I realized he is Jewish, I had that swelling of pride and resonance that I always get when someone I admire shares that identity with me.

And now there’s the Good Omens tv series. It has opened something in me I didn’t realize was closed. Crowley and Aziraphale are helping me better understand myself, and love, and gender, and storytelling, and, believe it or not, Torah. I am writing again for the first time in ages. I'm drawing more often and with more joy than I’ve known maybe since childhood.

I’ve been getting back into my gratidoodle practice, drawing and writing what I’m grateful for. And when I decided to add Neil Gaiman’s face and some words about my appreciation for his work to my sketchbook, I realized he’s brought me full circle.

Text and image and text-as-image + Neil Gaiman + story is an old constellation for me. And once again, I find my thoughts dancing, shifting, blossoming to the quiet melody of (one of?) the greatest storyteller(s) of this generation. 

And now that I am actively engaging with other Gaiman fans, I see how responsive and kind and encouraging he is to those of us who love his work, and his name is permanently etched on my heart: a benefactor, a teacher, a role model.

How satisfying and fitting that such a powerful and resonant voice, miraculously, thankfully, beautifully, also seems to be a genuine mensch. 

B”H (thanks to God) that I am alive at the same time as such a one.

#I didn't realize I was going to write AND draw when I started this #but I felt I needed both #I wish I had a flatbed scanner #this photo doesn't do it justice #there's greater nuance in the color in person #Stories matter #Art matters #like, really matters #Neil Gaiman is a gift to this world #Good Omens #Crowley and Aziraphale #Ocean at the End of the Lane #The Graveyard Book #Neil Armstrong and imposter syndrome #The Doctor's Wife #So grateful for tumblr

[crimson-and-clover-1717]

@celluloidbroomcloset ‘s post here just hit me in the feels.

I’ve been mulling over the devices used to present Ed and Stede for a while in terms of gender identity and traditional hero/heroine archetypes. These are just threads of ideas I’ve tried to pull together.

For me, Ed’s personal journey is somewhat of a traditional female narrative, which is groundbreaking when you consider he is also characterised as Blackbeard. Wronged and jilted by a lover. Suffering and dying brokenhearted. Brought back to life by the love of a Disney Prince. Ed can be quite passive around certain masculine behaviours. Struggles with agency. Leaves things to fate. Talks to woodland creatures. Emotionally open when allowed to be.

And it also got me thinking how many times Ed is presented lying down in the show compared to Stede. I mean, he’s barely upright.

It’s all very therapist’s couch. But it’s also a feminine aesthetic, this reclining. Ed’s even recumbent privately during the Kraken-spiral, whilst publicly performing hyper-masculinity. It’s a pressure-valve whilst alone. Emotional release.

Whilst tortured on deck by Ned Low’s crew, the trope continues with Ed flat, Stede upright.

There are times Stede is the one lying down. At the meet-cute and just afterwards. Stede, the sleeping damsel rescued and watched over by a fervent prince. The pattern repeats again in 109, Stede in the bunk waiting for his Ed to come up with a rescue plan.

But it’s Ed who’s jilted. By 1.10, Stede is seen through a chivalric hero lens; Ed the lover who needs rescuing, emotionally.

The characterisations are so complex. They’re both queer, both enjoy traditional masculine identities, but also gnc ones. Both capable of being the rescuer and the rescuee.

Through an artist’s lens, Stede, represents the masculine vertical, Ed, the feminine horizontal. The perpendicular lighthouse and the flattened mirror. The light enhanced in the reflection, the mirror needing something to reflect (104). Stronger, more beautiful together.

In literary terms, Ed’s a sort of a male heroine. Stede, a femme hero.

Really, they both represent the complexity of the human condition. They are both characterised with male/female tropes and the subversions of these tropes.

Like them, we’re individuals, one-offs. Imperfect, contrary, vulnerable and brave. Whether we’re standing or lying down; or in a diagonal slump like I am most days. Honestly, I just love them. Through all of the art and symbolism, I love them for being so damn flawed and relatable and adorable.

[fedwren]

lore olympus is over

tl;dr it was bad.

it was a long episode, i counted 110 panels, give or take a few. lore olympus has had increasingly long episodes, to the point of feeling arduous and overwrought with unnecessary details and subplots. i could feel my eyes glaze over as i was reading each episode; for years, it's felt like none of the episodes advanced the plot in any way, and mostly existed as pointless filler, delving into a plethora of subplots that never get resolved—at the very least, they never seem to be resolved in a meaningful and fulfilling way.

but enough preamble! you're wondering what happened in the episode itself, and i'm here to tell you. for context, within the last three to five episodes, apollo revealed that he was secretly a puppet of ouranos the whole time, ouranos revealed himself and tried to steal persephone's fertility goddess powers or something equally asinine, and persephone unlocked her full fertility goddess powers in order to unlock the full fertility goddess powers of all the other fertility goddesses, and together they brought back gaea from her vague undefined slumber/exile/whatever.

we start with the reveal of gaea, who defeats ouranos within five panels. a bit anticlimactic, but ouranos was revealed within the last five episodes of a 280-episode series, so i don't know what i was expecting.

it feels great to know there were no real stakes to this conflict.

gaea turns back to hades and persephone, and stares at them. the next full panel signals a timeskip. it's some undefined number of months later, and hades is on his own. the audience hasn't been shown the details of hades and persephone's confrontation with gaea, so we're led to believe something happened to persephone; all we know is that she and hades have been separated, and hades is sad.

hades goes through his morning routine, then enters the mortal realm, and the story flashes back to gaea's conversation with hades and persephone:

cool.

here, we run into an issue of bad comics formatting. i don't plan on getting too into the nitty gritty of page layout, it's more interesting to me than it is to most other people, and webcomics function fundamentally differently from normal comics, so i'm not as well versed in how to analyze them. that being said, this is what that snippet looks like when it's zoomed out:

this is the most important line in the episode, perhaps even the entire series, and neither the character speaking nor the characters reacting are in the same panel as the text. it's just this floating, meaningless bubble of dialogue, and most readers are on their phones, so it can't be seen at the same time as gaea, hades, or persephone; it has to be scrolled through. to me, the isolation seems to derive this line of anything that could make it compelling. it's also just a bad line. i am by no means the first (and hopefully not the last) person to point this out, but structuring your feminist hades and persephone retelling around persephone finding true love with a man is absolute nonsense. there is nothing genuinely feminist or subversive about lore olympus.

gaea goes on to monologue a bit, and ends up with this conclusion:

the hades/persephone myth retelling is finally complete: persephone is made to spend six months in the mortal realm and six months in the underworld, only in the lore olympus retelling, it's not demeter and hades who make this deal, it's an official decree from gaea. agency is stripped from demeter and hades and given to gaea, who had no role in this story originally, and shouldn't have this role now. ultimately, lore olympus is barely an echo of the original mythos, it keeps some aesthetics, and some names, but i am certain the nuances and complexities of hades and persephone as mythological and cultural figures have been lost on rachel smythe.

we also find out that hades and persephone are allowed to visit each other at any point, so the tragedy of their separation is completely undercut. they get a happy ending, and so does everyone else, except for the irredeemably evil apollo, and the redeemably evil zeus.

dionysus looks like this now after hardly showing up in the story:

i don't even know what to say to this:

happy pride month i guess

hades and persephone are happy and in love and everything is perfect and magical forever. the end.

but wait! there's more! you thought it was over, but there are at least 20 more panels! we skip ahead to "many, many years later," where melinoe—hades and persephone's dream daughter from the future—is now hades and persephone's actual real living daughter, no longer trapped in tartarus with kronos (long story, don't worry about it). she wakes up, and makes her way to hades and persephone's room, where persephone has just given birth:

this panel certainly is something. it wasn't until my second read through that i realized there was, in fact, a baby in hades' arms. the last panel is of hades, persephone, and their two daughters, finally a complete and happy family. where did dionysus go? i don't know, don't worry about it.

good lord rachel smythe cannot draw children. normally i wouldn't be mean about this—i can't draw children either—but rachel smythe is a bestselling author with the most popular webtoon on the site and multiple eisner awards, so i don't really feel like i'm punching down here. her art is incredibly inconsistent, and it tends to be at its worst when hades and persephone are standing next to each other, or when any child is shown. the art did not improve in the final episode, if anything, it was worse than usual.

what did it all mean? it's hard to say. i've been reading this series for years at this point, and trying to piece together the semblance of a coherent plot is arduous at best, and impossible at worst. the writing was never good per se, but the early episodes seemed to have a spark, a passion, that's completely lacking later on. the final arc was especially disappointing, smythe spent years building up apollo as an antagonist, only for him to be revealed as a puppet the entire time, and in the end, his defeat didn't feel like a victory for persephone.

i'm having a hard time coming up with a good conclusion. what is there to say about lore olympus that hasn't already been said? it's lazy, it's incoherent, it's liberal pseudofeminist nonsense. i spent three years obsessively reading it and now i don't know what to do with my life. thanks for nothing, rachel smythe.

[zhuoyichenpretty]

Ep 22-23 Commentary

Ha...I was inexplicably nervous for eps 22-23 and it looks like I was right to be (-: What a rollercoaster. Spoilers below!

I've just come out of ep 23 and uh????? holy shit????? ZYC????

Ok ok but to backtrack, let's do my comments semi-chronologically:

Ep 22:

A carry-over from ep 21 that I have to mention—heck yeah PSJ give WZY hell. She doesn't have all that many lines but she sure knows how to make them count. Also seeing PSJ and WX get screen time just the two of them makes my brain go "yay <3"

Back to ep 22, loved the fake-out sundial ayeee that was a nice Chekhov's gun that also brings the real sundial back into relevance for later. Also me eating up the PSJ and ZYC crumb of an interaction has brought to my attention how starved I am of their screen time together.

This whole ep was a great lament towards the feared inevitable. Every sad downcast look from ZYC, every complicated glance WX gives him. A wonderful, terrible crossroads for these characters. I love that for ZYC especially, it's such an incredible mess of emotion coming to a head. Bad enough that he's come to care about the demon who killed his family and ruined his life, bad enough that he's sworn a blood oath he regrets and tied himself to punishing someone he no longer finds culpable, bad enough that ZYZ's life or death depends solely on his choice and ZYZ is constantly practically begging for death when ZYC wants him to live. How much immensely worse it makes the whole situation that WX is literally ZYZ's soulmate. And obviously the whole team has only grown more and more attached to ZYZ, too. ZYC's personal turmoil aside, how heavy must that responsibility and guilt be? For the finishing blow that only he can deliver to also deeply threaten every other person he cares about? Everyone understands in the abstract what must happen and why, but just like seeing ZYZ lose control firsthand, the gulf between understanding and experiencing is so unimaginably wide. If he kills ZYZ, can there really be no resentment from his friends? From WX?

Also it seems ZYC only wears cloaks so that he can give them to other people lmao

Ah fuck, the farewell drinks. I didn't even factor in how ZYC might not survive the encounter (''': The drama truly was like hm can we possibly give ZYC a worse day than that night his whole fam died? Maybe give him a bunch of new family members and also the blade and the fate and the sole responsibility to potentially irrevocably scar said family members with? And he might die in the process too? (-: haha maybe? (((-:

Oh. Oh. Addendum. I forgot this til I saw it mentioned in another post—ZYC recounting his oath as he watched WX smile when they discussed reviving the tree...I could feel him weighing those words against his own life, against ZYZ's life, against WX's happiness. One way out of this impossible situation is indeed to doom himself. I'm in pieces.

Damn if WX isn't dedicated heart and soul, going into the sundial like that. I'm sad no one could keep her company for those 300 years but also I guess that's kind of an impossible ask (and maybe not survivable for the other non-goddess mortals? I'm admittedly very unclear on sundial time loophole logistics). It would have been nice to see someone offer though, even just to be turned down.

Ooh I like the soul needle fake-out, given this show's penchant for retroactive "actually we had a plan all along" moments. A good subversion of the narrative's own style.

Also I saved this for the end because it doesn't really fit the linearity of my comments but what the fuuuuuuuck oh my god I absolutely flipped out at this scene:

I am at once rabidly intrigued and at the same time not sure if I'll be satisfied with whatever payoff will come for this so I don't want to overindulge in theorizing and setting my own expectations too high. Maybe this is just a fevered hallucination, maybe it means nothing (I hope it means something). But damn!!! What a gorgeous man crazy scene.

In conclusion, ep 22 had some good stuff for me. Plot development and reflection and tension enough that I may have been satisfied with just that one episode. But they gave us two, so onward to ep 23 comments!

Ep 23:

I like how many solid reasons the team has to suspect ZYC being possessed. Even though I withheld judgment during my watch given how quickly the show usually confirms that kind of stuff with a possession mark, just simply casting that doubt made the whole build up that much more intense.

ZYC slowly walking down the corridor with the whole grounds lit a somber and haunting gold—*chef's kiss*

ZYC's monologue to a catatonic ZYZ is so important to me. The closest we'll get to his internal monologue about this whole situation. The kinds of things said when we think there's no conscious listener.

Okay so, having finished this episode and looking back, Li Lun's hands coming up from behind ZYC was not to denote possession (at least in this episode), potentially is a visual from ZYZ's POV, and seems related to the above screencap. I am so, so curious. Once again, I'm stopping myself from further speculation because I want to be surprised but ahhhhhhhhh

PSJ shooting at Ao Yin is so gorgeous. Her action scenes seriously never disappoint—the creativity of her fight choreos!! Also very cool that the whole team is getting to take part in the action, not just the two male leads.

Bai Jiu possession was not on my bingo card but I sure do love that we literally saw the possession take place and I still didn't connect the dots. Good shitttt. Also oh no ): ZYC was telling the truth about the soul needle, he was just tricked ):

Seriously from the Ao Yin case to getting PSJ released to reviving the Divine Wood to getting tricked by possessed!Bai Jiu to making pear soup to fighting ZYZ to fighting Li Lun—when will ZYC get a single goddamn vacation day holy shit.

Also when will WX tear up that contract so ZYZ can stop having a mild heart attack every time he wants to kiss her ): &I love that they saved the 300-year montage for this moment. While their ship doesn't give me brainrot personally, who could be unmoved by that incredible and undisclosed sacrifice? That's soulmatism.

Okay, I'd seen clips of them filming the ZYC and Li Lun fight but damn I did not expect it'd be happening right now!! Right after already taking damage from ZYZ? And my god is Li Lun brutal. The two actors did such an impressive job on this entire fight, what with Li Lun's ease and ZYC's suffering. I really appreciated the extensive hand-to-hand combat after Li Lun literally obliterated ZYC's sword. (Also though, given the origin of that sword, I kept hoping for a flashback to ZYC's brother once it broke, but alas, no dice.) Anyway, the show does not play around about ZYC whump it seems. I was very very shook by that throat punch; that shit legitimately looked like it hurt.

Honestly, I had a hard time with the extended ZYZ and Li Lun conversation at the very end because oh my god someone please heal ZYC lmao. But of course, that's the end of the episode~~

Y'all...check on your local ZYC stans because I was not okay after all that (': I need a heaping dose of comfort after all that hurt, but as always I'm cautious of hoping for much from canon itself. So yeah! Ep 23 was solid, but I would probably be in better shape if today's release just ended on ep 22 ((':

Time to go wait for the cast's Hi6 episode to drop so I can heal my battered heart ;-;

[y-rhywbeth2]

Something I love about BG1+2 is how it simultaneously plays and subverts the demigod/chosen one narrative (which continues in BG3, except with only the subversion. (And Halsin is not joking when Durge tells him what they are: Do NOT advertise that you're a Bhaalspawn.))

I've always been fond of the set up in Saradush in ToB, where the surviving children of Bhaal are being corralled into the besieged city under promise of protection against the entire world - because basically literally the entire world is trying to kill the Bhaalspawn: Your more powerful siblings want you dead; your mortal neighbours, and likely your nation itself either thinks you're inherently evil and are ready to kill you, or you represent such a threat that they're ready to drive you out and/or kill you just in case. Case in point: the aforementioned siege outside the city walls with the army that wants you dead currently raining giant flaming rocks of death over your head.

Some of these guys have no idea what they are, or what's happening, until attempted murder happens.

Like this discussion with one of your random brothers, a guy called Alexander:

Alexander: "You don't look like one of the locals. Are you a child of Bhaal as well, lured here like the rest of us to face our inevitable end?" Charname: "As well? What do you mean?" Alexander: "I myself am one of Bhaal's progeny - or so I've been told. I guess Bhaal's blood runs thicker in some of his children than in others." Sarevok: "By your snivelling manners, I would say Bhaal's blood runs very thin indeed in your veins. Bah-why do I even waste my breath tormenting this cowering cur?" Alexander: "Uh... is there anything else I can help you with?" Charname: "How did you get here exactly?" Alexander: "I wasn't brought here by Melissan, like some of the others. My home village was burned to the ground by a dragon who claimed to be hunting me. My friends... my family... they threatened to give me to the dragon if I didn't leave. So I did. And I heard a lot of other Bhaalspawn were coming here. *sigh* Now I almost wish I hadn't come."

Spoiler alert: He dies. Every single Bhaalspawn in that city dies*, along with everybody except a handful of commoners (*except maybe Viekang, who was not particularly inclined to murder me, so Murder in Baldur's Gate is weird.)

You, a simple peasant from a farming village one day come of age and learn that your absent father was a god, and you are forced to flee forces that are trying to kill you (in this case, your much more powerful half-brother)... it sounds like the start to some kind of fantasy epic, but instead of any fancy destiny you end up in a war torn city surrounded by castoff divine bastards just like you, terrified and unwanted, and then you die, and are forgotten.

And that's what being a Bhaalspawn is!

Whatever grand lies Bhaal tells you in your dreams about how you're special and great power awaits you (if you behave and do his will), your job is: sow death, faith, fear and chaos wherever you roam, strengthen Bhaal's power, and then be a good child and die for Father. No exceptions, save perhaps one, who is explicitly a special prophecy child, and even then is supposed to be doomed by future FR canon because they're still Bhaal's "pawn". There's also Imoen, who might be spared simply by proximity to said prophecy child keeping her alive. Non-game "canon" screwed her over hard. (FR canon and I have a complicated relationship, it must be said. All copies of those books are to be ritualistically burned.)

idk where I'm going with this, I just love how bleak the situation in the city is. No grand destinies, only a discardable pawn to be used, abused and consumed.

...And also that part where Tethyr sends an army to kill you because obviously you are guilty of "crimes against [Tethyr] and, indeed, all of humanity!" by supposedly killing a whole city: They admit they can't prove it, but you're a child of murder, you were born guilty even if you didn't actively do anything.

No, really:

General Jamis Tombelthen: "You are guilty, [Charname]. Of this there is no doubt. And we will not risk your further endangerment of us all. You are a spawn of Bhaal and responsible for the destruction of the city of Saradush*. Your execution has been ordered, [Charname]. May the gods have mercy on your soul."

* I implore you to move with great urgency to intercept the Bhaalspawn before they can do any more damage. Whether or not they are responsible for what occurred in Saradush, we cannot allow them to continue and cannot afford the time for trial... - Tombelthen's orders, courtesy of the Queen of Tethyr

[laurentidal]

Ice Core Report ❄️ August 2024

Decided to do a little editorial check in at the end of each month. Most of you probably don't know that, while Lauren is my real first name, that my blog is actually named for a massive ice sheet that once lay over the place where I live (the Laurentide Ice Sheet). Thus, this is a report from my ice core.

#1 Story: Suggestion Box

This one was a huge surprise for me. It took off immediately, and I had not seen that coming. I'd had this image saved in my "had potential" folder for probably three weeks before I decided on how to tell the story. It went through an iteration where this was an ice skating rink, then it was a sandwich shop. I think one draft had a "five dollar footlong" joke in it. But ultimately I liked "arcade" the best.

#2 Story: Enjoy Your Stay

This was based on fun joking conversation I had with @hypno-potion and as the scaffolding we were joking about kept getting more elaborate I was like "No there is definitely something here." I'm glad you all agreed.

#3 Story: Kitty Pet Saga

I saw this picture and immediately knew what the story was going to be. Sometimes I see an image and think "There's something here if I look hard enough" and sometimes I see an image and a fully formed idea just jumps right out of it.

#4 Story: Oh My

This is a story I actually wrote quite some time ago for an old defunct website that never really got any foot traffic. I'm glad I brought it over, because it's one of my personal favorites. The only fauxcest story in the top five this month. That's one of those kinks I think I'm just going to have to accept that you guys aren't as into as I am (and I have the data to validate that claim).

#5 Story: Daughters and Suns

The only true repost from my old blog and the only part of a series in the top five this month. This series is my favorite thing I'm writing right now (though this entry isn't my favorite in the series). There's a lot more coming so I hope you're enjoying as much as I am.

Sunda Systems

We're half way through Season 1 of my Sunda Systems investigative mind control conspiracy story. Our investigator has made several contacts and visited the campus first-hand. She also might be starting to feel some effects from her various encounters, and her keen eye for detail is missing a few clues that are staring her right in the face. But I'm sure the date she's got lined up will give her some much needed relaxation.

Please please please share this story and feel free to get interactive with it! I've put some real effort into it and I've never written such a slow burn before. I'm enjoying the ride, and I've got some GOOD (I think) twists and turns coming. I think this format could be fun to play around with as an audience. Post your theories! I love seeing that folks are engaging with more than just the like button.

Update of Magics & Mesmerism

Some of you are aware that I'm working on an erotic mind control TTRPG called Magics & Mesmerism. I'm still plugging away. As we speak, I'm writing skills for the Innovator character class. As a treat, I'd like to share with you an except from the page on Hypnotic Foci:

General Thoughts

Every story in the top five this month is a FEMALE SUB story. Noted. I tend to favor that in my writing, too, which is interesting because I think Female Over Male stories are hotter, probably because of the subversion of expectations. I'm a slut for subversion of expectations.

I think that's everything. Love you all and I'm very excited for you to see what's coming in September. One of my favorites that I wrote comes out tomorrow, and on the 13th you'll be introduced to your first Force of Nature.

Till then, keep reading, keep messaging, keep asking, and if you're feeling generous, keep donating.

[loonarii]

Idolizing Imperfection: The Ancient Allusions of 'Midas Touch' - KISS OF LIFE (an essay)

I have missed writing kpop essays so much and after watching the new Kiss of Life MV, I couldn't resist doing a scene by scene (with some lyrics) breakdown of the allusions to ancient mythology - (there are lots of other modern references, especially to Britney Spears, but the ancient ones are what I will be focusing on here, believe me there is more than enough to talk about.) I don't have any official qualifications surrounding this field (yet), but I am studying classical civilization and roman literature for a qualification, and I have a long time obsession with Greek mythology especially. Obviously all of these are my interpretations, this is not a definite guide to what exactly the creative direction team at S2 Ent. were thinking about for this comeback, and if you think I missed something or have a different interpretation of one of the scenes, please let me know in the reblogs/comments.

Let’s begin with the title of the track, ‘Midas Touch’. It references the Greek myth of King Midas, who (according to Ovid’s ‘Metamorphoses’) after winning the favour of the god Dionysus, was granted any wish he desired. Midas chose the ability to make everything he touched turn into gold, a wish driven by greed. Midas revelled in his new found powers, but the problems arose when he realised that all food he touched would be turned to gold too - he had condemned himself to starve to death. The myth is essentially a cautionary tale about the effects of greed; Midas is a tragic hero that brought about his own suffering due to his hamartia (tragic flaw) - his blessing becomes his curse. Today, having a ‘midas touch’ means that everything you are involved with is successful, but the main association of Midas with greed still remains. In the context of the song, KOL are saying that a relationship with them, although destined to end in tragedy, would be worth it for the ‘gold’ they can bring - “위험할수록 재밌잖아” (“The more dangerous it is, the more fun it is”).  Midas may have died a tragic death, but his time alive was quite literally golden. Still, it feels slightly odd that KOL are associating themselves with someone so flawed - an idol should be the image of perfection, and in this way, the meaning of the song becomes quite subversive on a meta level. Keep this interpretation in the back of your mind, we will return to it later.

Within the music video itself, each of the four members are given solo scenes that I believe allude to different women of Greek mythology. Julie is first, depicted lying on a blush pink velvet heart with gold embellishments, shell and heart shaped boxes littered around her. The composition of the framing, as well as the beach imagery seems to allude to Boticelli’s ‘The Birth of Venus’, linking Julie with Aphrodite/Venus, the goddess of love. In Greek mythology, Aphrodite is seen as beautiful beyond compare, but is also often characterised as highly vain and self absorbed. After hearing that some Greeks had begun to worship the ludicrously beautiful mortal woman Psyche instead of her, (and also out of protection of her son Eros to whom Psyche was married), she sent Psyche on a series of impossible trials designed to kill her, so she could remain the most beautiful. Once again, KOL compare themselves to people in the ancient world who were famously flawed.

Natty is seen next, intertwined with glittering spider webs. This is perhaps a reference to the tale of Arachne, a mortal woman who was highly skilled at weaving. She boasted that her skills were greater than Athena herself, the goddess of handicraft (and many other things), and Athena transformed her into a spider as punishment for her hubris (excessive pride). Like the tale of King Midas, Arachne’s story also centres around a fatal flaw bringing your own downfall, and like Midas and Aphrodite, Arachne is not typically remembered fondly within Greek Mythology canon.

Perched on a half dress, half throne that resembles a peacock, Belle is seen next. Originally I wasn’t certain who was being referenced here, but after some research I believe it may be Hera, although if you have another interpretation here I would love to hear it. Hera, the goddess of marriage and fertility, queen of the gods, and wife to Zeus, is affiliated with peacocks as they are one of her sacred animals, and are said to pull her chariot like horses. Hera is also, like Aphrodite, a goddess often portrayed in a negative light in mythology, repeatedly characterised as jealous and spiteful. A famous example of this is when Hera sent two snakes to strangle Heracles/Hercules, the illegitimate son of her husband Zeus, out of spite and jealousy for the boy’s mortal mother. Whether Hera had a right to be annoyed at her husband’s repeated adultery is another discussion, but generally speaking, when Hera is in a myth, she is often the villain.

Finally, we see Haneul, perched upon a corinthian style column (we love a greek column) surrounded by severed heads on spikes, a clearly war ridden scene. This is the allusion I am the least confident about, but I think perhaps she is supposed to be Helen of Troy? Helen is famous for being the catalyst for the Trojan War (perhaps this is the war scene she sits within?), she is the ‘face that launched a thousand ships’. Depending on the source, Helen is either a victim, kidnapped by the Trojan prince Paris, or she was seduced and went willingly, abandoning her Greek husband King Menelaus. The second seems to be the accepted narrative among many Roman authors, with writers such as Martial (in Epigrams 1.62) portraying her as the polar opposite of Penelope, who was seen as the image of loyalty. As a result, Helen is commonly portrayed as disloyal and unfaithful, the opposite of what an ideal woman in the ancient world was supposed to act like.

In their group scenes, there is also SO MUCH Medusa imagery - with snakes crawling all over their faces and hissing at the camera, and half broken stone statues littered here and there. As I am sure you are probably aware, Medusa is very much a villain in the myths she is depicted in, and despite modern reevaluations of her story (that I agree with) portraying her as a victim, in the primary sources, she is essentially an evil monster for Perseus to destroy - her death marks Perseus’s ascension to hero status.

So why oh why are KOL comparing themselves to figures so flawed? In their previous releases, especially their first comeback with ‘Bad News’, the girls are depicted trying to fix injustices in society - they expose corruption in corporations, they combat casual misogyny and sexual harassment, and they call out bullying and abuse. In ‘Midas Touch’ I believe they continue their addressing of injustices and double standards, this time with a focus on the idol industry, their own stomping ground. In the kpop industry, idols are expected to be perfect in every way - beautiful, highly skilled, never controversial, and loyal to their fans. Should an idol fail to uphold these impossible standards, they are relentlessly punished, especially if the idol is a woman. Last month, Karina’s earnest apology to ‘fans’  for falling in love exposed how ludicrous the standards are to the world, and other idols like Sakura, Wonyoung, and Jennie, continue to get bullied on a daily basis for not meeting all of the bars the industry sets them. A kpop idol should be talented, but never show off, they should be beautiful and care about their looks but never be vain, confident but never egotistical, and driven by passion, not the desire for fame and money. It’s all fucking impossible, especially when what constitutes being called the second traits is utterly arbitrary and depends on how many people woke up on stan twitter and decided they didn’t like you that day. In ‘Midas Touch’ KOL calls this out by openly depicting themselves with the traits that kpop stans hate - Julie is Aphrodite, beautiful but vain, Natty is Arachne, talented but boastful, Belle is Hera, confident but jealous, Haneul is Helen, influential but disloyal, and they all are Midas, spurred on by greed instead of passion. They recognise that these accusations are unavoidable, and by reclaiming the imagery of these symbols of undesirable traits, they call out and reject the standards the idol industry places upon them. Like Medusa, they may be seen by many fans as a villain, a hurdle for their favourite groups that have more promotion and budget to overcome on their way to the top, but in actuality, they are victims of an industry desperate to mould them into products to be bought and sold. I’ve seen lots of discussion online about what KISS OF LIFE’s concept is, as it seems to vary every comeback, but after ‘Midas Touch’ I am led to believe that their concept is rebellion, against society, idol culture, and the things they deem as wrong in the world. Other groups have  done concepts similar in the past, such as LOONA in ‘Butterfly’ (you really thought I wasn’t going to bring them up at some point?? Are you new here??) but KOL is doing it explicitly, and consistently, and to me, that's very exciting. The kpop industry is ever changing, and with the foundations of the new 5th generation being established as we speak, perhaps KOL could cause it to change for the better. In summary, I am SO excited to see what they do next.

That honestly took a turn I wasn’t fully expecting at the end, but I hope you enjoyed regardless - I didn’t really talk about the actual song here, but I fucking loved it, and my full review will be part of my April monthly roundup - see previous installments on my masterlist. I encourage all of you to listen to ‘Midas Touch’ if you haven’t already, congratulations KISS OF LIFE for graduating nugudom, stream Birth by ARTMS, stan loona, and prepare for the loossemble comeback - lmk if you have any thoughts on my analysis or any other interpretations, or any topics you want me to write an essay on. cya next time ~ ari

[utilitycaster]

Pls ignore if the spectre of ruminating on old god-diskhorse is far too obnoxious but it's rather a jump-off point for a more general question; an issue brought up pushing back against the most obnoxious "vanguard is right eradicate those tyrant gods rq stole vax hate that bitch" ppl, aside from other things like just being deeply myopic even just from an in-universe perspective, but on a wholler narrative level requires completely ignoring or discarding campaign 1 and 2's theses and genuine connections. Largely i think these ppl's takes are more interested in self-validation than concerned with what they're actually saying when they want these things to be true (which they aren't, Matt and cast and plot progression from the peak of those discourses have made that clear), but now here's my wondering: what would it say if c3 were to be these things? By what metrics do you judge a sequel installment should it, in the pursuit of its own story, undermine or contradict the earnest, complete, already told story that preceded it and was built upon?

Hi anon,

This is a good question, and necessarily one with a subjective answer, so I hope I at least explain my thought process below! Also: this does have some spoilers for a Midst episode in Season 3 (which aired a few weeks ago). I mention this because it's a really useful example for me but this wasn't a question about Midst so you might not be expecting me to talk about it.

Firstly, I agree with you that a lot of the people who want this want the story to validate their personal beliefs. Some want it to validate political/philosophical beliefs, which is a complicated thing: on the one hand, I very much don’t want to watch a show that’s like “hey slavery is neat-o!” and doubt such a show would have much merit. On the other hand, when we’re dealing with much more complicated issues like religion, which simultaneously exists as a tool of oppression; an aspect of identity that makes one a target of oppression; a source of meaning and comfort; and a source of justification of terrible practices all in one; I think it’s extremely valuable to be exposed to a multitude of perspectives and to not just endlessly look for those that validate one’s own experiences.

Others just want the story to validate their feelings about the happenings within the narrative, which is on the one hand usually less close-minded, but on the other hand, kind of stupid. You are permitted to dislike that Vax died. I disagree, but you can feel however you want (indeed, you don’t need my, or anyone’s permission to dislike that Vax died). The story saying “The Raven Queen isn’t perfect” or even “The Raven Queen is Bad” isn’t necessary for you to have those feelings; and the Raven Queen being slaughtered isn’t per se necessary for Vax to come back (which I think would be cheap and stupid, but like, if that’s what you want you could just have him come back.) You don’t need to story to tell you that your response to the story is good, so this is ultimately a case of “why are you even doing this."

I also suspect there’s just some degree of subversion for subversion’s sake (or change for change's sake) people who were into the idea of killing the gods just to flip C1 and C2 on their respective heads. The thing is, subversion for the sole purpose of subversion has always been the province of the dull. There’s a reason why culturally we treat M. Night Shyamalan as a joke and it’s because “THERE’S A TWIST” without a strong and compelling build-up to said twist nearly always is, as the post I recently reblogged said, something that only hits hard if you’re stupid.

What I need from a story to be good is internal consistency and a strong execution. I am frequently surprised, in a very positive way, by stories that are so well-executed that they sell me on a premise with which I was less than enamored. If you’d told me that I’d feel sad about FCG’s sacrifice or extremely in favor of Phineas and Jonas’s romantic relationship during early C3 or, frankly, even the minute before I listened to Trustfall, respectively, I would have said “huh, really?” But both of these events were thoughtfully built to a point where they felt like meaningful and interesting choices for the story to take, even if that was not apparent to me earlier on.

So: the metric I’d use to judge a god-killing C3 is the same as that of any long-running story. I think there is a universe in which Campaign 3 could have made the demise of the gods a good and compelling story. But that work simply has not been done. The atrocities of the Vanguard, Weave Mind, and the Dwendalian Empire under Ludinus Da’leth; the callousness shown towards all Exandrians and Ruidians by the Vanguard and Kreviris Imperium; and most importantly the fact that there haven’t been new reveals of terrible things done by the gods and the story has instead striven to paint them as more fragile and complicated than what we’ve seen in past means that a sudden twist would, well, be cheap and only hit hard if you’re stupid. You can contradict a past story in an installment (or the earlier work in a long-running series) in a way that is not undermining if you are able to tie it together and show new information that was not available earlier! But that’s the key: it needs to be clear that the earlier works were showing a specific perspective (already a very tall order given the protagonist-only POV of D&D campaigns) or that the situation has drastically changed. If you fail to do this, then as you said, it’s undermining and it’s poorly done and a bad story.

I think that last point is also really important in thinking through the fandom response. I mentioned that I can be sold on a premise that didn’t win me over initially if the execution is strong. I think some people, and especially those gunning for a “The Gods are All Bad” story are so terrified of not being validated or of being wrong in their predictions or of criticism from other fans that they can no longer enjoy a story or comment meaningfully upon it. To which I say skill issue. I am thrilled and even grateful that, as previously mentioned, FCG had an arc that deepened their character and addressed my earlier criticism such that I could enjoy episode 91 as much as I did. I was mildly spoiled on the potential of Jonas and Phineas getting together and was, to be honest, slightly dreading it as I’d always preferred a platonic interpretation of their relationship, and then the scene in which it happened (and everything since) has been so deftly handled that I’m fully on board.

I am a far better analyst and critic of fiction than a creator of it, and I’m open about this. I am constantly surprised in ways both positive and negative by how other people tell stories, and that’s why I come back to them. I want the story to be so good that it expands my horizons and comfort zone and shows me something new. I find little joy in a story validating who I already am and what I already think. I want the story to make a better argument for what it has to say than I can make against it. If this is a competition between the story and me, I am rooting for the story to win over me and in doing so, win me over; and I am disappointed when it doesn’t.

I am also a physicist, and, famously within our understanding of physics, pretty much anything can happen; it’s all just a matter of probabilities. And so it’s hard for me to say “there’s no way this could ever be done well.” It’s very easy, however, for me to say “the eye of the needle one must thread to do this well is a micron in diameter and constantly moving.” I think it’s possible to turn the concept of a god-slaying Campaign 3 into a story that, rather than clumsily ignoring or discarding C1 and C2’s theses, transforms them and puts them in a new and unexpected light. But the narrative dexterity check required for that has always been high, and only gets higher as the actual Campaign 3 story continues along its current path.

[katyspersonal]

Okay the last post about SoTE progress for today!! (3/3)

1) So, after I defeated Romina, I of course....

came back and finally got to that bridge area that I wanted to get to!!!

Yes, I just wanted to get to that side of the map where I saw a Horned Knight that I just really wanted to murder for some reason XD However, to my surprise, I saw another Dancing Lion boss ;-; That one was a hard battle and I could not have imagined to need to do that AGAIN ;-; But my way layed through that spot, and also I am a perfectionist..

1.1) But surprisingly, at the Stage 2, it summoned several Basylisks and started to use Deathblight! That was significant for me! So yesterday I concluded that Scarlet Rot, Deathblight and Formless Blood (? is this even a correct term) all spawn flies and plants? And whereas Romina of course raised Scarlet Rot here since the buds in Rauh church she brought here were not always rotten, some Hornsent here use same flies swarms as Mohg's people! Seeing how a Dancing Lion here uses Deathblight, but no Deathroot was anywhere on its arena, I felt even more convinced that these three powers are basically Pokemon Eevelutions of the same initial concept, 'stagnation', whereas fly sickness that fell upon Hornsent is its initial unaltered form! + I guess all Hornsent in Rauh are runaways from Belurat particularly, then?

2) I finally killed that poor particular Horned Knight whom I had eyes on as soon as I saw them!!!!! They've dropped the greatsword if I remember correctly? Happy end! XDDD

3) So... Yeah, at last, finally, FINALLY I proceeded and burnt the sealing tree. I got to explore Enir-Ilim! It was already beautiful, with all the pale yellow trees. Took me some time to adjust, though, the place was tangled from the start!

4) Yeah yeah Inquisitors are female feminism wins whatever

Vfggghgjhgv unironically though, I love subversion of the trope xD

5) Something creepy/funny happened along the way though, I was laughing so hard wtfffff gfbfgcbfg

OKAY SO at some point my joy from the new location went down because my focus shifted towards the memory of the final boss, and I just remembered how much I dreaded them.. so, I broke my vow to not fuel the negativity which is already abundant and wrote a rant(ish) post about how much that decision soured otherwise amazing DLC and ranted about Radahn (disliking about his involvement, not the character jfhyggfg). And what do you think? That frankly sour post got eaten by Tumblr!

And yes, I know, Tumblr is a broken website and all that, but listen.. It never made the posts disappear for me. Ever. It could glitch out a post with bad internet and randomly publish it later as I log in, it could glitch an ask response and not have the draft saved thus losing it. It has invisible ask glitch and glitch where same post gets reblogged from 3 to 5 times. It never just made post disappear instead of being posted even with delay or giving me error message. Never. Ever. Ever. Except for now. The one time I spoke unkindly about that choice, not just "mannn weird how it wasn't foreshadowed :("

So since I am infamous amongst my friends for my super bizarre coincidences regarding fictional characters ( @heraldofcrow and @val-of-the-north witnessed so many they can swear I am cursed) me and my friend are joking that Miquella is real and he nuked the post for talking shit about his blorbo LMAOOOOOOO FFGDHTGG WTFFFFF 🤣

6) OK sorry hghgggggf Anyways, to my DELIGHT, I discovered variant of Hornsent Knights that wore smaller variant of Dancing Lions masks and use their powers like lighting and blizzard.... fun... :/

7) *points like in the meme* HEY I KNOW THIS ITEM, IT WAS SWORD OF ABUNDANCE AND DECAY REPRESENTING MALENIA AND MIQUELLA IN BETA VARIANT! XDDD

Kind of ironic how it is called 'Euphoria', because I could not be less happy about that lore being cut, all for...... *looks around in case if Miquella is somewhere in the walls*

8) There were so many nooks.. I found a secret passageway on accident, by trying to run from an old lady spamming so many spells under my feet that I was BARELY able to move! 🤦‍♂️

That eventually led me to a part of Belurat that I didn't get to explore before! Yes, the bridge above that area was where I picked Euphoria in! But below was poisonous swamp (truly a Miyazaki lol) where I got to fight a GREEN variant of Tree Spirit! It just dropped a Horn Charm that boosted poison and Rot resistance!

^ This find, though, was interesting for me, because it is a variant of a glove that was dropped by an NPC Maddening Hand earlier! That one had eyes and dealt Frenzy and specified to be weapon of Hornsent hunted by their own as heretics, but it was also forged in yearning for revenge! So, it is not even that exceptional; for Hornsent, it is a cultural thing to stitch a weapon of revenge from the skin of the victims! Kind of like giving victims a chance to strike back, albeit in death. Very poetic.

9) There was a lot of running, and a lot of getting lost. Found Spirit Ashes of Horned Knight, too (nothing new about them in description), had to use Rainbow Stones to finally stop running in circles, found Ancient Somber Smithing Stone secret via elevator (good because I ran out of them).. and THIIIIIIS:

I wondered where was the head piece of this set! Pieces of it are scattered and I found all previous three! And, again, isn't it interesting how white birds (death) are here, whereas bird variant of Horned Knights were favored 'gold' birds? Second half of Twin Bird is gold life bird guuuuuyyys-

10) Okay, eventually I've met Leda telling me to step away! I was given the choice to summon Thiollier and Ansbach, presumably because I finished their questlines, so I did! It just felt like it would be more fun.. and it WAS! Holy shit gfgggcbch I did NOT expect the ultimate NPC showdown XD And, again, Freyja and Ansbach had an actual CONVERSATION! Look, this is a breakthrough for Soulsborne games, trust me they just DON'T have characters interact "on screen"!

10.1) HOLY SHIT THOUGH DANE ACTUALLY SAID SOMETHING o_o GDGTHCJBB

10.2) No, seriously, I just wanted to jump on Tumblr and post just this! The best fucking moment

11) Instant interest:

Which Outer God? Is it one we know of, or some random guy? I decided to not think about it too hard, yesterday it ended in an over 3 hours long brainstorming and my brain still short-circuits! But maybe later! ...I am sure at some point I'll find a similar pattern in the game itself and it will all click..

^ They were both picked by a respective final boss personally.. Simon+Brador to Ludwig+Laurence moment and so on

^ *points like in a meme AGAIN* Hey I read about it in a post, she killed all other Needle Knights! And by the way, I never found the seal (?) that revealed that lore! @val-of-the-north help bvbgggvh

12) Ansbach also had a dialogue after that battle to praise Thiollier's poisoning skills! That was lovely!

13) I kind of wondered though: why could not we summon Vengeance-Seeking Hornsent in this battle too, if we did his questline correctly? That would make fair 4 Miquella Simps vs 4 of "us" battle! Like, why just cast away the character to have him die as invader somewhere in Scarlet Rot place? I later realized that it would crash the "balance" of the final boss later, and I guess he was the "safest" to leave behind since he already had his goal (to see Messmer die)! Whereas other two target Miquella in particular!

13.1) This distribution is still a meme material for shitposts about characters doing competitive sport, fighting in an online game etc hfgfggbhcbx 4 vs 4

14) I actually checked and just like I thought, the last painting secret was only accessible after burning the seal!

Yeah no shit man we could tell

15) So.... yeah, finally, I've met the final boss. I never wanted to fight Radahn again; he somehow gave me problems even on Torrent with all the friends summons, and now I have to somehow dodge him in a small arena т.т Or maybe I am dumb and this is just my skill issue idk gfggjhhy

16) I actually got to the second stage first try somehow! It often happens how I play better when I still don't even know what I am doing XD And...

Okay, is this a good time to say that so far I only was spoilered some footage and lore, but not the voicelines? So.. I shared that story already some time, but a few months before the DLC, I was simply one of the people here 101% convinced about Miquella being kind and the good guy and all! I wasn't like aggressive or anything about it unlike some more avid fans (got stabbed by Bewitching Branch, did you? :p), but still also said "they should read something besides Berserk" or "people are reading into 'fearsome empyrean' line too deep". However, as DLC was approaching, at some point I had an extremely vivid dream where Miquella appeared to me, and his vibe was exactly like in the DLC in retrospective! Okay, maybe more sinister; not cold or evil, just... "forceful" in a similar way, "for my sake".

So, back then, not only that dream permanently altered my brain chemistry to accept and become open to "evil/manipulative Miquella" interpretations, but also helped me to Expect Anything which softened the blow regarding the DLC xd I had a shock moment, but far not as bad as other fans from 'this' camp! ...... so now, I found out that his voice is EXACTLY like it was in my dream 2 months ago. 🌛I really am cursed LMAOOOO WHY IS IT ALWAYS ME XDDDD

_____________

Like I said I am a dumb looser with skill issue so I've been trying to beat the boss for next 2+ hours and still didn't.. I will probably get them next time, for now I have to travel for a week and then work again т.т Watching what insane ways YouTube come up maybe will help..

I also one time got a grab attack where Radahn snatches Tarnished and says "I promise you a thousand years voyage of compassion" which got me flustered a little and already made it harder to play, but NOW that I think of it, Ranni also said "a thousand years voyage (under wisdom of stars") 🤔 So that's at least two Demigods hinting at how whatever order (or lack of) they establish won't/can't last forever, but only for 'thousand of years'! Good to know that any system, good or bad, will eventually crumble x) Gwyn: TRIGGERED

All in all, it is a very hard battle and I can't see shit in second phase, everything is too bright. But also oddly enough, I no longer dread new lore/final this much..? Meeting the final boss in person helped to finally accept actual Miquella and get over my prior mental image for good, and I am no longer hung up on Radahn involvement beyond 'some more foreshadowing needs to go in base game via patch now'. I start to wonder whether I simply got caught in the shared disappointment mood and effect of not having the full picture rather than actually dreaded thing from the start? It reminds me of that time when I was clowning agreeing that Malenia was unfair boss but only when I fought her like 70 times myself I realized I exagerrated hfhyggh Not saying Twin Dunces is a good battle, but just saying I don't dread it as much as I thought from spoiler and getting there MYSELF helped

[imthepunchlord]

Honestly, I wouldn’t bother with the Prodigious (Zodiac Miraculous) for the Bugettes AU specifically? The name itself strongly suggests that the bug-themed fairies are THE magical beings of this world off the bat. Beyond that, you’ve already got a solid, stable magical system running here with just the European-inspired seven Miraculous and three Calamitous; considering that system, the color choices and the design symbols, not to mention the not-fully-finalized stuff like powers, weapons and holders, trying to have 12 more unique additions in any of those groups sounds like, if not a massive headache waiting to happen (you of course know your own threshold better than me), extremely tedious/redundant for what you already have going on at the very least, which is one of the problems that canon itself already has. I’ve seen it mentioned on here and other blogs as the show’s continued on that the writers should’ve either had just the yin-yang and Wuxing levels of the Miracle Box in canon or just the Zodiac level, and I agree wholeheartedly. Not nearly every teenager shown on-screen needs to have a Miraculous to “validate” their or the Miraculouses’ existence in the ML world, they just don’t, and canon also ran into the problem I brought up of repetitive and often overpowered versions of previously established yin-yang/Wuxing powers once they FINALLY got around to showing all of the Zodiac Miraculous in action. They never even FINISHED showing what all of the potions do!!! And that’s not even getting into the canon!Prodigious or Native American Miracle Box! And the worst part is that they logistically and pragmatically executed each and every one of these magical systems in-universe ABYSMALLY! All this to say that I’m very similar to that one anon who brought up why they’d vehemently rather see a full-on, no-subversions girl group for this AU in that, while I don’t doubt that you specifically would be able to pull off the writing, canon has soured the idea of having more moving magical system parts than what the main story is focusing on that I can’t even enjoy seeing it in AUs anymore - that I have to literally push through reading it in writing or comics that I really like otherwise just to understand what’s happening in the rest of it that I genuinely enjoy and am there for. My distaste goes ESPECIALLY hard when the established magical systems are inspired by different cultures like European and Chinese as is the (STRONGLY muddled together) case in canon and would be the case for this AU if you included your version of the Prodigious. I would actually love to see how you would write a story where only the Zodiac Miraculous exist as the Chinese Miracle Box too!! Just not existing separately in the same world as the European Miraculous and Calamitous in the Bugettes AU, if that makes sense.

It does, and I feel you!

I fully agree that canon has poured out way more than they know what to work with. And a lot of it you raise a brow at in how it's handled, or wonder why was this included. Or they included stuff at weird times.

Like, s2, we got the confirmation of potions AND Zodiac Miraculous.

Did we really need both confirmed?

And then, before we get to see all of both, they do two Specials revealing NA Miraculous and the canon Prodigious; both of which are up in the air of how covered they'll actually get; and yeah, they just pour out way too much.

Most shows, when introducing a new concept in the new season, that usually takes the focus of the new season. So they did it really weird.

If it helps, the Prodigious are more a concept thought for plausible worldbuilding, as I do like the idea that different countries could potentially have their own magical thing going on, what the potential relations can be, and have it as an open door if I want to try and shuffle up the dynamics of different magic and do something else for any potential villain ideas.

But that doesn't mean the Prodigious will actually ever appear or even be mentioned. It's actually way to early to say yes or no to them even appearing, as I haven't even started on any planning for the idea. Only thing I can say for sure is that the Bugettes will be the primary focus, and the Calamitous will be the main villainous force. At this time, I'd say, IF the Prodigious do appear, they're more likely to be saved as the next big arc after the Calamitous. But I don't even know if I would want to continue to the next big arc.

So, really, they're just present for potential worldbuilding, and are an open door for the future if I want to go through it. They for sure won't be the focus. I really can't say if they'll even get mentioned in Bugettes au.

[altocat]

I actually love Lucrecia as a character because despite DOC’s writing, she is still a subversion of the classic, redundant “victimized and martyred mother” trope. I think that is what they had planned in the original drafts, for her to be someone forced into the horrible position of bearing enhanced children, with Sephiroth being one of them.

Usually this trope also has the mother being the sacrificial lamb that dies trying to protect their child, and being a totally selfless angelic Madonna figure with no flaws and their only character trait being their pure, motherly love for their child. Oh and they have no agency. (See: Disney mothers).

Personally, I am tired of this cliche and I love that Lucrecia was someone that was desperate to prove others wrong and had a lot of emotional issues that led her to make horrific mistakes with real consequences. She lost her baby because she chose to trust people that wanted weapons and scientific advancements at the cost of human life. She made that choice and it cost her son.

Her remorse, hopelessness, self-loathing…it is very realistic and believable. To make things worse, she clearly loved her child and had some point where she realized it. She calls him her “dear, dear child” in the OG and dreams of him, she begs to see him, to know what happened to him. All of her laments over her past mistakes are valid and painful

It also makes Seph looking for her all his life even more tragic because his mother did love him and want him, but she was the one that tore them apart ultimately because of her decisions. She’s the one that hurt him by letting his life be violated from the womb. It stabs at the heart so much more than the age-old “my selfless mother sacrificed herself for me and I wish I could still be with her” cliche.

Seph has a missing mother that could have been with him, but she’s not because of every one of the awful circumstances that she brought herself into. They both want and need each other, but it’s hopeless.

Lucrecia made a huge mistake and she and Sephiroth both paid dearly for it. It’s so tragically human and real. I love Lucrecia for her complex story in this way. People should stop just hating on her and try to see the unique aspects of her story.

^^^^ All of this.

It's just a tragedy. A complete tragedy at every angle. But while Lucrecia is despicable, part of me WANTS to see mother and child reunite. Because none of this had to be this way. And their separation from each other is the very thing that kicks all of this into motion.

[fallloverfic]

I am legitimately confused by repeated comments that ORV's opening is slow or boring or uninteresting, especially people who say you need to read [insert some very large number of pages/chapters] to get to the "good" parts. I've seen this on multiple socials at this point and I originally wrote this post months ago, but recent potential news has brought back people saying this again, particularly in recommending it to other people/trying to get other people into it.

I would personally argue that ORV has a good opening. A very good opening. And the early part of it is very good, too.

ORV opens with a literal train of angst, attempted friendship, workplace harassment (Sangah getting harassed by her boss), some neat Korean folklore (dokkaebis hello), graphic violence (remember when Bihyeong just kills the president on TV?), a group of people in a subway attempting to beat an old woman to death, Dokja winning a pissing contest with a teenage edgelord, a bunch of people getting murdered, bonding in times in despair over a really unique form of problem solving, a man breaking open subway doors with his bare arms, young love, and magic, fleeing onto a bridge that gets exploded to bits by an evil gremlin, a horde of zombies appearing, the protagonist getting new magic powers, and then his getting held by the neck over said broken bridge in a complex back and forth with the "true" story protagonist before getting dropped into the mouth of a giant sea monster.

It covers topics like the limits of human compassion in times of strife, the complicated presence of the military (Dokja hated his time being drafted v Hyeonseong's military leadership doesn't save anyone), international relations (Sangah is learning Spanish), trope subversion (I mean it is and isn't the entire book and Dokja's character, but he's constantly trying to be 5-10 steps ahead of what's going on, including literally fleeing Junghyeok until Junghyeok grabs him by the collar), workplace harassment, bullying, and it's all taking place during multiple apocalypse scenarios.

This is the like first 11 chapters of the book. And it never stops. There are "slower" moments, moments where characters take a breather (like it takes a while for Dokja to negotiate his contract with Bihyeong, which is slow if you ignore the fact Dokja is arguing with an interdimensional being/alien for the limits of his own life and autonomy in the most dangerous streaming event imaginable, knowing he may still die if he gambles wrong on his personal wikipedia brain), but it's still frequently confrontational, whether that confrontation is about what characters mean to each other, what lives are at stake, finding your purpose in life, adaptability to complex circumstances, overcoming trauma and self-doubt...

And it's more intense in a way in the manhwa adaptation because you can clearly see most of it visualized (e.g., how visually wrecked the characters get, how young the kids are, how terrifying the monsters are, how scary the odds are, and how dangerous Dokja's gambles can really get with a fickle streaming audience), and Sleepy-C's art is gorgeous.

I just have to wonder (though this is more of a rhetorical question), what on earth do people consider fast? Because I am quite honestly terrified of what the answer is.

Like I get that ORV is long. It can be hard to recommend very long books to folks (and as the manhwa keeps going, long comics). To each their own, everyone is different, what appeals to me won't appeal to others. But there's a difference between "it's hard to recommend a very long work to someone" and "it's hard to recommend something that's long and takes a while to get into", and maybe folks are just writing the former a bit weirdly. I completely understand having trouble recommending long series to people. Also ORV has a very complex plot and I don't blame folks having trouble recommending that. I'm writing fic for later parts of orv and other manhwa and I dread explaining all the context for all that to someone who hasn't read them.

That being said, ORV has a very good introduction. Both chapter 1 of the novel and episode 1 of the manhwa are very good. They're not perfect, I can't say I was hooked from the immediate moment I started reading the page, but both of them have good introductions and it doesn't stop, and there's stuff to love in just about every chapter/episode, and I was definitely hooked enough by the time I finished to keep going to chapter/episode 2. Chapter 1 of the novel has great angst and character building, and it's funny and sweet and tragic. When I first read Dokja trying, earnestly, to recommend TWSA and getting harassed about it and worrying it will hurt this art and artist he cares about, but not being able to do much else to give thanks for this experience because of his circumstances, I cried. The first page/episode of the manhwa has them delicious boys love vibes and gorgeous art (and cute baby Dokja, I die for him), and the promise of a fascinating story ahead, and then the following page/episode has more gorgeous art and angst and great characters (combining them cause the first page feels sort of more like a teaser than a first page, though Episode 0 ends with a spread of Kimcom that makes me tear up). We'll unfortunately never know if I'd have loved ORV as much if I'd read the novel first, but I like to think I would cause ORV's opening is just that good.

I just truly, truly do not understand the sentiment that idk the opening and the first [insert large number of pages/chapters] aren't good or interesting or engaging enough. Maybe I'm out of touch. To each their own on what appeals, maybe I'm built different (doubt it though) but it just feels kind of dismissive of ORV's opening, in both the novel and the manhwa, which are both really good. Will it win over everyone? No. It's fine if you weren't grabbed by the opening or the first [insert however many pages/chapters/arcs]. It's fine if you took a while, even a long while to get into it, or never really did, and maybe don't like the manhwa, which is a great gateway into the story, or don't like the novel for whatever reason and prefer the manhwa. And at the end of the day it's just random opinions online, we all have different ones. Make the posts that appeal to you on your blog, complain on your socmed, whatever. But the opening is good, it keeps you very engaged with a lot of difficult scenarios, the characters are great and fun and funny, in those parts especially, and idk why I'm supposed to pretend that's not the case.

Anyway I don't like writing complaint posts. The opening and general start are excellent and Imma go back and cry over Dokja again ty singNsong for my tears.

[mask131]

I have been watching Pointy Hat's Gods video, because, yes, I greatly enjoy Pointy Hat's D&D video and clever ideas and subversions of tired RPG tropes...

And this encouraged me to finally do the post I meant to do since a very long time: talking about some of my favorite depictions of gods in fantasy works.

Well... "Talking" might be a too-broad word, because I don't want to analyze or explain everything, due to this entering full spoiler territory - I prefer to leave you the surprise to discover them by yourself...

But I want to list here specific fantasy works that involve gods in fascinating, clever ways that work so hard to make us feel what a god or goddess is, while also avoiding the Americanized, super-heroized way media has been showing us the gods for decades now. I also will NOT be talking of specific works adapting or subverting specific mythologies. I am not talking here about stuff like Percy Jackson, or God of War, or the Vei comic book... I will make one exception for Neil Gaiman's "mythology melting-pot" works, but only because they are more interested in what "divinity" and "deity" means than playing with specific myths. I am mostly focusing here on what you would call the "fantasy pantheons" and the fictional gods.

First and foremost being: The Chalion series by Lois McMaster Bujold

This is the first fantasy I ever read where the gods actually FELT like gods. Not only that, but there is a full exploration and analysis, interwoven with the plot, of many god "tropes" people complain about in the fantasy genre, questionssuch as "Why must the gods rely on a human clergy to do things if they are so powerful" or "If the gods know everything, why don't they prevent stuff happening in the first place?" or "Why isn't the god a deus ex machina solving everything?"

Honestly, the gods of Chalion are probably my number 1 representation of gods in fantasy novels.

Not quite "traditional fantasy" but of course, when dealing about the creation, exploration and subversion of gods, Neil Gaiman has to be brought up. More precisely two of his works, "sisters" so to speak: his Sandman comic book series, and his American Gods novel.

The Endless of the Sandman world are NOT gods, this is their whole point, they are ABOVE the gods... but they are still a marvelous and complex exploration of what it means to be the supernatural personification or embodiment of something - plus, the Three, of course. Sandman also introduces the topic that is fully investigated and played with in American Gods: the nature of divinity, what is a religion or a cult, the consequences and limits of faith, and the idea of vanishing gods, dying gods, and divine births... It is due to this deep thematic exploration that I decided to still include this novel, despite it mainly using beings from actual religions and folklores of the world.

If you want to keep the same motifs, themes and explorations present in Gaiman's work while diving into more traditional fantasy, you of course must go take a look at Terry Pratchett's Discworld.

Who needs to present this series today? The most hilarious fantasy parody ever, the peak of humoristic fantasy, and yet the most thorough deconstruction and reconstruction of all the cliches, archetypes, tropes and settings of the fantasy genre.

Religion and gods are a recurring thread across the Discworld. One specific sub-series (the entire series being organized in "cycles so to speak) deals with the existence and adventures of anthropormophic personifications: the "Death cycle", following the titular character of Death, the Grim Reaper. Specific books I could suggest are "Mort", the first book of the cycle, "Reaper Man", and "Hogfather", about a psychopathic assassin trying to murder Santa Claus, and the Reaper having to replace the jolly old man... However, if you are truly interested in gods, and Pratchett's exploration of myths and religions, there is an unescapable trio. "Pyramids", about the fantasy parody of Ancient Egypt ; "Small Gods", about how Discworld's version of Jesus came to be ; and "Monstrous Regiment", about women having to enlist as men in the army in a war-torn, hyper-religious country... These three books are very thorough observations, parodies and deconstructions of what a "god" is, of what a "religion" is, and how the relationship between faith, the acts of faith, and the object of the faith...

You also have several books which involve Discworld's pantheon of gods while not actually exploring religious themes - just parodies of archetypal myths and the traditional appearances of gods in fantasy books: the first two books of Discworld, "The Colour of Magic" and "The Light Fantastic" ; "Sourcery", about Discworld'd version of the Apocalypse, or the illustrated novel "The Last Hero".

I said the first time I actually felt like I was reading about gods in fantasy was in the Chalion books - but there is another specific scene where the idea of divinity was perfectly conveyed. Now I can't speak about the whole series because I only read the first book: but the Fionavar Tapestry has some excellent godly depictions. Shout-out to the scene of the God encountering the Goddess - you'll know what I mean - it is an absolutely splendid thing.

A little-shout too to Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone. It doesn't have "gods" in it... But it is the best and most accurate fantasy depiction I saw of "saints cult" and the whole way saints ACTUALLY worked in old European Catholic-Christianity. Even down to fantasy transpositions of the "folk-Christianity" which intermingles the saints with legendary figures and pagan deities. And while they are not gods, there are also some badass powerful supernatural entities/natural personifications that play delightfuly on old European myths. [It unfortunately is also ranking at the tops in the category of "Insanely promising series with most disappointing ending"]

Shout-out, of course, to A Song of Ice and Fire - though Pointy Hat's video already covered it enough...

And to conclude, I will drop here not a fantasy book series, but a COMIC SERIES! Because yes, there are fantasy comics we should not forget about - one in particular I quite love being DIE.

(Oh yes and it was also adapted as a roleplayng game)

DIE was from the same creator as "The Wicked + The Divine", and you can summarize it as "A darker and edgier version of Jumanji, where the characters are taken to a fantasy RPG world instead of a jungle" - while also gleefully tearing apart at all the "portal fantasy" Narnia-style... The world of DIE is a great homage, deconstruction and "dark parody" of the tropes, conventions and archetypes of fantasy RPGs - while the plot explores the various roots and origins of the modern fantasy RPG universe (from Tolkien to Lovecraft passing by the Brontë sisters). And as such it does include a pantheon of gods, tied to its own version of a "cleric" (here rather a tamer and "debt collector" to the gods)...

Now, while some of the clever worldbuilding and inventions behind these gods is subtly conveyed throughout the actual comic, unfortunately (or fortunately if you like these things) to get the full extent of it all you need to read the interviews, articles and bonus content located at the end of each issue - but trust me, it is worth the read, because the pantheon of DIE was specifically designed to twist and subvert the cliche archetypes of gods in fantasy RPGs. From the god of nature, who is not a "flower-loving hippie" but a giant ferocious bear ; to the common "god of light and goodness" who turns out to be a sinister and sorrowful mourner crying forever over the world, passing by my favorite - Mistress Woe, the "goddess of luck", except that she embodies bad luck and misery and is the spirit of the "natural 1".

Oh yes, of course I also cannot forget to give a shout-out to the one who truly made the mythopoeia genre what it would be today: Lord Dunsany, who not only was one of the forefathers of fantasy well before Tolkien (and without which Tolkien wouldn't have written the works he created), but also created the famous The Gods of Pegana - who is still to this day a full pantheon and mythology completely fictional, but also free of use since it falls in the public domain...

[mdhwrites]

Frieren and the Timelessness of Fantasy

I am not about to talk about the themes of Frieren. I am not about to talk about what it does differently than other fantasy shows. I will not try to call it subversive or groundbreaking for I do not believe it is actually either of those things. It is oftentimes smart, clever, inventive and fun but it is still at its core a fantasy adventure.

The thing about fantasy adventures though is that the best, those that resonate with an audience, don't need to do anything new. They just need to be good. Frieren is one of the best.

It's no one singular thing either. Harry Potter is not going to rot into the next generation's brain because of just one thing. Lord of the Rings has no lasted over a century because of one element that stands above all other fantasy literature. Even Lovecraft still outshines most modern takes not because he was the first to think of fish people but for how he decided to mix that with a dozen other elements. Yes, all three of the works I have stated also have come under, justifiably, scrutiny for the underlying beliefs, messages, allegories, etc. like that but does that mean they have stopped resonating?

No. For a scared, powerless child will always want a story about how they can rise to greatness or had a secret destiny or even just can escape to a place that seems so much greater than the world they live in and that they can potentially conquer and fight back in. A person will always wish to believe in the nobility of a good heart and the power of a band of people coming together to overcome a darkness that seems bigger than them all but can never devour the light which is friendship and determination in the face of evil. People will always be afraid of things they cannot describe and connect with others who feel powerless to voice those fears except to scream at nothing and wish that some greater force than their own mind can be blamed for the madness that writhes within.

And for Frieren, people will always wish to both be able to go on an adventure and experience all of its joys, while also reminiscing about the past and the joy it has brought them. It is, more than maybe any other fantasy work I've ever seen, the story I've seen that truly loves what a fantasy world is from back to front. From its most ancient origins to its freshest faces to all the times inbetween, it will resonate for all of those who wish to seek a trip with those they care about and connect with them as each step we take, we know others take with us, whether now or before.

This is something I genuinely love about the fantasy genre. That which resonates is so often divorced from so much of reality and our time period that it ends up actually forming a purer bond than something more closely tied to the troubles of the day. Not to say those works do not have their place, they're potentially more important than timeless fairytales, but that does not mean we should not have these works that will always comfort. That will always scare. That we can pass from hand to hand like a folk spell and believe that they have power just because that is how we perceive them. That the same joy a man fifty years my elder enjoyed can be one I find the exact same joy in.

I imagine almost every fantasy fan has one fantasy work they consider to be this for them that they don't say is under-appreciated but that it is under-consumed. For me, I have two main ones. I adore the old RPG Legend of Dragoon and think it tells a very compelling tale of interwoven destinies, of how our worlds can expand so much faster than we expect but also of how the strength we draw from our friends and loved ones can help us face those. My other is the Ranger's Apprentice (at least before Royal Ranger). The excitement of not just flashy combat but of the grand majesty of war, of knights and rangers who are larger than life while also being all too human. Of how we can grow and become even better than our masters and change the world just by never being willing to stop dreaming of a day when we can be more than what we appear to be. That determination is truly all it takes to make it someday. It is to this day still my favorite book series.

And for fantasy anime? I don't know when I'll find one I think that is going to beat Frieren for me, not quickly at least, but I look forward to when one can sit next to that old elf and begin telling its tale too. Not to best it but to sit in the same circle at the round table of all the other works that still inspire to us to this day.

What works do you personally consider deserving of that table? Let me know and see you next tale.

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I would argue that the reverse of this blog btw would be me talking about how much I find the 'subversion' of fantasy tropes tired and tedious because subverting the genuine, human connection that most of the best fantasy stories include is just going to make your story look immediately dated and annoying. At least to me.

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