#I need my weapon for screaming commentary on my thoughts sometimes

[gonzodangerfeels]

I usually just squeeze the carotid a little bit letting you continue to breath

If I am in a mood I might restrict breathing too though.

[feanorianethicsdepartment]

Alright, I read your recent post and need to know - what is your interpretation of Maglor’s relationship with the twins?

askjdhslkjag my biggest self-inflicted problem in this fandom is that my take on maglor, elrond, and elros' relationship is so intensely detailed and specific i am forever tormented by none of the fic i read ever quite getting it right (from my perspective; i’ve read plenty of fic that presents a good interpretation on their own terms, it’s just never mine.) it’s simultaneously way darker than the fluffy kidnap dads stuff and nowhere near as black-and-white awful as the anti-fëanorian crowd likes to paint it, it’s messy and complicated and surrounded by darkness, and yet there’s also a sincere connection within it which mostly serves to make all those complications worse. angry teenage elrond is angry for a great many reasons, and the circumstances around him being raised by kinslayers account for at least half of them. there’s lots of complexity here, and i don’t see it in fic nearly as often as i’d like

(warning: the post... feathers? i already have an internet friend called faeiri this could be awkward - anyway, the post she’s talking about includes the line ‘everyone is wrong about kidnap dads except me.’ this post follows on from that in being as much a commentary about why various popular interpretations of both how the kidnapdoption went and the way people subsequently characterise the twins just don’t work for me as it is a setting out of my own ideas. i’m not really interested in getting into discourse here, i’m just trying to get my thoughts down. i’ve read fic with these interpretations before that i’ve liked, even, don’t take this as a Condemnation, aight? also this turned out long as hell, so i’m putting it under a cut)

i can never buy entirely fluffy depictions of kidnap dads

which isn’t to say i don’t read them! sometimes all i want is something sweet, for these kids to get to be happy for once. it’s not like i think their time with the fëanorians was completely devoid of laughter

it’s just. the pet names, the special days out, the home-cooked meals, it can get so treacly it stops feeling like the characters they are in the situation they’re in and turns into Generic Found Family #272

it soaks out all the complexity - which is the thing i am here for - and acts like oh, these kids were never in any danger, they were perfectly happy being abducted by the people who murdered everyone they knew, there’s nothing possibly questionable about this relationship at all

and... yeah. that’s not the characters i know. that’s not the context i know they belong to

i just can’t forget the circumstances that led them to meet

rivers of blood, the air filled with screams, a town ablaze, a woman choosing to die. every interaction the three of them have is going to proceed from that nightmare

(sidenote: i tend to hold it was maglor that raised the twins, with maedhros looming ominously in the background not really getting involved. it’s mostly personal preference, i’ve been in and out of the fandom since before this kidnap dads thing blew up and when i joined that was a perfectly standard reading)

(also the cave thing was a dumb idea, old man, if only because it implies beleriand had streams safe enough for children to play in at that point. the way it separates the twins from the third kinslaying is also something i don’t particularly vibe with)

probably my least favourite angle i’ve seen on the situation (edged out only by ‘maglor was actively abusive towards the twins’ which no no no no no no no no NO) is the idea that maglor (and/or maedhros, append as necessary) took the twins specifically to raise them

like, i get where it’s coming from, but it makes maglor come off as really creepy

(i have read fics where it is indeed played off as really creepy, but that’s not a maglor i have any interest in reading about)

(’mags 100% bad’ is just as facile a take to me as ‘mags 100% good’)

even if you’re saying maglor took them in because they had no one left to take care of them - i highly doubt they were the only children the fëanorians orphaned at sirion. idk, it always makes maglor seem much less sympathetic than i think it���s meant to

i prefer to think of it as more... organic? something that evolved, not something that was preordained. them growing closer gradually, the twins finding an adult who might maybe be on their side, maglor becoming invested in them almost by accident

and then the twins are so comfortable with the second scariest monster in amon ereb they frequently sass him off and maglor’s gotten so used to not hurting them he’s not even thinking about it any more. no one’s quite sure how it happened, but they’ve made a Connection

‘wait aren’t they a murderous warlord of questionable mental stability and a pair of terrified small children who’ve lost everyone they ever knew? isn’t that kinda fucked up?’ yup! that’s the point! complexity!

another idea i don’t like is the idea that maglor was an objectively better parent to the twins than eärendil or elwing

other people have talked about this already, i won’t rehash the whole thing. i will say that while i don’t think elwing was a perfect parent - someone so young, in such a horrible situation, i wouldn’t blame her for screwing up - i do think she (and eärendil) did the best by them they possibly could

this is one of the few things they have in common with maglor

something i come across now and again is the idea that sure, elwing and eärendil weren’t abusive or horrible or anything, but they were a couple of basically-teenagers with so many other responsibilities, there was only so much they could do. maglor, on the other hand, is an experienced adult who could take much better care of the twins

and...

first off, it’s not like mags doesn’t have a job. he’s a warlord, he has a fortress to help run, military shit to handle, lots of other stuff that needs to get done to stop everyone from starving or getting eaten by orcs. i feel like sirion had enough of a government there was plenty of opportunity for elwing to take days off and play with her kids, but in the fëanorian camp nobody really has the time to chase after a couple of toddlers, least of all one of the last points on the command network. they just don’t have the people any more

(seriously, the twins getting a formal education with tutors and classes and shit is a weirdly specific pet peeve of mine. this is a band of renegades, not a royal household; if there’s anyone left with those kinds of skills they almost certainly have more important things to do)

more than that, though - well, a quick glance through my late stage fëanorians tag should tell you a lot about what i think maglor’s mental state is like at this point. he is so accustomed to violence death means nothing to him, he’s lost most of his capacity for genuinely positive emotion to an endless century of defeat and despair, he hates everything in the universe, especially himself, he’s only able to keep functioning through a truly astounding amount of denial, and he covers it all up with a layer of snark and feigned apathy, which he defends aggressively because he’s subconsciously realised that if it breaks he’ll have absolutely nothing left

(maedhros, for the record, is... i’d say more stable, but at a lower point. maglor may interact with the world mostly through cold stares and mocking laughter, but at least his mind is firmly rooted in the present)

(on the other hand, at least maedhros lets himself be aware of what they are and where their road will lead)

which... this doesn’t mean maglor doesn’t try to be kind to the twins, or rein in his worst impulses around them

there’s just so little of him left but the weapon

he stalks through the halls like a portent of death and gets into hours-long screaming matches with maedhros and has definitely killed people in front of the twins

not even as, like, a deliberate attempt to scare them, but because when you solve most of your problems by stabbing them it’s pretty much a given that people who spend a lot of time around you are going to see you do it at least once

and sometimes, he curls up in an empty hallway, and weeps

... suffice it to say i don’t think elwing’s the more preoccupied, or the less mentally ill, parent here

just. in general, the fëanorians aren’t cackling boogeymen, but they’re not particularly nice either

no one has the energy left for that. not these isolated and weary soldiers at the end of a long losing war and the beginning of the end of the world. they don’t really bother to guard the kids against them escaping. where else are they going to go?

the sheer despair that must have been in the fëanorian camp after sirion, the knowledge that the cause cannot be fulfilled, that they are utterly forsaken, that they’re really just waiting to die -

it can’t have been a happy place to grow up in, under the shadow of loss and grief and deeds unrepentable, and the slow march of inevitable defeat

they would have had a better childhood if they stayed in sirion, raised by people who knew how to hope

but that isn’t the childhood they had. and despite everything i’ve said, i don’t think that childhood was an entirely awful one

yeah, see, this is where the other side of my self-inflicted fandom catch-22 comes in. just as much of the pro-kidnap dads stuff comes off as overly saccharine and simplified to me, i find much of the anti-kidnap dads stuff equally simplistic in the opposite direction

the idea that maglor and the fëanorians never meant anything to elros and elrond, that they had no effect on the people they became at all, that it was just a horrible thing that happened when they were children, easily thrown in the rear-view mirror...

that’s even more impossible to me than the idea that life with the fëanorians was 100% fluffy and nice

like, i’ve seen the take that elros and elrond hated the fëanorians from start to finish. they were perfect little sindarin princes, loyal to their people and the memory of doriath, spurning every scrap of kindness offered to them and knowing just what to say to twist the knife into the kinslayers’ wounds

... dude. they were six. hell, given their peredhelness, mentally they could easily have been younger

what six year old has a firm grasp of their ethnic identity? what six year old is fully aware of their place in history? what six year old would understand the politics that led to their situation?

don’t get me wrong, i can see hatred in there. but something else that doesn’t get acknowledged alongside it often enough is the fear

some of the stuff i’ve read feels like it gives the kids too much power in the situation. they’re perfectly happy to talk back to and belittle the people who burned down their hometown and killed everyone they ever knew, like miniature adults who don’t feel threatened at all

and, like, six. i can see them going for insults as a defensive measure, but it is defensive. it’s covering up fear, not coming from secure disdain

(and a lot of those insults sound, again, like things an adult who’s already familiar with the fëanorians would say, not a scared child who’s lost almost everything. why would a six year old raised by sindar and gondolindrim know what the noldolantë is, let alone what it means to maglor?)

(... i’m just ranting about this one fic that’s been ruffling my feathers for five years straight now, aren’t i)

i mean, i write elrond as the world’s angriest teenager, who snipes at maglor pretty much constantly, but the thing about angry teenage elrond is that he’s angry teenage elrond

he’s spent long enough with the fëanorians he has a pretty secure position within the camp, and he knows that maglor won’t hurt him from a decade and change of maglor not, in fact, hurting him

but as a small and terrified child abducted by the monsters his mother had nightmares about? he fluctuated wildly between ‘randomly guessing at things to say that wouldn’t get him killed’ ‘screaming at maglor to go away in words rarely more complicated than that’ 'desperately trying not to do or say anything in the hopes of not being noticed’ and ‘hiding’

(and i don’t think the twins were never in any danger from the fëanorians, either. quite besides the point that before they started orbiting maglor nobody was really sure what to do with them... well, they wouldn’t be the first children of thingol’s line the minions took revenge on)

(fortunately for them, maglor did, in fact, take them under his wing. by this point even their own followers are shit scared of the last two sons of fëanor, nobody’s going to mess with their stuff and risk getting mauled. tactically, it was a pretty good decision for a couple of toddlers)

more to the point, i feel like a child that young, in a situation that horrible, wouldn’t reject any kindness they were offered, any soothing touch in a universe of terror

in a world full of big scary monsters, the best way to survive is to get the biggest scariest monster possible to protect you. that’s how elros rationalises it when they’re, like, eight, mentally, but at the time they were just latching on to the only person around them who seemed to care about them

that’s how it started, on their end. two very young very scared children lost in a neverending nightmare clinging tightly to the lone outstretched pair of hands

as for maglor...

i’ve called mags evil before, but i see that as more of a... technical term? he is evil because he did the murder, he remains evil because he won’t stop doing the murder. hot take: murder bad

but that doesn’t make him, like, a moustache-twirling saturday morning cartoon villain. he is deeply unhappy with the position he’s in and the person he’s become, and he’s always trying not to take that final step over the edge

it’s not that i can’t see a maglor who is abusive or manipulative or who sees the twins more as objects than people. it’s just that that characterisation is one i am profoundly uninterested in. i do occasionally read fic with it, but it never enters my own headcanons

horrible people can do good things!! kinslayers can do good things!! the fallen are capable of humanity!! people can do both good and evil things at the same time, because people are complicated!! maglor is not psychologically incapable of actually taking pity on these kids!!!!

it’s... again, complexity. the fëanorians straddle the line between black and white, which is a lot less sharp in the legendarium than it’s sometimes characterised as. it’s what draws me to their characters so much, why i have so many stupid headcanons about them. pretending they fall firmly on either side of the line is my real fandom pet peeve

and, like, this moment? this sincere connection between a bloodstained warlord and two children who will grow up to be great and kind in equal measure? i may not entirely like the direction the fandom’s taken it recently, but that beat, that relationship, it still gets me

so no, i don’t think elrond and elros’ years with the fëanorians were an endless cavalcade of abuse and misery. i think there was love there, despite the darkness all around them

an old, tired monster, and the two tiny children it protects

maglor never hurts the twins, not ever, not once. his claws are sharp and his fangs are keen, if he so much as swatted them he’d rip them in half. instead he folds down the razor edges of his being, interacting with them ever so carefully. he has nightmares of suddenly tearing into their skin

seriously, the power differential between them is so great, maglor so much as raising his voice would break any trust they have in this horribly dangerous creature. fics where he does corporal punishment always get the side-eye from me

the mood of their relationship is... i find it hard to put into words. melancholy, maybe, like a sunny afternoon a few days before the end of the world. three people who’ve lost so much finding what respite they can in each other as the world slowly crumbles around them

there are times when it feels like the three of them exist in a world of their own, marked out by the edges of the firelight. maglor telling stories of the stars, elros giving relaxed irreverent commentary, elrond getting a few moments to just be, all their troubles kept at bay

they are the last two lights in a world sunk into darkness, the last two living beings he does not on some level hate. he will tear his own heart out before he sees them in pain

he teaches them to ride, he teaches them to read, he gives them everything he still has left. the twins should never have been in this situation, maglor probably isn’t entirely fit to take care of them, but it is what it is, and they take what love they can

(maglor depends on the twins emotionally a bit more than any adult should rely on any child. he’s still very much the caretaker in their relationship, but that relationship is the only one he has left that’s not stained by a century of rage and grief. he’s obsessed with them, maedhros tells him frequently. maglor’s standard response to this is to try to gouge maedhros’ eyes out)

(that particular darker side to their relationship, where maglor’s attachment to the twins turns into a desperate possessiveness - that’s not something i think i’ve ever seen in fic. which is a shame, it feels much closer to my own characterisation than the standard ways this relationship gets maleficised. darker, in a different way than usual. horribly compelling in its plausibility)

however you want to read it, i don’t think you can deny this is a relationship that defines elrond and elros’ childhood. they were raised in the woods by a pack of kinslayers, the text is quite clear on this

but i’ve seen a lot of talk about how elros and elrond are only sirion’s children. they are completely 100% sindarin, they love and forgive eärendil and elwing thoroughly and without question, they identify with doriath over - even gondolin, let alone tirion. the fëanorians - the people who raised them - had zero effect on the people they grew into and the selves they created

and that, more than anything else, i find utterly unbelievable

look, i get what this is a reaction to. a lot of the kidnap dads stuff paints the fëanorians as elrond and elros’ ‘real’ family, and i’ve already talked about what i think of the idea that maglor-and-possibly-also-maedhros were better parents than eärendil and elwing. i think it’s reductive and overly optimistic and just a little too neat

but to say instead that elrond and elros held no great love in their hearts for maglor, no lingering affinity with the fëanorians, no influence on their identity from the people they grew up around, none at all? that after it happened they just left it behind and resumed being the same people they were in sirion?

that strikes me as just as much an oversimplification. it sands down all the potential rough edges of their identity, all that inconvenient complexity that stops them from fitting into any well-defined box, and replaces it with a nice safe simple self-conception i find just as flat and boring as declaring them 100% fëanorian

we can quibble over who they call ‘father’ (i personally find that whole debate kinda petty) but denying that it was actually maglor who was the closest thing they knew to a parent for most of their childhoods, and that that would, in fact, affect the way they thought of themselves and their family, elides so many interesting possibilities out of existence

(i’m not even going to get into the most braindead take i have ever heard on the subject, namely that because their time with the fëanorians was such a small fraction of elrond’s total lifespan it was like being kidnapped for two weeks as a toddler and had no greater significance than that. do you not understand what childhood is????)

like, i tend to think of elrond as a child as being very loudly not-a-fëanorian. elros is more willing to go with the flow - hey, if the creepy kinslayer wants kids, elros is happy to play into that in order to not be murdered - but elrond is very firm that he’s not happy to be here and he doesn’t belong with them

(this is after they get over their initial terror, of course, when they’ve realised they won’t be fed to the orcs for the tiniest slight. even so, elrond only really gets shirty about it around people he’s comfortable with, whose reactions he can reasonably guess at. naturally, the first person he does it to is maglor)

elros calls maglor their father exactly once, when they’re... maybe early preteens? this is because elrond hears him do it and immediately loses his shit. they have a dad, elrond says, in tears, and a mum, and any day now their real parents are going to come to pick them up and take them home

... right?

it gets harder to believe as the years roll on, as their memories of sirion fade, as they find their own places within the host, as maglor watches over them as they grow. elrond still mentally sets himself apart from the fëanorians, but it’s more of an effort every year. life in the fëanorian camp is the only one he’s ever really known. he can barely remember his mother’s voice

then the war of wrath starts, and the fëanorian host drifts closer to the army of valinor, and the twins come into contact with non-fëanorians for the first time in forever, and it becomes clear just how obviously fëanorian elrond is. he always insisted he wasn’t like the kinslayers at all, but he dresses like them, talks like them, fights like them

the myth cycles the edain tell are almost completely unfamiliar to him, he barely remembers the shape of the songs of lost doriath. even these sarcastic commentary and subversive reinterpretations he made of maglor’s stories - those were still maglor’s stories! he’s been trying to guess at the person he was meant to be, but it’s growing nightmarishly blatant how little elrond ever knew about him

instead, the people he was born to are as alien to him as the orcs of morgoth. he is a fëanorian, through and through

... yeah, elrond (and/or elros) having an absolutely massive identity crisis upon being reintroduced to his quote-unquote ‘true kin’ is another angle i’d love to see in fic that i don’t think i’ve ever come across. all those potential grey areas around who they are and who they’re supposed to be sound utterly fascinating, and i think it’s the complexity i hate to see elided over the most

i really, really doubt they could effortlessly slot back into being eärendil and elwing’s children. not when they’ve been surrounded by, lived alongside, been raised by the people who were supposed to enemies for most of their lives

they just don’t fit into that box any more. they can’t

speaking of eärendil and elwing, while i do agree that they both (especially elwing) get a lot more flak than they deserve, i don’t agree that therefore elrond and elros were never the slightest bit mad at them and fully forgave them for everything with no reservations

because, well, they were left behind. elwing had no other choice, but they were still left behind; it led to the world being saved, but they were still left behind. all the best intentions in the universe don’t erase the weeks and months and years of waiting, of a hope that grew thinner and frailer until it finally quietly broke

that’s a real hurt, and a real grievance. even if the twins rationally understand that their parents were making the best out of their terrible situation, you can’t logic away emotions like that. it’s perfectly possible for them to know they have no reason to resent eärendil or elwing, and yet still harbour that bitterness and pain

(i did write a thing once where elrond loudly rejects eärendil as his father in favour of maglor, but something i didn’t add in that i probably should have is that elrond later regretted doing that)

(not like, several centuries later, when he’d grown old and wise. two hours later, when he’d calmed down. but he was still legitimately angry at eärendil, because the one thing angry teenage elrond was not lacking in was reasons to be mad at the adults around him, and before he could figure out if he had anything less furious to say the hosts of the valar left middle-earth behind)

(it’s another element to the tragedy of the whole thing. in that particular story, which is mostly aiming for maximum pain, the only thing elrond’s birth parents know about their son for thousands of years is that he hates them)

(and he doesn’t, not really. you can’t hate someone you’ve never known)

not that i think they couldn’t ever make up with their parents! fics where elrond and his birth parents work past all the things that lie between them and form a functional familial bond despite it all give me life. i just don’t like the idea that there’s nothing difficult for them to work past

i don’t like the idea that elrond and elros would naturally, effortlessly identify with the mother they last saw when they were six and the people they only vaguely remember. i can see them doing it as a political move, i can see them going for it as a deliberate personal choice, but i can’t seeing it being immediate and automatic and easy

no matter how great a pair of heroes eärendil and elwing are, that doesn’t change the fact that to elrond and elros, they’re at most a few scattered memories and a collection of far-off stories. and so long as the twins stay in middle-earth, they’re never going to draw any closer

compared to the dynamic, multifaceted, personal, and deep bonds they have with the fëanorians - who, and i know i keep saying this but i think it gets tossed aside way more casually than it should, are the people who actually raised them, their birth parents must feel like a distant idea

and that’s why i can never buy interpretations of elrond as 100% sindarin, a pure son of doriath, with no messy grey areas or awkward jagged edges to his identity. given everything we know about his life, it seems almost cartoonishly simplistic

honestly it seems like a narrative a bunch of old doriathrin nobles trying to manouevre elrond into being high king of the sindar or something would propagate. it's neat and nice and tidy, something that’d be much more convenient for everyone if elrond did feel that way

but i just don’t see how he can. this narrative is easy and simple in a way real people never are, it ignores all the forces pulling him apart. elrond being uncomplicatedly sindarin with the life he lives and the people he's close to - that doesn’t make any sense to me

which isn’t to say i think he’s 100% noldorin, from either a gondolindrim or a fëanorian perspective. (i find it a little more believable, given, again, who he grew up around and who he hangs out with, but it’s still a bit too reductive for my tastes.) it’s also not to say i couldn’t believe an elrond who made an active choice to emphasise his sindarin heritage

it’s not how i think of him, but it works. i don’t have a problem with other people interpreting the complexities of the twins’ identities differently

i just have a problem with people acting like it doesn’t exist

in general i think there’s a lot untapped potential that gets left behind when you declare the twins, separately or together, as All One Thing

they’re descended from half the noble houses of beleriand, and they have deep personal ties to most of the rest. they belong to all of the free peoples even the dwarves, somehow, probably and i feel like that was kind of the old man’s point? so many peoples meet in them, to say they wholly belong to any one species is probably an oversimplification

they sit at a crossroads of potential identities, and rather than narrowing down their worldviews to one single path, they take the hard road and choose all of them. that’s what you need to do, if you want to change the world

and, to bring this back to my ostensible topic, in my estimation at least this mélange of possible selves does include them as fëanorians! it’s not overpowering, but it’s certainly there, and the adults they grow into long after they’ve left the host still bear influence from their childhood

nothing super obvious, nothing that wouldn’t stand out if you didn’t know what to look for, but there’s something almost incandescent in how fiercely elros reaches out for his dreams

there’s something almost defiant in elrond’s drive to be as kind as summer

as for who they publically claim as their family... honestly, it depends. while it’s usually more tactically prudent for elros to connect himself to his various human ancestors, on occasion he does find a use for his free in with the elf mafia, and elrond, code switcher par excellence, is famously the son of whoever is most politically convenient at the moment, which is rarely, but not never, maglor

(in the privacy of their own minds, well, eärendil and elwing may have been the parents elros was supposed to have, but maglor was the parent he actually had, and elros doesn’t particularly care to mope over what might have been. elrond, for his part, figures that after all the shit maglor has put him through, the least that bastard owes him is a father)

but honestly? i think before any of their mountain of identities, before thinking of themselves as sindarin or gondolindel or hadorian or haladin or fëanorian or anything, elrond and elros identify as themselves

they are peredhil, they are númenóreans, they are whoever they make themselves to be. that’s how elrond finally resolved his identity, figured out who he was and found something past the pain and the rage

he wasn’t doriathrin, or gondolindrin, or falathrin, or fëanorian, or whatever else. he was elrond, no more and no less

and that person, elrond, could be whatever he chose to be

... elros came to a similar conclusion, with much less sturm und drang that he’s willing to admit. being able to go ‘hey, i can’t possibly be biased towards any one of your cultures, because i’m descended from all of you and i was raised by murderelves’ makes it a lot easier to unite people around your personal banner, turns out

the stories other people tried to force on them shattered into pieces, and the peredhel twins were free to shape themselves into anything they could dream of

and as the new world struggles alive, these lost children of an Age of death begin to bloom into their full glorious selves -

i just. i love the poetry of that. despite every single shadow that hangs over their past, despite all the clashing notes pulling them apart, they harmonise it all into a greater, kinder theme, determined to make their world a better place in whatever way they can

they fail, of course, but so do all things. the inevitable march of entropy doesn’t diminish the long millennia they (and their descendants) held onto the light

and their growing up in the fëanorian host definitely had a huge effect on the noble lords they became. you can see it in elros’ loud ambition to create a land of happiness and hope, elrond’s quiet resolve to heal all the hurts inflicted by this marred reality

it wasn’t a perfect time by any means, but neither was it a nightmare. it was what it was, a desperate existence at the edge of a knife where, nevertheless, they were loved

even after years upon decades upon centuries have passed, it’s hard for the wise king and the honourable sage to separate out and identify all the conflicting emotions swirling around their childhood. they never knew eärendil or elwing, true, but they also never really knew maglor

not as equals, not as adults, not as people who could truly understand him. he disappeared into the fog of history, leaving only childhood memories of razor-sharp, gentle hands

it’s messy and it’s complicated and getting any real closure would be like shoving their way through a thornbush with bare hands even if elrond could find the shithead, and yet at the core of it all, there is light. not the brightest of lights, maybe, but an enduring one

that contrast, above all, that note of warmth amidst the shadows, is what fascinates me so much about their relationship. three screwed up people in a screwed up world, finding a little peace with each other

and the fact that somehow, it does have a good ending - the children grow up magnificent and compassionate and just, they become exemplars of all their peoples, lodestars of the new world born out of the ashes of the old - that makes it seem to me like this relationship must have contained some fragment of happiness

but, fuck, all the darkness that surrounds that love, all the tangled-up emotions its existence necessitates, all the prefabricated self-identities it can never slot into - nothing about it is simple, nothing about it is easy, and i find that utterly enthralling. especially how, despite everything, that flickering light never goes out

well, i don’t think it does, anyway. my take on this relationship is both complicated enough no one else ever quite gets it right and well-defined enough every single ‘error’ in other people’s interpretations sticks out like a kinslayer in rivendell

it is an entirely self-inflicted problem, i will admit. other people are allowed to interpret those complexities differently from me, and it’s entirely my own fault i lack the :waves hands around nebulously: to write my own hypothetical fic on the subject at a pace faster than glacial

still, though. i do wish there was more fic out there that engaged with these complexities. a lot of the common fandom interpretations of this relationship just sweep it all away

[mytwitterisdogtoast1]

Kingdom Hearts 3 broke my heart.

I am a fan of Kingdom Hearts. i've been here through the first game and even though I grew up without the money to play every game I stuck with the series as best I could. In fact I've bought multiple copies of games on multiple systems and beat a couple of the games not just once but 3 or more times. Here is a list of the things I've done involving this series.

1: I bought KH1/2/COM on more than one system such as ps2,3, and 4. 2: I've played and beaten on the hardest difficulty on each main installment (except critical mode of 3) 3: I have 100% KH1 which might not seem like a big deal but it is the only game I have 100% ever. Got all the trophies and so on. 4: I stuck with the story and even recently before 3 came out played and beat most of the games. (except DDD since it wasn't my kind of deal since I don't like the flowmotion part of the combat.)

You could say I'm a fan of the games and have done what I can to in general keep up with the series as well as have enjoyed the series.

But then 3 came out and I was just not happy with it. After waiting for so long and playing the game and screaming and ranting about certain plot points that just don't make sense to me (KH is notoriously hard to keep up with plot wise and I am just not the brightest person in the world when it comes to shit. Like I really need some things explained outright for me and to some degree do not mind spoilers for some things) I swore off KH the entirety from now on cause it was just that bad of a game for me. It wasn't a horrible game but the direction they started taking it in was just so far removed from what the original 2 games in the numerical series were that this was just NOT Kingdom Hearts at all. Sure you can say it is a love letter to the biggest of fans but I can say that a letter to regular fans was something it needed to do more than cater to such a rabid fanbase compared to a regular fanbase. I thought this was unfair and then bought Memory of Melody. That is now the worst game in the series to me. So I dived into what people thought and looked at a ton of youtubers who played the game and saw what they thought. I looked at reviews of non youtubers and read what they thought and the game has made the fanbase more divided than anything I'd ever seen from a fanbase. So I replayed the game with the intent to write down all I felt on the game to give it a fair review. Like I said I'm a filthy casual and I can give stuff a large break when it comes to media and have a large understanding of what that thing is meant to be. Sometimes a product is meant to be a certain way and we have to enjoy it for what it is and I can try and do that. I mean I love the WWE and Yugioh and anyone who is a part of those fanbases knows in their hearts (kek hearts) how bad those things can be at times. So I played the game and wrote down all the thoughts I had on it and Some might be easy to explain while others are in general probably at least fair on how I feel about it.

Kingdom Hearts is a series not meant for the new comer. It knows what it wants to be and does that thing. It isn't here to make everyone happy and that is just absolutely fine in general. I've been a fan and it makes me happy that the game is one long story that I can appreciate and make call backs to in stuff. I remember being so rewarded when I looked at my then best friend who skipped over chain of memories (I had to emulate it but I think it was fair of me to do so since I bought the game 3 times since now that I have the money to do so) and said he knew what happened because he saw the cutscene of Sora reaching the top and Namine betraying him by putting him into a pod. I laughed at him cause he was a fool who knew nothing of how the story went cause he foolishly just thought he didn't NEED to play the game. This made me more invested into the series than he was. I stuck with the series reading up articles and even watching videos on the series for stuff I missed out on since again i couldn't afford everything. They were building a story over a decade long and at the end it just didn't do it for me. It's not that the story wasn't the end of the series in general. Heck gotta make dat' money Y'all but in general this was the end of a saga for Xehanort and it just didn't cut it. But maybe I'm not starting at the right spot to give my feelings on it. Maybe I'm coming fresh off a game play and feeling a rant building for multiple reasons. So let me start with the positives before I bury the list under a pile of problems for me.

So I'll be putting things in order of good, mixed, bad. They will be somewhat fair and if they have an answer you have my sincerest apologies but remember I'm slightly the "dumb" and would in general like to just get simple straight answers. Something simple and clean if you would. On that note

1: The starting song is a god damned banger - Face my fears is up there with sanctuary which is better than Simple and clean. To be fair though simple and clean was made in like a flight and pretty much is nonsensical to the game in general. However it is a good song. How could it not be with one of japans best pop artists? Have you heard sakura drops? Colors? Traveling? Apples and cinnamon? Fuck man this song is just really good. 2: The game looks great - Sure the game might not look like ps2 graphics anymore but this isn't a bad thing it just is a different thing. The only time I thought it looked bad was during the pirates area where they had to make real people. Sometimes it is better to have a different art theme and even if something is just ok at best during it it can still be over all great. Everyone looked good during it. It just in general looked like a new version of KH entirely. 3: You can power up keyblades - One of the best parts of the game is powering up keyblades. Now sure mickey saying "we should have powered up our keyblades" is a stupid line in general when they are magic items and not fully meant to break form normal stuff but i think the ability to latch onto a key and make that sucker your main key is a great idea. Finally I can power up keys like sweet memories or the kingdom key and go through the cutscenes with the keyblade never changing and it look like it's meant to be there. 4: The whole getting treasure for sinking ships - Even if in general people might not like the ship combat the idea of being a pirate and stealing treasure from a ship when you sink one of the large ones is one of the best thematical ideas in the game. You can just sail the ocean and just pirate ship for loot if you wanted to and since you get xp during it and get your ship to be better it just is a great idea in its entirety. 5: Rikus keyblade - That is one of the better keyblades. I'm not gonna lie but the final fantasy cloud based keyblades where they are more realistic have been one of my favorite designs and I am sad i can't throw it on sora. I like the idea of an actual blade instead of a blunt weapon in the game since it just feels cooler sometimes. Riku getting a keyblade that not only looks more like a sword but is also still a key for a more modern car is one of the cooler things they have ever put in. 6: The call back to union cross players - This was a little lover note to people who played the game. They grabbed a ton of names and threw them in as you threw hundreds of keyblades at the giant heartless storm mob thing. I think it is great and even if I didn't play one of the names that pops up is my actual name so I find that pretty cool whenever I see it.

And that is it. Those are the best parts of KH3 to me. Everything else is either a mixed bag or just not good. I'm sure you can tell which one has more in it. As for the stuff that is in the middle of both good and bad let me make it clear that some stuff that is bad will probably be talked about in the bad section because it needs its own commentary.

1: All the party members - I always was a little sad having to remove one of the characters in my party to add the one new person they wanted to add in and was always sad at that limitation but with 3 you can now have ALL THE MEMBERS. This is great because now I have access to all of my forms with donal...... Oh right, they're not in the game anymore. 2: Nice to one and done an area - Back in the day when I first played the original first game I never went back cause I beat the level and thought it was extra stuff. When I got older and playued through 2 I was a little impatient and just didn't want to keep going back. Now as I am older and wiser and more patient I just do the thing cause it's a part of the game and deal. Thankfully it is all in one trip which is good CAUSE I DON'T WANNA FUCKING PLAY THESE LEVELS EVER AGAIN. 3: I'm gonna say it and people are gonna question me (probably not I'm not a large content creator thus people probably don't care about my opinion so strange of you to be here reading this) but I fucking hate winnie the pooh. I don't like him as a person and I'm just not a fan of his entire world. I only like Eeyore and not cause "gosh that's how I feel" Eeyore is the fucking man. He never lets his bad mood get him down and he powers through even when life is shit. Good for him man. Love that guy. Such a trooper. I just don't like pooh but the levels. God Kingdom Hearts mini games are just mostly not fun in general so not having to play so many mini games in poohs level is fantastic. EXCEPT EVERY WORLD HAS A DAMNED MINI GAME IN IT. 4: Speaking of mini games the ship combat is fine. - It's just, fine. 5: I had so much money - I don't remember playing any other game having so much money. I remember caring and investing and even trying to get money to spend on stuff in some points and in here it just.... I never spent it until i got bored and started using food. I didn't use food until the last world and beyond cause I wanted to finish the game faster. I mean the change of pace having money is nice but there was nothing really to do with it. Maybe I should have bought Hayner, Pence and Olette a ton of pretzels with it. 6: Playing as any other keyblade wielder - Man this was one of those great moments that I was excited to do. Having played as many other characters during other games was always nice and refreshing and being able to do so here was great. It got me excited to play as Mickey again since I got to use him a few times in KH2 or to be able to use Ventus or Aqua again cause they were gonna be saved and be able to fight in the upcoming battle. That is you know. If they are used in the game more than one time each. 7: Giant heartless battle - One of the best moments in the game was the "goofy just died" moment. Not because The goof man "died" but because you got to solo fight a crowd of enemies and in this game it was so cool to have that call back. The shit icing on that beautiful cake was having to use the train to win. Like it just felt like I was making no progress and I can't on my own fight the enemies and no matter how hard you try you can never stop the enemies ever. 8: The what if scenario - The group dying was pretty cool and was a great what if but would have been better if they didn't come back to the past and have Ventus run up and think it was Terra again. It was cool for the lingering will to step in and help but even then the whole situation was so stupid that it could have been written better. What if instead of doing the whole scenario it was a mind fuckery to sora to put him down mentally like they had been trying to entire game. What if it showed him losing and that it was possible? Instead we got this long winded scenario where people didn't learn from their first mistake and tried to go run up to Terra when in that moment Aqua when Ven tried going should have grabbed his shoulder and said "you know it's not him so let's just get ready to fight"

Those are the mixed bag moments I was commenting on. Some things are fine and aren't really an issue except the are a part of a bigger problem in itself which makes them a mixed bag. The last part's I'll be writing about are pretty much a giant rant or asking questions to things. There are problematic points I'll be making as well. So now let's look at the bad stuff in KH3. However, before I get into it, I want to also write down the not as bad stuff as well as some of the really big stuff so I'll make sure to point out when it is a gripe that isn't the worst thing in the world compared to it actually being not good.

1: Nitpick/The social media is dumb - Look I'm not much of a social media person and I know todays kids and teens are all about that jazz and such but man this part of the game is pretty dumb. I am in no way too old to "get hip with it grandpa" and think social media is a bad thing. Times and things change but WHY IS THIS A THING? Sora and friends are out saving the world and probably do not know about current phones since they are so busy. They would be like really old people trying to catch up with todays world and just in general should not have time enough to do it. Sure giving a phone is fine which whatever they can just add in ways to contact which again makes the phone fine but social media is dumb. What platform are they on? Who is following them? What world is this being sent to in general? Does anyone really care?

2: Nitpick/Why 7 VS 13? - I think the number is just really off. Ok look the original organization 13 was fine. Having 14 members in it wasn't a big deal and sure fighting them seperately and not all in one game made me a little sad until final mix came out but at least i got to fight Marluxia in all his pretty boy glory. The point I make is they just seem to have stuck with the 13 which is fine I guess? It just seemed like it was more or less there for no real reason. Sure we would have to fight every single Xehanort around such as Ansem, Xemnas, Terranort, Xigbar who works with old man Xehanort, Young Xehanort, Old man Xehanort. If you also in general wanted him to have each good guy fight a bad guy we would need one for each single keyblade wielder to come out. So let's say Kairi and Axel were just gonna join in so we can have for whatever reason Xion and Roxas just pop out to fight people. We would have need for a total of 7 enemies to fight. Let's just use these guys here as people for people to fight. We can have terranort fight someone before he comes back as lingering will to fight and get his body back. We can have Kairi fight Xion until she defects in general and fights another person with her. We can have axel fight Xemnas so he can get revenge and then have him lose and Roxas can come out. So on and so forth until we have just enough for each person to be matched with another person. You wouldn't need to stretch and find whatever you can and just fill the numbers. You could have at that point just filled it with villains you knew you wanted on your team. Not just bring back generic dudes who don't even need to be here. I'll get more into that in a moment but the numbers just seem off and could have been anything not 7 v 13 but like I said. Nitpick.

3: The plot of Sora flying around this time is a little weak. - So Sora lost his powers and needs to get them back. So he fucks off for a bit until he can regain the powers. Wouldn't it be better if he also trained with Kairi and Axel? What about just going into the realm of darkness to help the others get Aqua? What if instead of just going back and forth to each Disney world like he normally did he in general just.....trained. See the point of the other games was "close the keyholes of the world so heartless stop getting in. Stop those nobodies from opening Kindom Hearts." Kind like saving the world is a great motivation to have compared to "fuck off until you are good or something". It's one of the biggest issues in general. Now if he was told something more substantial than "you need the power of waking" than it would have made the grind through much better. Add in a new plot element for him to need to travel to lands in general so he can earn the power of waking. Send him to places to get that shit instead of "get stronger". You think I can't just do that shit with story? Shit's boring man lemme do stuff.

4: You cannot turn off attractions - That is without playing critical mode. Man Attractions are in general one of the worst parts of the game. Sure I find it hilarious when I'm fighting an important boss (such as Xemnas) and I last hit him with a merry go round but in general they just suck. They aren't fun and they slow the games combat down with a cinematic. Sure they can be "avoided" and I "don't have to use them" but they exist in the game. They are the creators vision and he wants you to use them. If they didn't want it to be a huge part of the games combat system they wouldn't add it in and the fact that it shows up so often just kinda proves they want you to use the thing. Combat in here is very floaty if you haven't noticed and a more grounded approach is sometimes best. This is what the attractions do since they still try and attack you thus getting closer to the attraction in the first place. It's really a jarring object. Telling me not to use it while having the chance to actually accidentally press the button is frustrating. It's the smaller version of telling someone don't be mad when they are mad or try not to be depressed. It's hard to avoid and the answer isn't just "don't do it." Especially when the game puts in abilities to make them more prominent such as extending the time on them. Another point on this is that if the developer wanted them to be optional they wouldn't sometimes be mandatory or even show up during boss fights. Either this was an added on horse shit thing where Disney was like "add attractions or we're done" or Nomura just was like "i recently went to disney land and you gotta put this in it's dope". Joke aside it is one of the worst parts of the game since I can't turn them off and it is hard to get around them. Let me turn them off fully or let them be used as an ability where you can add them in if you want it. Customization should be more of a thing than a gimmick you keep getting. Also they show up so often and I believe in every enemy spawn group. Multiple times even if you miss it the first time. Having so much prominence placed onto this one mechanic just shows they went in hard on it and sure if it was just the rock titan or just the horde of heartless at the end or maybe even rare I wouldn't find it much of a problem but it is EVERY FREAKING COMBAT. I hit that button on accident more times than I wanted to that in general I was trying to use a spell but I missed it by seconds or something and the carnival ride started up and I just said "god dammit" and had to end it dealing a burst of damage since you can't just stop it, it has to go full swing. Also only in critical mode is kind of bullshit. Add it to every mode in the game and it'll be less of an issue.

5: Nitpick/Sora is an idiot - Look I don't mean the whole "he's so stupid now he just is always happy or has dumb dialogue" I mean the idiot tried to touch fire and instead of water magic which he now has and I spammed on the fire balls he walked up to a freaking inferno of flames and just tried to see if it was hot by touching it with his bare hands. Shit Sora you dumb fuck Goofy had a better idea than the mage and the main character and he's not always the brightest. Fuck you.

6: There is too much stuff in this game - Way too many mechanics and most of them are on forever. You have so much you can do such as the shotlock, Flowmotion, Carnival rides, Extra forms, Summoning the fat cat dream pokemon, so many mini games,  just so much shit and I'm sure I forgot something. Now look I can let go of the whole "cat" thing because it is a summon and those are normal but in general it just feels like the entire game was overloaded with everything from every other game EXCEPT for cards and if we don't have cards for character upgrades or something it feels like a waste. (that's a joke) The point is that there is too much stuff and it's all filler and fluff and we can just have a nice game without 10,000 things to learn in the first section of the game.

7: Nitpick/ I think the selfies are just dumb - I've taken a total of maybe 5 selfies. All of which are to show a single person in that specific moment. Selfies don't really do much in the world we play in for KH3 and I just think it is in general a dumb game mechanic. However it is not required to do so it's not a big deal to have in. Just another nitpick.

8: Food and cooking - Look, this is not monster hunter. This is not another game where food is an important detail and sure I don't mind the addition of it if you really wanna put it in but it does make the game easier when used. In that direction fine making a game easier isn't a bad thing, however, constantly telling me now is a good time to find ingredients for little chef is annoying every time. I could figure it out if I really wanted it but in general since it is an optional mechanic to which I can just buy the parts for it and even the food at a kupo shop than what is the point in adding in the game play mechanics for it? The mini games are dumb and take too long to do for such a small mini game. Crack and egg get soup. Nothing else but crack an egg. So than the game is too short for a mechanic I'm supposed to do often? Why not add in a larger game so that I can help him create the object one time to see if he likes it and then when he adds it on I can order the object from him. Don't add it into the kupo store if I you want me to make it and don't make me make it be so tedious if you want me to make it. Also why is sora cooking at all? It's Remys passion not mine. He's even shown to run a packed restaurant all on his own at the end of the game in the credits scene.

9: More customization please - Here's a major issue I have with the game. There is less customization compared to other games. This is strange as in general it seems to be the same. The problem is this. I have to use flowmotion in the game. It is not an option because in certain levels it is a legitimate requirement to use for moving elsas castle. It is required in a couple other places as well but the point still stands. I need to have them equipped in order to make progress. The fact that in KH2 I could turn off big moves from team members but cannot now takes the agency away from me from making my fighting style more what I want to do. This means in order for me to really enjoy the game I have to really accept mechanics I was not a fan of in DDD. Maybe having an option for character customization such as turning off forms, and what special attacks you wanna do would be nice instead of giving everything under the sun. Do I want to be a fast mobile fighter? Than make that a character level abiliy choice instead of just making me have it from the start and also making it mandatory for levels. Allow me to remove the big moves with my team and stop making them always on since I never liked them. Sure I can ignore them but it comes down to the same thing as the attractions. Sometimes you cannot avoid hitting the wrong thing. This also goes into the whole magic sucking ass in this game. Every spell is offensive and thus it just feels like it is the same. Wanna do a little small thing with some damage? Wanna do massive damage comparatively? It just feels like they wanted to simplify the whole having a summon, having a spell, having 2 items on or something along those lines. This stops you from having more options on your character and just stream lines you in to a generic build. I didn't use ice once past the first time finding out its pretty much a fire ball. I used cure, fire, water, thunder. Thunder for crowds, fire for damage, water for crowds also because I just stopped caring and cura cause I heal all my damage cause DONALD NEVER HEALS YOU. WE'RE 4000 GAMES IN MAKE DONALD HEAL BETTER. This again comes back to the limits. Let me turn them off since I do not like them. If they worked as magic they would be better cause the magic sucks ass in the game. I mostly after a while stopped doing any real care in magic and just used healing. This also comes back to the original abilities in second form that you can unlock via smacking them with your keyblade. They would be nice since the magic in the game again sucks ass so having something to use magic bar that is not cure would be a nice touch.

10: For a guy who lost his powers I sure have a ton of abilities right away - Remember when in the beginning of each game you lost all your powers and had to slowly unlock everything and it would come to you not just willy nilly? Man those were the days. Could earn powers for reasons. I'm not helpless in the game if I can run up mountains or sky scrapers. If I can glide with the shotlock from one spot to another. I'm too strong if anything at the start and it just makes you feel like the game is padding time before the small amount of story at the end that matters. This could have literally been with the final chapter prologue and it would have worked fine. But no, we didn't get that. That leads into us just spending time until something happens. The story has its own issues (which I will touch up on near the end) and it has some really bad pacing issues. There is bad pacing, and then there is bad writing because of bad pacing. Why not put some shit in the middle. Show I'm getting better instead of just having me just do everything all at once.  That's not really an issue if they space parts of it in or let me play as the other characters while sora is fucking off for power. Imagine if they added in more parts with Riku while Sora quests for strength. Imagine us going through the land of darkness instead of just Disney world after Disney world. Imagine what we could have had had it not just been all the Disney stuff then the finale all at once. It wasn't bad pacing for the end to pick up, it was bad pacing for there to be nothing in the middle. This is where the final fantasy characters could have been nice. Adding in the end of the Cloud and Sephiroth stuff so we can fight for more power there. Having us talk with Leon and the gang while they battle with some heartless just in the area and needing help. This would have made better pacing since it would have cut the monotony of the Disney grind. There are times when you just sit there waiting for stuff to happen as you run through world after world waiting for plot in general to just move forward. This does not mean it is bad pacing, this just means there is nothing important going on and leads to the story just falling short of being gripping and engaging. I again bring up the final fantasy characters because let's face it, if they did exist it would give something in general more time to flesh out. There is nothing to do but repeated disney movies that either play out like normal or that you play no real part in since it is after the story in the whole movie. Sure it was great to see what happened with boo and the monsters but Randall just is there and I'm sure he was gone at the end of the first movie. In fact after using my Disney plus account (#notsponsored) to just hit the end of the movie it shows him in a trailer getting beat with a shovel. He probably got back but still.

11: The combat is too "floaty" - I'm in the sky like fucking constantly man. Like all the time. Which is a bad thing since the fucking god damned level creation is now just a tall hallway. See I say tallway (patent pending) beause the level of the game is still pretty small but now it just also goes up a long way. I know this because there are so many flashing walls that there should be seizure warnings in the beginning of the game. It doesn't stop either since in general you have to climb high and doing so brings you ledges and if you have to hit people flying then you are gonna fall. Sure we can use magic but magic runs out and is complete ass. Now look this isn't just me saying it can happen since it does right in the hercules area. The first area where they could have been testing thing and probably did which means someone dealt with this shit and said it was fine enough to pass. That's just bad game mechanics right there. If you want me to be floaty in combat that do not put ledges I can fall down in your game. I do not want to climb all the way back to the top just to get into more fights I might fall down because of. Maybe make the parts I'm on bigger platforms. It just seems they want us to use the attractions because you can't fall off the safe attractions. Another thing is that it isn't just combat that is "floaty" but your movement is also a little too fast. Making larger areas and then making us speed up into a sprint is fine but having me stop right next to a save spot inches too short of touching it only for me to Vroom Vroom right over it because of how fast and far I move is god damned infuriating. It also continues combat wise as an issue in that once you get the ability to knock people up you start going into air combat and smacking them away and you can do that so much since in general the areas you fight in are so large that you can knock a single heartless out of the spawning area enough that you have to run back to fight it.

12: Proud mode is a fucking joke - I think I died a total of one time in proud mode which is probably more than others. See the difficulty has been said to be really easy on this games play through and I'm inclined to believe them. Here is the thing. I know critical mode now exists. I just don't like it. See critical mode was doable in 2 since it was just again harder stuff but in this it is no longer you playing KH3. It is you playing Dark Souls which if I wanted to play that kind of game I'd pop in my copy of bloodborne or turn on my copy of dakr souls 2 which in general I'm not a huge fan of so I stopped playing those games. Difficulty in a game is fine but there is going from hard to fuck why am I playing dark souls? No I'm not the kind of guy who says anything hard is dark souls because I grew up in the era of gaming where games had one difficulty and you had to learn to "get gud" or deal with never winning. Even if I was never good at games I didn't shy away from things being difficult. There is however an exception that the game changes so drastically that there is no happy medium between pants shittingly hard or baby mode. The other thing is that in general DLC should not dictate if a game is good on its own. DLC is meant to enhance the fucking experience and should not make me want to have to buy something (this was free) to get a god damned happy experience out of something that cost me top dollar to begin with. If I need your DLC to have fun or enjoy the story than you clearly missed the damned mark. DLC is extra boss battles. It is final mix of the game when it comes out. It turns your vanilla play through into more than what it once was. It adds aesthetics to the game not makes the game difficult and if it does it doesn't make the game different to such a degree that I'd rather fucking play a game that was created to be that difficult because their combat system is hand crafted for said difficulty. Secondly on that list of being too easy who the fuck thought kupo coins was a good idea. I literally just stopped giving a shit since I could use my now always full magic bar since magic is ass to heal when I needed it and to just run away with my big fucking area during battles and not take damage until I could go in and do slappies for a while before running away and gauging if I need to heal and then if I died come back to life. With all the power moves and free attractions each combat I could have beaten proud mode without gimping myself by trying to not use attractions. The forms didn't help with that either because I would just second form and have a brand new powerful thing to do since it was right there. Not only that but rage form is a full heal and why am I heartless sora again? Either way rage form into run away fast because I run like I'm form kenya with all the movement abilities and then with kupo coin and magic makes the difficulty in here easier than "just don't use it". Mostly because it is implemented in the game and they want you to use it. Telling someone not to use the thing is again stupid because if they didn't want me to use it they would remove the feature. This is no longer a kids game. I'm over 10 years older than I once was and I'm a big boy and want to not be treated like a child. Sure they could be putting it in for kids but why not just have it in easy mode since kids will either do easy mode or know they want that extra challenge.

13: Many of the fights and heartless are just not that good compared to earlier games - So firstly the giant horde of heartless was cool one time. Each time you fight it it gets more and more boring and feels like a cop out on trying to make a good battle and a "oh man this is such a cool idea lets use it alot more than we need to". For a game that was in development for 6 years you think they would have more varied enemies and fights and by that I mean more better heartless. Also some of the heartless are just kinda eh in general. Not only that but the places we visit feel like the heartless are kinda thrown in there and they just made way less enemies than normal. Maybe that is me forgetting if other games did the same thing but I can remember many places having more unique enemies that made more sense. Like why is the monkey heartless here? This is not the time to return to monke or some shit like that and it makes 0 sense when I have to fight it in more than one area. How about the lady heartless with the umbrella. Doesn't fit in every single place it shows up and just feels like it is there. Sometimes they do a nice job putting in certain heartless such as the reindeer which I thought was a nice touch but i don't remember them interacting at all with the reindeer from frozen. I also in general remember each heartless having a newer form such as the fat heartless eventually turned into fire breathers and then eventually into shield dudes. They do not make a reappearance but the fat ones show up all over the place and it would be nice to fight things that are great for the area. Some just also have eh designs and the game just feels poorly made because of it. Some bosses are just boring as well. In fact off the top of my head I can't really remember one I like but I sure as shit can remember the one I hated most which happens to be the airship section where you board a machine gun heartless to fight that sky bird thing in the pirates section. I even found the robots in general tedious because they were hard to beat without the use of the robot suits and felt like another tacked on gimmick to use to make combat more easy. Had they been a single section and not everywhere in the store it would have been cooler but instead we had many fights to do with robots who almost always wrecked my shit. In fact it ruined combat a little for me in general and made the section of toy story a little less good. See most of these issues I have with the places are the grand scale of things and having to go back and forth with them with having really unmemorable heartless for the most part and just not finding the game to be that great with some of the more important parts. Enemies help to flesh the game out to be cooler and as much as I love the generic heartless the worlds make the heartless cooler by making them change to be better suited for the world they are in. Having extra enemies like nobodies and unversed without having much of a reason to have them there other than "you remember this right?" seems like a waste of design chances. Some just either were frustrating tank sponges and the others were just not good. The other issue is some bosses appeared numerous times and just didn't feel impressive when fighting them since they just keep coming back. The giant heartless who I saw in hercules mode coming back on the bridge where you first meet Baymax makes the scene not great since it is a simple color swap at most and it is the same thing again. A lot of the bosses in general just feel ok at best too design wise. I can look back at many of the designs and just name really enjoyable ones who are better than the ones we got here. Honestly the designs are just so much of a let down I don't even wanna revisit the stages which is good because the game just isnt that much fun. One of the more unfun parts of enemies is also the shield stuff they have sometimes which is just more ways to give them extra health. Why not just in general just give them more health since it is just a way to beef them up? Not only are they now mostly damage sponges but the fact that some turn into shielded damage sponges just makes me less happy to fight things. The worst version of unfun boss happens to be the lich at the end when you need to rescue everyone from it. The thing is that it not only takes forever and makes you have to fight it numerous times but it also has the ability to make you unlock from it and in such large areas that becomes tedious to deal with lengthening the entire fight from the already long fight it is.

14: Quick speed round of things I don't like that are just not as good as earlier games - Magic sucks in this game. It's all relatively the same since it is all offensive. Aero was in general the same as thunder since it is aoe with a secondary effect. Water, Fire, Ice are all the same as they shoot a ball of the element that homing devices onto an enemy and when not in general locked on fucks off wherever. I miss the older spells and how they worked and felt more unique in 2 while also having more than just offense. Maybe introduce more spells to the next main entry based on the spells of every other game? I'm just not a fan of some of these worlds as they are all new. I haven't had a chance to catch most of the new movies (even thought I have disney plus which is great you should totally buy it #stillnotsponsored) I just don't like some of the places and the mini games in the don't help. Slight inconvenience but making me have to press x as I load new levels is kinda dumb. Maximus should be a party member. Give me him instead of eugene. Why do I need the flowmotion to progress? Hooray WATER LEVELS MY FAVORITE. Crabs. Watch me beat davy jones in a 4 on 1 battle.Darkubes are dumb. Jesus christ Jiminy shut up I'm trying to grind in the best place for the end game. Oh look it's an organization member maybe I can figh....nah they gone now. THERE ARE SO MANY CUTSCENES.

15: 2 final things before the story issues - Playing as other characters, keyblade forms. One of the biggest gripes I had in this was each time I used a new keyblade i wanted to fight with it and not transform into a new form because I do not like the new forms. They do nothing for me and since they kind of all are ok at best that it just kinda feels meh to me to use them. I pretty much used the kingdom key because second form was fine and stayed a keyblade. If anything I would rather have a new style of fighting like second form in general like the original forms are in KH2. I like valor and wisdom form and as cool of a call back as it was for the 2 first keyblades to be given to you I don't like the final ability to be used which makes me less inclined to find a weapon I do like. Which leads into my second final gripe. I was really excited to play as multiple keyblade wielders. Playing as mickey in 2 was super fucking cool and I miss that. Playing as Aqua and Riku in this made me hope for eventual fights at the end where it was each person fought someone else and you would get an ability to play through a final area for extra boss fights as any character for extra gameplay. I was excited to see what Axel and Kairi could do since in general they finally had moments to shine. You could make them fight and even if they did win just have them lose via cutscene and bring back Roxas and have Xion turn to your side. So many issues I have with that because it goes into another issue of.......

16: Everyone but Sora is fucking worthless - I have seen Dragonball GT and the main main main main main issue I have with that show is no one matters except Goku. See in other series characters could fight and kill or do something against the not main villain and be worth a damn but when GT happened everyone kinda just. Became worthless. No one could win a fight except Goku especially near the end when they had him fight 7 dragons. Sora does the same here when he has to be involved the final boss rush in the game. I'd have liked to see other characters stand out but even then he is the only one who can fight Xehanort when Mickey failed to do anything. It was all sora. Even waking Aqua was all sora. The only time someone did something was when Aqua fought Vanitas and still got her shit kicked in at the end during the cinematic and at that point he just didn't wanna fight 3 people. This is a shame because as I already said it would have been cooler to have those characters fight people and it matter. Let's break down the people who would be on our side Riku Kairi Axel Roxas Terra Ven Aqua Xion Sora Mickey Thats a total of 10 different people to play as. That would have made the final boss fights unique and super cool. You say that would have taken so much time and I say "Cool" but it would have been cooler to fight as these different characters. If they put in 2 extra just do them all. It is the most let down of let downs in gameplay mechanics. Who could they have fought in the game? Let's look at the villains Xigbar Marluxia Terranort Young Xehanort Xemnas Ansem Larxene Luxord Older Xehanort Evil Clone Riku Vanitas Saix Xion There are 12 total people to fight that are not the original Xehanort and each one could be fought with someone totally different. If Xion fights twice but wasn't really trying the first time she can be fine for the second battle. Let's give everyone a person to fight. Let's get the easy ones out of the way. Remember the ones who we fight first don't matter as much because each person not Older Xehanort do not matter even if they are him in other forms. Terra as the lingering will is gonna fight Terranort and get his body back. Riku can fight Ansem who tries to use his darkness and their past against him. Kairi can fight Xion who is noticed to not even be trying and then kairi can be captured to still do the ending they planned for. Xion who now defects can join and fight Larxene Axel can fight Xemnas and lose leaving him almost die while Roxas can jump out and fight him instead Ventus can finally defeat Vanitas Aqua can fight and defeat Xigbar who she has some history with Sora can fight and defeat Luxord so he can give him the card he was going to give. This fight can be more simple than the others and Sora can have to fight against the other Riku Mickey can fight Marluxia Before losing his fight with Xemnas Axel can fight and beat Saix We get to the final battle and while Sora who ran off to find Kairi he has to get through Younger Xehanort to get to the older one.

Look at that clean battle line up. Throw them in the correct order and you can have fights with so many people and even do the stuff needed for it to make the story go smoothly. Everyone gets to be unique and have their day in the sun. The final fight would be sora and gang fighting Xehanort and since the end game would be choose who fights who you can literally have over 120 different fights total if you leave out Donald and Goofy from the sora versions of fights. Heck allow us to fight the final boss final main form and we can in general have even more as we fight him with each character.

17: What is the difference between a heart and a soul? - This is a simple question because they keep saying we don't need the bodies cause we still have their hearts and I'm just having troubles figuring out if the story writers know the damn difference between a heart which is a physical thing or a concept of the soul which is the metaphysical thing. You know like what makes you you.

18: Why doesn't Axel have 2 keyblades? - Like I like that he holds it the way he does, it's very him very unique and all that but if Roxas can have 2 and he gets one from Xion who is no longer a part of him because she is right there than why can't Axel who is specifically a dual wielder of weapons get 2 of them? I mean give the main a sword that is like a Chinese Dao sword combo. It literally is a blade that turns into 2 blades. Like don't even tell me that shit is unable to happen cause Ventus fucking gets that strange keyblade because it is unique to his style so if that is how it works and they all have based on their personality he should have two. Especially since it would be a great call back to my favorite Axel line in the entire series. "Two!?"

19: Clone Riku should not be a boss - Remember when we beat the shit out of Riku as Sora and then Riku clone and then Riku beat Riku clones ass? He's not a challenge. "He was given more darkness powers" Nice, cool cop out there. Fuck you.

20: Why kill everyone just to set up a story line when you could just do it better - So this one is a little subjective. Need sora to meet Chirithy or whatever its name is and maybe set up remind dlc or whatever but in the end you could have just broke his spirit from his body and put him in the other world by making Xehanort who tried taking him over show him everyone dying and it causing Sora to blank out and travel there as a spirit or some shit. It could have worked just as fine allowing the rest of everyone else to go fight the enemies at the end giving sora time to eventually wake up and join in while Donald and Goofy protect him. Then when he wakes up Luxord who could have said "I'll handle the boy when he wakes up could have just did what he wanted to do with the card then. It's just a dumb moment and we could have instead of dumb gameplay where we have to put ourselves back together and have to save everyone and re watch a stupid ass cutscene just watched a cutscene and went back while everyone handled what they needed to.

So before I get into the final 4 parts to get into I hope that you know I was trying to be really fair with a bunch of these and not just looking for things to gripe about. When I didn't understand things I made myself look up to make sure I understood and didn't just bitch about it for the sake of bitching. These last 4 things are kind of in general I beleive super fair.

1: The battles stop as you talk with each person - Nothing kills a fight sequence like starting it, defeating a single enemy in it, talking with a full blown conversation to them, then as they die restart with another fight scene to do it with every single person in the fight. WHY WOULD MARLUXIA AND LARXENE ALLOW LUXORD TO GIVE HIM A CARD? Why would they stop fighting? Why would Ansem, Xemnas, and Young Xehanort watch as one of the others fell and talked? Why would any sane fucking person do that? It makes 0 sense and ruins that boss rush.

2: I know you need to set up another game but fuck you - You literally made the happiest of endings where everything is the best for everyone ever and I MEAN EVERYONE except for Sora and Kairi. Fucking fuck you man. I'm not even mad that that was the ending but when everyone comes up fucking peaches and cream I tend to question the product even if they need to set up story. They can do it better, do what you did at the end of 2 and send a message in a bottle and say "there are still other worlds out there that need us, just not in this universe" or some shit like that. Shit if in general they can have emotions in games than have sora have to jump into the game. You already said my microwave can feel love so than if he can be in that rex universe than he can just go in after he has a nice break with all of his friends.

3: No - Xehanort was not a good guy the entire time. He literally murdered people and stole a childs body and ripped the emotions out of another child and made them not whole. He got a child so angry he murdered his new sorta dad. He pretty much was the whole reason anything bad happened and he was "misguided and wanted to good but did bad to do so". Then in the end he's forgiven and everything is fucking fine? Then he turns into a good guy and goes into the big heart in the sky. This is the kind of writing that literally kills off stories for at least me. Not everyone needs a second chance and sometimes people are just evil. We need stories that have people die at the end sometimes. I know it is fantasy and it can be all rainbows and butterflies but dear god Steven Universe was literally "no you" and that was the end of the entire fucking series. This is the same thing. It might not be "no you" but fuck this ending. This was a story that was supposed to end a 17 year long story and the end of this single part literally spits in the face of people who played it by saying "hey guys, he wasn't bad, he is sorry now". That is complete and utter horse shit. I don't mind that this is not the end of the series. I don't care because if I stuck around this long I would do the same if the story had a satisfying ending. Fuck man in the new game he's even evil then unless that is just how Kairi remembers him but let's face it. The gang would have told her what happened and this is just horse shit in general. This is a fucking stupid story and I literally am fine with alternate realities since time travel and other dumb stuff has been the main name of the game the entire fucking time but let's face it. This is one of the worst ideas for an ending for a villain. The buold up is fucking massive and the payout is just sad.

4: NO - Fucking xigbar. I don't even know how to put this into words how much of a let down it is for Xigbar, Fucking XIGBAR to be the next main enemy. (or at least it looks that way). Fucking we could have had Luxord. We could have had Marluxia. We could have had Demyx. We could have had fucking I don't know Vexen. We could have had fucking anyone but we get Xigbar. You could have slapped any other character onto his scenes and gotten the same amount of out of nowhere shit to explain him being next but it is fucking xigbar. Fucking unreal.

So yeah. That's my massive wrap up on KH3 and I personally do not know where I stand from here. Maybe if the next game doesn't play like shit in 400 years when Nomura gets off his ass and lets us have kingdom hearts 3.76 tie in to 4 which is oddly enough a main title and not a second part of 3 I'll see how it plays. Until then I think I'm gonna sit hereand never touch 3 again and never finish Melody of Memory.

[kaiyaps]

Blood

They called it the vessel, just so because it was a vessel of destruction. It had killed so many people across their fair country. Leaving naught in it’s wake, save for a blood stained ground. Avarice was young and heeded the warnings of the adults in the village. She stayed indoors when it got past suppertime, she didn’t stray far from the house when she played during the day and always locked her bedroom door. One night she awoke to a horrible sound, a woman was screaming, then silence. Another scream, most likely a man, silence again. Closer, she recognised Miss Callaway, her neighbour, voice talking, then silence, a short scream and silence again. She quietly left her bed and made it like her mother had said to do when you get out of bed. She could hear more voices now, the village was waking up. She hid under the bedframe her blanket hanging over the side, obscuring her from view. She was clutching the doll her mother had made her, fashioned after the duchess governing their province. She could hear her parents talking now, suddenly she heard her mother scream, silence, her father started to say something in a quiet voice she’d never heard him use before then, silence. To her surprise nothing tried to open her door, she didn’t have to climb out the window like her father had said to do. She hated climbing out the window her legs would dangle and she scraped her knees last time. The screaming and silence pattern continued long into the night, until the silence was no longer interrupted. Avarice did as any good girl would do in her situation, she went to bed and slept until morning.

When the sun woke her the next day she had briefly forgotten the events of the previous night. Still rubbing her sleepy eyes she wandered into the kitchen and found it was covered completely in blood. The fireplace, the pots, her mothers favourite apron. Everything was drenched in sticky congealing blood. It smelt awful and she decided to go outside to get some fresh air. This did not help as the morning sun was warming the blood all over the ground in the village, it smelt worse than what was in her kitchen. Feeling overwhelmed she trotted past the village square her feet sticking to the ground as she went out to the paddocks where Mr. Baltimore’s sheep were. They bleated expectantly at her, there was no hay stack for them to munch on this morning. She remembers hearing Mrs. Baltimore shouting last night. She pet the sheep until they realised she wasn’t going to feed them and scattered about the paddock nibbling on what was left of the spring grass. She picked at the grass, hungry but not wanting to go back into the kitchen. Fly’s were starting to collect around her feet and she decided to walk down to the small river next to Mr. Baltimore’s farm. She dipped them in the water and watched the blood float down the stream in translucent ribbons. Once they were clean she wiped them with her nightdress and sat by the bank throwing peddles. She was still hungry. From across the paddock she could hear shouting, normally she would stay away because it was probably the school boys making a ruckus. But she was bored and hungry so followed the voices. Eventually she stood on the outskirts of the village again, dreading the smell of blood. However it did not dissuade her for long. She marched along the street the blood having dried more now, until she saw a collection of armoured men, knights she realised, on horseback. One of them noticed her and pointed, all the men stood to attention and drew their weapons, they were aimed her. Why? she thought, knights were meant to protect little girls. The one that had noticed her dismounted at the order of one of the fancier looking knights, he had a flag on his spear. The knight approached her slowly weapon still pointing at her, she stood still and didn’t move. When he got close enough she spoke.

“I’m hungry.” She stated hoping he would understand her predicament, to punctuate this her stomach growled. The knight stopped moving and looked back at his friends, they were talking amongst themselves.

“Hungry for what?” One of them shouted, he was shorter than the others. She smiled.

“Breakfast, I have eggs and milk.” She replied, the knights started talking again and lowered their weapons, she could hear bits of their conversation now that they had stopped whispering.

“Well they didn’t say it could talk, or that it looked like a little girl.” There was another little girl? There was only little boys in her village, she got excited.

“Can I meet her? I’m sure we’d be fast friends!” The knights stopped talking for a moment then a couple of them chuckled.

“Fast friends, more like fast dinner.” One of the older knights muttered.

“We should probably search for more survivors before we move on, this-” He pointed at Avarice.

“-hasn’t happened before, we can question her about what she saw at the Duchess’ Manor.” Avarice started jumping up and down, she’d never met the Duchess, only her stories from her mother.

“I would like that very much! I want to tell the Duchess about my doll.” The knight closest to her removed his helmet so she could see his face, it was a her. Her expression was soft as she kneeled down in front of Avarice.

“Alright but first we need your name, I’m Valery.” The knight held out her armoured hand.

“I’m Avarice nice to meet you!” She took the offered hand with hers and shook it vigorously earning a chuckle out of Valery.

The knights spent around an hour looking for other people in the village but found no one, it wasn’t a surprise, What was though, was Avarice.

“Why was she spared? It’s killed girls her age before why is she different?” Avarice was on the back of the lady knight’s horse and was playing with her doll, Valery had retrieved it from her bedroom upon request.

“I don’t know Daniel, I saw her room too, her door was untouched it hadn’t even tried to enter.” Valery replied. She had given Avarice some rations to chew on which the girl had devoured surprisingly quickly.

“Halt, I smell iron.” The knights horses all stopped and it was true, Avarice could smell that familiar scent. She held her nose.

“Proceed with caution, it’s never been active during the day but we must remain vigilant.” They resumed pace the smell growing stronger until they rounded a fork in the road. Before them was a near identical sight to Avarice’s village. The ground once again stained red, the only living creatures were curious foxes and birds. Attracted by the smell of blood but confused by the lack meat. However, unlike last time, they saw a figure standing in the square. It was motionless and hard to make out it’s details as it was exuding a blinding white. The knights froze.

“By god, is that it?” The older knight whispered, they waited in tense silence. It didn’t move and gave no indication it would. Suddenly Avarice noticed a chicken wandering near the horses. She loved chickens and wiggled free of her seat on the horse, her legs dangling off the side of the saddle. “Oh no.” she said it’s just like the window, before she fell and felt a sharp stinging sensation in her knee. The noise snapped Valery’s attention to her.

“Avarice no!” She whispered loudly but the thing had already started moving towards them. Valery dismounted immediately scooping up the little girl in her arms. The other knights made a defensive line preparing for the worst.

“Run!” Was all they heard as they both sprinted into the forest lining the village, Valery knew in her heart it was in vain, her fears cemented when she heard her comrades screams. They didn’t make it far before Valery’s hand was ripped from Avarice’s and the little girl was blinded by something. She wiped her eyes seeing that light tearing into what was Valery, all the while she shouted why at it until she couldn’t any longer. Avarice walked closer to it and felt something wrap around her throat, it wasn’t painful.

“Did you care for them?” It asked her in a voice like thunder, Avarice didn’t know what it meant.

“Who?” She asked honestly.

“Who else child?, your parents, village, those knights and this one.” It replied holding up the torn figure of Valery. Avarice thought for a moment, her mother said she cared for her and she would say it, but Avarice also said she cared for other people, people she didn’t know well. They always seemed upset when she’d say that however. Her mother explained only special people could be cared for, but she cared about everyone then.

“You are as I thought, without.” It said, and suddenly the body of Valery disappeared in a bright flash, more blood fell to the ground.

“Farewell, Peccatum.” It’s voice rolled that last word around like the rumble from a rain cloud. And just like it had done to Valery, it vanished, leaving Avarice alone again, and again she wasn’t scared, just hungry.

Commentary: This piece was intended for the week 3 ‘Role of the Reader’ task. My intention with this piece was to present a trope that I personally hate. People with Autism (like me) find it difficult sometimes to grasp the concept of empathy and so I created Avarice, her name literally meaning sin or greed. In my understanding of what I wrote, I made it so the ‘vessel’ didn’t need to kill her because she didn’t care about people in the way people cared about her. The vessel, as I the Author wrote, was intended to be perceived as the desire to hurt people through their bonds with others. There was a reason it would kill one person at a time. An example being Avarice’s mother who is killed and then she can hear her father talking and he is killed shortly after. The Vessel wanted things to see it kill the things they cared about. After killing her parents it didn’t understand why it couldn’t sense fear in Avarice and left her to continue onto the next town. Even when Avarice watched the Vessel kill Valery she doesn’t grasp the situation. Which was supposed to mirror the trope of Autistic children not feeling for the ones they should love. Which is blatantly untrue. I didn’t enjoy and still don’t enjoy the trope so it was interesting to write something I hate seeing in media.

[yfere]

M9 Signature Combat Moves (and what they say about them)

AKA, I nerd out over battle strategies and patterns.

Fjord: Fjord is lovely and my favorite person to watch in battle, because his main combat strategy is, get out of dodge, then distract the enemy away from your friends, then get out of dodge, get your friends out of dodge, shove a healing potion down your unconscious friend’s throat while you’re getting them out of dodge. He’s all for the guerilla warfare, and is understandably upset whenever someone implies that it’s not super noble and heroic looking, because it works, right? Keeps him and everyone alive. So among his signature moves are:

Thunderstep. Which he uses to a) bampf himself and his friends (but mostly his friends) out of harms’ way or b) bampf some help to his friends. And by friends we mostly mean “Caleb” because this poor man needs everyone he can looking after him so he isn’t ground into meat paste in .02 seconds. Routinely holds the spell while Bad Shit Is Happening so that he can use it at the exact right moment.

Major Image. For those times you really want the enemy to be looking the other direction while you get out of dodge, or, to encourage them to massacre the group that is not you (an effective distraction!)

Misty Step. Getting some distance, like a hero.

Summon Greater Demon. For chewing spellcasters he doesn’t like to bits, but mostly for absorbing damage from all the mooks that might otherwise be targeting his squishy friends. 

Beau: Beau is also lovely, so lovely that she takes precisely the opposite approach to Fjord in battle. The nature of what she does means she is in the enemy’s face. Grappled in every other fight (3/4 of fights?) and on the main? Thinks escaping from the grapple is a fuckin’ waste of time. She’s right where she wants to be, punching your lights out, and learning how better to destroy you all the while. And sure, it might be dangerous, especially when the creature holding your limp unconscious body splashes acid whenever it’s damaged, but hey. The logical upgrade to punching ghosts is to be a punching ghost. So for this violent, curious bean, you have:

Sentinel. I’m sorry, did you forget who you were fighting? You’re fighting Beau. You’re not fighting anyone else. And she is going to stay in your face, whether you like it or not.

Step of the Wind. Used less often for running away from things than running towards things, like things she wants to punch. But also for running towards other goals--like the Plank King who can put an end to the fighting on the docks, like her friend who is burning in lava and needs to be rescued. The reason she has so much movement, you see, is so she can drag your sorry ass out of trouble.

Stun. And that’s why she’s not leaving your space. The power that gets all of the worst creatures completely destroyed. Bye bye giants, bye bye Lorenzo, bye bye Krynn warrior--no, fuck! Well, whoever was responsible for offing the spellcaster is responsible for that, not Beau.

Extract Aspects. Wherein her punches and curious nature help her friends fight more effectively. Hey--hey CALEB! They’re not super wise! Wait--is Caleb down again? Fuck! JESTER! They’re not super wise!

Caleb: The easiest way to describe Caleb is to say that he has two battle modes. By and large, he is the nice and helpful support caster, making his friends more powerful and his foes a lot weaker while he ducks as much as he can out of the line of fire. But there’s another side to Caleb....when things truly go to hell, he brings hellfire raining down upon you, giving no fucks about anything but death. Leaves scores of incinerated bodies in his wake. Makes Fjord do a happy jig. So for him, you have:

Haste. Along with expeditious retreat, this is the spell that leads the whole party to just take it as gospel that Caleb is “as fast as balls.” In general, Caleb casts Haste on people less as a kind of strategy and more to display in his kooky way his love or favoritism or Desire for Friendship. Wants to get on Beau’s good side after telling her his secrets? She gets all the hastes. Feels guilty about leaving Nott to nearly get mauled to death by a dragon? She gets Haste. Needs to demonstrate to a stressed-out Fjord that he supports him in these trying times? Haste. And even if it’s not combat, we should never forget Hasted chopsticks to show love and friendship for Jester. Caleb....maybe you should use your words instead of your spell components, yeah?

Slow. Fuck you, you are not attacking his friends. Bye bye multiattack, bye bye, crazy AC. He’s so keen on saving his friends that he never even manages to wait for Caduceus to make landing the spell easier for him. It’s like a debuffing race between those two.

Fireball. From Caleb, fireball is a death sentence. You have the fleeing giant, but also...........all those pirates. All those gnolls. When Caleb casts Fireball, chances are it’s when he’s passed the point of caring about his own well-being and is only interested in fucking up other people. Downed with a crossbow bolt and just barely revived by Fjord, his only thought is to stumble forward, bleeding profusely, and finish what he started--make everything blow up.

Counterspell/Wall of Fire. So far, used in tandem, and to accomplish the same purpose--to put a big middle finger up at other spellcasters. His goal is to block their line of sight to his important people, bonus points if he can also light some people on fire, and if you even think about fucking with his spell he will smack whatever you try to the ground. Even half dead from exhaustion, he’s just better than you, and he’ll let you know it.

Nott: Like Fjord, she is all about guerilla tactics, about distracting and attacking, and hiding to attack again. She really likes attacking, and has the kill count to prove it. Also like Fjord, Nott is invested in the purchase and dispersal of healing potions--to the point where she annoyed him by buying the potions he requested (so that he could give them to people in trouble) only to keep them herself (so that she could give them to people in trouble). But unlike Fjord, she utilizes the running strategy not to get herself or others to safety necessarily, but rather as another form of distraction, to draw attention to herself and away from the others. For her, you have:

Phantasmal Force. The spell most likely to make her turn up her nose at Fjord and say, “but do you need me to make the illusion even more realistic?” She takes a great deal of pride and joy in it. Absolutely wonderful--a spell to distract in creative ways, to control other people to “thinking things that aren’t real,” the targets justify the illusion, and it deals damage! While Nott uses it for distraction, she also employs it for more creative purposes, like making Avantika relax and change priorities by thinking her journal was recovered.

Bonus Action Disengage. Or more strikingly, not disengaging. Nott will run like hell, and she will take the hit so that the people she loves won’t.

Bonus Action Hide. When the going gets tough, crawl behind something and wait it out, or wait for a good shot. Sometimes works brilliantly--other times what you’re hiding in is a burning building or beneath a bridge actively being collapsed on top of you. The moral of the story Nott takes from this is, running is probably better. At which point you do what you’re more used to--dashing. 

Fury of the Small. "That’s my secret. I’m always small.” There’s an interesting commentary to this being a goblin racial trait, because in Nott’s case it probably isn’t fury at things bigger than her so much as fury at being made a goblin, a fury that only grows more potent with time, and more deadly.

Jester: Imagination that kills you, with humor and cuteness! You have to wonder if the pink bits on her dress are floral designs or blood splatters. This woman is a terror, and a person who loves to enter the fray--to the point of picking bar fights with her friends for the thrill of it! You might think, “oh, the cleric wants to get in my face to hurt me, I’ll just make her suffer” but the truth is, the one suffering is going to be you. 

Spiritual Weapon. As Iconic a weapon as Fjord’s falchion, and used a lot more frequently. Bludgeons people until they’re nothing more than bloodstains on the ground. Other clerics wish they were as good. Especially Shakaste. Poor Shakaste.

Invoke Duplicity. There to help her friends whenever Jester can’t--or shouldn’t--get somewhere herself. Will fight furniture when Jester needs to look around for a way to help Fjord. Will walk over lava to harm a giant as a distraction. Will, sometimes, be sent over to heal someone who needs it. The beauty of it is that, besides distracting and protecting, it allows her to be wherever she is most needed for a spell.

Inflict Wounds. Jester likes one thing above all, and it is to fuck people up. She’ll do it through her duplicate or she’ll do it herself, but one way or the other she’s going to wind her hands around you and make you bleed through your eyeballs. She’ll cast it on hydras. She’ll cast it on dragons. She’ll cast it on fire giants. She’ll cast it on her best friend who thought that this was a friendly brawl. And it is. Jester is nearly always friendly when she’s destroying you.

Hellish Rebuke. Unless she’s not being friendly. Once upon a time, she had a quip for when she was attacked. Now she will scream and cry out, and just the sound of it will send icy pain to whoever dared to hurt her.

Caduceus: Of everyone in the M9, the most averse to close combat, or more broadly to making a target of himself, ever. Is surprised and upset whenever creatures get close to him, or get it into their heads to attack him. He’s the support. You shouldn’t even notice he’s there. Here are some bugs--how about you attack those? What do you mean he has to get close to do touch-based healing--nope, nope, healing word it is, and only after people are unconscious to maximize its usefulness.

Hidden Step. He really doesn’t want you to notice that he’s here. If he doesn’t do this, he might try literally sinking into the ground to avoid you.

Bane. The quintessential Caduceus spell. Aptly named for how miserable it makes all his enemies. Works beautifully both for protecting those who are close to the enemy, and gels very nicely with Jester fucking shit up and Fjord distracting the enemy and whatever the hell Caleb is planning to do if....if they fucking wait for him to cast it..............

Sentinel at Death’s Door. He really doesn’t want his friends to die. It’s expensive. And there’s a certain impatient ass of a wizard who just might have died instantly if he hadn’t been hovering around him at the time. Sigh.

Path to the Grave. Caduceus is not one to get his hands dirty. Well, dirt is fine, but not so much the living blood of his foes. No, he likes to deal his damage by proxy, through his bug swarm but especially through Yasha. She already deals so much damage, and isn’t it beautiful to watch her deal twice as much of it? Bonus points if it makes Yasha look like the big scary target, and not him.

Yasha: As always, Yasha is a hard one for me, because I want to distinguish Travis-Yasha from Ashley-Yasha, but the fact of it is I haven’t seen much of Ashley-Yasha for a while. So it’s hard. But there’s one thing in particular that has stood out to me about Yasha and the way she works, and that is 

Rage. Or rather, her hesitation to rage. She’s a fighting machine who isn’t happy being a fighting machine, and there are so many times she chooses not to fly into a rage and start hitting things when she thinks being calm and talking things out is an option. She asks the lightning-creature a question, asks if it was sent from the Stormlord. “Yeah...he’s going to attack you,” Matt says. But that’s the important thing--she didn’t instigate. Ever. She didn’t get angry first. She waits, and tries everything other than the killing, until she’s provoked past the point of reason. You could even argue this as a story justification for her low initiative rolls--she just doesn’t want to get angry and attack. Not unless she has to.

[mebongster87]

The real villains and the real heroes of Season 8: predictions and foreshadowings

Back when the character posters for Season 8 was released, a few folks in the JonSa fandom speculated about how Daenerys, Euron Greyjoy, and the Night King, were shown to be seated on the Iron Throne with the Stanley Kubrick glare. Here are the pictures of what I am talking about. 

Kubrick stare is a typical characterising feature of villainy. Given that Euron Greyjoy, Daenerys Stormborn, and the Night King all sport this, it is safe to say that Team Storm are the main villains. 

The Crypts of Winterfell teaser provided us the real heroes of this season and they are these three:

Jon Snow, Sansa Stark, and Arya Stark, poised to face the threats of Ice and Fire with their best weapons, and are the real heroes of Season 8 and the story at large.

Longclaw for Jon, Sansa has her wits and charm, intelligence, and realpolitik, I mean I could go on but you get the point. Last but not the least, Arya Stark, newly minted Night King Slayer, with her Valyrian steel dagger, with which she killed the NK and Needle.

Thanks to Arya being the NK Slayer, this picture makes a whole lot of sense now and I believe we will have Jon and Sansa take down the other two villains in the story. 3 villains vs 3 heroes.

Daenerys Stormborn:

The show actually teased that Jon and Sansa will stand against Daenerys Stormborn back in Season 6.

The S06E09 Battle of the Bastards Inside the Episode commentary by David Benioff, where he says:

“If you are one of the Lords of Westeros or one of her potential opponents in the wars to come, and you get word of what happened here in Meereen, you have to be pretty nervous because this is an unprecedented threat. You’ve got a woman who has somehow formed an alliance where she’s got a Dothraki horde, a legion of Unsullied, she’s got the mercenary army of the Second Sons, and she’s got three dragons, who are now pretty close to full-grown. So if she can make it all the way across the Narrow Sea and get to Westeros, who’s gonna stand in her way?”

over shots of Daenerys about to destroy Meereen and burning people, is immediately followed by this shot of Sansa and Jon, from the tent scene, prior to Battle of Bastards, where they discuss how to defeat Ramsay (another villain).

Sneaky.

In Season 8 so far, we have seen Sansa go toe-to-toe with Daenerys, either by making her displeasure known in feeding the “greatest army the world has ever seen” with the limited food and resources that Sansa has managed to gather for the North, or derisively asking “what do dragons eat anyway” or outright defying Daenerys in Jamie’s trial. I do not see this abating in the upcoming episodes. Sansa knows that the Dragon Queen is a threat to her home, her family, and the entire North and she will be using her smarts and political prowess to outplay Daenerys.

Jon, on the other hand, will be the one to go fight Daenerys in a Dance of the Dragons 2.0. Whether Jon kills Daenerys remains to be seen. The show has buried enough clues to allude to this happening. I have written about it here and here and I think there is a strong possibility that Jon kills Daenerys, irrespective of your beliefs in those alleged leaks. 

In fact, these lines from ADWD, Jon XII, may have foreshadowed this:

Burning shafts hissed upward, trailing tongues of fire. Scarecrow brothers tumbled down, black cloaks ablaze. 

"Snow," an eagle cried, as foemen scuttled up the ice like spiders. 

Jon was armored in black ice, but his blade burned red in his fist. As the dead men reached the top of the Wall he sent them down to die again. He slew a greybeard and a beardless boy, a giant, a gaunt man with filed teeth, a girl with thick red hair. Too late he recognized Ygritte. She was gone as quick as she'd appeared. The world dissolved into a red mist. Jon stabbed and slashed and cut. He hacked down Donal Noye and gutted Deaf Dick Follard. Qhorin Halfhand stumbled to his knees, trying in vain to staunch the flow of blood from his neck. "I am the Lord of Winterfell," Jon screamed. It was Robb before him now, his hair wet with melting snow. Longclaw took his head off. Then a gnarled hand seized Jon roughly by the shoulder. He whirled …… and woke with a raven pecking at his chest. 

Here we have Jon armored in black ice, which is very reminiscent of Daenerys’ dream from ASOS, Daenerys III:

That night she dreamt that she was Rhaegar, riding to the Trident. But she was mounted on a dragon, not a horse. When she saw the Usurper's rebel host across the river they were armored all in ice, but she bathed them in dragonfire and they melted away like dew and turned the Trident into a torrent. Some small part of her knew that she was dreaming, but another part exulted. This is how it was meant to be. The other was a nightmare, and I have only now awakened.

Jon kills Ygritte, a love interest, and Robb, his kin/cousin within the same dream. Daenerys is both a love interest and his kin/aunt. 

Jon has also been referred to as the “shifting shadow” from Daenerys’s chapters...ASOS, Daenerys II.

“Sometimes she would close her eyes and dream of him, but it was never Jorah Mormont she dreamed of; her lover was always younger and more comely, though his face remained a shifting shadow.“

Melisandre in her visions sees Jon as a shifting shadow as well:

“The flames crackled softly, and in their crackling she heard the whispered name Jon Snow. His long face floated before her, limned in tongues of red and orange, appearing and disappearing again, a shadow half-seen behind a fluttering curtain. Now he was a man, now a wolf, now a man again.”

-ADWD, Melisandre I.

What’s interesting is that the show actually uses a “shadow” to allude to Jon.

Notice the focus on the shadow of Jon, right before he goes to behead Janos Slynt, someone who betrayed Ned Stark and was an enemy to House Stark. And dare I say, this reminds me of the shadow of Jamie from Bran’s visions right before he shoves the sword in the back of the Mad King Aerys. 

Since Jon and Jamie are foils, Jon could end the story as a kinslayer and Queenslayer, just as Jamie started the story as the Kingslayer. We shall see whether it does come to pass or not. Additionally, Jon has refused to kill a woman twice before (Ygritte and Melisandre), maybe he ends up having to kill a woman this third time. Notably, Ygritte was a love interest, Melisandre tried seducing Jon, and now he is in a relationship with Daenerys.   

Euron Greyjoy:

I would’ve loved for Theon to be the one to take down Euron but since he is dead, someone else will have to step up to bring this guy down.

Could Jon be the one? Or Arya?Or Yara?

Since both Euron and Daenerys have been associated with “Storm”, here are some clues that I found that I thought were interesting.

This next part is just wild speculation on my part. 

Euron is introduced to us in S06E02 Home, where he kills his brother and King Balon Greyjoy and these are some of the things he says...

And this is what Jon says before he gets crowned KITN in S06E10 The Winds of Winter...

Littlefinger needles him in the crypts before Jon leaves for Dragonstone in S07E02 Stormborn and says this...

While Daenerys Stormborn has been associated with storms, Euron has been called the Storm and in this same episode called Stormborn, we see both Daenerys and Euron but not the Night King. Interesting don’t you think?

In fact, LF’s line could be applicable to Jon being the last best hope against either or both of these two “Storms”. 

In fact, I think we may get a Daenerys Stormborn and Euron Greyjoy “Storm-Storm” alliance mainly because of this throwaway line from Yara while she is captive in the Silence at KL in S08E01...

to which Euron replies:

Now on the surface, this may seem that Yara, an ally of Daenerys is confident of Daenerys’s win over Cersei and Euron, who are current allies. To which Euron talks about sailing his fleet elsewhere??To Dragonstone maybe??? I believe the show is cluing us to the fact that Euron could possibly switch camps. I mean he is wild, unpredictable and who knows what his next move is?? However, he wants to marry the most beautiful woman in the world and just wants to side with the winning team.

In the promo for Episode 4, we see Euron going down on his knees and looks like he is proposing Cersei. If Cersei rejects his proposal, maybe he will switch sides over to Daenerys, whom he thinks has a better chance of winning and is the most beautiful woman in the world.

However, in the subtext, do we really think Daenerys’s side is the winning side????

If she is the main antagonist, then she has to lose, right? So what could this mean....that Euron switches Cersei’s camp and goes over to Daenerys’s camp thinking he is picking the winning side, only to end up on the losing side, when Daenerys finally loses. 

Euron is a wild card and hopefully, next episode provides some solid clues regarding what’s going to happen.

There is also this scene from S07E05 Eastwatch, where the maesters of the Citadel are discussing Bran’s letter about the AOTD and one of the maesters mockingly says...”Don’t forget the prophet Lodos, who said that the drowned god will rise up and destroy Aegon the Conqueror”

Prophecy twist is when Aegon the Protector aka Jon Snow who has risen from the dead, destroys the Drowned God aka Euron Greyjoy.

Or the Drowned God aka Euron Greyjoy allies himself with Aegon the Conqueror come again aka Daenerys Stormborn to attempt to destroy KL???? It remains to be seen.

Why will Jon need to kill Euron??? Maybe just maybe Euron will be involved in kidnapping Sansa to KL. And Jon has already said (to LF) “Touch my sister and I’ll kill you myself”. That Chekhov’s gun is still waiting to go off.

I can’t help but think that the scene in the godswood in S08E01 Winterfell, in front of the heart tree, when Arya and Jon reunite and they talk about Sansa and Jon says that “I am her family too”, Arya says “don’t forget that” is foreshadowing for Jon to remember his first vow after he was brought back from the death that he made to Sansa...”I won’t ever let him touch you again, I will protect you, I promise”. Jon’s vow to protect Sansa will come into play in a moment when Sansa’s safety and her life is compromised. If Euron/GC come for her, then Jon’s vows to protect Sansa are applicable here as well. 

This Jon/Arya scene then transitions to a shot of KL, where we think Sansa will get kidnapped to, and then we have shots of Cersei and Qyburn, the Golden Company with Euron and, finally we have scenes where a “sister” is held captive by Euron. And who comes to rescue his “sister” Yara?? Theon, who is a foil to Jon...I think these are interesting scene transitions. Again, since it’s rescuing one’s sister, it could be that Arya is the one who comes to rescue Sansa, together with Jon, and ends up being the one to kill Euron.

Having said all of that, I am really not sure. Mainly because I don’t think the show will let Jon kill both Euron and Daenerys. That’s a bit much for one guy, even if it’s Jon. And this is primarily where I think Arya may play a part and be the one to kill Euron. If Jon kills Daenerys, then Arya will kill Euron, again the objective remains the same, protect Sansa. That shot from the crypts teaser where Sansa is flanked by Arya one on side and Jon on the other side, with their weapons drawn in a protective stance, makes me think that both Jon and Arya will have to protect and save Sansa at some point.

Or the show could give this kill to Yara, Jamie, or even Brienne, who knows. Like I said, this part is pure speculation on my part so I could be totally wrong.

And finally Cersei Lannister:

I am counting on the show giving us a Sansa vs Cersei showdown, I feel like those two characters need to meet to complete the YMBQ story arc. 

If the kidnapping plot does not happen, Sansa could come to KL to parlay with Cersei to strike up an alliance to take down Daenerys and defend the 7Ks.

These character posters have the same energy about them. Two Queens.

The show has been teasing us a Stark-Lannister alliance through its promos and teasers.

I could see Sansa and Cersei forming an alliance together to defeat Daenerys’s forces. The Golden Company will fight on behalf of Cersei and Sansa against Daenerys’s (and maybe Euron’s) armies.

In terms of Cersei’s demise, I am not putting too much stock on the Valonqar prophecy being actually true. Yes, Cersei has to die eventually, but D&D are Lena fanboys and I don’t think they will give her a gruesome on-camera death. In fact, I think Cersei will commit suicide or maybe poisoned.

When cornered, Cersei has either always managed to pull out an ace in the hole and outwit all her opponents in one fell-swoop like she did with House Tyrell in S06E10 when she blew up the sept 

OR 

she turns suicidal and threatens to do something rash.

Case in point:

1. She was willing to poison herself and Tommen with the essence of nightshade poison at the Battle of Blackwater Bay when all looked lost until Tywin came and saved her.

2. When Tywin was forcing her to marry Loras, she threatened to “burn our House to the ground”.

The only thing Cersei loves is her children, Jamie, and her throne. The fact that she is drinking wine again means that she probably is no longer pregnant. Jamie, if he ends up with Brienne, is gone from her. Her throne is under attack from Daenerys’s forces. All of these may just force her to do:

Foreshadowing from S03E10 Mhysa, where she is talking to Tyrion to give Sansa a child so that she may have some happiness.

She does not have any more children left, so she may just throw herself from the highest window in the red keep.

Joffrey and Myrcella were poisoned, Tommen committed suicide by throwing himself from his window. Maybe Cersei will do the same. We shall see.

Thoughts and comments??

[whiterosebrian]

Black Lives Matter Indeed

Should I offer my own public commentary on the demonstrations in Minnesota and elsewhere over the murder of George Floyd and other unarmed black men? I am Caucasian, I am male, I am primarily attracted to women, and I have never experienced serious gender dysphoria. Even though I have my own vulnerabilities (i.e. autism), I have some measure of distance and privilege. Aside from using my sideblog on Tumblr for boosting black voices, I can only offer a few scattershot personal observations.

The ideal that many have of treating people as people regardless of skin color may be laudable in itself, but I’ve learned that being “colorblind” isn’t sufficient. I’ve learned that I need to respect the differences that people have and learn their struggles—even honor the differences while honoring the common humanity. I’ve lately come to understand the need to respect the closed nature of some spiritual and magical practices and the close links to their associated people, whether Jewish or African-American. That is largely why I’m shifting towards the Nordic tradition, which is considered open. As a beginning illustrator I also feel that I should do some small part—however small indeed—and try to offer up respectful and humanizing images of various groups of people. As a beginning writer I hope to do my best to offer similarly humanizing portraits of various groups of people.

Calling for calm and nonviolence may be easy from a distance, but I’ve come to understand the desperation that demonstrators have. They feel that passive and quiet protests are not enough to really force everyone to get the message about systemic discrimination and persecution. Look at how nearly all-white protesters against lockdowns were treated by police—even as the clearly paranoid and entitled fanatics carry heavy weapons, scream in officers’ faces, and sometimes brandish white-nationalist symbols. Now look at how black (and also Native American) protesters are attacked with batons, tear gas, sometimes worse.

As I’ve briefly touched upon a moment ago, it’s not a simple matter of bad behavior or personal prejudice. It’s a matter of a system built to place white people over others. Evidently the very concept of “white people” is a product of imperialism and colonization. Colonization went hand-in-hand with enslavement. In regards to black people in the USA, enslavement went on for centuries. Voodoo and Hoodoo are considered closed because of their links to people who tried to survive horrors that I can scarcely comprehend, however much I try to sympathize, and keep some traces of their heritage alive. When chattel slavery was abolished, the white supremacist ideology still kept blacks in their place through Jim Crow for a substantial length of time. The long pattern of enslavement and apartheid, along with the animating mentality, left an impact and thus leak into today’s culture, regardless of what the Christian Right says about letting bygones being bygones (or its concern-trolling over unborn black children). A major reckoning is needed to even begin to heal the wounds—who knows how long either process would take?

I obviously have no easy answers. In the midst of a pandemic, a wannabe strongman’s administration, the continual flare-ups of systemic racism, and the increasingly large cracks showing in a capitalist system, it’s clear that there are no easy answers at all. A quote attributed to the Talmud (though probably cobbled together from various sources) says to not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief—but rather to do justly now, love mercy now, and walk humbly now, as none are free to abandon the work whether or not they make much progress. I still wish I could do more.

I am currently contemplating writing and casting a spell with some runes for the protection of the peaceful demonstrators in Minnesota. I’ve previously thought of waiting until completing my basic overview of the runes before using them for magic. I’ve read that I need to take them in thoroughly first in order to use their powers effectively and safely. Desperate times, however, call for desperate measures. I’ll have to give further reflection to this possible working.

Am I accomplishing anything at all by composing and posting this text? I may desire to be a sage and leader, but I am neither yet. Is it enough to simply point to those who suffer and cry for even the most basic justice? I have to see what more I can do. Have I at least done something constructive, however small?

[kcwcommentary]

VLD8x13 – “The End is the Beginning”(part 1)

8x13 – “The End is the Beginning”

I decided to post this commentary in two parts. 

As much as this show frustrates me, I do have some level of sadness that this is the last episode, and this specific series of commentaries is at an end. My emotions that this is the end of the show feels more pronounced now than it did the first time I watched this season. There is a sense of loss to it, and some of that sense of loss comes from knowing that with this being the last episode, there is no possibility that the show will course-correct and produce a story that I started the series hoping for. In some ways, I feel like I’m mourning for the wasted potential that this series had.

Every story has flaws. Sometimes what works for one viewer doesn’t work for another. Even if there are aspects of a story that don’t quite work for me, if in the end, I feel fulfilled, then I’m good. Endings should have a sense of fulfillment, a sense of accomplishment. I wonder if the executive producers, the writers, the producers, the executives at DreamWorks, and others involved in this series’s production felt accomplished at the end, or if they just felt like it was finally finished and were past ready to move on.

This ending was not fulfilling to me, and that makes me sad.

The episode starts where the last one ended: Voltron and Honerva staring each other down, the Alteans in the nearby city in a panic. Honerva, with her gaze focused on Voltron, has her mecha aim and fire a hand blast at the nearby Altean city. The blast nearly hits until at the last second something blocks the blast. At first, I thought it was a leg of Voltron, but after a couple different shots, I realized it was Voltron’s sword. Voltron throwing its sword to block the blast leaves Voltron distracted, and Honerva tackles Voltron, sending them both sliding along the ground into the city.

Honerva’s mech extends a blade from its wrist and tries to slam down on Voltron, but Voltron takes flight and maneuvers out from under Honerva and back to its sword. They’re then suddenly out in a nearby field without any of the city in the background and start a sword fight. Honerva uses her tail to trip Voltron, which falls backward onto the ground. She then combines her wing-blades around her wrist-sword to create a spinning purple drill and she dives down into Voltron, sending the ground in the area crumbling. We then get a shot from far above the surface of the planet so that we can see their location relative to the city. My guess is the backgrounds during the more standard shots of the fight lack any inclusion of the city in the background as a way to not have to spend time and energy keeping track of precisely where the city is in relation to where they are in the field.

The drill doesn’t really damage Voltron though. Allura screams, pushes her controls forward, and an energy blast shoots out of Voltron’s eyes. Since when has Allura as a leg of Voltron been able to produce an energy blast attack out of the eyes (the head) of Voltron? The blast knocks Honerva back, and the wing-blades spin off and stab into the ground. Voltron then punches Honerva through a mountain.

Voltron’s sword, having been left stuck in the ground again, now has rockets, and it jets to Voltron’s hand. (Why did Voltron need to stop at the sword a bit earlier and pick it up on the way out of the city if the sword can come to Voltron on its own?) Voltron tries to stab Honerva in the head, but she easily moves to the side and the blow misses her. Allura yells, “Now, let’s finish this,” but then someone else yells “incoming,” and Voltron is hit by a wing-blade. The blade actually penetrates Voltron in the back (and stays stuck in Voltron). Then two more wing-blades stab Voltron, this time in either side of the abdomen. Voltron falls over face-first.

The other wing-blades swirl up into the sky and look like they stab the sky. It’s the wings piercing the fabric of space, and I actually kind of like the way it looks. Purple electricity arcs between the wing-blades to form a circle. The wing-blades piercing Voltron start to glow, a big bolt of purple electricity arcs between Voltron and the circle in the sky. Honerva stands up and flies up into the sky, into the circle. The way this is depicted, it’s so much clearer that she’s drawing energy out of Voltron to create a rift in space than it was the time she must have been doing similarly last episode. (Last episode, this similar moment didn’t show anything making a new rift, it was just spontaneously there.)

Shiro says, “We can’t let this happen. She can’t get away,” the Paladins grunt, Voltron pulls the wing-blades out of itself. There are no holes in Voltron in the three places it had been stabbed.

I do still actually like the visual design of this Voltron-Atlas combination.

Voltron blasts off and soars into the rift, everything goes white, and then Voltron is floating in space, but it’s not regular space. There are what looks like stars in the far distance, but much closer, there are wispy, glowing tendrils, like roots that look like they originate from a central, brighter source.

Lance asks, “What is this place,” and Allura says, “I’m not sure.” Then Honerva’s voice booms, “This is the beginning—” her mecha smashes into Voltron, sending it careening away “—and the end.” Honerva blasts one of the roots with an energy beam and the root explodes. The root withers away, up to the central source, and then that center and every root ignites in orangish, fiery energy.

Allura glows yellow and sounds like she’s in pain and there are flashes of different aliens living their normal lives. The light around Allura fades. Team Voltron concludes that “these strands” “are the only remaining realities” and that “this place is the source of time, of space, of” “everything.”

I know almost everything in this show’s magic system is made up and re-made in the individual moment as each moment of the series has been written, and doing that makes it impossible to argue against anything happening if it can be explained as because-magic, but it does kind of bother me that Honerva can destroy a reality now, not by tearing a rift out of or into a reality but just by shooting a strand representing it with a standard blaster beam.

Honerva sounds ridiculous when she, while gasping for air like she’s out of breath, says, “I—will end this—once—and for all!” Like I mentioned last commentary, I don’t find villains who end with cliché scorched-earth action to be compelling. This series has put a lot of time and effort into trying – and I do think the creative team was genuinely trying – to add complexity to Honerva’s character. I think the attempt was almost always clumsy, quick, and underdeveloped, but for a while they were trying to portray Honerva as not a flat antagonist. But to have her character be this spiteful person who is trying to destroy literally all of existence, every reality erases any attempt this show made to complicate her character. I know the creative team would think that saying that she’s being irrational is a defense of having written her character to act this way, but it’s not.

Let’s say I accept – and I don’t, but I’m going to pretend – that Honerva was a good person before she was poisoned by quintessence and before she was possessed by the rift entity. And then that poison and that possession turned her into the abusive, torturing, genocidal dictator that she’s been for 10,000 years. That I accept the premise that the poisoning and possession took maternal instinct away from her. That she is genuinely upset that Lotor hated her. How is her current behavior a logical, writing choice to have her react like this to a little boy from another reality whose mother died not instantly accepting her as his mother? One little boy that she knows is not her actual son says “no” to her, and she decides to destroy all of existence? Like, even if this one Lotor says no, she doesn’t want to try additional other Lotors in other realities first?

This just feels like an escalation that the writing team thinks works because what can be bigger than destroying all of existence, destroying every reality? And the end of a story has to be about the biggest thing ever, the most cataclysmic conflict possible, right?

Honerva projects energy blasts in opposite directions and spins, destroying several reality strands. Then she throws her arms wide and 18 energy beams blast outward with her at the center. (Her mecha can generate 18 blasts simultaneously? Why hasn’t she used that before? That’s a significant weapon capacity.)

While she and the others grunt with each destruction, Allura says, “She’s destroying – all realities!” This level of destruction is so over-the-top that it doesn’t have any emotional weight. This is supposed to be the climax of the story, and I don’t feel invested in the plot whatsoever in part because of its scale. Another part that keeps me from feeling invested is that this is Honerva’s story. It’s not Shiro’s. It’s not Allura’s. It’s not Keith’s or Lance’s or Pidge’s or Hunk’s. Nothing about any of the six of them has anything to do with what’s happening. They’re all just sort of here. Even with this show in the past having used Honerva/Haggar as a foil for Allura, within this specific plot, that is not being used. Maybe one could say that it comes back later in the episode when Allura’s making the decision to give up her life in order to reboot all of existence, that the story finally brings Allura’s personal story back into this and her as a “life-giver” parallels Honerva as the destroyer of all realities. But that is not now. What’s happening in the plot now isn’t connected to Allura’s story. This decision to focus the story entirely on Honerva makes the show’s protagonists all be reactive. Everything that’s happening, they’re just reacting to, none of them are active, none of them are trying to achieve anything. And no, stop-the-bad-guys does not count as a protagonist goal because it is baseline-level of simplistic.

I think we’re seeing more different species of aliens in this destruction of realities sequence than we’ve seen throughout the entire rest of the show combined. The destruction is now near total, with only one strand coming from the center remaining. Honerva has decided to pause and stare at Voltron for a moment before destroying the last reality strand. For some reason, rather than use her blaster to destroy this last one, Honerva decides to use her sword. Why? There is nothing to explain why Honerva decides to use a sword instead of a blaster. Allura quietly begs no one in particular, “No, please.” Honerva flies toward the last strand, but before she can strike, Voltron slams into her. This is the sole reason why Honerva switched to using a sword when she had been using her blasters: To allow for Voltron to hit her and knock her aside. In other words, it’s contrived. Why was Allura written to react as if there was nothing that Team Voltron could do and then have Voltron swoop in to attack Honerva? There’s a dissonance between Allura’s reaction beat and Voltron then attacking.

Voltron and Honerva fly around in a sword fight. Honerva stabs Voltron, and Pidge shifts her controls and Voltron grows knuckle claws and punches Honerva. Honerva drives Voltron backward, then Keith uses Voltron’s wings to push back. Honerva stabs Voltron with her tail and purple lightning sparks. Honerva’s enegines push harder, and she drives Voltron back more.

“If Honerva destroys this final strand, all of existence will end with it!” Allura says. That feels like it’s stating the obvious and thus unnecessary dialog. Keith thrusts his controls forward, all of Team Voltron screams, and Voltron produces larger wings. These wings are absolutely ridiculous. They are like 50 times larger than Voltron itself. Voltron pushes Honerva back.

Rather than push Honerva away from the strand, Voltron, without any characters saying anything about doing this, pushes Honerva into the light that was central to all the strands. What made them make this decision? It really bothers me that this show writes characters to behave like this. Characters aren’t supposed to just spontaneously do things. The writers are moving to the next set-piece and need to move the characters to there, so they just had the characters move to there.

I don’t understand how the show is conceptualizing this story-world’s cosmology. Where is this place from which Honerva is destroying realities? Does this location itself not count as reality? How could Honerva and Voltron exist here, how could they move around through space here if it isn’t itself a reality? I would imagine the creative team for the show would say something like Honerva and Voltron are outside of reality, but you can’t go outside of universes unless there is something there to go into. It kind of makes the fault of using the word “realities” instead of “universes” noticeable. The latter of those words could work, but the former doesn’t.

Inside, Honerva is kneeling on an endless horizon of white and slight purple above and below her. It looks a bit like the horizons that was the Black Lion’s consciousness until 8x10 “Knights of Light Part 2” had those environments be located inside Honerva’s mind where the Paladins fought the spirits of the old Paladins. I would have much rather had those environments remain the consciousnesses of the Lions, and then to have this white version be the consciousness of the White Lion. But this location is just some miscellaneous elsewhere. I also wouldn’t have minded if this white field location looked like the space Allura was shown in when the White Lion jumped into her in 5x06 “White Lion.”

Imagine if the show had kept Shiro as Black Paladin, kept Keith with Red, kept Lance with Blue, had Allura in command of the Atlas. Imagine if the show got to this environment as part of Voltron’s fight with Honerva. Imagine if here, the conversation that occurs here came to a point where here Allura actively proclaimed herself, I am the Paladin of the White Lion! That would have been so freaking cool!

Honerva turns around, sees silhouettes of the Paladins and Shiro. (I’m still curious what’s up with the rest of the crew of the Atlas. Are they still within the combined Voltron-Atlas mecha? Or were they magically thrown out into space and killed? Or were they magically erased from existence? If they’re still inside Voltron-Atlas, why aren’t they appearing here too? From the moment Voltron and the Atlas combined, the crew was simply ignored, and I guess the creative team on the show hoped the audience would ignore their absence too.)

Honerva asks, “Where are we?” and Allura answers, “The connected consciousness of all existence.” Is this different that the connected consciousness the Paladins used to get into Honerva’s mind in 8x09 “Knights of Light Part 1?” This connected consciousness definitely looks different than that collected consciousness.

Honerva continues to be annoying. “You think you’re safe here? Soon, all will cease to exist.” Hunk replies, “You have to stop this. All these worlds, all these realities, they deserve to live.” What does he mean “all these?” We were just told a moment ago that there’s only one single reality left. Also, why is he framing this as Honerva has to stop doing what she’s doing? Why aren’t the Paladins actively stopping her? This comes back to what I said earlier that this plot only has the Paladins reacting to things. This is being framed as Honerva has to stop herself, not that the Paladins have to stop her. The locus of action for this plot has been placed exclusively within Honerva’s character, not in any of the protagonists. That makes this story weak.

Honerva says, “Those realities are flawed and weak, living out the same pathetic cycle of war and pain.” This philosophy is woefully uninteresting. It feels so weird hearing Honerva say this since she’s been such a huge inflictor of war and pain. She has no validity to speak in objection to war and pain. I can’t take her character seriously because she’s been written to say stuff like this that so diametrically opposite to how she has behaved. Also, if she’s condemning all realties for being flawed, does that mean that she thinks that she is flawless?

A scene of conversation like this at a point of climax in a story should produce a sense of enlightenment, but this doesn’t. It doesn’t work because Honerva’s comments and perspective aren’t, pardon the phrase given this story, grounded in reality.

How did Honerva’s psychology progress from an alternate reality version of her son won’t accept her as his long-dead mother to her having a problem with war and pain? There’s a lot of steps missing between those two mentalities.

Allura responds, “There is beauty in their flaws.” I have actively tried to avoid comparing this show to other stories, but I can’t talk about this line without doing so. This line instantly made me think of a far better-written conversation between a protagonist and the antagonist in a specific Marvel film. That Marvel scene felt poignant, but Allura saying it here does not. For this to have emotional weight coming from Allura, her struggling with her personal flaws would have had to be a much larger, prominent part of her character arc. I want to say that this statement would be better coming from Lance, but then the show gave up on doing anything with Lance and his feeling deeply insecure.

Allura goes on about the war killing her family and her whole planet but that she now has a new family. I wish it felt like they were a family. She also says she’s gained “a purpose stronger than any I could have imagined.” What purpose is that? Beyond stop-the-Galra, which turned into stop-Honerva, what has Allura expressed as feeling like her purpose is? Allura and whatever goals she might have or could have had haven’t been the driving force behind this story for a long time. Narratively, Allura’s purpose has been to wait around until the show got this last episode so that she can die and magically reboot all realities.

Pidge says, “Humans began very flawed. There were wars, hate, but with each mistake they learned and grew.” Is Pidge saying that humans in this story have ceased being “very flawed?”

Shiro picks up from Pidge, saying, “And now we reach out to other worlds, to pass on those same lessons and spread them across the entire universe, like your people once did.” I don’t like this idea that seems built into this dialog that humanity has moved beyond being flawed and that humanity can now function as some kind of lord handing out enlightenment to other worlds. This is a very arrogant perspective.

Hunk continues, “And with every new world touched, the message grows.”

Keith then says, “Every world. Every reality. We wouldn’t exist without the others.” Uh, yes we would. Keith personally might not exist without another world since he’s half-human and half-Galra, but humans here on Earth exist without needing other life on some other planet elsewhere to also exist. The ideal that every person has value is great, but Keith’s statement seems like it goes too far.

Lance says, “Our differences are what make us stronger.” I can agree with that.

Honerva responds, “You think your words mean anything to me? I’ve lived multiple lifetimes, and all of them filled with pain and loss.” Since when? Honerva has lived 10,000 years, that is not the same thing as having “lived multiple lifetimes.” Where did this suddenly come from? She mentioned it last episode too. When talking to alternate-Zarkon, she said, “I’ve spent lifetimes trying to get back.” I don’t if this is just really badly written, like the writers have conflated living one life for 10,000 years with living multiple lifetimes, or is this something left over from the season being revised (not even necessarily the re-edit that some fans think happened, but just something fundamentally changing in the story in the middle of production)?

In 8x06 “Genesis” where Honerva is at the two-hand pedestal and is in the process of bringing Sincline back, we see different realities temporarily mixing with the main reality. There’s a moment where Honerva’s appearance changes several times. At first, I had thought she was shapeshifting back and forth between Honerva and Haggar, but then I wondered if we were seeing multiple different Honervas all doing the same thing the main Honerva was doing at their respective Oriandes. Thinking of that again now that Honerva has twice referenced living multiple lifetimes, I wonder if maybe that was originally what was happening in that moment in Genesis. Maybe an earlier version of this season had Honervas from different realities combining into one Honerva, and these two comments that she’s lived multiple lifetimes are artifacts in the dialog of an earlier version of the season’s story.

If there isn’t some kind of explanation involving a story revised while the season was well into production, then her making this comment about having lived “multiple lifetimes” makes no sense.

She continues, and her voice really bothers me here: “If I cannot experience the simple joys of life, why should anyone else!?” There is a flatness to the sound of her voice. The story and dialog seem to want to evoke sympathy for Honerva, but she’s not behaving like a sympathetic person. The expectation placed on the audience by the narrative and the content the narrative is providing to the audience do not match. This statement she just made is incredibly selfish. We’re supposed to feel sympathy for someone who thinks like this?

I’ve personally had more than a few problems in life, but I don’t resent other people for having better lives than I have. I want people to have better lives than I have specifically because of how much pain I’ve felt in my life.

This show wants us to feel sympathy for Honerva right now, but the method they’ve used to try to evoke that sympathy – having her say, “If I cannot experience the simple joys of life, why should anyone else!?” – demonstrates that Honerva herself is not capable of feeling sympathy for others.

And is this perspective Honerva’s speaking from right now supposed to be her still behaving under the influence of quintessence poisoning? Is she still being influenced by the rift entity? Or is this the real Honerva? It feels like the real Honerva to me. This selfishness she’s speaking with here feels exactly like how Honerva pre-quintessence poisoning in 3x07 “The Legend Begins” felt to me. This is why it’s absurd that the show absolves her abuse, torture, and genocide by layering the quintessence poisoning and rift entity possession excuses on top of her character. This is what’s underneath all those excuses: Honerva is not a good person. Her abusive, torturing, genocidal behavior comes, not from her having been poisoned, not from having been possessed, but from her own inability to feel sympathy for others.

Allura touches Honerva’s head similarly to how she touched Zarkon’s head in 8x10 “Knights of Light Part 2.” With Zarkon, she was angry and showed him all the horrible things he did in his life since he couldn’t remember them. Now, Allura is calm and makes Honerva see her happy memories.

Allura says, “There was a time when you loved more than just your family.” This show has not shown Honerva having ever loved her family, nor has it shown her having ever loved anything. Having a couple of still images here or in “Knights of Light Part 2” does not actually show us Honerva having once been a happy, normal person. These still images that are shown now as Allura’s speaking are a total retcon of Honerva’s character. Throwing this content, these images, these claims in now right at the end of the show is contrary to how this character has been portrayed for eight seasons. This just feels like the show lying to me.

Allura continues, “A time when your fascination with how vast the universe is gave way to your desire to help and uplift others.” Honerva has never once in this show been shown to have acted in any way that uplifted anyone else. It is so offensive to me that this episode literally just showed Honerva being incredibly selfish at the core of her being, and now the show is telling me that she used to be a person who “help[ed] and uplift[ed] others.” This claim that she used to be a good person is not supported by literally any of the content of her in this show. Allura just saying it, having a couple of still images right now, is not this show having established Honerva to have once been a good person. Again, I feel like this show is lying to me right now.

A video-memory of Allura and Lotor together appears in the mist of the two of them in the pyramid on Oriande in 5x06 “White Lion.” Honerva says, “You tried to help him.” I guess she did until she turned against him because someone told her that he had been drawing quintessence from Alteans. Even after Allura threw Lotor across the room in rejection of him, before Voltron and Lotor started fighting in 6x07 “Defender of All Universes,” Lotor still tried to get Allura to not reject him. But she did, and they fought, and the Paladins let him die in the quintessence field.

Honerva continues, “He was happy.” Lotor did seem happy with Allura. But this show told us through the story between 6x04 “The Colony” and “Defender of All Universes” and in conversation with Axca at the end of 7x03 “The Way Forward” that all these happy moments Lotor had with Allura was just Lotor lying and manipulating her.

This is so infuriating! The show introduced Lotor as someone who was abused by his parents, who was mired in the toxicity of his culture, who was subject to ridicule for wanting to treat people better. The show then did its surprise-twist to say that Lotor had been lying the entire time and that he really was “evil” all along. That surprise-twist was a giant retcon of his character. And now, the show is re-retconning him back to having been genuinely happy when he was with Allura in season five? I mean, I would like to have most of season six not exist either, but this show made that season. And they made that season specifically to defile everything about Lotor that had come before. And now the show is doing this. When Joaquim Dos Santos and Lauren Montgomery wrote this final episode, did they think that we had forgotten what they did to Lotor in season six?

Honerva says, “He deserved better, better than I could give.” He deserved better than this show’s executive producers and writers gave him for sure. Also, I don’t care about Honerva wishing she could have been a better mother to him now. I have seen this woman literally inflict so much pain on her son that he passed out. I don’t care if she feels bad about it now. I hate that this show is presenting the supposed sadness of an abusive parent reflecting on having abused their child as if their feeling sad about having been a horrible person is important. I care about the wellbeing of the abused, not about the wellbeing of the abuser.

Allura says, “Lotor may have been misguided, but ultimately, he wanted to preserve life.” Where was this understanding from Allura about Lotor trying to preserve life when Lotor was literally telling her this to her face? She rejected his explanations for his behavior. She repeatedly said what he told her was all a lie. The show itself did everything it could to reinforce the conclusion that Lotor was “evil” and that he had been manipulating everyone the whole time.

It infuriates me.

Allura says, “Honor your son. Help me change this.” Honerva responds, “I’m sorry, but the damage is done.” Yeah, the damage that the EPs and writers of this show have done is done. JDS and LM might have written this ending to undo the destruction of all realities, but they cannot undo the damage they’ve caused as executive producers of this series.

Allura thinks for a moment and says, “I can change the quintessence within your vessel. Your son helped me learn how to transform it from a destructive force into a life-giving force.” Here at the end of this show, I still do not understand quintessence. We have been told time and again that quintessence is life energy. That it is inherently life energy. That it is energy produced by living things. That’s how the Galra, that’s how Honerva has gained quintessence, by taking it from living things. So, how is it according to Allura here that quintessence is a “destructive force” that she through Altean alchemy can turn into a “life-giving force?” It has always been a life-giving force. Why did this show have so much trouble keeping something this simple and this fundamental to the story straight? Why is this story even now fundamentally contradicting itself?

Allura says, “But I cannot do it alone,” and holds out her hand to Honerva. Honerva says, “But that would require—” and her voice falls away, and Allura says, “I know the risks.” How/why does Honerva seemingly jump to the conclusion that what Allura is talking about will result in their both dying? Characters throughout this series have jumped to a lot of conclusions, but why does Honerva jump to this conclusion?

Also, if Allura’s plan of action is to generate a lot of “life-giving force” what about this requires her to die? The logic of this resolution makes literally zero sense. Allura’s not about to die because that’s the inevitable outcome of this story. She’s about to die because Joaquim Dos Santos and Lauren Montgomery wanted to kill her. It is that simple. JDS and LM wanted to kill Allura, and they made it happen even though there is literally no reason in this story for it to happen.

I know JDS and LM have said that this is a story about sacrifice, but if it is, this seems like it comes out of a perspective of people who have never had to sacrifice anything.

And let me talk about how offensive it is for this show to do this. Allura is a female character of color in an action-adventure animated kids show. This does not happen often, if at all. So, it was amazing to have a female character of color in this show. It made the show seem, for a while at least, like the people working on this show cared about inclusiveness and diversity. They’ve showed us before that they really didn’t with how they treated Shiro’s character. And now, they’re showing again that they didn’t with how they’re killing Allura.

Allura is a female character of color. She’s a character who can use magic. And here, the story kills her to magically solve everyone’s problems. In this series, Allura had been a princess, a genocide survivor, a leader, and a friend. But here, in the end, the show reduces her into nothing more than a magical negress stereotype. If you think that the magical negro/negress stereotype is not a thing, then do some research. There is a long, long history of this stereotype used in black characters in stories. It is a deeply racist stereotype. Often when a character of color is used as a magical negro/negress, the writer thinks that they’re actually doing a good thing by writing them positively: Look at how awesome the character is, they have magical powers! But they’re written to have those magical powers to solve other characters’ problems, so that makes the magical negro/negress character subordinate to the other characters. Voltron Legendary Defender takes its one main character who is a female character of color and kills her to magically fix everything.

Part of me wants to characterize the blame for this as the result of VLD having been written primarily by a bunch of white men. But I feel like that’s just giving them an excuse. I am a white man, but I have at least a bit of understanding about why the show killing Allura to magically solve everyone’s problem is offensive.  

Given how this show handled Shiro being Asian and gay and having a disability, given how this show had Lance’s being Cuban pretty much in name-only, given how Hunk’s ethnicity is never really defined at all in the show, given how the show had Zarkon speaking with praise about Keith in saying Keith’s leadership comes from Keith being half-Galra, I just don’t think most of the people who were in control of this show’s story, especially Joaquim Dos Santos and Lauren Montgomery, bothered to educate themselves about different constituencies of diversity. I think they were/are oblivious to how hurtful so much of what they wrote into this story has been.

JDS and LM wanted a story with a theme about sacrifice, they’ve said. They seem to think that that means characters must die. I think that they thought they were making it better when, in one of the interviews earlier this year, said that they considered killing all the main characters here at the end of the show. That just sort of emphasizes that they specifically chose Allura to kill to magically fix everything for everyone else in the story.

I don’t think the solution was to kill any of the main characters. Allure here told Honerva that she’s going to use energy that’s in Honerva’s mecha to do this. The show could totally have had Allura have to use, and thus sacrifice, the Lions of Voltron to make this reboot happen. The EPs chose to kill Allura.

Honerva takes Allura’s hand and stands up, and Allura then turns to the others and says, “I’m afraid this is where we part ways.” She tells the others that this “is [her] purpose.” Ugh!

Hunk tells her, “There is no Voltron without you,” and she replies, “Voltron isn’t needed anymore.” How is that accurate? The universe is now going to be an unrealistic peaceful utopia for everyone now?

Allura says, “The rest of the work is up to the people, and they’ll have you to guide them Hunk,” and she hugs him as he cries.

She hugs Pidge and says, “Remain curious and fearless.”

As much as I have a lot of criticism for what’s happening, I do still feel the emotion of it. And Shiro talking to Allura breaks me. I’m actually crying now:

Shiro says, “Most of them won’t know the sacrifice you made so they could live.” Allura says, “And they’ll never need to. Your selflessness taught me that.” They hug. Allura says, “Thank you.” Shiro says, “You never have to thank me for anything.”

Allura moves down the line, “Keith, I cannot thank you enough for all you’ve given me.” Keith says, “Allura, when you accepted me, it helped me to accept myself. Thank you.” Allura hugs him and says, “There is greatness in your heart and in your actions.”

Then she comes to Lance. He says, “No, Allura, there has to be another way.” She says, “There is no other way. This is all we have.” He says, “You’re too important to the cause. You’re too important to me.” She says, “I’ll always be with you Lance. And I’ll always love you.” She kisses him and Altean facial markings appear on his face.

What in the world does Lance getting Altean facial markings mean? There is never an explanation for them.

The light in this long scene has been white, but now it turns yellow. The light in the distance beams like a sun. Allura and Honerva look toward it. In the light stand Alfor, Lotor, Zarkon, Blaytz, Gyrgan, and Trigel. Allura and Honerva walk into the light.

Allura turns back to look at the Paladins one last time before heading on into the light.

(I hate that a story as hurtful and offensive as this is still making me cry.)

The light fades and Voltron and Honerva’s mecha remain. Light shrinks down into a point until everything goes dark then light explodes outward. The strands of existences spring back into existence.

The Lions and the Atlas are separated. Keith quietly asks, “Is this?” and Pidge confirms, “Yeah, it’s our reality.” The cockpit of the Blue Lion is empty.

Hunk sees a planet, “I don’t remember that planet being there before.” Lance looks up, “It’s Altea.”

Cut to “One Year Later…”

(This commentary continues in part 2.) 

[tessatechaitea]

Scarab #4

Is this child porn? I hope this isn't child porn. I bet it's not child porn because this is a fetus.

Apparently this is why Marty was so bloody. He beat an old woman to death. Or to miscarriage.

Marty claims the old woman wouldn't stop screaming so he had to beat her. But why wouldn't she stop screaming? Was Marty raping her? Probably. As I mentioned before, Marty believes the women of this town deserve physical violence. Although he ended last issue screaming, "Look what it did to me," which doesn't make any sense in this context. Maybe he just means Pan drove him crazy by not allowing him to kill himself? So this violence is Pan's fault and not part of Marty's toxic masculinity? Marty goes on to explain the entire story to Scarab so that the reader isn't confused anymore. All the men in town were castrated by Pan who then pissed in their mouths. And afterward, either due to visions of heavenly glory or the ripest of all embarrassments, they marched into the sea and killed themselves. Except Marty had a broken leg so he didn't get to experience the beauty and wonder of castration followed by ritual suicide. But earlier this evening, he glimpsed Pan and came in his pants. I think the "Look what it did to me" while opening his pants before Scarab was to demonstrate he'd lost his balls. Then he beat the old woman to death because she couldn't stop screaming after seeing his mutilated manhood. So now Scarab feels like he needs to put things to right although it seems like the women of Whitehaven are happy with how things are going. And the men are dead so what do they care if somebody destroys Pan? I guess this is why I'm not a superhero because my first reaction to seeing dozens of naked women engaged in a passionate orgy is to think, "Things look good here! I guess I'll be off! After staring an inordinately long time. You know, to just top off the wank bank."

Meanwhile, this pornographer happens upon the scene and decides to join in. Little does he realize, it's Pan's fetuses who are in control. He's fucking the fetuses!

Scarab seeps into the ground to confront Pan and to nobody's surprise, Pan threatens to fuck his arse off when they finally meet. This is another reason why I'm not a superhero or Jesus Christ. Because I can't resist temptation. If I were Jesus Christ, Kazantzakis's The Last Temptation of Christ could probably still have been called that. But, just to clarify, it would also have been The First Temptation of Christ. Satan would have been, "Look. Knock this shit off for a handful of Fizz candy and a Snickers bar?" And I would have been all, "Ooh! Fizz!" Scarab punches Pan and Pan responds by saying, "Hey man! Why so violent?! Sheesh. Let's be civil. Come inside my lair and let's talk. Watch out for the puddles of semen. Don't touch those socks. I apologize for the stench."

Pan reveals his real name and exposes himself for the vanilla sex monster he really is.

Why would Pan joyfully claim he's the missionary position?! At least be "The Beast Whose Penis Looks Like a Backwards Woman So I Can Stare Straight Up Her Butthole as We Fuck!" It turns out Pan is dying. Probably because he only fucks in one the worst position. Scarab can't convince Pan not to die so Pan dies. Some hero. After Pan dies, the women of the town begin realizing they don't want to be pregnant with a smell goat god's disgusting progeny so they begin to perform abortions on themselves or scream until they miscarry or simply go insane. Pan told Scarab that Eleanor will be taking care of his children. I don't know if he meant because they're all going to be killed now or because they'll be born into the Net or any number of other stupid reasons I can come up with through my terrible ability to speculate. The pornographer turns out to be Sidney Sometimes, the Fortean publisher, who I completely forgot about because I read that section of this comic book yesterday. Maybe he'll become the Scarab's lead on weird things to investigate. The issue ends with one more revelation: the "it" in Marty's "Look what it did to me" was indeed impregnation. I'm not going to rule out the castration as well but that wasn't ever explicit. So Marty wanders off to ignore what's going to happen when he gives birth because it certainly won't be a lot of fun finding out. Scarab #4 Rating: C. I think Pan fucked up this entire town just to get a few more months of life. I can respect that. People act horrified at the thought of bathing in baby's blood to stay eternally young but, I mean, seriously, if that were an actual option, we'd find out a whole lot of people were way less concerned about the welfare of infants.

[rangerlake]

There is something about a battle, the Big Fight, that seems like it comes with subtle but distinct fan fare. That build up that guides you towards the inevitable outcome of the fight, you can see the course charted in front of you the entire way.  There is time to prepare, rest up, anticipate, think.  You know, round up all the supplies you need.  Have a protein shake. Basic stuff like that.

Welp, that’s all a bunch of crap, Lake thought as she looked through the binoculars at the fire.

“How long have you had eyes on this?”

“Since 14:00.”

Wild fires had been popping up across the region, but they were easily linked to lightning strikes.  But not this one. This one had started during a nice spot of weather, dead smack in the middle of valley, with nothing but trees up hill, and good breeze to move things along.  And the along was straight towards No Moon.  This wasn’t natural.  But with all the other fires in the region, it was low priority. It’d gotten a name and there was tracking set up, but nothing more.  And now, staring through the binoculars, Lake was glad for that.  She wasn’t sure what she was looking at, but deep down in her gut, she knew it wasn’t supposed to be here.

“I need you and any of your associates to move south of this spot.”  She looked over at him, “I really recommend not being anywhere close by.”

“What if you need help?”

“Use something with good range and a good scope?”

She sent off a note through fae channels to let the right people know what was happening. Or at least what seemed to be happening.  Made a few requests as well.  The courier was reliable, if not exactly traditional.  She watched them go, a small tinge of jealousy that they was leaving the situation behind. This wasn’t where she wanted to be.  All that crap people say, that they go nobly into combat, buoyed by the sense of honor of responsibility?  Fucking morons who couldn’t properly assess the hazard staring them down.

Ripping the faded striped Pendleton blanket from the floor of her old Land Cruiser, Lake assessed her options. It was the best she had, guns, swords, enchanted weapons for spell casting.  All here due to watching too many disaster movies full of people who weren’t prepared.  A pang of understanding and empathy for those characters sang through her core of her being, some things were just too big and too impossible to be ready for. The grip of her collapsable baton, so familiar, worn to the shape of her fingers, felt ridiculously inappropriate for the situation.  She slipped both of them into their places, the weight familiar on her lower back.

Death held no fear for her, there was no unknown in that path.  The fear that feed her mood was the consequence of her failure.  There was no one else around to deal with this.  Lake looked back towards the rising smoke. Probably for the best she didn’t fear Death, she’d be in that place soon.  

Now she stood in the field, not far from the fire.  She watched the stream of animals and wild fae fleeing the approaching the storm.  To the east sat the wild dense that many of the wild fae lived in, present in the world, but never in the path of man.  She watched as many of the creatures she’d come to know helped drive animals away from the land in front of her.

“Wizard?”

“Yes?”

“There are humans in the path, newly arrived.  They wear a uniform the color of the sun and the grass.”

Well, shit, they’d sent out a fire crew.  Lake looked over at the stocky being next to her.  “They must be moved before I can do my work.  Will you remove them, preserving their life and health?”  She’d learned to add things like that, sometimes the fae folk weren’t too considerate of things like life and limb.  Or keeping the limbs together and attached to the original owner.

“Yes, Wizard.  But it isn’t wise to wait, the Outsider is approaching.”  

Trusting them to their word, Lake began to reach out.  She felt her power flow through her body, pouring out of her into the world.  Some of the bands of energy thrummed as they made their way into the ground.  Very little was wasted into the air.  What she needed to do required as much efficiency as possible.  Then she began to push her energy out with purpose.  The ground began to move, slowly churning.  The bands of moving earth stretched out almost a 500 meters in front of her.  But it wasn’t enough.  There wasn’t enough turn over.  

‘Death holds no fear from me’ she whispered.  And she truly believed it.  Besides, no fight was ever made easier by being mopey about it.

Lake  pushed down with her magic, touching her power to the ley lines that crossed below her feet.  It was like trying to take a drink of water from a fire hose.  For a moment, she thought she wasn’t able to handle it. Her mind held to the razor sharp intention she kept in her mind.  All of her muscles tightened, bracing against the energy.  With great concentration, she brought herself up to full height, facing the fire that worked its way towards her.  Fingers uncurled from palms, and the earth exploded into a churning mass, the fire being pulled under the earth, extinguished with force.  The range of the roiling earth shot out far beyond its original boundary.  Trees and rocks jumped, swayed, and were pulled under then ejected into the air as the earth turned.  The red glow was soon replaced with a haze of smoke and dirt.  

The earth fell into a familiar rhythm, the roils of dirt moving in coordination with Lake’s heartbeat, interrupted only by the occasion stray beat from one of the car sized dirt chunks breaking up in mid tumble.  The weather created by the fire raged around her, angry and confused that its energy was being consumed by the earth.  Slowly the wind changed, falling docile to the efforts, then fading away entirely.

The sound of screaming was registered by her brain, but she didn’t realize it was coming from her.  The blood coming from her ears distorted the sound.  Her body felt like one massive ache, like everything was extended just a bit too far. It was time to pull out of the ley line current.  But gods above, it was so hard.  With a tearing feeling that felt like her ribs were being torn from her spine, Lake pulled herself out.  

The sense of emptiness felt like breathing a cold desert into her lungs then not being able to exhale it.  Gasping did no good, there was no satisfaction in breathing.  Disorientation so intense that she didn’t even know where she was, laying awkwardly on the disturbed dirt. The first thing she could recall consciously doing was crying.  A good cry could bring all sorts of clarity to even the worst situation.  That doesn’t sound right, part of her brain argued, but, having just used up its small portion of energy, quickly fell quiet. And though the tears, blood, and snot, Lake finally got a good look at the flaming thing that emerged from the destruction she’d wrought on the land and on its fire.

It looked pissed.

Maybe.

It was hard to tell when it looked like a strange combination of a deer and a mass of worms writhing and swirling in and out of a giant orb.  The Outsider wasn’t as symmetrical as it should be.  It was missing pieces, chunks of its body.  The ooze must be blood.  The creature was injured.  That thought rallied Lake.  Magic might be spent, but she was not yet done.  This was what she trained for, what the misery she experienced amongst the dead for so long was meant to teach her, resiliency in the face of exhaustion and bleak odds.  Even when it looks lost, you keep fighting.  The thing opened its mouth and let a scream loose.  That was not where Lake would have guessed a mouth went.

You always get back up until it’s no longer possible.

Pushing herself off the ground, Lake turned to face the creature.  Her swords rested comfortably in her hands.  A moment was spared for her teacher, Darius. They’d argued over her weapons, Lake always wanting some type of shield.  “When the time comes, you’ll be glad you aren’t wasting a perfectly good hand on a shield.  You will every weapon you can hold. And you will need them.”  At the time she’d thought it was just commentary on her fighting skills.  Instead it was just the truth of war.  You win or you die. Hiding behind cover just prolongs the path towards those two options.  

Raising each sword up, she tapped each hilt to her forehead, kissed the bracelet on her right wrist, thought of all the people she loved, and offered a prayer up to the universe. Come what may, she would fight.  

….

Through the haze of dirt and smoke, Lake could see the stars.  They twinkled and blinked just like they always did.  She could see a lot of them.  The moon must be close to new, she figured.  A breeze blew strands of hair across her face, making it harder to see the stars.  That sucked, it’d been a nice view.  Everything smelled like copper.  Or it tasted like it.  Maybe both?   Didn’t really matter, though.  The rhythmic sound of her heart kept her company, loud in the absence of any other sound.  She’s never heard the wilderness so quiet.  Not even the bugs.  This was better than last time, no pain, no frustration, no sense of loss.  Just complete exhaustion.  This was what it was like to truly have nothing left.

She’d been victorious.

The Rocky Mountain region had held.

Unfortunately, victory in true battle never seemed to feel very good.  This was no exception.

She heard foot steps, felt the touch of gentle hands, the embrace of someone picking up her nonresistant body.  A firm grip against her back, the warmth of a body, her head in the crook of a neck. The faintest smile touched her lips.  Just like last time.  There was peace in consistency.

[all-hail-the-witcher]

questionable government spies: chapter 5

AH YES FINALLLLLLLY like im actually so excited this is the last chapter before we get to the good stuff eeeee

as always previous parts can be found under spy boys

__________

ship: eventual space, platonic ralbert, platonic jackcrutchie

warnings: uh, I think not, Albert is tired and jacks an idiot

word count: 2066

editing: uhhh actually yes

__________

Two nights after he had moved in with Crutchie, jack was awoken sometime in the early hours of the morning by an ear piercing scream.

He bolted upright and was out of bed in a second, only pausing to grab one of his sneakers off the floor. Suddenly, he was thankful for the strange training drills Race and Albert had put him through, specifically the one they had called What To Do If Someone Breaks Into Your House With A Gun And You Only Have A Rubber Band. They had claimed that it was based off of real events, but jack suspected they just wanted him to do stupid things and make him look like a fool for future blackmail. But then again, it was Race and Albert, you could never be too sure with them.

Jack ran down the hall and slid into the kitchen in his Cookie Monster socks, wielding his shoe above his head ready to take on whatever intruder had dared enter their apartment. But all he saw when he entered the kitchen was Crutchie staring transfixed at his laptop, grinning like a maniac.

“Jack! Oh my god I did it!” Crutchie squealed in delight. “I cra- wait a second.” He looked up, taking in his friends lackluster fight stance and his lame weapon. “What are you doing?”

Jack sheepishly lowered his shoe. “You screamed. I thought there was an intruder.”

Crutchie stared at Jack for a solid 5 seconds before he burst out laughing. “You thought - so you - a shoe?” He couldn’t seem to get the words out.

“Shoes, I’ll have you know, are very useful weapons,” jack said proudly. “Albert knows 15 different ways to kill someone with a sneaker.” He bragged about it all the time. It was the reason why he only owned sneakers.

Crutchie finally regained his composure. “And has he taught you any of those ways?”

“Well….no.” Jack stared at his feet.

“Then why the heck would you come out here with a shoe to face an intruder?”

Crutchie did have a point. “I’m not sure…?”

“Don’t those guys teach you anything?” Crutchie continued clacking away at the keys on his computer.

“Race taught me how to get out of bed in less than 3 seconds, how to properly stash weapons in a ball gown, and fall off a roof without dying. And Albert taught me how to store 17 knives in a leather jacket, how to safely ingest several kinds of poison and how to ignore Race’s commentary.” Jack supplied quietly as he looked at his feet.

“My point exactly.” Crutchie said.

Jack dropped his shoe on the ground dejectedly. “So, why were you screaming if there isn’t an intruder?”

“Oh, right!” Crutchie perked up, turning his computer around to face jack. He could get distracted very easily. “I cracked the code!” A smile spread across his face.

“Really?!” Jack felt his own face explode into a grin. “That’s fantastic, crutch! What does it say?”

“Well it's a little confusing,” Crutchie began. “But I think it could be a real breakthrough in the case.”

“Read it to me.” For the past two days Jack, along with Race and Albert had been looking for leads on the case with no luck whatsoever. If this note gave them something to go off of then they could finally get started.

“Okay here’s what it says,” Crutchie began to read off of his laptop. “My best friend is in Ymony and he wants out. Leaving punishable by death or imprisonment. Name is conlon. Will give you information and help you bring them down in exchange for freedom. Please help.”

Jack was silent for a minute. This was exactly what they needed. “I’m going to call Race and Albert, this is huge.”

•••

It was 2:12 am when race stormed into Crutchie and Jacks apartment, dragging a half asleep Albert behind him. “Jack Francis Kelly this better be good.”

Luckily, Crutchie spoke up almost immediately. “I cracked the code!”

Albert took his head off of Race’s shoulder and opened his eyes. “Do we have a name?”

“A last name, we think,” jack supplied.

“Make me some coffee,” race announced, cracking his knuckles and looking already more awake than he had 2 minutes ago. “We’re not leaving until we find this sucker.”

•••

Turned out, Race was very serious when he said they weren’t leaving until they found the suspect. It was now close to 4 and race was on his 4th cup of coffee as he sat on the couch, clacking away at his laptop, searching through tax records from the previous year. At the counter, Crutchie was sifting through police records and Jack was hunting through social security numbers and birth certificates.

“Are we done yet, race?” Albert mumbled. His eyes were closed and he had his head on race’s shoulder, but jack knew he wasn’t asleep because he chimed in with information every few minutes.

“Not yet.” Race responded, pausing to flick his blonde hair out of his eyes and take a sip of coffee. “You can go to sleep, you know. I know you’re tired.”

“Can’t.” Albert cracked open an eye to peer at Races computer screen. “You looked at this page already.”

“Ugh, you’re right,” race groaned, clicking onto the next page. “How did you even know that?”

“M smart,” Albert yawned, closing his eyes again.

“Yeah yeah, you keep telling yourself that,” race paused to copy down a name that he would research later, “if you were really smart, you’d be helping me instead of sleeping.”

“Nah,” Albert muttered. “You’re smarter, that’s why I’m letting you do it.”

Race snorted. “Why thank you, Albert. You’re very endearing when you’re half asleep,” he said sarcastically, not taking his eyes off the screen.

Jack paused his work to watch the two of them banter. He’d missed having Albert around the last week. He’d actually missed him way more than he would like to admit. The last year he’d spent with race and Albert had been the best year of his life. The two of them had welcomed him into their little family with open arms. They had done pretty much the same thing he had done: ran away from home and joined the FBI at a young age. Well, at least race had, he knew Albert still had some family that he kept in contact with. Jack had no one. For the longest time it had been him and Crutchie and whatever foster home they’d been placed in (the two of them had met on the street when they were 5 and pretended to be siblings so they wouldn’t be separated). With race and Albert, jack felt like for the first time he had a stable place to go home to. They were like the older brothers he had never had, constantly looking out for him and taking care of him and teaching him little tricks here and there. The first night he had spent back with Crutchie at his apartment had actually been strange, jack was not used to living anywhere without either race or Albert.

When race had gotten the call last week that Albert was dead, he took the call quietly. Jack could still remember exactly what they had been doing. They had gotten home from the mission two hours before, and dumped their gear on the entryway floor to be cleaned later. Albert hadn’t been with them, but that wasn’t out of the ordinary, he’d usually join them a few hours later. Jack had just showered and was sitting in the couch watching an episode of Psych and race was in the kitchen, hair still damp, wearing an oversized blue sweatshirt making pasta. The phone had rang. Not Races cell phone, the apartment one that was reserved for important calls from the FBI. Jack had paused the tv as race answered. Race had answered the call with a quiet hello and the call had consisted mainly of many yes sirs and no sirs. Jack had sat silently on the couch for what felt like an eternity while Race has been on the phone, a pit growing in his stomach. Finally, race had come over and sat down next to him, quietly telling him that Albert wouldn’t be coming back from the mission.

Jack hadn’t known what to feel, he’d never lost anyone that close to him before that he had been old enough to remember. He had stared at Race in silence for several seconds before tears began to flow. Race had enveloped him in a tight hug and they cried silently together. That night, jack had been unable to sleep and ended up in race’s bed with him, hiccuping softly as the older boy helped try to coax him to rest. The next few days jack had snuck out and lived in his van - he couldn’t stand to be in the apartment or see race without Albert - and didn’t return until the day of the funeral.

But now, Albert was here, and he was alive and in one piece and all of the previous weeks events felt like a bad dream. He was a little nervous at how out of it Albert still seemed - usually he’d be up along with race pulling an all nighter to figure out leads and research suspects instead of almost being asleep - but when he’d asked Race about it, he brushed off his concerns saying Albert just needed time to rest and recuperate after his stunt. In the meantime, jack was just happy to have his brother back.

“Wait,” he was pulled out of his thoughts by Races voice. “I think I found him.”

“Name?” Crutchie called from the counter.

“Sean Patrick Conlon. 24. Lives in Brooklyn.”

Crutchie typed a string of letters into his computer. “Currently lives with Elmer Kasprzak, part time EMT, and co owner of a tattoo shop.” He scrolled and typed a little more. “Parents are dead. Has a sister.” Scrolled some more. “Oh, here we go, only criminal record is getting caught pickpocketing three years ago on the subway. But-” he typed in another string of code. “That file was edited two years ago.”

“Sounds like our guy,” Albert said, still leaning against race. “Does he have an address? Phone number?”

Jack typed for a minute. “Yes, but didn’t the note say “my best friend”? Like it wasn’t written by Sean?” Race and Crutchie nodded and Albert let out a soft snore before jolting awake suddenly and gripping Races hand. “Well, I found an Instagram account for Elmer who posted a picture of him and Sean - except he calls him spot - and the caption refers to him as his “best friend,” maybe we should try him first?”

“And Crutchie said Elmer lives with him, it has to be him who delivered the note. Great idea, Jackie” race nodded in approval, shutting his laptop. “Find Elmer’s number and give him a call right now.” He placed the laptop on the floor and pulled Albert into his lap, calmly running his fingers up and down his back, trying to coax him to sleep.

“Found it,” Crutchie called a minute later. He pulled out the standard issue FBI house phone that was non traceable. “What should I tell him?”

“Tell him that well meet Sean tomorrow at that coffee shop on 8th Avenue up by Central Park, say 3pm. Tell him to come alone and not to bring weapons,” Albert mumbled into Races shoulder, clearly avoiding all of his friends attempts to make him sleep.

Crutchie dialed and relayed the information when someone, Elmer, he supposed, picked up. After a few minutes of chatter he hung up. “Done.”

“Perfect.” Race let go of Albert long enough to stash his laptop back into his bag and shouldered it before standing up, Albert in tow. “If you’ll excuse us, I need to get Albie back home, he needs to sleep. Jack-” he said, and jack looked up. “Meet us at our place tomorrow at 1 so we can go over the plan, and don’t be late.”

Jack nodded and watched race and Albert go, door closing softly behind them.

“I can see why you’ve become so attached to them,” Crutchie said, putting away his computer. “They seem nice and caring, and they’ve adopted you into their family.”

Jack smiled. “Yeah,” he whispered. “Yeah they have.”

__________

ooooooo we got a little look at jack isn't he the cutest thing and crutchie well, he isn't in it much but I love him too

and look at that cute platonic ralbert race is such a caring boi awwww

the next chapter is my favorite hehehe

feedback is always appreciated hmu to be on the tag list

tag list

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@well-the-kids-do-too

@racetrackcook

@bouncyscreamingnewsboys

@ughwaitwhat

@aw-jus-let-em-try

@ben-cook-can-cook

@the-woild-is-my-what-now

@elmer-s-s0cks

@voice-foundshoe-lost

@galaxy-trees13

@stopthe-presses

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[xroxasx]

2017: Why I Stopped Making Resolutions Years Ago

I listen to Spotify a lot. I had listened to 120,757 minutes of music. Some of my top songs were varied. Attention by Charlie Puth, Feelings by Hayley Kiyoko, and I Don’t Know Why by Imagine Dragons, to name a few. I was dropped by exactly 2 friends this year. So obviously I still love them. Just not in the same way. Because what I got was rejected. Same people. Can someone explain the difference between romance and friendship for me because I don’t get it. GPA dropped me too, for a time. Near misses that hit me over the head like a boomerang, my professors asked me “is there something going on in your life right now?” I smiled and told them yes. Silence. Where will I live. Where do I get a job. Insurance. License. I’m scared. Who’s gonna hate me in the next sixth months. I’m getting bad again, I didn’t tell them. Nothing can ever be worse than three years ago, right? The demons I thought were a thing of the past resurfaced and stared me down right in front of me, right in front of everyone, and I couldn’t look away. The only difference is that this time, everyone else saw me having a staring contest with them. They saw my legs shaking, heard my voice falter, watched me scream and cry when I told them to go away and when they just made clones of themselves and I didn’t have any weapons, that was it. They couldn’t do anything. Just my audience. It’s funny, because I managed to get all of my friends to hate me at the exact same time. They weren’t enjoying the show anymore. Quite tired of it actually. Can you blame them? Too abrasive, too passive, too quiet, too loud, too uncaring, too clingy, too much. Not enough. Simultaneously, never one without the other, in succession, never the same person, never ignored, sometimes quelled. Oh by the way Satan is your new world leader. Shut up. Just shut the fuck up. I need you to speak more. But it repeats and repeats. I’m a magical girl now, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I have power now. I can’t become God. It doesn’t matter. I can’t save everyone. I can’t save me. Then it goes quiet. That’s usually when I hear Follow You by Bring Me The Horizon. Terrible song. Terrible message. Absolutely toxic. I’ve never thought any of these things. Some of my friends don’t think it’s about a very healthy relationship. I stopped for a second because that’s never, ever how I interpreted it. But it made a lot of sense. The commentary for the song called it “a beautiful realization that can only come out of something really ugly”. Me too. You can drag me through hell and throw me to the flames, sure. I’ll follow you. If it meant I could hold your hand? Damn right I’d do it. But only because I want to. I’m not under your spell, and I’m not going to die with you. But I’m in that dark place with you. I could leave. I’ve learned how to leave. When you hold up a candle in hell because there’s no light, and the water is directly beneath your feet, you’ll feel the ice cracking slowly. There’s no crying out for help. Welcome To Hell. But the ice is cracking under my feet too. Your shaky breath is mixing with my even one. Because I’m always here, and I’m glad to have some company. The ice has cracked for me already. Hundreds of times. Thousands. Often daily. You don’t always drown. But please don’t stay. Or one day you will. We’re standing here in front of each other. I’ll grab your hand right before you fall, and maybe we’re gonna go down together, but like Hell I’m gonna let us go down without a fight. Follow You by Bring Me The Horizon, my number one most listened to song of 2017. The best and worst of me. 

I’ve always hoped for the next year to be better. It never is. Ever. And maybe it never will. Every year I’m right back where I started by the end of it. Beaten to a pulp. Suicidal to say the least. No hospital in sight. And every year I get back up, pull my bloody body off the floor, wipe away the tear stains and do it all over again. And that’s how I know I’m wrong. 

[majingojira]

120 Years, 120 Monsters, Days 27, 28, and 29

This one is going to be a doozy! 

101) The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002) - Orcs/Uruk-Hai

One of J.R.R. Tolkien's original creations for his Mythopoeia were the Orcs, and their spawn the Uruk-Hai.  They’re the template example of the ‘evil minion’ that can be slaughtered in droves yet still poses a danger if only from their numbers.  

Crude, vile, filthy, disgusting, rough, and cannibalistic, the Orcs were made to be as repulsive as possible, and that made them memorable.

102) The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) - Nazgul/Ringwraiths

Eh, might as well complete the trilogy.  With only one monster left to claim as its own, but still so many to choose from, it was a hard choice to make.  I decided to go with the one that has their own memorable musical motif.  

The Nazgul are an inspiration for every kind of “Undead” in gaming fiction.  Men who were granted immortality thanks to their magic rings, but their bodies did not last with them.  So now they are wraiths that animate armor and clothes in order to affect the world of the living.  Capable of dark sorcery, a shriek that drives men to madness, weapons capable of making more like themselves, and being unkillable save a few specific methods.  Drawing from old folklore and myth, it became a standard for generations to come.

And with their horses gone, they upgrade their mounts to Fell Beasts for the movie -- winged horrors that allow them to take down armies almost by themselves.  Since they are the inspiration for so many RPG horrors, I think the best way to describe how terrifyingly powerful and dangerous the Ringwraiths are is with an RPG term.

“HAX!  I CALL HAX!”

103) Freddy vs. Jason (2003)     - Jason Voorhees

Jason had to be on the list, but let’s be honest with ourselves: they were pretty crap for the most part. Often incoherent, relying more on spectacle than story, they’re good schlock at best, but some are also quite painful.  And he didn’t become a true monster until later in the series.  Before that, he was a human killer, and before that the killer was his mom and the best scare of the movie came from a damn dream sequence.  

Which is probably why, in the end, I went with the one where he fights the incarnation of nightmares for the film to include him in.  This was a labor of love, and that love shows through the film.  As you might have guessed, I’m not a fan of the Friday the 13th movie series. The love this movie shows that series makes me want to give them another chance (or a chance in some cases).  

As to Jason himself, he is in pretty good form. Archetypal “Slasher” or “Relentless Undead”. Driven to kill in part for revenge, in part mad obsession against perceived impropriety, and in part because his mommy told him.  It makes him more . . . sympathetic.  He’s still a remorseless killer, and nearly unstoppable juggernaut, but he’s the lesser of two evils here.

But that bar is REALLY low.

104) Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004) - Dementors

Harry Potter had a lot of creatures in it, some from folklore, others were unique.  But only one really, truly resonated.  Those were the Dementors.  According to the writer, they were her expression of depression.  What it did to her is what the dementors do to others.  It’s quite succinct, but that’s what they are.  It’s a YA series, they can be deep, but sometimes the meaning is spelled out clearly.  

Their design, faceless, shadowy wraiths, works well to support them as incarnations of depression.  Plus the mouth the movie’s give them is just damn creepy.

105) Call of Cthulhu (2005) - Cthulhu

H.P. Lovecraft’s works have had a long and powerful influence on monsters, but his work has rarely been translated to film, and even rarer has it been done well.  One of those exceptions goes to a group of dedicated fans of Lovecraft: The H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society who made an adaptation of one of his most famous works . . . as a silent film.  They made it as though it were adapted around the time it was printed.  

This choice allows for low budget and simple effects to carry the day.  It turns R’lyeh into full expressionist germanic horror. Including some practical effects taking advantage of visual illusions (creating a concave structure that looks convex, etc).  

Lovecraft’s stories are generally about the buildup, and the film works well in that regard.  It convinces the audience of the insignificance of man in the setting, and the reach and power of the sleeping god-monster.  Once Cthulhu shows up, there’s no real dialogue for that sequence. The actions are all primal and universal, with R’lyeh as much a danger as Cthulhu himself at times.  

There is one change: Cthulhu doesn’t ignore the poor humans.  It considers them.  Little more than pests, but it still considers them.  

And he’s a GREAT stop-motion effect, and even once shown, he is kept in shadow and shown only in part, adding to the menace he emanates.

106) The Host (2006) - Gwoemul

The Host is an odd film.  One part comedy, one part tragedy, one part absurdity, one part social commentary.  In the end, it works, but it’s an odd journey to get there.  

The creature itself is a mutation, and one of the best looking mutations I’ve seen.  It’s so mutated that it’s hard to identify exactly what it is, or what it was to start with.  Most mutants in fiction are just organism A + Extra stuff.  This thing is . . . well, aside from being horrendously ugly and amphibious it’s hard to say what it is, exactly.  And that works well in its favor.

The creature also moves around and acts as though it were in constant pain, which is another nice touch.  It is still a villainous beast at the end of the day, but the constant pain it feels and its need to feed make its actions understandable.  

107) The Mist (2007) - The Leviathan

The Mist has a great, simple premise.  “A fog rolls into town and a person with blood on their shirt comes running out, screaming ‘There’s something in the mist!’”

It’s so simple, it’s brilliant.  What is in the mist?  An entire alien ecosystem, foreign enough to be hard to kill, but close enough to eat us without suffering.  Of these, one monster stands above all the others (literally).  A creature as massive as a whale that has other horrors following in its wake.  After all the monsters and killer creatures (and madness driven humans), it shows up and easily demonstrates how insignificant humans are in this strange world order that peaked into our world.  It doesn’t interact with the survivors, it just passes by as the things which they thought were the deadliest things in the mist fly around it to pick up its scraps.  No more than oxpeckers to the horror.

It says so much with so little screentime.

Also, the ending of this movie messed me up in all the best ways.  

108) Cloverfield (2008) - Clover

This was America’s giant monster answer to 9-11 as Godzilla was to Japan after Hiroshima.  It didn’t quite work out as well, but it was still a good monster and good film.

I think part of the reason why Godzilla worked, and Clover did not has to do with symbolic resonance.  He manages to capture the fear, confusion, and similar fears brought up by the incident, but doesn’t go to the same lengths and depths of understanding of the situation (because, frankly, almost no one understood them yet at the time, at least not fully, as it was the result of almost 100 years of turmoil that can date itself back to the FIRST World War).  

The creature is just as confused as everyone else in the movie, which is a stark contrast to all that possible allegorical connection.  Still, it set one thing up: Large American monsters would have a bent-legged stance from here on out.  

109) Trollhunter (2010) - Trolls

A variety of perspectives and stories is always helpful.  It’s as true in life, as it is in film.  This is partly why I tried to include a few of the foreign film monsters that I have seen (that are worth it, I’ve seen some that were derivative as hell without adding much worthwhile).  So I was quite pleased to include Trollhunter on this list.

It walks a fine line between horror and comedy, which I always appreciate. It also treats the Trolls as sources of horror as well as treating them as big, dumb, dangerous animals.  All the strangeness of them is explained decently (they’re so dumb because of what they eat for the most part -- a mix of meat and rock, they turn to “Stone” because of a runaway chain reaction of calcium buildup due to an inability to process vitamin E or some such technobabble), save one detail from the folklore.

They can still smell the blood of a Christian man.  

The Found Footage style makes sense here and works well with it, and leads to some interesting humor beyond the usual “Camera Damage’.  We get humor ranging from surprise reveals to the mundanity of what really should be an awesome sounding job (To meme: Paperwork? For my troll hunter? It’s more likely than you might expect!).  The FX are convincing but what really sells it is the title character and his interactions with the creatures.  They’re just animals, big and dumb, and he has to clean up after them.  And his job is as terrible as you might expect.  It’s one part character study, one part journey into a hidden world.  And I’m a sucker for that sort of mix.  

110) How to Train your Dragon (2010) - Dragons

The Dragon in folklore, myth, and religion is one of the most diverse creatures within those fields.  Beyond even the vampire, which at times usually means “Usually nocturnal thing that attacks people in a debilitating/draining way rather than outright killing them”.  Very few movies go into the sheer variety the dragon can encompass.  They usually focus on one individual dragon or one species of dragon.  Before this series of books was turned into a movie and TV franchise of epic proportions, the only thing that even came close to doing that was the Rankin-Bass animated feature Flight of Dragons.  Which showed two main varieties of Dragon (Eastern and Western).  

The advent of cheaper CG allowed for a whole slew of dragon shapes and sizes to be used and while they didn’t go as nuts as some of the folklore went, they made a really good effort.  And one that I think should be rewarded.  

While the ones in the film have a similar general behavior (in the way that big cats have similar behavior), the visual variety made them a treat to all see on the screen at once.

[chiisana-sukima]

The One Where I Escaped an Attempted Rape, Bought a Gun, and Managed Not to Shoot Anyone

Genre: Weird, True Life Anecdotes as Meta Commentary. Characters: Me (an incompetent victim), and Some Random Dude (an incompetent perpetrator). With side appearances by a Cop and my Roommate. Warnings: What it says on the label. Nothing too scary or at all graphic though. Summary: Also what it says on the label.

When I was in nursing school, twenty-five years or so ago, I lived in a dangerous, rundown area in Boston, and I had no car. I was walking home from the subway station one night, and a guy grabbed my breast, mugged me, and told me I needed to go down some tiny deserted street with him because he had a gun and he wanted me to “be his girlfriend”.

I had always thought, partly because of my history with sexual violence as a kid, and partly because I just don’t see myself as a physically brave person, that in a situation like that, I would be compliant in order to get out of the experience alive and with the least amount of damage possible. But it turns out what I actually did was not that at all.

I told the dude, in a voice that somehow ended up dripping with scorn (but not with a wealth of logic), that of course I wouldn’t be his girlfriend; he’d just stolen money from me.

He said he didn’t.

I said then give it back.

(He declined).

I swore at him extensively. And stalled for time, while I thought about whether I’d rather be raped or shot in the back. And then I ran into oncoming (sparse) traffic and escaped. When I got far enough down the opposite side of the street that I was pretty sure he wouldn’t be able to hit me anymore, even if shooting was still in the cards, I screamed back at him to fuck off, motherfucker, fuck you! and then I walked home.

He didn’t shoot me. Maybe he never had a gun. He never showed it to me; we were in semi-public. it was allegedly in the pocket of his baggy pants, where he kept his hand through the whole interaction. Not seeing the (alleged) actual weapon probably entered into my decision-making some, though I’m not sure how much.

When I got home, I felt elated- high on adrenaline, unharmed. He didn’t even get my wallet or my credit cards, just twenty bucks. My roommate- who later installed a steel core door and a reinforced frame for it, in place of my old bedroom door, because I was incapable of sleeping without a lock anymore and why have a lock if the cheap-ass door could just be broken in- said shouldn’t you call the cops?

The thought had not even entered my mind.

I called the police, and one of them came and took my statement. He had me come down to the station the next day and look at the mug book. I didn’t see the assailant there, but I did see a couple other guys from the awful slum of a neighborhood I lived in.

So here’s the thing. During the event itself, clearly, from my behavior, I was angry. I argued, and swore, and sounded like I thought the dude was less than a bug under my foot.

But I had no access to any of that. I felt terrified. Every time I opened my mouth, what came out was completely unplanned and I was shocked anew that I could be so stupid. I did consciously decide on running. But that was it; the only part the consciousness that narrates, that I call me, had any control over. All the rest of it came from somewhere else.

Later, I got a carry permit and a gun. I was- not surprisingly- frightened by the experience of almost being raped, and also by the presence of my neighbors in the mugbook. People got shot not infrequently where I lived. The dude across the street from me got shot and killed in a drug deal. A little schoolgirl on her bike got shot and killed in broad daylight about two blocks away. People got knifed. Houses burned down from arson. Strangers on the bus randomly told me I shouldn’t be in the area, while I was on my way to my job, to save their sorry friends’ and relatives’ asses.

The process to qualify for carrying a handgun legally in Massachusetts at the time was somewhat onerous. I had to take a class that lasted a couple of months, have a certain number of hours on a designated range, and take a practical exam given by the cops at the police range. 

I came to love shooting. It’s meditative and grounding both. I love guns. They’re gorgeous. They feel solid in your hands. The concentration required to shoot skillfully feels wonderful in that in the zone way that athletics does. Even the recoil feels good- out of your control for just a second and then back in it again, like catching air in a car.

But I never did end up carrying.

Because the better I got at shooting, the more I realized that if I’d had a gun the night I didn’t get raped, there’s very little chance I wouldn’t have killed that dude. I’m competence-driven, and he was slow and stupid (and probably high), and would have had no clue I was carrying and given me plenty of time to shoot him, and we were standing right next to each other, and I would have shot him in the center of his largest mass, because that’s how you shoot competently.

And the part of me that I call me did not want him dead. But I think probably the part where all that other stuff came from did.

There are several morals one could take from this story. “Don’t give guns to crazy people who have PTSD” is obviously one of them. “He would’ve deserved it” might be another. But those aren’t my point. My point is that *I*- the me who is what I choose- didn’t want him dead and still don’t. And given a slightly different set of circumstances, I almost certainly would have done this thing- this horrible, irrevocable, unfixable thing, that was not at all what I ever would have wanted. My lifetime weight of grief and his family’s lifetime weight of grief and his unfixable deadness would not have been any different for the fact that I have problems I can’t fix from someone else’s violence decades ago, or because, technically, it would’ve been his own fault.

Even though I don’t think of myself as particularly brave, I do think of myself as strong. I think of myself as morally strong, and emotionally strong; a person who has made hard choices and done hard things, and works hard to be a net good in the world. But people aren’t strong every minute or in every way. It’s impossible. We all have weak points where, given the right set of circumstances, we’ll make really, really, really shitty choices. That’s just how it is.

People (/characters) do terrible things, and sometimes mostly what I feel is angry. Because like everyone, some things just piss me off. But underneath the anger, there’s often not really any moral judgement. And then people rightly wonder, “but how could you think [Thing X] was the person’s action and yet still like them”? “[Thing X]- if it’s what really happened- is unforgivable”.

I don’t want to be over-dramatic about the handgun (ok maybe the evidence here suggests I kinda do, I dunno- guns are like that; they invite drama). I didn’t- thank christ- come into even the same galaxy where shooting someone lives. I *have* made bad decisions about other things, but I made the call I wanted to when I decided to keep on walking my sorry vulnerable ass outdoors, at night, in my terrible neighborhood, without protection, rather than risk shooting someone in a moment of anger and panic.

But that decision I made was the real moment of choice, and that I did live through, and it was no fucking fun. In the theoretical later moment down the other path, where I would’ve had the gun and been angry and panicked and not in control, it would’ve already been too late, like the crash after you don’t pick out a designated driver. And it wasn’t obvious at my decision point what I wanted or what I should do. I could easily have gone the other way. I did go the other way at multiple steps along in the process.

In the end, I made some choices that were probably good and some that were probably bad, and then I got lucky.

There are several answers for me to the question about calling actions bad, but then not judging the actor. One of the most central though, the most personally real, is the oldey but goody. It dates me, but: There But For Fortune Go You and I.

[justanotherwannabeclassic]

Bloom (3/?)

The story of Captain Swan’s pregnancy, told in many parts. Affectionately nicknamed “The Happiest Pregnancy Ever.”

In this chapter, Regina gives advice on how to blow off steam by blowing things up. Better than the townsfolk, right? Many, many thanks to @unfolded73 for the beta! [Ch.1][Ch.2]

You can also read on AO3!

Chapter 3: Fireball

Emma was going to kill someone, and since she was Sheriff, she could get away with it.

No one would suspect her. She was Emma Swan-Jones: Sheriff, Savior, once Slayer and now Friend of Dragons. She was also the pregnant lady, and who would suspect the pregnant lady? Anyone with a brain, that's who. Because it was her pregnancy that was driving her to consider homicide.

No, no, that wasn't quite right. Her pregnancy wasn't making her want to kill anyone, it was the way people reacted to her pregnancy that had her seeing red. People apparently went insane around pregnant women. It was as if she was giving off a magical aura that made them lose all sense of decency or respect, and that her belly was some weird homing beacon.

First of all, why did people feel the need to touch her? Emma had never been a super touchy-feely person. She was called prickly for a reason. There were a select few people she would allow into her space, and she was fine with them. But Happy wasn't one of those people. Neither was Susan who ran the gas station, and certainly not Henry's track coach. People who had never even shaken her hand suddenly decided that attempting to touch her belly would be the best greeting. She was barely even showing. Okay, that was a lie, she was clearly pregnant, but she wasn't that pregnant. And even if she was that pregnant, it still didn't give strangers permission to try and touch her stomach.  

Thankfully, one of the perks of having a husband who was once a villain was that people shied away from invading her space whenever he was around. Was it insulting that people didn't respect her pregnant self enough to leave her alone? Absolutely. But over the course of her life, Emma had learned to choose her battles, and this wasn’t one of them. If strangers avoided touching her because they were afraid Killian's hook might end up embedded in their abdomen, then so be it. She could deal with the vaguely misogynistic mindsets later.

Of course, Killian had his own issues. She loved her husband. She had zero doubt he was going to be a great father. He already was with Henry, so this kid would be no different. And, well, now that they knew it was going to be a girl, she knew he'd be even more doting. (Not that he wouldn't be with a son, he absolutely would. It's just that she could easily see their little girl having him wrapped around her finger. Dear God, she was going to have to be bad cop, wasn't she?) But there was also such a thing as too doting, which he was now.

At first, she appreciated it. She felt pampered, adored, precious -- even more so than he normally made her feel. But Emma was a woman who'd taken care of herself for over two decades. She was independent, and she prided herself on that. It was a characteristic that she wanted to instill in their daughter, only without the baggage. Naturally, that meant that sooner or later, Killian's doting would cause her to feel claustrophobic.

With Killian, she knew it came from a place of love. He wanted to do everything to ensure her and their daughter's safety. That meant fetching her food whenever she wanted, but it also meant slight critiques of what she was eating, switching her to decaf and the like.

"It can't possibly be that different."

"It is and it sucks."

He argued that she should stick to desk duty, despite the fact that she could still move around. And she didn't have to get that close to any criminals -- not that petty town criminals were that violent to begin with -- she had magic, after all. And she understood, really. Everyone he loved had died (including herself, briefly) or abandoned him, and Killian was going to do everything possible to protect his growing family. That was why she didn't complain too much, only ever putting her foot down when it came to her career.

And everything would have been fine if it had begun and ended with Killian. Only it hadn't. Everyone had an opinion on what she should drink or eat or do. At one point, Granny had refused to serve her onion rings, which made Emma's hormonal self actually cry. That had been terrible, because then the whole town was on watch around her, lest they hurt her "delicate pregnancy feelings." Grumpy had nearly manhandled her grocery bags out of her arms, arguing that she shouldn't be carrying anything too heavy -- might harm the pregnancy.

"Don't you care about your baby, sister?"

She almost, almost turned him into a tree -- a small, lame tree that would have made Charlie Brown's Christmas tree look like the most beautiful thing ever. But she didn’t, because she was a hero…and because it would give the townsfolk more ammunition for the pregnancy brain theory. Jerks.

It was awful. She never had to deal with that kind of treatment when she was pregnant in prison. (Who would have thought that prison could actually one-up Storybrooke at something?)

Currently, the whole town had her hiding in her house. She felt a little bit like a coward, but for once she wanted her and her baby to be completely off-limits. Was that so wrong?

Knock. Knock.

Apparently so.

Sighing, Emma pushed herself up from the couch and padded to the door. If it was Belle with more pregnancy books or her mother with additional designs for the nursery, she just might scream. (She loved her friends and family. She did. She just had to remind herself of that more often than not in recent weeks.)

Instead, Emma was surprised to see Regina on the other side. Though she and Regina were close, her enemy-turned-friend rarely made surprise house calls. The only reason she ever came by unannounced was if Henry forgot something at her place, but she was empty-handed.

"Hey," Emma greeted, stepping aside to allow Regina entrance. Emma quickly glanced around, checking to see if anything was too messy. She hated surprise guests. "Henry's at the movies with some friends."

Regina waved her off. "I'm not here for Henry, I'm here for you. Put some shoes on, we're going out."

Emma raised a skeptical eyebrow. "The last time we went out, my mother nearly got into a fight with Vikings and I cried into a napkin at a bar."

"You have to admit seeing Snow that drunk was worth it."

Emma thought back to her discovery that the kind mixologist Aesop was actually Gideon in disguise. Nope. Definitely not worth it.

"You know I can't drink, right?" Emma asked, pointing to her stomach. Regina rolled her eyes and gave Emma her most "do you think I am that stupid" expression. "Just checking, because most of what we do when we hang out is drink."

"Emma, we're not going drinking. We're going to have fun."

Emma narrowed her eyes suspiciously, despite beginning to search for her sneakers. God, if Regina of all people began to treat her like she was some porcelain doll, Emma might go full Dark Swan again. Once she finished tying her shoes, she stretched out her arms. "Okay, I'm ready for fun."

And then Emma was suddenly engulfed in smoke. She felt the familiar pull of magical teleportation, and braced herself. When the smoke lifted, Emma was no longer in her living room, but standing in a cleared green, circled by trees. Looking around, she noticed multiple targets scattered around.

What the hell? 

"Your idea of fun is target practice?" Emma asked, her incredulity apparent. This was not what she had been expecting. Had she been, Emma would have come more prepared. "Are we going to poof in guns, or are we going for weapons with a bit more flair?"

She had always wanted to try a bow and arrow, after all. Her mother and Robin Hood had always made it look so cool. Regina, however, had other plans. 

"Weapons? Please, Emma. You're a Sorceress. We're using magic." A fireball appeared in Regina's hand, and she smirked. She threw it and one of the targets burst into flames. "More fun, don't you think?"  

Emma watched as the flames licked the air and smoke twirled skyward. She closed her eyes and channeled her own magic, smiling when she felt it coalesce in her palm into something bright and powerful.

"Oh, hell yes."

Her own target erupted into flames. Bullseye, baby, Emma thought triumphantly. She channeled another fireball and threw it toward a different target further away. She continued like that for some time, right up until she realized that Regina wasn't joining in.

"What gives?"

"I'm not the one who needs to work out her frustrations," Regina replied. There was a that's-what-she-said joke in there somewhere, but Emma was sure Regina wouldn't accept the commentary.

"You aren't frustrated? You're mayor of this town. When Mom was mayor, she yelled at, like, everyone. Let me rephrase: being mayor almost broke Snow White." 

"And teaching a classroom of elementary school students would almost break me. We all have our strengths, Emma," Regina replied without a hint of smugness. Sometimes Emma marveled at how far they had all come. "Besides, look around. Who do you think created this place?"

Emma glanced at the targets. Much of them were aflame, but weren't burning to the ground at they should. It was as if they were magically protected.

"Impressive."

"I like to pretend the one on the far left is Grumpy," Regina commented with a smirk. She then sighed and shrugged. "I thought it would be best if I made a space where I could exercise my darker feelings without...exercising my darker feelings." 

"So instead of blowing up Granny's or Zelena, you blow up these." Emma gestured to the targets that were slowly turning back to their original state. "And you brought me here because...?"

"I thought it would be bad for town morale if you killed half the dwarf population. Not that they don't deserve it."

Emma sighed. "Am I that obvious?"

"In a word, painfully."

"Ugh."

"You're handling it better than I would be," Regina said with a rueful smile.

"Somehow, that doesn't make me feel better."

"Which is why you now have these." Regina waved over to the targets. "Now, flame on. I know you can do more." 

"Flame on?" Emma quirked a brow at the reference. 

Regina shrugged. "You don't think I bought Henry those comic books without reading them first, do you?" 

An image of Regina in full Evil Queen regalia reading an array comic books rose unbidden to her mind, and Emma had to stifle a laugh. She doubted her friend would appreciate it. Instead, Emma channeled those thoughts into another ball of energy and directed it at a nearby target. Regina was right. It really did feel better to let off steam this way.

"You do realize I'm going to come out here all of the time now, right? At least, up until the baby is born." Emma thought back to how irritable her mother became after one too many all-nighters with Neal. "Maybe after, too."

"I wouldn't expect anything less," Regina responded with a wink. "Now what do you say we have a little competition. Whoever hits the most targets in under a minute wins?"

Emma grinned. "You're on."

Emma won, and later that evening she rewarded herself with ice cream, its cone dipped in fudge and topped with sprinkles. And when Goldilocks made a passing comment about how it must be nice to have an excuse to eat whatever she wanted, Emma only smiled.

After all, she now had target practice.

[pinksweatergettingbetter]

ah i almsot forgot: warning, the following has mainly snarky opinions on Spirit of Justice. Reader discretion is advised.

and we’re back to our scheduled programming

time to be rendered unconscious against your will you lil shit

-

“i hardly think anyone could pass out from eating something like this”

clearly you dont know what world youre living in, Sadmad.

...also he... might be allergic, guys. ever thought of that? 

-

yes, EAT! EAT OR WE WILL HARASS YOU, POSSIBLY INNOCENT BYSTANDER!!! YOU THINK YOU HAVE RIGHTS???? CRAM THAT SHIT DOWN YOUR THROAT BEFORE I DO!!!!

-

...uh;

-

FIVE IS NOT AN OCCUPATION!!! EAT ANOTHER BUN AS PUNISHMENT!!!! REGRESS FURTHER!!!! HFKJGU;SUUSRSO 

coping jokes aside holy shit 

don’t hurt this tiny boy!!!

-

i hope you all feel guilty for being such pricks.

look at him. he's curled up under his jacket like a traumatized baby 

at least this personality... sort of aligns with how DID is supposed to work? But now i just feel even worse. Someone get that kid a teddy and a juice-box, stat!

-

“Its clear that none of his personalities could be the killer!”

A) one of the three could still be lying

B) there’s four so far, what’s to discount a fifth? triggered by... i dunno, a reefer brownie.

C) I'm actually glad he's not the killer anyway just wanted to point out the possibilities youre discounting there

-

i love that theyre playing the goofy X people music for a traumatized five year old who witnessed a horrific murder of a loved one.

-

“I believe the person who laid the cards out is the very person who killed the victim” WELL.... DOY.

-

“How quickly you move onto a new theory when your old theory proves false!”

WELL.......... DOY

-

I love that theyre all just yelling and screaming about murder while the tiny child cowers behind the bench

hello??? anybody with compassion anywhere? maybe in the gallery? a bailiff? anybody???

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“his emotions are spiralling out of control! something must have really frightening him”

maybe 

THE FUCKING MURDER????

athena youre a psychologist; dont you know anything about calming people down or at least putting them at ease? youre gonna put scars on this kid’s scars!

i mean at least Cody Hackins was fairly fearless and defiant about what happened to him and only really broke down once it dawned on him what he’d actually seen. Owen is clearly very, very upset.

-

i passed out *image promptly closes eyes*

-

“poor kid, he's absolutely terrified of something”

KDJFKLDGDGL

“whatever it is, it might be the root of his out of control emotions!”

DSHFA;SLGHOHSO GIRSHG’ 

-

“see, all we got out of this boy is a tale he dreamt up”

fuck off sadmad

-

(sigh) Owen’s on his side, Shisho’s laying down, just get to it already

-

“rotating your thinking about?”

“oh! you mean turning your thinking around!”

“yeah, whatever...”

(SNERK)

-

“like the forehead, perhaps”

is that... just a random location or is it actually going to come true

also, back at the office, Apollo winces and he can’t figure out why

-

oh yeah its definitely gonna come back.

-

WHOA; OK, MANHANDLING 

MANHANDLING, NOT GOOD

STEP AWAY FROM THE ATTORNEY, BLACKQUILL

yeah just fucking manhandle the stressed out anxious girl. you piece of shit.  i knew me being your friend wouldn’t fuckin last.

-

“MOTIVE, OPPORTUNITY, EVIDENCE??? IS THAT ALL IT TAKES TO MAKE YOU STOP BELIEVING IT YOUR CLIENT?!”

to be fuckin fair, cuckoo, thats usually what loses most cases.

-

would phoenix manhandle athena?? would he berate her and shake her into doing her best?? i highly doubt it.

-

“prosecutor blackquill was just giving me a pep talk, thats all!”

athena thats unhealthy

-

legitimately simon’s been nothing but unpleasant this entire time. its fun to watch him wreck sadmad’s shit but he needs to keep the hell away from athena. whatever protective, elder-brotherly instincts he had for her in DD seem to have stayed in DD.

-

man I'm looking back at my previous commentary and i was. i was just so optimistic. how foolish. franziska, bring down your lash upon this foolishly foolish fool.

atcuall dont i bruise like a peach

-

jeez now I'm imagining Super Dad™ Phoenix Wright cross examining Owen with Athena instead and it’s melting my cold, hard heart

-

“unfortunately, i spy nothing of the sort”

again Sadmad acts like if he doesn't see the answer, then it’s nonexistent 

not very monk-y of you, Sadmad.

-

gotta admit, i love this unique murder weapon

ive actually nearly suffocated under soft, cold, gloopy stuff and lemme tell you, its not fun.

-

...i love that simon took that logic-attack for us 

maybe the animators just wanted to play his OH SHIT animation again 

-

i know it looks like i pick on everything but in fact i edit these down. sometimes i take out whole statements because i rationalize them and realize that theyre actually plausible and i let them slide. so just, y’know. if you think I'm just blindly going at it, i am actually giving this game the benefit of the doubt. you just dont see it.

...if you read these

...uh

-

they used the pre-prepped noodles in the fridge. c’mon guys, as athena would say: Andale!

-

“perhaps the victim was simply playing with the cards, and they hold no other meaning”

oh NOW THEY COULD BE UNRELATED TO THE CASE

OF COURSE, NOW THAT IT’S CONVENIENT TO YOU

you sack’a shit

-

nice cliffhanger, kid.

Oh well; I’m partially glad that the poor lil guy can get a rest, and partially upset that his last two surfaces put him through intense anguish. maybe get Uendo drunk and go to the theatre or something, guys. poor baby could use a pick-me-up.

-

n no–– rise from the ashes flashbacks–– RISE FROM THE ASHES FLASHBACKS

THE LUNCHBOXES

SO MANY LUNCHBOXES

AAAAAHHHHhhhhi gotta give bucky a hand; being drunk and riding a skateboard while supporting a tower of bentos isn’t an easy feat

-

ew slurping 

-

and simon extends his douchiness to the guys he's even shafting Athena for.

just, fuckin, lighten the fuck UP simon, CHRIST

-

TIDDIES

seriously tho; we haven’t had a proper boob joke in ages. actually Geiru kinda reminds me of April May...

 Meanwhile we’ve had several testicle references, a drunk guy, and the bloodiest overarching plot the series has ever had. I think we’ve left Ace behind and graduated to Edge Attorney

-

 to be fair the judge could totally be talking about her actual rubber balloons, considering his childlike personality at times. so maybe ITS YOU, SADMAD, WHO’S THE VULGAR ONE!

GET YOUR MIND OUTTA THE GUTTER!!

-

bloooon. i think Drifloon says that, too. Is that a japenese onomatopoeia or something? 

-

ooh he sadMad

heh

i guess its up to simon’s brilliant mind tricks to save us again..?

...yehhhh i knew it

-

...huh. didnt expect that. impressive use of air...sword... skill. 

-

IM NOT A KOORAHEENIST, SHE’S NOT GONNA HEAR ME ANYWAY.

-

i know what theyre building up and yes, i am super excited to see all those balloons pop

-

...i gotta ask tho, why does Athena think those balloon animals are bad?? theyre extremely intricate and they look a lot more like the thing she promised than most of the ones ive seen.

-

aw no the cake disappeared. i want a huge explosion at the end!!

-

“I’ma cut ya, witch!”

...

.....

........

i uh, i have to um,,,,,,, go now

-

SHES GONNA CUT OFF A TIT

GIRD YERSELF ATHENA

-

me, into my DS mic: HOLD IT. Hold IT. Hold it. hold it... hold it... bold it

athena; HOLD IT 

-

simon: athena youre stupid do something. I'm not helping you.

simon: this time I'm going to do something, but god forbid you dont run with it

i dont think we’ve ever had a co counsel add something to the testimony for us before. we’ve had them hint at answers and interrupt trials to get us out of tight spots, but never directly ordering something like that. Guess that proves just how highly BK thinks of Athena’s abilities......

-

ooh the cakes back and there was a pop

im super ready for this

-

shit thats a strong balloon. i wouldn’t advice biting very thing plastic...

-

............

the... fuck???

sadmad: here is what will prove that Geiru IS NOT the murderer!

(geiru reveals buckwheat allergy and ACUAL RED HAND)

how the fuck does that help your case, Sadmad?? We know that the killer used the dough to kill the master by suffocating him with it. Pointing out that she came into contact with the dough, WITH HER HANDS, IS PROVING SHE DID IT.

YOU JUST GOT HER CAUGHT LITERALLY RED-HANDED.

HOW DOES THIS HELP YOUR CASE??????

-

ok well apparently she could die just by being in the room but if we look at how badly her hand has reacted, and is still reacting, Geiru should probably have at least some difficulty talking if “breathing in the flour” was dangerous. If her hand reacted that badly from minor contact, her throat should be shut like a steel trap. what I'm saying is, she’s probably lying about the severity.

-

“As if I would do anything so underhanded”

oh sad-‘trigger my enemies into yielding’-mad, youre hilarious 

-

y’know i just realized, it is a little insensitive of Taifu to make/buy/keep soba around the place. if Geiru is this deadly allergic, he’s risking killing her simply because he can’t give up his precious noodles. thats like living with someone with a deadly peanut allergy and being all “can’t get enough of my PBnJ!!”

-

its time for

Off!

Brand!

Logic!!!!

-

oh. its not. ...ok

-

hang on didnt she say the dough was udon already, or am i misremembering? if she did and everyone just forgot, thats a little sad.

anyway, i guess thats... an alright twist. i still say that saying your witness is allergic to something and showing a reaction on the body part associated with the murder is stupid thing to do.

-

“dont lose your nerve now. keep charging forward or you'll feel my blade at your back”

I'm just gonna let that speak for itself.

-

ah THERES the off brand logic. and we’re finally gonna talk about those fucking noodles in the fridge. its been a long time coming.

-

i like that ‘ramen’ is a third choice every time

-

that was a pretty involved murder. “alright, kill the old man, hmm hmm... make a dish that i’m deathly allergic to to throw of the scent; just gotta get the cooking! make sure Uendo doesn’t wake up and catch me in the act~~ get rid of the dough in a way that is probably time consuming, lalala~ and there! Blooooon, the perfect crime!”

how much time did she have??

-

also how much blood did she lose form that knick on her forehead? if its enough to permeate an entire clump of dough, she should probably need a transfusion.

-

simon: dog pun. have you figured out the twist yet???? DOG PUN, BY THE WAY. JUST SO YOU KNOW.

-

all the balloons are there. its time.

-

seriously, thats gotta be a lot of blood. I'm getting Gingerdead Man flashbacks.

-

“i wanna thank you, simon. without your constant abuse, i wouldn’t have been scared enough to succeed for fear of what would happen if i failed!”

-

...its a bit premature for breakdown animations; the police haven't gotten back to us about the dough...

-

...i didnt like this balloon explosion as much as i thought i was going to. this is kinda just... uncomfortable.

-

you know, she shouldn’t have resorted to murder or blaming the crime on an innocent, but I feel like Taifu should’ve.... I dunno, either Trained her properly or let her down easy instead of forcing her to be a sexy balloon clown.

It’s clear she really, really wanted to succeed her father’s name, (which I'm a little confused about; was he one of Taifu’s students? What is Uendo’s real name then? what is any of their real names...) so I’m sure that if she just practiced enough, she’d probably be able to do what she needed to get to that level of entertainment. And if she couldn’t, letting her down easy and encouraging her to find something she actually liked instead of making her do... um... balloons would probably be a whole lot less nasty.

also wtf uendo; what did whet ever do to you

man all of these people were kind of dicks. except bucky. the guy who came to his trial drunk.

-

Sadmad: Hmm.... upon further deliberation... seeing as you won... I believe I shall afford you a basic sense of human respect.................. 

Athena: thats all I ask, prosecutor sadmahdi!

-

heyy he’s sobered up! or should I say... SOBA’D UP AAAAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH but seriously i don’t think they’ve said drunk or hungover once in this entire case what the fu

-

“no way... i almost got convicted out of convenience?” you, larry butz, maggey byrde and a shit tonne of other characters in the series. its actually a fairly common occurrence.

-

“he didn’t give her the name because he wanted geiru to find her own calling in life...”

...you know. after foisting a sexy balloon routine on her. to encourage her to quite entertainment. 

obviously Taifu was using the Simon Blackquill approach to encouragement.

“making udon was his way of showing his support of her in her new endeavour”

...what does that... mean

“oh, i’ll make safe dough instead of the stuff THAT KILLS HER to prove that i support her!”

genius

-

“So this entire situation happened because of a misunderstanding? How sad...”

i think you mean,,, hhhh

i hate misunderstanding plots so so much

-

this entire case is just “he was being an asshole to ENCOURAGE you, see!! now you HAVE to forgive him!!”

newsflash: no i dont. you know what works better than fear tactics, threats and coercion? 

BEING ACTUALLY SUPPORTIVE

-

“he probably used some tough love on you so that the shop wouldn’t just go belly up”

I SAID SUPPORTIVE. ARE YOU DEAF???

-

see? athena is being a little misguided but at least she's using a positive -food- to try to accomplish something.

“i’ll make sure its got all the TLC Master Toneido would’ve packed in it, too!”

you got it! one ice-cold, bitter, al-dente bowl with a side of vinegar, comin’ right up!

-

no athena!! brand loyalty!! mr eldoon will never forgive you!!!

-

“do us all proud, bucky”

or else

(flashes air sword)

-

Athena: I wonder if this gave me any experience as a lawyer...

Simon: HAHA WRONG, IF I HADN’T BEEN THERE YOU’D HAVE HAD THE SHIT KICKED OUT OF YOU. YOU SUCK, ATHENA, AND YOU DO EVERYTHING WRONG. FUCK YOU~!

see what annoys me about this is that when I first played Athena, I had some issues with her being too inexperienced to be a proper lawyer, especially with her court-related PTSD which could seriously endanger her clients.

However... Why are they bringing up her lack of experience in the one case (it’s not even a full case) in a game that isn’t even about her? And ignoring all the progress she made in Dual Destinies?

The way they’re talking about it is as if theyre setting up some kind of sequel; ‘you need to improve athena, you need to practice’. Which would have been all well and good for one of the cases in the first run of her own game... but Athena has been and continues to be a side character to Apollo and Phoenix. Rather than this moment coming at a crucial moment in her own game, it comes out of nowhere during a case she got last minute, couldn’t have prepared for, and is abused throughout.

what I'm saying is, the ghosts of DD past has come to haunt us. They introduced Athena too early and are bungling up her character development. Lawyers need a full set of games to let them grow. Just make an actual Apollo Justice 2 or Athena Cykes 1, but don’t insult us by pretending that this five minute shit actually did either of them justice.

-

Simon: I hope you stay shitty so that I can always win

brilliant.

you know, usually when a character is jerk with a heart of gold, that ‘heart of gold’ thing is supposed to show up at the end.

-

i was going to ignore the horrible joke but then Widget said “ROTFL”

what a... great way to end this....... great case

-

and so we close this one off, and for a case about tasty food, it sure left a bitter taste in my mouth.