#also also if you look at the audio commentaries at all the ones she does with ougi are some of the funniest shit

[johntayjinf]

take me on

rrthiel - athletic (ym2151 + ymz280b)

i was inspired so i wrote a vocal mix! ack

for anyone who wants the commentary:

the pain of vocal production on a tracker with simple detuning controls

no, genuinely i can't tell you how frustrating the vocals were to tune; first i set the entire project to 435hz (440 is the default tuning that every single daw in existence uses), but the consequence of that is that it also lightly detuned every single sample, making timing very difficult to manage. i felt like the devil having to artificially extend my vocals to fit both the timing and get the tuning right, but you win some you lose some i guess.

on top of that i feel very unsure about my own vocal performance and there'd be a few noticeable tuning mistakes, i think? i mean before i tuned them again tonight they were even worse, but apparently the trick to that is just to listen to them outside my headphones; because listening to the lower frequencies to tune vocals isn't going to give great results. or maybe that's just me and my habits. my shit phone audio that exposed the mid frequencies did a good job at telling me that, "hey, you tune terrible for a gal that likes to say she does music production to people when you like silly video games and music that came out before you were even conceived"

venus theory made a very good point about having a "shitbox" (like, a boombox that is shit) so it exposes frequencies you would've never heard otherwise, and that was quite the enlightening experience to say the least. i wouldn't say my tuning is terrible; frankly i think it's fairly okay for someone with informal training and practice, but i genuinely didn't expect to go so out of tune in my one (yes, one) take of the main vocals... and then i learnt that way that the voice that you think you're singing varies widely with what's actually produced from your vocal cords, your mouth shape, and how much air you put into it. needless to say this was a really good, and *horrifying* learning experience, and hopefully this means more vocal covers and originals in the future.

as for the lyrics, i was going for the "mindless 80s love song" cheesy lovey dovey kind, and was inspired slowly after a few listens of the og song. it's not my first time writing english lyrics, but it's fair to say that it's really rare coming from me.

Lyrics

sometimes i feel like i'm afraid of heights

(don't look down now)

sometimes i feel like i wanna hold you tight

oh you would never know the sight,

because right now we're so high we could almost die

but now you're here with me, i'm like on ecstasy

if anything ever happens i won't mind

'cause with the two of us, our hearts combined

we'll always have our time to shine

together we can find a place or run away

it's okay

you could pretend that we would be so far

but i will find my way 'cause you're my north star

i hope that you and i are on par

i don't wanna put my feelings in a jar

is it just my mind that is pacing, my chest that is aching

the things i wanna say could be said everyday

is it just my heart that is racing, the love we'll be sharing

and we will never say goodbye

you see that all is fine,

now put your worries all aside

[guitar solo]

'cause with the two of us, our hearts combined

we'll always have our time to shine

together we can find a place or run away

it's okay

you could pretend that we would be so far

but i will find my way 'cause you're my north star

i hope that you and i are on par

i don't wanna put my feelings in a jar

is it just my mind that is pacing, my chest that is aching

the memories we'll make will never fade

is it just my heart that is racing, the love we'll be sharing

and i will always play my part

we should take on the charts,

or maybe begin from the start

[noonaishere]

Online/Offline [C.S] // (Music) Theory of the Heart [J.YH] -  seventy-seven | WHAT?

Yunho pushed open the café door and t/n walked in after him.

“Your roommate works here?”

“Mhm. They make really good coffee. Their café drinks are really nice too.”

T/n nodded and looked around, taking in the decor as she followed him up to the counter. “Nice place.”

Y/n turned around from cleaning and smiled. “Hi Yunho! What would you guys like?”

“Hey y/n,” he smiled. “This is t/n, we work at the same agency. She was hired as a bassist but she’s going to be a producer.”

“Oh, that’s cool.” Y/n smiled.

T/n nodded. “Yep. That’s me.”

“Nice to meet you.” She turned back to Yunho. “Do you want me to get San to make your drinks?”

“Could you?”

She smiled. “Be right back.”

Y/n went to the kitchen to find San.

“The guy she went to get is my roommate.”

“Ah. You two already know each other?” T/n asked.

He nodded. “She became friends with San when she started working here a couple months ago. She just moved to the area, actually. I think she said her main job is streaming?”

T/n nodded.

“Oh-- they’re dating.”

T/n looked at him quizzically. “...Thanks?”

Yunho nodded while t/n continued to look at him like she wasn’t sure why he volunteered the information so readily.

San came out of the kitchen. “Hi guys. What can I get for you?”

Yunho gestured to t/n to place her order.

“Umm… can I get a mocha frappe?”

“Sure thing.” San put the order into the register. “Yunho?” 

“Vanilla latte?”

“Coming right up.”

Y/n came out of the kitchen with more cups for the cup stand.

“Y/n,” Yunho started loudly and then hushed his voice, “You said you stream, right?”

She laughed and quietly said: “Yeah, I do.”

“T/n was just asking what you did for work--”

“No I didn’t, you were telling me.” T/n interrupted.

“Oh-- yeah. Was it just here and gaming?”

“No, I also edit videos.”

Yunho snapped his fingers and smiled. “Ah. I knew there was another thing.”

“Did I tell you about it?”

“San told me.”

Y/n looked over to San for a moment, “You tell people about me?”

“When we first met, yeah.”

She nodded knowingly. “Yeah, I dropped most of them though. One of them kept trying to hit on me in his emails.”

“That’s gross,” t/n added.

“Yeah, tell me about it.”

“What kind of videos do you edit?” San asked as he put the lid on the first drink. “I don’t think you’ve ever told me.”

“Umm… So, beforehand I mostly edited for commentary youtubers-- I was the one who made them funny. But some of them… there was no making them funny.”

San laughed and started the next drink.

She chuckled. “Then there’s someone who does music mashups, they’re really good. They were the only client I kept, actually.”

“You only edit the videos?” Yunho asked.

“I put the music videos of the different groups they use together to match the music so like, as it goes from part to part, whichever group is in the foreground of the audio is the music video that’s on screen at that time.”

“That’s cool.” He nodded. “T/n makes music mashups, right?”

“Yeah.” She answered.

“What’s your channel name?” San asked with a smile.

“Nero Music.”

The cups all clattered to the floor as they fell out of y/n’s hands. 

San turned. “How did you drop those?”

She looked at t/n in shock.

“Y/n?” San asked.

T/n and Yunho looked back at her in confusion. 

“Ahh!” Y/n yelled as she pointed at t/n.

“What?” T/n asked, one arm coming up to try and block whatever was about to happen.

“I’m--” y/n moved closer so she could lean over the counter and yell at a whisper. “I’m Cat! I’m Jageun Geomeun Goyangi!”

T/n pulled away, her eyes wide, and screamed: “WHAT?”

“Have a nice day,” San said as he handed a customer a drink. The customer left the café, and with only a couple other people already seated with drinks, San sat down at the table that Yunho, t/n, and y/n were sitting at out of hearing of the other customers. Regardless, they talked quietly.

“So how did you not know each other’s names?” Yunho laughed.

San chuckled at the question.

“Well, it’s like… online shit, you know? I don’t know people’s real names unless we’re really close.” Y/n said.

“Personally, I let people think that the name ‘Nero’ means I’m a guy. I get way less shit that way.” 

Y/n nodded and pointed at her. “Exactly that. If I weren’t a streamer I would have gone that route.” 

“So…” San thought for a moment, “You must not be very close. If you said that you only know the real names of people you’re close with.”

“Wow, make me sound like an asshole, why don’t you?” Y/n responded, poking him in the side.

San made a strangled noise of discontent as he tried to evade the poking. He grabbed y/n’s finger and held it as she shook his hand around. 

T/n laughed quietly.

“What happened to my Sanflower?” San asked.

“I can look at you and seek revenge. They’re not mutually exclusive.”

“It’s not like you’re wrong though,” t/n offered. 

They both turned to her. 

“We don’t know each other well at all.”

“Yeah, I guess…” she tried to shake off San’s hand again. “I  feel like I was mean by accident though--” She bit at his hand and he pulled away. “You know?”

T/n looked at her queerly. “Uh… yeah.”

She nodded. 

“It wasn’t on purpose though, right?” Yunho asked.

“Oh, no!” Both reacted.

“No, no, no.” Y/n said, quietly.

“I think we only ever just talked about work stuff because like, I hired you…” T/n gestured.

“Mhm… and I was doing what you hired me to do.”

“Mhm.”

“Yeah. And honestly, I thought you might be a guy, so I didn’t want another possible situation like the guy who hit on me.”

She gestured apologetically. “Oh no, that’s totally understandable.”

The group sat in awkward silence for a few moments. San and Yunho caught each other’s eye. San raised his eyebrow and Yunho smiled.

“So…” Yunho turned back to them. “Why don’t you become friends now?”

Y/n looked from him to t/n. “...I guess we could.”

T/n nodded.

“Now that I definitely know you’re not a creepy guy.”

She chuckled. “What if I were a creepy girl?”

“Then I’d invite you to stream so you can capitalize on it.”

She laughed.

“What’d Wooyoung call it that time? A ‘monster of capitalism’?” San asked.

Y/n poked him in the side again.

“This is cool though, that you finally met, and by accident?” Yunho smiled. “It’s destiny.”

The other three members of the table looked at him with expressions that varied from confusion, to incredulity, to mild annoyance.

“Isn’t it?” He asked.

“But you knew San and he knew her,” T/n said. 

Y/n nodded. “Mhm. People know other people all the time.”

“Well I think it’s cool,” Yunho pouted.

T/n and y/n looked at each other. Y/n suppressed a smile at his reaction, causing t/n to roll her eyes.

“Fine,” she said, “It’s cool.”

He smiled at her.

San chuckled at him and shook his head.

An influx of customers through the door signaled the impending afternoon rush. San turned to look at the clock on the wall and patted y/n’s knee as he stood. 

“I’m sorry, but we have to get back to work. Lunch rush is about to start.”

Y/n stood and smiled. “It was really nice meeting you, I’ll email you and we’ll have to hang out either online or in person.”

T/n nodded. “Yeah it was nice meeting you.”

San and y/n left for the counter and Yunho and t/n both stood to leave.

“What a cute coincidence,” Yunho said as he got the door for her.

She chuckled. “First it was ‘cool’? Now it’s ‘cute’?”

“I just think it’s neat that you’ve known each other this whole time and now you’ve actually met.”

T/n looked at him for a moment, his lower lip threatening to pout again.

She nodded. “Yeah, I guess it’s neat. Now keep that lip where it belongs before I get rid of it. I need to get back to what I was doing.”

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[antialiasis]

Chess (2018 Kennedy Center revival)

So I was just going to briefly mention all the other different versions of Chess I have consumed in the big essay post I’ve been writing on and off, but there was just too much to say about this one which made it really awkward to fit it in, so fine, here is another individual chesspost. Nearly 7500 words of rambling under the cut, oh my god.

This production represents the latest official full overhaul of Chess. It sports an all-new book written by Danny Strong, also known as the actor who played Jonathan on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which is some whiplash (Sarah Michelle Gellar is apparently a big Chess fan, too). It was later staged again as a concert with some further modifications in 2021, but I listened to an audio bootleg of the 2018 version. (There exist some videos of it online, but only scattered bits.)

The Story Changes

This version has London’s basic plot structure with the distinctive two chess tournaments (this time four years apart, which is neither the original number nor the actual number of years between world chess championships), but rearranges Act I, adds a lot more quippy dialogue and swearing, reinterprets the characters, and recenters real-world politics in the whole thing — sort of the exact inverse of what Chess på svenska did with the material. It opens with “Difficult and Dangerous Times” to set the scene in the Cold War and features the Arbiter narrating with sardonic omniscient commentary between songs/scenes throughout, which does feel a bit more consistent than the Arbiter suddenly having a narrator role for the duration of one song in Act II.

All the main characters in this version are reinterpreted with significant new background context, which is a very interesting way to rewrite it that I definitely dig in principle. For example, Florence’s first scene here involves Walter threatening her with deportation from the US unless she can make Freddie behave for the duration of the tournament. Most versions of Chess make the political scheming very symbolic and vague — exchanges of mostly unnamed political prisoners or handwaved concessions — but this version is noticeably specific, with specific nuclear arms treaty negotiations that the CIA believes would be negatively affected if Freddie keeps openly antagonizing the Soviets. She tells Walter to go fuck himself (told you it adds more swearing) and that nobody can control Freddie Trumper, but ultimately she doesn’t have much of a choice but to reluctantly play along. This addition recontextualizes her character and her interactions with Freddie in Act I a fair bit — it’s pretty significant, after all, that she is under threat and may lose her home if she doesn’t somehow control what she really can’t.

Meanwhile, Freddie himself here suffers from a full-on mental illness which he takes medication for. Walter asserts on a phone call early that they’re dealing with a “genuine paranoid schizophrenic”, but then later calls him a “bipolar bitch”; I take the blatant inconsistency combined with the obviously insulting nature of these remarks to mean probably we’re not meant to take either of them at face value, but these two lines from Walter are the only ones suggesting any specific diagnosis. (I unfortunately suspect Danny Strong didn’t have a specific condition in mind and research it so much as just slap him with a Generic Ambiguous Mental Illness for which he takes Pills.) One way or another, Freddie’s ambiguous mental illness gives him bouts of intense paranoia, driving him to do things like trashing his and Florence’s hotel room to look for listening devices at one point. Florence keeps insistently, frustratedly telling him to just take his goddamn pills even as he’s in genuine distress; it’s pretty uncomfortable, and also definitely one of those things that are at least more human when his episodes could cost her the only home she has: she’s desperate and in distress too.

(I do kind of feel as if this whole bit would make more sense if Florence and Freddie had a strictly business relationship here to start with, instead of being explicitly portrayed as a couple — when they have a committed intimate partnership going on, one would think Florence getting deported would also be pretty obviously significant for Freddie, and Florence quietly playing along with the CIA and crossing her fingers that she can indirectly coax him into behaving with seemingly no serious thought given to whether it’d be better to just tell him why he needs to stop feels stranger. The scene with Walter sounds like Walter/the CIA are not aware of their romantic relationship and Florence wants to keep it that way — they both refer to Freddie strictly by his full/last name and as “her player” — so I guess Walter would have assumed she wouldn’t tell him, but surely the calculus would at least look a bit different to Florence herself. Even if it just prompts her to realize Freddie would still be liable to react by becoming even more erratic and vocal about his paranoias, that feels like it’d be significant enough, at least for her feelings on this relationship going forward, that it never actually coming up or being suggested within the story starts to feel marginally odd. Not a major complaint, though, just a bit of overthinking.)

Freddie in general is noticeably portrayed much more sympathetically here than usual throughout. Where other versions of Chess tend to present Freddie as an attention-seeking drama queen who plays up ludicrous arbitrary demands for money and press, here things like his walkout from the first chess game are made to come from a much more genuine place: he has major sensory issues and is intolerably thrown off balance by distracting noise and lights (which really are deliberately arranged to sabotage him). “Florence Quits”, the song with the misogyny verse, usually reads as being triggered by his jealousy and inability to accept that Anatoly’s just playing better than him, but this version makes it feel more about how he feels persistently gaslit about the ways he’s being sabotaged than anything else: he accuses the Soviets of having a hypnotist in the front row to throw him off (which they do, and Freddie literally saw him and recognized him) and Florence of working for the CIA (which she has been, if not by choice) while they deny it and brush it off, and the tense opening notes of the song play under him desperately yelling “You’re lying to me! You’re all lying to me!” (Which doesn’t make the misogyny okay, obviously, but it does make it feel more like a desperate, paranoia-fueled lashout where you don’t know how much he really means all that.)

When he subsequently forfeits the match against Anatoly, he makes a speech that sounds absolutely despairing where he says chess has been taking a toll on his health since he first became champion at eleven years old, and he doesn’t feel he can trust anyone, even himself. In Act II, before “The Interview”, he even actually apologizes to Florence for how he treated her; heck, his motivation for going so hard after Anatoly in “The Interview” itself is portrayed as being that he is genuinely disgusted by Anatoly leaving his family so callously (which is a lot of fun given Freddie’s own issues about his father leaving him and his mother behind) and wants Florence to hear the truth about what a despicable man he is, which is still unpleasant to her but clearly comes from a much more sympathetic place than either simple spite or reluctantly complying with Walter’s orders.

As for Anatoly… he was taken from his parents when he was a small child to be groomed by Molokov and the KGB into becoming a chess champion, and he’s well aware from his very first scene that the state had killed the previous Soviet champion after Freddie unseated him. (Freddie excoriates the press early on for not covering why the former champion disappeared off the face of the Earth because they’re too busy bashing Freddie, which sounds like paranoia, but the narrative has actually told us Freddie is right and they really did execute him but no one but Freddie seems to notice or care — another way in which Freddie is jarringly sympathetic here. In general, Freddie is portrayed as paranoid, and the other characters treat him like he’s just paranoid, but the narrative keeps proving Freddie’s paranoia right.)

Anatoly, though, isn’t afraid of the same fate, because “The state cannot execute a man… that is already dead.” (This general sentiment could press my buttons, but it just feels super corny and melodramatic the way it’s presented and performed, especially with that dramatic pause in there.) He is deeply depressed, thinks his marriage to Svetlana is fake and his kids hate him, and says repeatedly in Act I that he hates chess and just wants to be free of it, though he also describes a particular championship match he watched as the only time he’s felt love. At the end of Act I, he defects to the UK along with Florence as usual (his defection fully blows up the treaty Walter was worrying about despite Anatoly’s victory, so Florence’s refugee visa is indeed revoked, and that’s why they end up in the UK). Theoretically he should be free of chess now, but it bothers him intensely that he only won by forfeit (here they never finished playing a single match), resulting in him returning to defend his world champion title, and win it ‘properly’, four years later in Bangkok against Viigand.

Unknown to Anatoly, by Act II, after the election of Ronald Reagan, the Soviets are extra on edge and believe a planned NATO military exercise is actually the US mobilizing for a full-scale invasion of the Soviet Union. Walter tries to convince Molokov it’s just an exercise; Molokov insists unfortunately the generals are going to believe it’s an invasion and be ready to retaliate unless Viigand wins the championship (if Viigand wins they will take it as a ‘sign of goodwill’ from the US, which will change their minds on the apparent invasion because, uhh, unclear). Throughout Act II, the larger stakes in this version are set up to be that if Anatoly should win the match, the Soviets are liable to start a nuclear war.

Does Walter go to Anatoly to frankly tell him that apparently the Soviets have lost their minds and are basically threatening nuclear war over a chess match and try to convince him to throw on that basis? Does Molokov realize that if he’s telling Walter to go rig the chess match so the generals will call it off, he clearly doesn’t actually believe that the US is about to invade, so probably he should be trying to convince the generals not to go for the nuclear option himself? No, of course not; this is Chess, so we have to have the songs that are in Chess. So instead, Walter and Molokov just go through the same indirect schemes as usual to unbalance Anatoly and convince him to throw the game, with some minor twists. Molokov actually actively threatens Svetlana with being sent to a gulag to die if she doesn’t convince her husband to return — and Svetlana does straight-up tell Anatoly this, only for Anatoly to brush her off and tell her they won’t do that. Florence learns the same from Walter and initially dismisses him, and fully doesn’t believe him about her father being alive, but does ultimately sympathize with Svetlana and worry for her, which I like. But Anatoly is obsessed with winning this championship above all else and fully convinced Molokov is bluffing.

In the end, he plays the game to win, oblivious to the nuclear threat; as he checkmates, Walter makes a desperate phone call to his superiors to call off the training exercise. (Why he didn’t just do that immediately when Molokov told him the Soviets were taking it as an attack, instead of spending all this time playing along with this elaborate chess mind game, is a mystery.) Only… they don’t, and the Soviets watch with their fingers on the nuclear button, but ultimately they don’t fire. The Arbiter’s narration informs us this was the closest the world ever came to destruction, even closer than the Cuban missile crisis, and that this then served as the wake-up call that prompted negotiations about nuclear deescalation.

Anatoly, meanwhile, returns to the Soviet Union as usual, this time successfully exchanging himself for Florence’s imprisoned father, and Walter gives Florence and her father visas so that they can return to the US together.

Broad thoughts

I feel profoundly weird about the mixing of real-life history and completely fictitious alternate history here — you can’t just assert in narration that the fictional events in your musical were what taught the US and Soviet Union that maybe they should just talk to each other, while making a specific comparison to an actual thing that really happened, after spending the musical asserting that the Soviets murdered chess players for losing the world championship. I think mixing history and fiction can work fine if we can imagine that for all we know this is what really happened, or alternatively that this is what might have happened in some alternate universe similar to but distinct from ours. But here, we’re creating highly significant and publicized events that are obviously fictional, making it absurd to pretend this is what really happened, while also presenting these fictional alternate-universe events in objective hindsight narration alongside real events that happened in the real world and as a supposed cause of them. This ending narration just feels like it’s weirdly trying to have its cake and eat it too.

All in all, though, I think this is definitely one of the most interesting efforts to rewrite Chess. It definitely has something it’s going for, there are several neat ideas in it, and in particular I appreciate that it tries to give extra attention to the characters, more context to their actions, and more messy, humanized depth, inner conflict, and complicated motivators and stressors behind what they do. I genuinely enjoy what it’s doing with Freddie in Act I, in particular, even though it feels somehow both jarringly like it’s woobifying him (I genuinely think he ends up coming across as the most sympathetic of the three mains here, with so much of his erratic, childish and unpleasant behaviour being recontextualized to be more understandable and the way his hatred of the Soviets keeps being validated by the narrative) and like the narrative is weirdly harsh on him (this much more sympathetic Freddie who suffers from an actual mental illness is treated like absolute irredeemable scum by every other character including the fourth-wall-leaning narrator, even more than usual).

I also think the restructuring of Act I was pretty solid for the most part, though there’s definitely some awkwardness, like how Freddie’s expanded encounters with the press sort of clumsily repeat the same beats a bit. On the one hand, I can get what Danny Strong was going for in choosing to introduce everyone first and then go into “Merano” instead of doing several minutes of narrative meaninglessness before the main characters are even introduced; on the other hand, that kind of just half-defeats the sole original purpose of “Merano”, which is to provide a very jaunty more stereotypical musical theater song so that Freddie can be introduced via barging in and interrupting it with his very different vibe, and if I were Danny Strong I would definitely have just removed “Merano” at that point. But the “Difficult and Dangerous Times” opening works great, and it nicely avoids the “almost nothing of note happens for nearly forty minutes” and “several meaningless fluff songs in a row” problems of the London script, introducing conflict and stakes early and keeping the narrative going.

Ultimately, though, a lot of what it’s trying to do doesn’t quite come together to me, and some of it is variously misguided or just strange.

The Politics

To start with, I can definitely get wanting to emphasize the role of Cold War politics in the narrative, and I basically enjoyed the increased political focus and higher stakes in Act I — but I don’t think making Anatoly unwittingly almost start a nuclear war works here, or fits properly into this narrative at all. The Soviet generals have to be holding idiot balls; Molokov has to be holding an idiot ball; Walter has to be holding the biggest idiot ball of all; and most importantly, the ludicrously massive stakes being pasted on top of the match despite none of the main characters even knowing about it means we zoom thoroughly out of the character drama of the situation: “Endgame” just becomes grotesquely trivial with that hanging over it without Anatoly’s knowledge, rendering the actual drama of the climactic song completely irrelevant to what’s really at stake.

I also dislike, in a version that emphasizes the politics, how distinctly slanted it is. One of the things that I like in the London strain of Chess is that Walter and Molokov are both slimy, manipulative bastards in different ways, both sides’ political actors cruelly toying with the lives of the players for their own impersonal ends; the righteousness of each state as a whole doesn’t really matter to this story, only the impact that the whole conflict and the mutual scheming has on the main characters’ lives. But in this version, the Soviets and Molokov are cartoon villains who literally abduct children to force them into chess camp and then murder them if they don’t win the world championship, while Walter may be a condescending asshole who’s willing to threaten Florence but is distinctly the ‘good guy’ in his interactions with Molokov, which comprise most of his screentime, especially in Act II. Walter even gets a humanizing moment where he explains he has a nine-year-old son and has nightmares about him suffering a nuclear winter (Molokov, meanwhile, tells Walter in Act I that Anatoly is like a son to him but could not more obviously not care about Anatoly at all when he proudly presents his new champion material Viigand in Act II). I just find it really detrimental to Chess’s narrative to make it about Soviets Bad, US Good, and more so the more you focus on that — to whatever extent you highlight the politics in this story, it should be done in a way that’s about how the political machinations of the Cold War impact the character drama at the center of it, and it’s distracting when instead you make it into a loosely related B-plot about Walter’s desperate diplomatic efforts to stop the evil Soviets from destroying the world with their shortsightedness.

I think a successful more politically-focused Chess could definitely exist, but I think it’s always going to function best if Walter and Molokov feel at least narratively like just about equal scumbags. It’s not even impossible to imagine nuclear weapons and mutually assured destruction coming up in the course of it — but it needs to be using that to make us enraged at all of this on behalf of Anatoly/Florence/Svetlana/Freddie, not enraged at Molokov on behalf of Walter.

The Character Work

Meanwhile, I do basically like the setup and recontextualization done for all of the main characters in Act I, but unfortunately none of them quite delivered as well as I hoped in the end.

Let’s start with Florence. I actually quite liked the deportation threat, putting Florence herself under personal pressure in a way she usually isn’t. I dig characters being put through the wringer and making decisions under stress. But the story doesn’t quite do anything with that other than using it as silent context behind her early interactions with Freddie and technically as the reason she and Anatoly move to the UK offscreen. We don’t, for instance, ever see Freddie learn that that’s why she moved or that he was unwittingly indirectly responsible for that, or otherwise address that in any way, and as far as Florence in the rest of the story is concerned, it might as well never have happened — we never see her having any kinds of feelings on it, or even confronting Walter about that nasty little part he played in her life when she meets him again (she doesn’t even comment on it when he offers her the chance to go back to the US at the end!). To an extent this is, of course, because Florence being deported was never originally part of the story of Chess, so of course it doesn’t come up in any song or have any significant specific impact on the core series of events — but if you’re going to add it in at all, you really ought to be taking that somewhere in the rest of your additions that isn’t just briefly handwaving that she gets to go back at the end.

Like Long Beach, this version brings Florence’s father back at the end — but unfortunately, it feels really unearned here. Compared to other London variants, it actually ditches the bit of “The Deal” where Florence is tangibly emotional and riled up by Walter’s offer of her father — she fully dismisses the idea of her father being alive as bullshit, and instead it’s Svetlana who moves her to have doubts when she sees her begging Anatoly to return on video and realizes Svetlana still loves him. I do really like that, by itself, and it’s probably my favorite thing about this version’s portrayal of Florence; her empathizing with Svetlana to the point of feeling genuinely guilty for having taken her husband from her, and believing maybe the right thing to do would be if he went back to Svetlana for her sake, is actually very good, serves as a great lead-in to “I Know Him So Well”, and makes Florence’s character feel far more sympathetic in a production where she’s otherwise pretty lacking in that department. But it leaves us with no emotional connection whatsoever to Florence’s father — we’ve only heard her mention him twice before Walter’s offer, very briefly, in Act I, and not really with any sense that she misses or is all that invested in him. Seeing her reunite with him means nothing for her or her arc; it just comes out of left field, and winds up being another thing slanting this version towards Good Guy Walter, Bad Guy Molokov, what with Walter offering her visas back to the US for both of them seemingly out of the goodness of his heart.

It would have been possible to actually build up to this in a way that would make it satisfying. Florence and Anatoly have several conversations; we could have used some of those to have Florence actually talk about her father and how she feels about him being gone, and that could have been part of building up her relationship with Anatoly, made it meaningful that Anatoly’s parting gift to her is to ensure her father’s return. I suppose Danny Strong’s thought process may have been that if he built up Florence’s father too much, that should become her main concern once Walter brings that into it, and he wanted her concern to be about Svetlana instead, which I guess is fair; it also means Anatoly only really has to dismiss the potential harm to one other person in his obsession with winning the game. But if you do make the decision to not build up her father, then bringing her father back is not an ending that makes any sense, and there was no need to do this — they could have easily cut out all suggestion of her father being alive entirely and it would only have made things smoother. I think the only reason she gets her father back in this one is in some hasty effort to make Florence’s ending less bleak, but because it doesn’t have any emotional resonance, it’s just not the right way to do that here.

Speaking of Florence and Anatoly, the romance here… once again has some neat, interesting things it’s going for but doesn’t quite come together as a whole. The two of them do have some actual conversations where they bond a bit, which is already a marked improvement over the default London script — but their very first conversation features Anatoly asserting out of nowhere that Florence has “a way of brightening his spirit”, despite not even knowing her, which isn’t super convincing and just comes off kind of creepy-awkward. Florence asserts a few times that he’s sweet and kind, but we don’t really see much of him actually coming across as sweet or kind — his lines tend to be either melodramatic or sardonic moping interspersed kind of jarringly with awkward jokes. He’s less charming or sweet and more like a lonely, kicked dog, which is fine if Florence is into that but doesn’t quite make her descriptions of why she likes him ring true.

This production actually goes back to the concept album a bit when it comes to Florence and Anatoly — namely, more than political manipulation and external pressures forcibly tearing them apart from the outside, there’s a more substantial internal tension between them as Anatoly genuinely simply prioritizes winning the chess match over her and dismisses her as she tries to question him about Svetlana. The two approaches can both work but do different things for the narrative; this internal approach puts more focus on the personal conflict and character drama and makes the relationship more interesting, which is definitely good, and in principle I think this is built up to in a pretty solid way here — Anatoly, raised to become a chess champion to the exclusion of all else, being maddened by the notion of not actually beating Freddie in Act I and needing to prove he deserves the championship to himself in Act II before he can feel “free from chess” works as a coherent reason for him to be so strikingly, unhealthily obsessive about it.

But I think the biggest problem is that Florence and Anatoly individually don’t hit well enough as characters to create investment in them. Florence is ultimately not developed enough and mostly just acts kind of unpleasant, especially to Freddie, all the way up until that Svetlana bit in Act II. More importantly, I just can’t like or understand or sympathize with Anatoly at all, beyond recognizing that core of what his arc is going for. Part of it is probably down to the writing of his lines, which I’m just not a fan of in general. I already named one example from his first scene. Here’s how Anatoly and Florence’s very first conversation starts:

ANATOLY: It’s not his fault. This game drives us all crazy. FLORENCE: I’m fine. Aren’t you even a little bit scared? ANATOLY: Of Trumper? FLORENCE: No, that they’ll kill you if you lose. ANATOLY: Oh. To quote the great Leo Tolstoy, “Even in the valley of the shadow of death, two and two do not make six.” FLORENCE: What does that mean? ANATOLY: I don’t know exactly, but it is very Russian.

I just don’t find this dialogue very convincing. Why is he reciting a dramatic irrelevant quote if he doesn’t know what it means and just thinks it’s “very Russian”? It feels like a generic quippy exchange off a snarky TV show. Does Anatoly use humour to cope with his situation? Not really; this is pretty much the only time he says anything that might be taken as that. This feels like a joke that’s there only to get a laugh out of the audience, not because Anatoly would actually tell it — and consequently, it doesn’t tell us anything real about Anatoly. Meanwhile, Florence responds to this with “Oh, you’re funny,” as if that’s one of the reasons she falls for him when I would decidedly not name that as a character trait he has. I feel like most of his dialogue just doesn’t have a great sense of character — in stark contrast to Freddie, who oozes character. I can’t get a good sense of who he is and how he thinks. He’s just there. And this also makes it harder to see what Florence sees in him and believe in the relationship.

Moreover, this Anatoly just comes across as kind of a terrible person, not in the fun coherent intentional way Freddie is a terrible person but in a flat, confusing and kind of unintentional-seeming way. Svetlana here is actually really sympathetic, with lovely little additional bits of dialogue that make her feelings hit harder (her voice as she tells Anatoly that “You left us!” breaks my heart), and this is possibly my favorite version of Svetlana in any Chess. But Anatoly is really, really terrible to her, by which I don’t even mean the cheating on her but the bit where he keeps angrily insisting to her face that she never loved him and she brainwashed their children to hate him and of course they’re not going to kill her (hey, Anatoly, guess who’s already well aware that the Soviet government in this universe is not above executing people over chess?).

And even that could be made understandable, given his situation — he could just be in hard denial about it because the thought of them having been suffering with him gone and being punished for his actions is so horrific he just shuts it down — but there’s never any sense that that’s what’s really going on. We don’t see him privately upset about the possibility later, for instance — he just keeps insisting the same and dismissing Svetlana to Florence, too. We know it’s not that it’s true — we see Svetlana admit to Molokov that even though he ruined her life and she never wants to see him again she still loves him, and we hear her sing “Someone Else’s Story” and “I Know Him So Well”. Nor do we ever get any hint at exactly what Svetlana or his kids did to make him think this of them, if anything (his own kids!). Anatoly just seems to sort of bitterly, adamantly believe this for no reason at all. And that makes it impossible to empathize with. Okay, sure, Anatoly, you were taken from your family as a child, but that really doesn’t even start to explain any of this. There could have been ways of making it feel at least believable, tragic in a deeply fucked-up way, but the story here just doesn’t do the work. And once again, Anatoly being so unpleasant for no reason just makes it harder to feel at all invested in his relationship with Florence or sad when they part.

The best fix here isn’t quite obvious, and I can’t say I envy Danny Strong trying to put all his neat little ideas together and make them work. If Anatoly were to appear substantially conflicted about Svetlana and put any real stock in Molokov’s threat, that would render “Endgame”, where he doubles down anyway, kind of jarring and inexcusable as he’d be not just refusing to return to her but refusing to care if she is killed. So in order for this to properly work with “Endgame”, he probably does need to be very deep in denial about whether they’d really kill her. I think what I would do, if I were writing this plot where groomed-as-a-chess-champion Anatoly knows the Soviets killed Boris Ivanovich and they’ve threatened to kill Svetlana too, is to emphasize better how irrational Anatoly is being and try to show it more as a consequence of growing up among the constantly plotting KGB.

Let him go off on a proper paranoid rant to Florence about the reasons why he thinks Svetlana is just plotting against him, and some innocuous things he saw his kids do once that mean she brainwashed them. When Florence tries to challenge him on how batshit he sounds, he just storms out, saying she’s being taken in by their lies and just wants to sabotage him, and disappears — and she doesn’t see him again until he appears at the final game and plays this manic, desperate match while insisting to himself that Svetlana and Florence both just never understood him and hated his success. Afterwards, we can perhaps see him finally, quietly asking Molokov if they’re really going to kill her, showing that on some level he already knew the threat might be real and had just firmly blocked it out (in the actual ending as it is Molokov simply tells him unprompted that she really will be punished unless he comes back, and he just asks why with no addressing of his previous adamant insistence that that wouldn’t happen). His and Florence’s final conversation could then involve a bit more of a reckoning with that and with what his relationship with Svetlana was really like, through a more honest lens.

I’m actually pretty tickled by this scenario because that would really drive home a pretty fun parallel between Anatoly and Freddie — which in hindsight I think this version must in fact have been trying for, but didn’t quite do in a focused enough way for it to really hit. Anatoly and Freddie are both chess players with deeply abnormal childhoods and bouts of paranoia that cause them to behave in toxic ways, which ultimately drives Florence away from both of them.

This production shows the first chess game as the “Chess Game” instrumental playing under Freddie and Anatoly having alternating inner monologues about the game and their issues, deliberately drawing a comparison between the two of them; they both say they hate chess, that they don’t feel like real human beings. It’s not exactly subtle, but I liked the way this was used to build up their respective brain gremlins and was intrigued by the parallel being set up. I didn’t feel they ultimately did much with the parallel, though, because the story then didn’t really continue leaning into it much from there. By emphasizing this Anatoly’s paranoia as paranoia and not just as him legitimately thinking the marriage was never real and the KGB wouldn’t kill her, we could properly build the story around that parallel, and I would genuinely dig that.

The one place after the chess match where the actual thing does sort of try to get at the Anatoly/Freddie parallel again is in the dialogue scene that precedes “Endgame”. This scene is not sung (though it has the “Chess Game” instrumental in the background, which connects it neatly to that previous bit comparing the two of them), but it’s clearly based on “Talking Chess”: Freddie approaches Anatoly to tell him Viigand’s weakness lies in his King’s Indian Defense, and:

ANATOLY: Why are you helping me? FREDDIE: Jesus Christ! Am I the only one who cares about this game? ANATOLY: It’s more than a game now. There is so much more at stake than who wins or loses. FREDDIE: No! No, winning is everything. Fuck politics! Fuck the KGB, fuck the CIA, fuck them all! We are the ones who have dedicated our lives to chess. We are the ones who have given up everything for greatness — our childhoods, our sanity, our loves. Anatoly, we’ve sacrificed everything. They’ve sacrificed nothing. What’s the number one rule of a chess champion? ANATOLY: Play to win. FREDDIE: As long as you do that you can never lose, even if you do.

Much as I love “Talking Chess”, though, this on the surface similar scene just didn’t feel right in this context when I listened to it. In Anatoly’s last scene here, he told Florence firmly that he just wanted to win and that his marriage with Svetlana was never real and it’s all KGB mind games. Him going “It’s more than a game now, there’s so much more at stake” suddenly now comes out of nowhere — if he believes that now, it could only be if he actively reconsidered something offscreen, but he doesn’t say anything elaborating on what he’s thinking now or what he might have reconsidered or why, just that vague, generic line that contradicts everything he’s expressed up until this point. It’s another example of Anatoly’s dialogue just feeling really flat and meaningless to me — his lines here don’t say anything, just serve as vague filler to prompt Freddie onward. And because unlike London proper the setup leading up to this is all about him already being absolutely determined to win the game at all costs, this just feels redundant, unnecessary, going through the motions of something that’s in London without realizing that with the changed context it doesn’t quite make sense anymore.

I think that’s unfortunately the case with Freddie a bit here too. I enjoyed Act I’s quite different take on Freddie, and his establishing narration for Act II petulantly stating Anatoly won the championship last year “by forfeit, I might add”, and “The Interview” is recontextualized in a very fun way as I mentioned before — but after that it feels like Danny Strong doesn’t quite know what to do with Freddie anymore and just has him sort of arbitrarily go through the motions of London in a way that doesn’t necessarily hang together with everything he’s established of Freddie so far. It made sense that this Freddie, despite being decidedly hostile towards Walter and the CIA, conducted the interview to show Florence what a bastard Anatoly is — he’s not doing it for Walter, he’s got his own reasons to want to do it once Walter’s shown him the Svetlana video. But I find it a lot harder to swallow that this Freddie — whose usual problem seems to be that he’s compulsively blunt about how he really feels — would then be easily persuaded to play his part in “The Deal”, which involves exaggeratedly trying to be all buddy-buddy with Anatoly. Maybe if there was better setup around it, like with “The Interview” — but “The Deal” only has seconds of kind of half-assed leadup here, and from there it moves directly into “Pity the Child” (after a segue featuring the recording of Oppenheimer quoting the Bhagavad Gita, because nuclear war).

Freddie’s next appearance after that, then, is this “Talking Chess”-esque dialogue where he’s realized the parallel between the two of them, how they’ve both sacrificed everything for chess and the political schemers have sacrificed nothing and that’s why he should play to win. I can appreciate how the low point of “Pity the Child” would trigger that particular realization, contemplating how much he lost and sacrificed to achieve his status in the game and perhaps afterward realizing Anatoly is the only other person here who might understand that. That feels like it basically tracks and is interesting.

But… it also means that fun very specific contempt for Anatoly in particular based on him having left his family like Freddie’s own father did is just kind of… gone, I guess, or at least Freddie doesn’t consider it relevant enough for it to stop him from going out of his way to pep Anatoly up for the game with no mention or hint of it. (At least Freddie probably isn’t aware of the threats made against Svetlana in particular, so he doesn’t know Anatoly winning would shatter his family even further.) And we’ve lost the bit in “Talking Chess” where the notion of the political scheming actually leading to Viigand winning the match just personally offends Freddie because Viigand is not even that good; instead Freddie is just putting forward “Play to win” as some kind of general inviolable chess principle, which is kind of generic and not nearly as characterful, in my opinion. I’m not saying we ought to have had the “Viigand is mediocre” bit here — I don’t think it would quite fit in for this Freddie, whose feelings about chess itself are very conflicted and who is more concerned with showing up these political hacks who have sacrificed nothing while they sacrificed everything — but as a Freddie moment I would really have wanted to end on something stronger there than this vague assertion that “The number one rule of a chess champion is to play to win.”

Like in London, this is Freddie’s last substantial scene, but he does have a part in “Endgame”, and it’s also an interesting one: he gets Sixty-four squares / they’re the reason you know you exist (but not the preceding How straightforward the game…), but also a couple of other verses usually sung by the chorus, and the lines he gets are clearly very purposefully chosen to reinforce that final resolve regarding the sacrifices they’ve made for greatness, which I really appreciate: Listen to them shout / They saw you do it / In their minds no doubt / That you’ve been through it / Suffered for your art and in the end a winner and They’re completely enchanted / But they don’t take your qualities for granted / It isn’t very often / That the critics soften / Nonetheless, you’ve won their hearts / How can we begin to / Appreciate the work that you’ve put into / Your calling through the years / The blood, the sweat, the tears / The late, late, nights, the early starts?

All in all, Freddie is still definitely my favorite part of this Chess, but while the parallel itself is neat it’s too muddled and I find the second half of Act II pretty uneven for him. What would I do if I were writing this bit?

I’m not totally sure how I’d want to tackle “The Deal”, but as for the “Talking Chess”-but-not scene: I would ditch the bit where Freddie is trying to advise Anatoly on strategy and the bit where Anatoly is apparently suddenly not determined to play to win just so Freddie can then tell him he should be again. None of that is contributing anything in what this version has been building up. Instead, they just sort of bump into each other, Anatoly fresh off his paranoid rant to Florence about Svetlana, Freddie fresh off “Pity the Child” and the strange realization Anatoly might be the only person who’d understand him a little bit. At first they just sort of stop and look at each other. Freddie starts, guarded, with some kind of oblique accusatory prod about the leaving his family thing, which he still deeply resents.

Anatoly has calmed down now, but he tells him what he told Florence: that it was always a fake marriage, a fake family, that the video was just a lie set up for him by the KGB, that Svetlana had brainwashed their children to despise him.

This incidentally plays into Freddie’s existing preconceptions pretty well. He’s probably not instantly convinced but it checks out enough he’s willing to reluctantly leave it alone for now. Probably mutters something like, “Fucking Soviets.”

Anatoly says something like, aren’t you going to try to make me a deal to get me to throw the match and go back? Freddie says no, fuck that. Says the whole bit about how we are the ones who have dedicated ourselves to chess, who have sacrificed everything, childhood, sanity, love, and they’ve sacrificed nothing. Why should we listen to those CIA and KGB assholes? Draws out that parallel. The two of them are probably standing in symmetrical positions on the stage.

Anatoly just nods slowly, agreeing. “I would have beaten you.”

Freddie scoffs and says, “Dream on,” but not quite with the spiteful arrogance he would’ve said it in Act I.

Then they part, and we move on to “Endgame”. The scene isn’t about Freddie helping Anatoly, or about Freddie convincing Anatoly to go for the win; it’s about the Freddie/Anatoly parallel, about Freddie realizing it and in his profound loneliness finding a smidge of connection with this guy he hated because he’s the only one who sort of Gets It, and about showing how Anatoly’s conviction has developed since the first chess match where part of his inner monologue went, “I can’t beat him, he’s too good.” Anatoly is so ready to prove that he really is the world’s best chess player.

Conclusion

Man, this version is so interesting. It’s a mess, but it’s a fascinating mess with a bunch of tasty potential and a real sense that Danny Strong had some genuine thoughts on what the show was missing and how to rework it to fix that, even where his attempts were ultimately confused and don’t succeed. In some ways it’s the most me-core version of Chess and in other ways it’s deeply antithetical to me and in most all ways it’s trying to do something neat but does it in a flawed way. Special shoutout to this Freddie, who honestly deserves better than this Florence.

[canmom]

NieR Automata anime episode 7-8

Continuing commentary from [part 1], [part 2-3], [part 4-5] and [part 6].

So much to catch up on so I'll keep commentary pretty sparse this time!

Episode 7: [Q]uestionable Actions

Episode 7 serves to introduce A2 in the present...

It does this by using the premise of one of the more memorable sidequests in the game, where one of the Machine Lifeforms in Pascal's village asks you to save her little sister. In the game, this is an escort quest in the desert area, in which there is an extended conversation with the little sister android. Here, it's sending us to the Forest Kingdom early - no meeting with Emil, Engels attacking the city, or encounter with the alien ship just yet.

In the Forest Kingdom, we get a very compressed version of the kingdom's backstory and founding by Ernst, and the creation of the little robot baby Immanuel who's supposed to inherit it (these names aren't given in the anime, and only barely mentioned in the game)...

...but most of the forest machines have been massacred by A2. The machine interactions are played mostly for humour here, with the Little Sister declaring that she wants to start a family with one of the forest guards, and Pascal jumping on the concept enthusiastically.

We also have 9S finally warm to Pascal a bit through the old narrative expedient of 'sudden accident that lets the character save your life'...

A shot that raises all kinds of architectural questions we probably shouldn't get into. It's kinda clumsy but there's a lot of game to compress into a short time, so it makes sense to cut 9S gradually warming to Pascal.

Anyway, the star of the show is of course A2, who enters in her inimitable baby-stabbing way:

After an all-too-brief fight with 2B, A2 jumps out the window - something maybe a little more motivated because her Type-4O Sword breaks so she can't really stay and fight. This mostly serves to introduce the conflict with command to 2B and 9S, and motivate 9S to start digging around for dirty secrets.

One thing that isn't really addressed in either the game or this anime is that, according to the concert audio dramas, the androids sent after A2 previously were... 2B and 9S, and A2 got pretty damn good at beating them. Perhaps this explains why she doesn't bother to say many words to them here.

Other than that, we also get Adam and Eve discussing Sartre:

Much as in the game, Eve doesn't have much interest in Adam's books and philosophy, and Adam treats him condescendingly like a child. I mention this shot mostly because I think it's the first time the "existence precedes essence" quote actually appears in the story, for all its engagement with existentialist philosophy.

The final post-credits bit sees puppet A2 killing puppet Pascal...

...just before he can tell us about the dragons in the Kingdom of Night! Grah! They'll keep teasing us with this forever it seems like...

Episode 8: aji wo [K]utta?

If episode 7 took us to the Forest Kingdom zone, this one is focused on the Flooded City area. They clearly referenced the game pretty closely for the backgrounds - I could recognise specific locations, such as the ramp with a bus leading in to the zone.

Picking up pretty directly where episode 7 ended, 2B and 9S are sent on the trail of A2. 9S is getting pretty suspicious of Command already, and when 2B chides him to stay on mission, he goes behind her back. But not before they can hang out a bit at the seaside!

If there's one thing I can respect this adaptation for, it's that it understands the importance of quiet character moments. Fully half this episode is spent just on 2B getting persuaded to stand in water and this is entirely a correct adaptational decision.

Also a 6O lesbian moment:

The pair are looking for Jackass for a lead on A2, after Lily refuses to tell them anything. 9S gets them to split up so he can do some snooping. So 2B is the one to find Jackass, who gets to have the kind of moment that would have been hard to do in the game...

...hanging out in a swimsuit with scarf and combat boots, fishing with grenades, and offering 2B the deadly, delicious mackerel.

All these cute moments lead into a gradual turn towards horror as 9S is cut off from 2B. In the game, I recall this happens after the fight with Grün, which is almost entirely cut in this adaptation - the most we see is a silhouette that looks kind of like the defeated Grün on the skyline early on:

A reasonable thing to cut; Grün in the game is a cool boss fight but not very important to the story (a bit of a jarring nonsequitur really).

Anyway, after taking advantage of 21O to spy on command, 9S gets to hear the Commander talking to the Council of Humanity. They mention, rather cryptically, something called 'Contact Plan B' - which I don't remember being an element in the game and could be the first seeds of a story divergence.

Someone - it's Adam of course - sets up a comms jammer and 9S finds his way into a room full of fanart of him and 2B. I wonder if they put out a call for fanart, or even just scraped it from the internet, because the styles and skill levels are pretty damn varied:

Would definitely be curious if anyone has tracked down sources of any of these pictures.

9S gradually transfers into hacking space, indicated in this anime by black letterboxing bars, as the environment gets more surreal. Whoops! He's been nabbed by Adam. In the game, he pretty much just wakes up in hacking space after the battle with Grün so this is a cool variation.

Thanks to the final arc of NieR Reincarnation, we now know that all the variations of NieR are 'explained', in a sense, by an obscenely complicated time loop premise involving the records of humanity and the AIs assigned to look after them. So, is the game canon or this anime? Yes. The real question is whether the variation from the game is going to be limited to this kind of minor story reshuffling, or if they'll make bigger divergences in season 2. I wouldn't put anything past Yoko Taro, but I've got a lot of catching up to do before I find out...

The ending skit for episode 8 is just a letter from (game producer) Yosuke Saito followed by the mackerel bit, thus explaining the episode title: アジを食った aji o kutta, which can be translated as 'I ate a mackerel' but is also a pun on 'I experienced a flavour'. (It's mostly known in English as the name of the ending of NieR Automata where you eat a mackerel and immediately die).

Feels good to be back on this anime! More to come soon hopefully!

[olderthannetfic]

Escapade Dance Party 2023 Writeup 2/3

Here is the playlist I ended up with this year, plus my commentary:

First Half

Good Omens | Running in the 90's by Maria Morningstar

Good Omens is so tricky. On the one hand, there are a billion fantastic vids, many with editing that's better than this one. On the other, a lot of the preferred music is syrupy and slow, and GO fans are actively seeking out vids and have already seen many of the ones intended for cons in the English-speaking world.

I wanted something high-energy to open the dance with, and this ridiculous song fit the bill. It woke people up and got them noticing the music had started.

I don't know Maria, but her channel has a bunch of things with cyrillic titles, so I'm guessing she's Russian. That meant a higher chance of this vid being new to people at Escapade.

Tubthumping by Aaronantium

To be perfectly honest, I do not care about this anime, but I was chilling with Aaron at Vidders Chat and discussing my plans, and he offered to make me a vid for his vampire fandom.

I don't generally accept premieres because it means wrangling more people and dealing with uncertainty, but Aaron suggested this song, and it's always a crowd pleaser as is the vid everyone makes to it. This fandom is also unusually perfect for said joke, featuring as it does a repeatedly dying vampire who… well… gets back up again.

Actually, despite it not being most people's fandom, I think this vid got one of the biggest laughs and reactions of anything during the party.

Kirk/Spock | I Knew You Were Trouble by mogo nit

K/S is a perennial favorite with con attendees—more TOS but AOS too. I don't recall why I was specifically looking for it this year. Probably, it ranked best out of things people mentioned on their site profiles.

This is an old-ass vid from 10 years ago, so if people have seen it, they probably haven't seen it lately. It's also a song I love, cliched though it might be for vids.

Word of Honor - Wenzhou - Hit and Run by CelestialMoonDragon

I knew I wanted to include WoH, both for its many fans and for people still dragging their feet about checking out Asian live action m/m stuff. The fandom has a wealth to choose from from vidders all over the globe. The big issue was simply finding vids that weren't too plastered with show audio.

When I heard this song choice, however, I knew it was the one. WoH has some unusual genre elements for wuxia, specifically all the central government focus where wuxia characters usually stay away from politics. The song really highlights that aspect. Those lyric matches! Genius!

【夜访吸血鬼】【莱斯特】【Young and Beautiful】献给我最心中最美艳的吸血鬼——莱斯特 by 欧阳夏右

Obviously, if I was going to celebrate the new IWTV, I couldn't leave out the old movie!

This is a brilliant song choice given what happens to Lestat. It's interesting to me how many Chinese vidders use music I know well. It's always fun to see what they do with a Western source and Western music, and I think bilibili is largely uncharted territory for most Escapade attendees.

【The Sentinel】【Jim/Blair】It's consuming me（Lash视角）美剧-哨兵 同人mv by ozakikaoru

The Sentinel still has monofannish fans, but covering it for a dance party is a pain in the butt. I generally end up scraping the depths of Bilibili, and this year was no exception…

So how excited was I to find this refreshing and freaky take! This audio is apparently from some short film and has become something of a meme amongst vidders, but I hadn't heard it before and I don't think anyone at the con had either.

It's always extra surprising and wonderful to find a more serious and darker vid for fandoms everyone associates with camp and retro cheese. The Sentinel fans I included it for were blown away too. It's apparently a pretty good representation of the episode in question.

Forever Knight Vampires | Darkness, Darkness | Gothic 90s by knightvision1228

Because I had the vampires theme, I made a huge list of vampire fandoms to try to include. Forever Knight was one of my fandoms of the 90s and very popular with het shippers and slashers alike. Finding a vid that didn't look like bad VHS transfer, however, was easier said than done.

This one won out for featuring a rare song from the FK soundtrack that was never released. The vid also showcases the main trio instead of just being Nick/Jeanette het.

Megatron x Optimus (Song: Wrecking Ball) by Mellew

We have a lot of Transformers fans, and it's always so hard to find something I can play in the dance party… well… something that's not a 10-minute compilation of explicit fan art to horny reggaeton. Personally, I'm all about that reggaeton, but I've been looking for actual shipper vids that are a little more representative and a little less likely to make the fans combust in embarrassment.

When I heard the song choice… well… no other vid could compete.

But don't let the literalism and hilarious if one-note joke fool you: this is a fantastically edited vid that makes excellent use of the song's varying tempo.

And yes, I made sure to loudly say "WHY ARE YOU ALL LAUGHING? THIS IS A VERY SERIOUS VID" as the vid started.

BakuDeku AMV - Lucky Strike by caliowl 333

Do I watch BNHA? No. Do people at the con watch BNHA? No. Do antis hate this ship? Absofuckinglutely YES!

I love stupid shonen nonsense, and this fandom provides it in spades. It took a while to find an AMV that wasn't littered with not only show audio but dubbed show audio. (What am I, an animal?!)

I also just really love this song for dance parties.

Dancing on My Own - Robyn (Izzy Hands Edit) by auxiliarywardrobe

OFMD is another tough one. It's not due to a lack of vids: if anything, there are too many. But so many aren't suitable for a dance party and many are already familiar to people.

While I did find this on AO3 (honestly nearly a requirement for finding non-show audio vids in this fandom), it hadn't gotten any attention from people I recognized as an Escapade type crowd.

I loved the indignity of pairing Izzy with this ridiculous song. OFMD was a little anodyne for me in some ways, so the sleazy obnoxiousness of Izzy is a welcome antidote to all of the fluff and angst vids about the main ship.

At the same time, I don't particularly ship Izzy with anybody. I enjoy watching him be miserable, and the song is actually quite a good lyrical match for his impotent frustration.

Do You Wanna Touch Me? [Fanvid] by resurrecho

Okay, this one is cheating on my own rules. I'm sure people had every opportunity to see it… But it's also a femslash vid that is very, very horny.

This one's for you ladies tired of ~dewy flower~ soft bullshit!

Cult of Dionysus - Leverage OT3 - Eliot/Parker/Hardison by leverage brain worms

Leverage remains a perennial favorite and the new show had attendees talking,  but people often request the same tired old vid choice. I went looking for something that hadn't been played at every con over and over.

I liked that this vid was relatively recent. The song with poly lyrics was a fun touch.

HeiHua FMV~|| Hei Ye falling for the Thorny Flower by Black Flower

When I saw this vid, I said to myself: I don't know who they are, but I ship them!

AND GUESS WHAT? SEEING THE SHOW DID NOT CHANGE THAT OPINION!

Yes, this vid is directly responsible for me watching all these DMBJ adaptations.

I knew a lot of Escapade attendees were vaguely familiar with Reunion because of Zhu Yilong, but I didn't think most had checked out the rest of DMBJ, and this vid was so diametrically opposite of both that adaptation and the vibe of the big ship that I knew I just had to include it.

But seriously, this vidder actually has an excellent grasp of narrative. Now that I've seen the show, some of this stuff is repurposed and out of context, but you wouldn't know it from the eyelines.

Cover Me - A Fanvid by TinTurtle

Ah, Pros. The Professionals has the most dedicated fans at Escapade, hands down. They keep the con afloat and keep their fandom vibrant even after decades. Finding a dance vid to include for them, however, is a bit of a trial.

Realistically, I'm never going to find a vid they haven't all seen unless I make it myself, so I look for songs with a better beat than the typical old fandom vids tend to have.

The Fanged Four - Play with Fire (BTVS/ATS) by SlayerVid

People were talking about the Buffyverse again this year. Was it an anniversary of some kind? I can't recall, but it's a big nostalgia fandom for a lot of attendees, and it's one of the bigger vampire fandoms, so I wanted to include it.

While there used to be a billion vids for Buffy and Angel, only a fraction of them are findable online now. I went hunting for something not by a con regular and with visual quality that would play okay on a projector.

This is a great song for its grinding beat, and the vid is both recent and features a variety of vampire characters.

BL | Mobu ✘ Kikuchi S2 || So What by rosenana708

I suspect I found it by looking for Kei x Yaku vids, but as soon as I spotted it, I knew it was a must-have.

Yes, this is full of stupid show audio, but too bad: Nobody at a slash or BL con should be allowed to escape without knowing that A Man Who Defies the World of BL exists.

The Locked Tomb | Fences (SPOILERS!) by peachy 💕

This fandom was the latest hot flavor for many and f/f to boot. I was skeptical about finding a vid, but what do you know!

die for you / beyond evil by butillmissyou

After being pimped in by last year's vid find, I knew I wanted to include it again.

This music grabbed me by the throat. I'd never even heard of LÉON, but the soulful sound is perfect for this fandom.

Personal Jesus by killabeez

I desperately wanted a vid to this song. The cover isn't my fave, but I couldn't turn down the combo of a vampire fandom and this classic.

True, Killa isn't exactly obscure to anyone at Escapade, but this is a relatively less seen older vid and excellently edited.

BTS Vampire FMV | Bad Things (True Blood OP) by GoldenArmy7

I'm so clever.

Yes, this is mostly here so I can follow the True Blood vid with one to the True Blood theme song. Also to inflict BTS on people.

● Ichiro + Shiro | 'dope' (KeixYaku: Dangerous Partners FMV) by xXScarshadowXx

And now some BTS music, LOL

Sadly no longer online from what I can tell

WEDNESDAY | “Sweet But Psycho” Netflix Serie [HD] by SHIK

There are like thirty vids to this fandom using this song. This one blew the others out of the water.

I'll be honest, everyone was trying to push Wednesday/Enid around the time of the con, and that ship is the most boring thing you could possibly take away from this show. I wanted a vid that showcased what's actually fun here, which is not sucking all the creepy out of an Addams Family adaptation, for fuck sake.

ALIEN SUPERSTAR | Wanda & Scarlet Witch by LittleLaceBoots

MCU is still big with attendees, but it's so sprawling that knowing what to choose is hard. I found this music choice quite interesting for how it showcases the weird schtick of this particular show.

A Cowboy's Love by lilly_the_kid

If there's one AO3 vidder I will always play, it's lilly_the_kid! I wanted something for Star Wars, and I wanted it to be slash. This classic and ridiculous vid fit the bill.

Is it appropriate for a dance party? It is IF I SAY IT IS!

Boss Bitch | Lan Wangji (陈情令 The Untamed FMV) by slowparade

Everyone vids this song, but this example is particularly great!

I like aspects of The Untamed a lot. Sadly, those aspects do not include the central ship. I'm always on the hunt for vids that actually work for me. This take on Lan Wangji is hilarious.

Geraskier - Fine By Me by CainnetreIt delights me to find vids to other versions of popular canons. This is such a classic slash vid. It's not particularly danceable, but it's so fun that I wanted to include it, so it needed to go at the end of a section. It's the kind of song you wave your beer around to.

[aprillikesthings]

It's Fridayyyyy

TIME FOR MORE SHE-RA

s1 ep11 Promise

oh shit I remember this one it's a heartbreaker

(good stuff for my fic though)

Hey remember when I swore up and down I wasn't going to liveblog my entire rewatch? Good times.

Part of me is like: I would get through these so much faster if I didn't insist on screenshotting them and commenting and making jokes

But the rest of me knows damn well I probably just wouldn't bother watching them?? This way feels a bit like watching it *with* someone, which I always prefer to watching things alone.

Also tbh if I did just marathon them while knitting or something I wouldn't remember anything!! Which would defeat the point!! So here I am.

If you're new to these posts: I am doing a rewatch of She-Ra with the specific purpose of taking notes for a fic I'm working on--but because this is me we're talking about, I also post a ton of screenshots with the purposes of commentary, squeeing at specific scenes, and making jokes. Because it's a rewatch, I don't comment on every plot point and I often mention things that happen later in the show--in other words, these might be confusing if you haven't seen the show yet.

EDIT: yeah this was another one where I hit the image limit, will have to reblog to finish it

I know people have figured out the "alphabet" of the first ones what does this sayyyyy

I mean wouldn't they all be portable in some sense? The one that recharges Glimmer could be taken down and moved somewhere, couldn't it? We know the one from Scorpia's kingdom was taken and moved to the Fright Zone, for instance.

"Query not recognized."

Adora's frustration here is exactly why I don't use Siri, like, ever.

Light Hope reminds me of a specific model? actress? from the 1980's but I can never remember who and it drives me CRAZY

*does some googling*

GRACE JONES I AM THINKING OF GRACE JONES

TELL ME I'M WRONG

Grace Jones also did disco music, TIL

back to cartoon lesbians

yeah that couldn't have been important for anything no worries it's fine

you didn't notice anyone else there until She-Ra destroyed something lolol

ehehehehehehh

Look I know it's the point of the whole show but I grin every time they're supposed to be on opposite sides and one saves the other's life (Does Adora do it more than Catra does? surely someone kept count)

don't mind me

little shit

🎵BUT YOU DID IT ANYWAYYYYYY🎶

"how many times are you going to make that joke" well how many times does Catra say it lolll

"where are your friends?" "you mean the ones you KIDNAPPED and CURSED???" "uh, yeah?"

lol

I just like the art style here

Okay so I can't screenshot audio, but that little moment of Catra saying "Adora? Adora???" where the tone goes from "hey look at this" to that almost-panic and then she turns around and it's kid!Catra is just so, SO well done.

ugh these scenes are such a punch in the gut

I'm not getting emotional at cartoon characters remembering the happier bits of their shitty traumatic childhood together, YOU ARE

;_;

man this shot is just good, ugh, you can see so much of their characters on display: Adora's self-righteousness vs Catra's sullen defensiveness

anyway they should've made out

lol

they're 1:1 so far this episode

(even though this cliff probably isn't even real)

"Did you really think I'd just let Shadow Weaver erase your memory like that?" oh so she DID know

Adora: "I don't know, probably" I mean I thought she would

I've been CALLED OUT lol

Adora: "Can you blame me? Catra: "*scoffs* Not really"

😏

John Cena.gif

BABIES (okay a little older like maybe 13)

(still babies)

I mean, true

I'VE HIT THE IMAGE LIMIT FOR THIS POST lol I knew I would

gonna post and reblog

[a-lost-illusion]

Continuing this ask from @forg3tbytw0, because they asked nicely. Here are two more things I think people tend to get wrong about Adam.

He’s abusive to Belle We know the Beast has an aggressive temper, which may or may not have been exacerbated by the curse. But the argument that he’s outright abusive (and will never stop being abusive) is a complete misreading of his character. While Beast’s initial behaviour does tread into that territory (such as when he tells Belle she can starve for not eating with him, and when he nearly strikes her in the West Wing), he does face consequences for his actions and has to make significant changes to earn her respect after that. Personally, I think Adam’s temper stems from his entitled upbringing, never being told "no" and from spending the last decade as an insecure and emotionally stunted teenager. NOT because he’s a fundamentally bad person. His outbursts, when they happen, come from frustration, fear and unchecked anger rather than a desire to be outright cruel.

He’s ugly as a human, and Belle likes him better as a Beast

This take annoys me to no end, especially since one of the movie’s key messages is to not judge someone by their appearance. While Adam’s human character design does have some issues (something even the creators have admitted to in the audio commentary), you can see that they were doing their best to reconcile his defining features as a beast with the features of a classically handsome young man. Personally, I had no issue with his appearance as a kid—in fact, I think I liked him better as a human because he was happier, no longer scary, and because I was seeing him the way he was “supposed to be.” Also, in response to that terrible Belle reaction meme that’s been circulating on the Internet—I don’t understand why people can’t give her some grace in needing time to adjust to her Beast’s human appearance, considering she wasn’t expecting him to transform in the first place. If all she cared about was his looks, it would completely undermine their relationship and make her seem like an even shallower person than Gaston.

Another thing that annoys me is the amount of people who have been trying to “redesign” the Prince to look more like his beastly self, sometimes to the point that he looks more like a neanderthal than an 18th-century nobleman. YKINMK of course, but I actually think it’s better that the Beast and the Prince don’t heavily resemble each other, because it makes his curse seem even more tragic. Not only is he unable to leave his castle, but he has no recognizable human features left, except for his eyes. That kind of transformation would be deeply traumatic on anyone and helps to further justify why he’s so bitter and angry at the beginning of the film.

[autisticempathydaemon]

for the matchups, please? this is very long oops :^)

What song are you fixated on at the moment? What lyric or verse, and why?

magnolia by laufey!!! love the first verse, specifically, "stars in her eyes, handpicked from the skies." i just think it's very pretty :))

What is your Enneagram type?

type 4w5 (looking at the other submissions this is very popular?!)

Do you love gargantuan Youtube video essays, and if so, which is your favorite and why?

the youtuber strange æons has this video where she does a deep dive on an old harry potter fanfiction writer called ms.scribe, i think it's really fascinating stuff!

Tell me about your childhood imaginary friend.

i don't know if this technically counts as an imaginary friend? there was this one time i found a little praying mantis and gave him a whole backstory (he was a legendary samurai!!) and pretended to sword fight with him. i think about that often

What is your go-to way to fall asleep?

get snuggled up in bed and consume content til i pass out wwww

If you had to change your name, what would it be, and why? (In tandem, if you have changed your name, why did you pick that one?)

i named myself after my favorite artist :))

What is your favorite of Redacted’s audios, and why?

caelums first audio! it was the first redacted audio i listened to ever and im very attached to it just for that

What Redacted boy holds no appeal to you, and why? Like, not the one you hate but the one who you don’t get the hype for. (I won’t judge, I promise.)

james! not really into him, he doesn't stand out to me

Tell me about that one book/movie/tv show you know all the words to.

bee and puppycat! i can even mimick puppycats voice hehe (if you haven't seen it, puppycat makes mechanical beep sounds, sorta like animal crossing noises instead of talking) i just find the concept of it charming, a girl who feels isolated from everyone else finding a magical little pet that takes her on grand adventures. the subtleness of its commentary i find really appealing. also if we're just talking about aesthetics it's all soft colors and stars, very pretty and very my thing.

Which Redacted boy are you platonically attracted to? Like- forget dating, which dude do you want to be your best friend?

asher!! he's funny and energetic but also very relatable to me, which are qualities I like in a friend :))

Do you have a go-to thing you ramble about when you’re tired, and if so, what is it? (For example, my boyfriend knows I’m ready to sleep when I start talking about space.)

i basically turn into a pokedex during my late night phone calls with my friends. if the conversation goes out, i'll start speaking about random pokemon facts (it's the special interest talking..)

Tell me your go-to gas station and drink combo.

gas stations and convenience stores are separated where i live xD i like to get a strawberry smoothie from 7-eleven, but tbh i mainly do it because i just think the machine is cool...

What’s your guilty pleasure media, and why?

dating sims! i just like feeling included :,)

And whatever else you think tells me about who you are!

im a drawing artist mostly, but i dabble in a ton of other creative/artistic hobbies, and im in a band :^) also, i have hyperphantasia. that's pretty cool

A Free Spirit, a creative, and artist with a love of the stars- who else could you be but Elliott’s Sunshine, his brightest star?

I love pairing our favorite Dreamwalker with artists; it’s just an irrefutable match, you know? With your hyperphantasia, I bet he’d love to be a guest in your dreams, to firsthand see what you see and bring into the world through art. Elliott is just such a sweetpea, the most fun and supportive boyfriend you could imagine. As someone who works in art/architecture himself, he gets you. He understands creative blocks, the frustration and excitement of trying out a new concept or medium, the desire to not rest until you have made something, a desire he’d make sure to nip in the bud when necessary.

Speaking of your art, he is your biggest fanboy, because Elliott highkey has fanboy energy, don’t you think? He’s picking you up from practice, he’s attending every gig, he hyping you up every chance he gets. He’d also use his magic to give you the most exciting gifts. Think the dragon flashback audio but for you. He could put you in the world of Bee and Puppycat! He could make you a dream dating sim where all the romanceable npcs are him in different hats.

Song:

Pull it out of park, put it in drive/ I can feel your heart beatin' with mine/ Underneath the stars lookin' for a sign/ Glowing in the dark 'til the sun shines/ Made it pretty far on the first try/ Might've set the bar a little too high/ Started with a spark, now we're on fire/ Started with a spark

I had to give you a fun song with star motifs, I couldn’t help it~ This is also a fun, sweet song with chill, lowkey make out vibes. Elliott also totally strikes me as a The Neighborhood, Sweater Weather fan.

Runner-ups:

Vincent is a really fun runner-up because he would be such a good groupie; like, can’t you imagine him front and center of any of your performances, saying “you were great, Lovely, I bought you a brand new guitar.” Anton is another fun runner-up because he’s so technically-inclined, so I think an artist would contrast him beautifully.

note: thank you for your entry~!

Read this post and send me an ask if you’d like a match-up of your own! 💌

[gemini-care-barr]

Okay, I’m an effort to lighten up here’s a more fun question.

It’s Saturday night and Oppenheimer just dropped on Amazon prime. And all ur favs and their respective partners (so like Bruce brings Selina and Barry brings Iris etc.) to a JLA watch party!

How do you think all (or some) of your favs would react to the movie? Who would like it? Who would say words? Any fun commentaries? Who’s talking the most? Who’s eating the most? Who disagrees with Oppenheimer etc.? Who’s spiraling? 🤣

I’m still reeling at the fact that you think anything to do with Oppenheimer would lighten things up hahah 😭🤣

To answer, as briefly as possible haha:

Barry/Iris: Barry is interested from a scientific and historical perspective and very moved by Oppenheimer’s dilemma and the emotional burden he carries after the realization of his creation lands squarely on him. Iris is hyper-fixated on why tf Florence Pugh had to be naked right in front of her salad lmao.

Hal/Carol: Hal is high key bored and asking Barry when the explosion happens, once it does happen he’s in absolute shock that the credits aren’t immediately rolling. Carol is enjoying it as a closet movie buff and is feeling very seen in all the scenes showing the stress of organizing large projects haha.

Bruce/Selina: Bruce is interested for similar reasons as Barry and is getting ready to enter an hours-long debate with Barry and Ollie about the validity of creating something so dangerous for the sake of making it first. Selina is recognizing the validity of avoiding marriage when men like Oppenheimer exist, and is getting ready to enter into an hours-long debate with Lois and Dinah on how marriage could possibly be an option lol.

Arthur/Mera: Arthur is approaching the movie from a king’s perspective and is appalled at the idea of weapons of mass destruction because of the endangerment of so many innocents, he’s getting ready to join Ollie’s fight against the preemptive motive of mutually assured destruction. Mera is surprisingly okay with mutually assured destruction and even more surprisingly likes the movie as a movie, so she’s just vibing while eating popcorn haha.

Clark/Lois: Clark is saddened by the story, but understanding of Oppenheimer’s hunger for knowledge, it’s nothing he didn’t already know, and now he’s getting ready to play referee for the Barry/Bruce/Ollie/Arthur fight debate. Lois is looking up articles on Oppenheimer’s life to see just how accurate this movie is, “no way he said that ‘I am become death’ line right then,” she thinks.

Ollie/Dinah: Ollie, ah Ollie, he’s ready to fite, Oppenheimer’s complete disregard for human life and the flimsy excuse of the safety of mutually assured destruction or getting ahead of the “bad guys” when creating something so dangerous just isn’t enough for him, he holds little sympathy for Oppenheimer and doesn’t believe in his remorse, he’ll fight Barry and Bruce’s scientific/pragmatic/forgiving natures on this. Dinah has Ollie’s back on this, she’s slightly more forgiving, but that gets overridden by Oppenheimer’s treatment of the people in his life, granted, she’s also not that willing to fight over a movie no matter how historically accurate (or not) it is, so she’ll be supporting Ollie, but also reminding everyone to chill.

J’onn: He’s amazingly brought down by thoughts of his home world that are sparked by the movie, he has a deep appreciation for art though and is marveling at the technical and artistic aspects of the movie, the cinematography, audio, writing, and acting are all stunning and he is moved, he’ll be the one to sober everyone up afterwards and remind them that they’re all friends here, he’s the true mediator of the group, everyone trusts him on this since he’s the closest to all that pain.

And those are my thoughts! Sorry for getting a little sad there at the end haha, but can you blame me?? It’s Oppenheimer 😭

[chillychive]

Because I’m insane, I’m watching TOS. And since it seemed to be entertaining, I’m writing commentary. I take no responsibility for how incoherent this is. (Fair warning, there is swearing bc this show is wild)

Bro why were there two people walking around in street clothes? Why does she walk like thattttt

Not the doctor giving him alcohol

Also hello Una ik ur not Una yet but hello <3

This is so weird cause there’s absolutely *no* context to anything they mention. Whatever happened on Rigel, we have *no* idea about.

Ayo Pike’s horses!!

Hello Spock.

HAHHAAAA WHATTT was that a PIECE OF PAPER???? BRO WHAT CENTURY IS THISSSSSS HAHAHA

IT IS!! It’s a piece of PAPER hahahaa

Intercraft? What does that mean??

The bridge was soo tiny back then.

And i love the little goofy effects. They so silly.

Yet again, reports on paper??????? They can pilot a ship through space and go to different star systems, but they can’t send an text??

“I Can’t get used to having a woman on the bridge?” BRO WHAT THE BLATANT SEXISM IS KILLING ME. C’mon, pike, in about 60 years of real time, you’ll be on a bridge with primarily woman. AND UNA’S LITERALLY YOUR FIRST OFFICER WHAT ARE YOU ON ABOUT

The sound effects are soo silly

And the audio is killing me

Im gonna stop commenting on the obvious low budget stuff because it is *so* bad. But also so wildly impressive for a show that has such a low budget

A SPOCK SMILE IN EPISODE 1?! What is this???

Ah hello, Vina. Of course, it’s been only 18 years since the landing and Vina is very much 18 years old, and pike is very much not, but of course there’s gonna be a whole thing now. And hello talosians!!

“Prime specimen.” What

HAHAHA the way the talosian put him to sleep that was hilarious

I love how the phaser produces wind HAHA

Yo ik he just got kidnapped but that bed/couch looks so comfortable i want it

The shadow puppet aliens are hilarious

It’s so strange how in the same breath this show can have a woman in charge of the ship and then be totally sexist

Oh the transitions are SO BAD he’s not even vaguely looking the same direction as he was in the last frame

THe whip sounds on the axe im dyinggggggggg

BRO WHHAT why did she hug him like that TF ive never seen anyone do that ever

EW BARF THIS IS SO GROSS VINA WHAT

Their little goggles I canttttt

Okay turn off the lasers now ur just wasting power

ADAM AND EVE WHAT

The random music hahahhaaa

Ayo he refuses to eat so they put him in hell??? The goofy fire effects lolll

Also i wanna know about that bird species that they put in the cage. There are so few winged species in memory alpha, literally just that one that has wings made of butterflies in disco

YO its the horses and a picnic

Im so confused how this becomes the pike and vina we know from disco

“I can’t help but love you.” Ew ew this is all ew

What is happening

Literally the misogyny is weirddddddddd

What just happened.

Ayo she’s not 18 she’s actually old gross. Wait they changed that in disco i think.

EW what why do they say that abt una. I doubt any of these things are true

Literally the whole premise of this episode is pike resisting fucking one of 3 women while aliens try to make him horny

This is weird as helll

The airbag veins hahaha

“A unique hatred of captivity” bro tf

Whoa they had no idea how to make old or injured makeup. Oh wait that actually makes some sense

Bro wait so the ending is just she stays as a captive with a fake pike??

What is this

Also the lighting was so wacky

A clipboard with paper whattt

The yeoman i cant

[sinkableruby]

do you think any of the other characters from Monogatari would be able to beat Ougi in a bmx race, and which of them do you think would cheat in the most interesting manner while trying?

KALKDFALKFDA i love how you phrased it like it's already understood that people would have to cheat to do it

ok the objectively correct but also boring answer is tsukihi. but shes a shoo-in so i dont wanna talk about her. she doesnt count she's unbeatable! realistically, if ougi were to be doing a bmx race and be faced with her, they would simply Not Race lol

ok first i will talk about the people who wouldn't cheat. (spoilers up to nademonogatari under the cut meaning nademonogatari is included)

kanbaru would not cheat she would want to do it fair and square. she would train for the occasion but she doesnt know how to ride a bike (semi canonically? idk how canonical the audio commentaries are) so she’d probably struggle, and even though she’s athletic i can’t imagine she’d win or get close to it (rip). karen would have the best chances of winning legitimately. i’d imagine she probably knows how to ride a bike bc shes got easy access since koyomi is always riding them. and her level of fitness is absolutely insane, so she could pull it off. but ougi has lots of bicycle experience, and does like tricks and stuff for it. and they can do crazy stunts without worrying about damage to the user. so its a toss up here, but karen could win. hanekawa would not win. ougi would not allow it, their pride would not allow it. hanekawa would try to win, as part of her rivalry with them. but ougi would probably rather die than allow her to win especially when it concerns a hobby of theirs so they dont its as simple as that. i dont think hanekawa would be too much of a challenge, but she’s very powerful and unpredictable so ougi would take no chances. eliminate with extreme prejudice. now for the last of the non-cheaters, koyomi (surprisingly). dont get me wrong he would absolutely cheat against like at least half of the other cast if he felt like he couldn’t win easily or if he started losing. but he would be way too terrified to cheat against ougi. and there’s absolutely no way he wins against ougi without cheating, i mean come on. ougi can do cool little tricks and knows all his weaknesses. i think he would keep up decently at first but ultimately be completely destroyed near the end of the race.

ok now for the cheaters 😈 (spoilers: none of them could win)

nadeko would cheat here because she would know that she has no chance of winning whatsoever if she doesnt, and she doesnt really like ougi all that much so she doesnt feel too bad about it. now the WAY she decides to cheat varies. nadeko would much rather rely on her own abilities instead of asking yotsugi or tsukihi for help, so she might draw a shikigami of anti-nadeko (or a more cooperative version with the same strength) to throw/boost her instead, which you could argue is technically not cheating because its still her own power moving the bmx. senjougahara really cheats? no dignity! she would act like shes gonna do it fair and square and then totally shamelessly cheat bc she doesnt think she can win at all. i think she would race normally, and then once ougi got far ahead enough she would try to cut ahead by going off the tracks and taking a shortcut. i think i can picture a universe where sodachi cheats so heres what she’d do. and she’s probably the most creative one about it. i think, given her penchant for careful and precise planning, she would add obstacles to the course. its hard to do and it would take a while, but its also hard to check for if you do it right. she wouldnt even necessarily have to buy materials either, assuming the race doesnt happen somewhere built for the purpose of bicycle racing. she could just move stuff from the general terrain around the course to make it look like it was something that happened by accident, while having knowledge of where the traps were and how to get past them. think like moving around rocks and boulders, small logs and dirt piles and stuff like that. stuff that could put the bicycle off balance, or would require slowing down or rerouting, especially stuff that looks deceptively harmless. shinobu would cheat, but not intentionally, she just has no interest in the rules and doesnt intend to learn what they are. so the moment the race starts, in order to “get to the goal the fastest” she goes off track. yotsugi ABSOLUTELY cheats, but probably not in an interesting way. she just uses unlimited rulebook to boost her bike into the air. i think she potentially maybe could use it to just speed up, but i think she wouldnt have the patience for that at all and would rather just skip the whole race asap. mayoi is unable to ride the bmx. she just isn’t good at it. she’s small and its kinda big and unwieldy so its just hard to do. i think her cheat would be the kind of cheat that doesnt really have much practical chance of succeeding long term, like tying her bmx to ougi’s so she can get pulled along. i think she’d try to frame it as like a cooperative thing like let’s get to the finish line together type deal. but i cant see her having the heart to actually betray someone right at the finish line, so she would just lose. she probably wouldnt care that much anyway

but the reason why not just hachikuji but none of the cheaters would have a chance at winning is because while ougi could potentially be miffed at losing, there’s no way they’d let a cheater slip by. and they’d have a lot of fun catching the cheats and working around them. they would examine for possible cheats based on the opponent and prepare countermeasures far in advance-- all in all, cheating is bad against ougi because its like when you pirate a game and the final boss becomes impossible to beat on your copy. youre ramping up the difficulty to such an extreme level that its better to just do it legit. ougi’s ability and desire to win probably increases exponentially if their opponent is cheating, as well as their enjoyment of the race.

here’s how they would deploy the countermeasures:

ougi would definitely anticipate the shikigami move and have some countermeasures in mind. i imagine they might try to convince anti-nadeko she’s being used for a silly purpose (she is) and make her not want to help, OR the much more Fun way they would go to the drawing in the notebook right before nadeko brings it to life and erase the arms without nadeko noticing. so it has no arms and can’t help her. oops! senjougahara’s move... it’s just kinda silly. i think it’s too silly for ougi to prepare anything really crazy. if anything they prolly just pick to do the race at a time + place where the shortcuts aren’t actually helpful at all. like construction blocking the way, rocky terrain, that sort of thing. and then they’d just do the race and win normally sodachi’s planning is her own downfall as usual :( ougi is very cool and just uses the added obstacles as like ramps and shit. and uses the ramps to go over harder obstacles, or just fucking lifts the bmx up somehow like in otorimongatari. and sodachi just doesnt have that kinda technical prowess, or the ability to predict that someone would be able to do that (which is reasonable). rip as for shinobu, she’s instantly disqualified so ougi just goes off track with her for the hell of it (and wins anyway, of course) yotsugi’s impatience gets the best of her here-- she’d have had a lot easier time if she had just tried to speed herself up, but by attempting a leap she leaves herself wayy more open to counterattacks. i think ougi would choose the most slapstick way of going about this so i’d imagine that, understanding that unlimited rulebook involves a lot of explosive force, they would bring a slingshot to the race. and they’d wait till yotsugi tried to use the rulebook and then with one perfectly placed projectile, knock yotsugi’s foot to the side juuust so, so that the angle of the leap is altered, and she goes careening away at high speed. teehee shouldnt have cheated! of course yotsugi would be fine even after a crash bc shes a doll, so its okay to go for more dangerous counterattacks in ougi’s mind. for hachikuji, she wouldnt have the opportunity to not betray ougi bc she wouldnt get to the finish line tow truck/three legged race style in the first place. she would be like “lets get there together” and ougi would just pull out a pair of scissors and be like “nope ✂” even though they know she probably wouldnt even try to win. they are just devious like that

so yeah none of the cheaters would win. ougi would want more of them to cheat so they could win anyway and have fun with it. like ooh youre cheating now i can be evil. honestly same

[dailyaudiobiblechronological]

1/25/2023 DAB Chronological Transciption

Genesis 38 - 40

Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible Chronological, I'm China. Today is the 25 day. Wow, the 20 fiveTH day. That is our new metric of time, welcome. We are starting today. I don't know what that was that came out of my mouth, but today is the 25th day of January, welcome. It is so great to be here with you today. So glad that you are here reading the word of the Lord together and that there are so many of us all around the globe that are reading God's word together and that he is listening and the Holy Spirit is breathing and coming alive to us in the scriptures. And yeah, so maybe if you are listening alone or by yourself, may you just rest in the comfort of knowing that there are so many others around the global campfire who are listening with you today. So whether you have a cold weather day where you're at and you really do need a campfire, or the weather is not so chilly and you could do a campfire setting on YouTube and just have one of those running, those are pretty cool. But regardless, there's a global campfire here and we are coming around and reading and listening to the word of the Lord together. So let's jump in. Today we are continuing our story. We are in the book of Genesis with chapters 38 through 40, and we are in the Common English Bible for this week.

Commentary

So two crazy stories happen today. The first one is is so bizarre to me. It's like two different sexual affairs try to happen. One does happen, and then one tries to happen and is accused of being happening. Of happening. So she gets married and the first husband is immoral. So the Lord puts him to death, and then the second husband is being deceitful and he gets put to death. And so basically what's happening is they're waiting for a Shaila to grow up, which means there's a substantial age gap. And so they're just waiting for him to get older, for them to get married is my best guess here. And so while they're waiting for that time to come, she's realizing, okay, well, he's already grown up, but he hasn't been given to me to be my husband yet. So when Judah sees her, he assumes that she's a prostitute, which I'm like, okay, Judah like, time out. Both your sons were just killed by God because of their immorality, and yet here you are thinking that this woman's a prostitute. And so you're like, sure, why not? So I'm like, buddy, what's happening here? But he sleeps with her, she becomes pregnant, and that we don't see in the scripture. But I wonder if she okay. Pause. Sorry. My brains kind of go in a couple of different directions. One, how do you not know what your daughter in law looks like? How do you not know what your father in law looks like? It seems that she knows who he is and like, did she keep her face covered the whole time? Which is strange to me. Whatever. So my best guess here, and I'm not trying to make a theological statement, I'm just trying to understand the text a little bit better, I think my best guess, she knows who he is. He doesn't know who she is. She's like, let me set myself up here. One, I'll have a child, and two, I also won't get burned or killed because I'm going to have this statement that you slept with me. This was your idea. And so that happens. And then not only is she pregnant with a baby, she's pregnant with twins. And this part was really fascinating to me. Now that I've had a baby, I'm very aware of, like, birth stories, and I'm like, oh my goodness. If a baby came out with their hand out first, the labor for that is, whoa, intense. So I have heard. But okay, so then he puts his hand back. I'm curious how that would go. Once a baby is coming out, how does it hand go back? I'm not saying this is wrong or that I don't believe it. I'm just saying, wow, this is something that I'm picturing. And I'm like, okay, this is crazy. And so then for him to be retracted under the pubic bone, which is where you have to push your baby out of, and in the birth canal for him to go back, and then another baby come out, I'm like, okay, very interesting. That labor must have really sucked. Anyway, so that's like all the story that's, like, all the contexts that we have, they're named. And then we go back into the story of Joseph. Now, this is a very common, very popular story that we know, or maybe you don't know it. I'll break it down for those who don't know it, but we just read it, so there's not much that I need to break down. But what is very interesting to me is Joseph's heart posture. It always gets me. You know, he is towards the end of the scripture. He's he's talking about, look, I've done nothing to be down here. I've actually done nothing to even be sold into human trafficking, but he doesn't call it that to slavery. And then to be down here in this dungeon, I've done nothing wrong. But for him to maintain his heart posture, like, we don't see any Lord. Are you kidding me? Or any of, like, anger towards God or frustration towards man. We don't see that in the text. Maybe he struggled with that. I'm not sure that would kind of make sense. Wouldn't blame him. But really, he continues to be who God made him to be and who what God gave him the gift of is to interpret dreams. And he even says dreams are from God, and so interpretations are from God. And so he is again, this is now his. Sorry, I think this is his second time revealing a dream, there'll be a third that we'll read about. But what's the one thing that he asks in return is, please don't forget me. Don't forget me down here. And the the wine steward, the cup barer, he forgets Joseph. And so Joseph is is forgotten. There's not a phone line. He don't get a call. There's no, like, I'll scream loud enough, you can hear me through your floor, but there's none of that. I don't even know that the dungeon would be under the king's house or anything like that. I think it's separate. I don't know. But there's no way that he gets out of this in his own might, you know, and it doesn't even seem like he again, through what scripture reveals to us, I don't know how you could be content in a dungeon in prison. I don't know that he was or that he wasn't, but I do know that he continues to be faithful to the Lord and continues to be a good steward of what the Lord has given him, which is his dream interpretations and to wait on the Lord. And so I think this story really just shows me that when we are in less than ideal situations and we are doing everything quote right and doing everything, that we're just living our lives and then things have happened to us that we're like, time out, what is this? What's happening? Some pointers. One, I think the Lord isn't always behind those things. I think that he's in them and that he guides and directs us and nothing takes him by surprise because I don't think that God motive, it like, I don't think it was God who was behind just his brother selling him into slavery and then that he would be bought into Potipher's house and then Potipher's wife trying to sleep with him and then accusing him of rape and then him getting put in prison. I don't know that that was like, this is my plan for you, Joseph. It's going to be great. Could have been, I don't know for sure. But what I do know is that the word is sovereign. And he's like, okay, I'm going to use this all for my glory, and then you're going to be a mouthpiece. And through all of this, the Lord gets the glory and the honor. Maybe you have some things going on in your life that you're like, I didn't do anything. I was just living my life and XYZ is happening to me and gosh, dang, I can't catch a break. And I'm just trying to be a good steward, trying to be a good believer, a good person, and these things are happening to me and I just don't even know what to do anymore. We don't see that Joseph asks those questions. But like I said, it would make sense that he would it makes sense that we would have those questions kind of like Job, but then to also just kind of rest on the fact that the Lord is sovereign. And to trust that we again, like in this text, we don't see that the Lord is saying joseph, it's going to be this much longer, buddy. Hang in there. Things will look up, keep fighting a good fight. There's no indicator that the Lord is speaking to Joseph through this. Again, he could have, could not have. I don't know, I'm just going by what the scripture says, but I see that Joseph continues to be faithful to the Lord and to be faithful to what he has been given, which is his own dreams and interpretation of dreams, and we'll see how that really propels him. But yeah, some things that I think that are helpful to apply to our own story is sometimes things happen and we can't control them. We cannot control the outcome, no matter how much we are trying to. And then something happens and we're like, okay, don't forget me. Or maybe we're saying that to the Lord, lord, don't forget me. And then we feel forgotten. I can promise you, like, we're in the thick of this story right now, so I won't bring the outcome to make this a feel good message, especially if you're in the thick of your story. But what I can say for sure is that you're not forgotten. You may be in this place of a dungeon where you didn't do anything to deserve this or to get here. Is it not by your faultings? And you're here and you're being a faithful steward of what God has given you. You're doing what he's asked you and yet you feel forgotten. I can promise you the Lord sees you and I can promise you that you are not forgotten.

Prayer

So Father, I thank you for your word. I thank you for the guidance and the direction that it gives us, even when we can't see it, even when we can't feel it, even maybe if we don't really want it. We just want to feel the pain and the intensity of our questions. And God, I just thank you that when we have those questions and we have our pain, you meet us in them. And so I pray that we would be a people who can learn to be uncomfortable in our own questions and doubts and big feelings, but I pray that we would remember the truth, that you meet us there and that we would be sensitive to Your Holy Spirit. And God, I thank you that you always come to rescue us. You are always coming after us. And just like we are going to read soon in this story, we're not going to stay in this dungeon, we're not going to stay in this place, we're not going to stay in the thought or the wonder that you might have forgotten us. I think that the sweet truth is that there's nowhere we could go that you wouldn't be and there's nowhere that you would be that we couldn't be? And so I just thank you for your word today and it's in your name we pray, amen.

[m1ckeyb3rry]

No fr it’s funny because even Ego says that like “you guys live in the comfort of Japan where you’ll never worry about surviving” so good that bllk is self aware but I agree the stakes in the beginning fr felt a bit intense which was refreshing!! Yeah im still a little irked about himizus backstory too like that could’ve been a gorgeous karasu panel instead but NOPE wtv also makes me a little sad that we won’t see karasus backstory animated since its in epinagi

HAHA its funny when you remember he has a second lead role in one of your reqs he will not get his happy ending quite yet it seems LMAOO but also I JUST SAW we literally called it yuki and Karasu certified gentlemen FRRR yayoi knew what she was doing!! I bet it’s also because granny Karasu lives with them too so he’s constantly surrounded by older women and learning to respect them! No because what am I supposed to do with the info in hioris profile he what?????? Hospitalized y/n era next /j I’m crying it just has me imagining like does that include like a whole ass full body cast where you can’t even see the person but yeah anyways and we all thought Karasu was the weird one for commenting on his leg this is a different level of freak

I’m convinced otoya is the animators’ fave because he looks so good?? Like they make him so majestic too I see so many edits of him trust yuki and nagi will get their moment when we see their match!! Very excited to see all the clips from there! Some scenes of Shidou are actually INSANE did you watch through the ep? Towards the end they have pics of the top 6 and when I tell you I fr got jumpscared by Shidou but I also could not care less like yesss save the budget for Karasu pls!!!

FR like how are they even connected…actually ik a lot of people ship megumi and sukuna because of sukunas plan for megumi and how he didn’t let him die etc but Karasu is wild…maybe someone mistook megumi for Karasu and went to town with it idk LMAO

IM CRYING THE STOCK PHOTO thats fr me whenever i have to be productive im crying well at least the sufferings over now!!! You made it!! LMAOO wait im kinda excited for when you have to get to the Isagi req too not just to read but to hear your commentary as you write LMAOAOA I love the classic Mira foreshadowing hint drops i like picking them out and being like “oh yk someone’s dying” or something LOL

AGAIN WITH THE HISTORICAL REFERENCE your research game is too strong but I loved the story overall I mean you know I’m not a Kaiser fan either LMAO but I certainly didn’t mind reading that!! Another win in my book wait again the Kunigami cameo LMAOOOO fr had me like “omg what are YOU doing here??” LOL

Wait your process for making the layout already sounds complicated to me LMAO ibis paint is fr pretty insane though for a free app!!

That panel is so good speaking of I can’t wait to see that animated too omg

LMAOAOAOA you are correct in fact those two edits actually made it to my fyp which was pleasantly surprising but YEAHHHHHH THAT KARASU SCENE CHEFS KISS he looks so good and LMAOOO the “mama a girl behind you” audio is so funny and it works perfectly with otoya being sneaky

- Karasu anon

LMAOO ego calling them out will always be funny to me like bro was not playing around 😭 but agreed it added a bit of self awareness to the show!! and yeah…idk why we needed an entire focus on himizu when we know he’s irrelevant moving forward…just another example of how bllk ends up on focusing on too many characters and spreading itself too thin 😫 it was a perfect chance to expand on karasu and/or kiyora who are both playing in the current match 🙁 but maybe i’m biased because i want more karasu i’m sure the two himizu fans out there were happy abt it

HFJDJSS KUNIGAMI FOREVER SUFFERING at least he’s entering the miraverse though…maybe one day he’ll debut in full probably not though because alongside being ginger he’s also kinda boring i fear 😭 perhaps if the wildcard backstory makes him rlly fascinating i’ll change my mind but idk…ANYWAYS YESSSS YUKI AND KARASU MY GLORIOUS KINGS also i think it’s funny that the rankings are voted by other blue lock characters and karasu’s constantly an asshole to like all of them?? yet they still voted him as the number two gentleman KDCNDJS bro has no enemies fr i love him 🥹 HAHAHA PLSSSS ngl the more i learn abt hiori with his ln and now his profile the more i’m like nah karasu is JUSTIFIED in fucking around with him LMAOAOA everyone thinking he’s the weird one when he’s just a slightly sassy guy who likes to say goofy stuff to his friends meanwhile hiori is like actually lowkey a freak 😰

SHIDOU CONSISTENTLY JUMPSCARING HE’S SO GOOFY I CAN’T 😭 pls i just know they’re going to do yuki and nagi so well in the next episode they show up in…okay but i saw a panel of manga karasu and i was fr like 😫 as glorious as he is animated he fr hits diff in the manga for some reason JSDHSJSJ anyways yeah they’re really eating it up with the otoya scenes ngl good for them otoya would be proud

yeahhh i think that’s why it’s such a popular ship!! since sukuna was all like “megumi absolutely cannot die” ofc we know that wasn’t romantic but when you’re a shipper anything works ig 🙂‍↕️ my only thought is someone who ships sukuna and megumi together started bllk and put the pieces together and created the rare pair of the century

I LOVEEE THAT PHOTO a guy sent it to a gc i was in whenever he had to do computer science hw and i IMMEDIATELY saved i think it’s hilarious 😭 literally me seeing all of my sae requests and zero nagi ones 😔 but YESSSS I’M FREE FROM KAISER AT LEAST not sure what i’m going to work on next but we’ll see!! hopefully it won’t take as long as that did to come out 😫

HISTORICAL REFERENCES ALWAYS #trust LMAAOOA yeah i don’t love kaiser as you know but he is fun to write abt sometimes he’s more on the karasu end of things where he lends himself to more plots…HELP i was thinking of leaving the guard anonymous but then i was like nah let me let kunigami get his first name drop KDJDJDDHJS anyways fun fact in the very first scene when reader takes kunigami to the art gallery and they leave the other guard to watch over her father the other guard is meant to be barou!! also if she didn’t get sick and meet kaiser/literally die she probably would’ve ended up marrying kunigami 🙁

SPEAKING OF HISTORICAL REFERENCES…rin said his fav historical figure is oda nobunaga apparently??? aka the person hollyhock y/n is based on 😭 rin is a hollyhock y/n stan wait imagine we were joking abt what it would be like if hollyhock characters met their bllk selves but imagine RIN meeting hollyhock y/n he’d genuinely glaze her i fear 😰 probably hollyhock karasu too since he’s also one of the three unifiers 😜 probably feels bad they got reincarnated into such “lukewarm” modern time equivalents

yeahhh ibis paint x fr goes hard i love it!! and it’s not too bad DJFHDJ the hardest part is picking what panel i want to use 😭 it wasn’t hard for kaiser because he doesn’t have that many panels with the long gold hair which is what i imagined him having while as an actual angel but i’m sure i’ll start to run out of sae panels at some point HAHAHA

UGH barou goal animated is going to be so good they always do him and his goals SO well i have full entire faith that he’s going to look amazing…barou my handsome amazing boyfriend…I CAN’T WAIT TO SEE KARASU SPAWNING INTO EVERY CELEBRATION TOO he’s literally in ALL of them (except nagi’s i think that’s just his fist pump and then we see isagi and chigiri running towards him) IT’S SO FUNNY LIKE BRO IS IN THE MIDFIELD WHERE DOES HE EVEN COME FROM 😭

THAT KARASU SCENE IS SOOOOO ugh he carried the episode i’m trying not to rewatch because i plan on rewatching all of s2 at once after it’s all out but it’s so tempting i want to see him again 😫 and the mama a girl behind you audio for otoya CRACKS ME UP it’s so him also wait lowkey is it just me or does otoya kinda look like rin 😭 maybe it’s the hair idk they’re kinda giving twin

[mermaidsirennikita]

ARC REVIEW:

3.5/5. Releases 10/8/2024 (in audio).

The Vibes: The Nightmare Before Christmas (you know this), rivals to lovers, fighting for the same girl but we really wanna kiss each other

Heat Index: 5/10

The Basics:

Nicholas Claus (otherwise known as Coal) is the Prince of Christmas. His father, the reigning Santa, has commercialized Christmas to the point that Coal is rebellious and and chafes at the prospect of duty... which doesn't mean he isn't obligated to marry his friend Iris, the Easter Princess (who Coal's brother is currently pining for). Problem: Hex, the Prince of Halloween, is here to vie for Iris's hand... except he really doesn't. Because Hex actually wants Coal. And also, they made out a couple of years ago.

The Review:

Well.... I really loved this in theory. In reality? It's solid, but it's another one of those "'twill be better for others than it is for me" books that I seem to be running into a good bit lately.

"But Caroline," you say. "Surely you didn't have high expectations for a silly, fun Nightmare Before Christmas but it's rivals to lovers book, right?"

I mean, I didn't expect it to be some sweeping epic romance, no. But I do expect to have a fun and sexy time, and while this is a fun and sexy time for many, I'm sure, it's not MY type of fun and sexy time. Because I do enjoy a silly book! I was so down for silly here.

It is fun and cute and all that, but it's actually way more in touch with reality (our reality) than I expected. With Christmas romances especially, I often want to be swept up into this Christmas world. The Christmas Notch series, for example, is a Christmas romance series set in our world that is still somehow SO. INTO. CHRISTMAS. It feels "Christmas realm but making out". This had some of that, but I really thought I'd get more.

This leans a lot into the daddy issues of Bad Cynical Santa, versus the potential cackling fun of Bad Cynical Santa. And there wasn't as much magic as I expected? Like, I expected the *creepy organ riff* Addams Family type intro for Hex, but alas. He's most notably wearing a corset. Which I love, but MORE. HALLOWEEN.

When you reference The Nightmare Before Christmas, I just expect... more camp holiday joy and less "let's reference Frozen". There is a Frozen joke, and that was JARRINGLY close to our real world. When you combine that with the capitalism commentary, which is a surprisingly big part of the novel, I'm like... But wait. I want like. Peppermint-flavored dicks, or something. Not OUR world.

That said. I love the holiday royals. I loved Iris. There is a lot of cute here. The concept of two guys trying to win a princess who doesn't want to marry either of them, really (but she will because Holiday Royal Duty) making out with each other on the low? Great.

I think I was just looking more for... more.

I also will say, this falls victim to another "this reads like a well-written book but does it read as romance-y as it could because there is one POV and we need both" situation. Being in Coal's head all the time honestly left me feeling like I'd spent more time getting to know Coal's friends and family than Coal and Hex as a couple. Which, again... doesn't mean it's a bad book. But it did keep me from investing in the romance.

I also do have something of a golden rule with romance novels, which is that... if you don't have everyone involved in the romance show up by 20% in, that's a deduction. Hex does show up early. Technically. But then we have a time jump, during which he and Coal never see each other, and then... it's a good bit before he shows up. Not a lot happens in that good bit, admittedly, because we're mostly getting to know Coal's platonic relationships. But I don't know, man. We needed more.

The Sex:

This is lightly steamy, I'd say. There's chemistry, there's Stuff, but it's not super descriptive or super frequent.

I do actually totally get the Red White & Royal Blue comparisons. If you enjoyed that book (I'm more about the movie version) then yeah, I totally see this working for you. For me... it was more of an "alright" experience. Solid voice performance from the narrator, no complaints there.

Thanks to Macmillan Audio and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

[dreamerwriternstargazer]

Something something hiding our pain and scars with a token from our loves

Only thing is Mina knew, they decided together, no, she *volunteered* to hide Jonathan’s pain and hurt, a concealment that was a trust

Lucy doesn’t give Arthur that same intimacy, yet the gesture is done in the same sense, concealing the bites and preventing him from the pain she’s suffering through, and in the end he will suffer anyway, losing her twice over.

Both these women trying dearly to protect the men they love, but… in the end it’s Lucy’s undoing, both such selfless acts but only one was done as a partnership

Something something, commentary on love and relationships. And while there might not be statements from Bram Stoker about meanings behind the relationships, Mina and Jonathan both express their views several times throughout the book about how a marriage is a deep bond full of trust, and it requires openness and connection between the husband and wife

Even when Jonathan gives her the journal, he says that his views are that “there should be no secrets between husband and wife”. You could view this to mean literally, they have to share everything but their actions define his words for him. In the end, Mina shows through the tying of her ribbon that she will help him conceal his secrets, in the end what the book shows us is that there might be things each person keeps to themselves privately, but both parties are aware there is something hidden and respect and trust their partner.

In the end, Lucy didn’t let on her sickness *or* the secret of the source. She never let Arthur know of the secret’s existence in the first place

And I don’t know that it suggests Stoker wrote them as a purposeful foil, as a “bad couple” in contrast to Jonmina, but I feel it’s more of a commentary on social rules and propriety that Edwardian women were taught. Jonmina’s intimacy is in slight defiance of etiquette after all, they’re unusually close for an unmarried couple and have been for years, whereas Lucy and Arthur’s romance blossoms not because but in spite of social restrictions. A nuanced view, at my guess (and limited time with the book I just about manage to listen to the audio 🥹) is that Lucy and Arthur’s partnership breaks due to that adherence to propriety - Lucy doesn’t share her sickness with Arthur yes to avoid causing him pain but also because it wouldn’t do to look that way in front of your fiancé, Arthur is barely aware of how badly sick she is even when he does find out, due to Seward and Van Helsing keeping it from him. And! Lucy doesn’t share with anyone the source of the bite marks, the reason stated by Mina, that it could ruin her reputation and raise alarm around her.

Lucy and Arthur are doomed by societal compliance, and Jonathan and Mina are saved by their connection that transcends societal expectations for men and women.

Hang on - "bit of ribbon that was around my neck" - part of the wedding and the wedding present is her baring her throat to him

Mina takes off the (blue) ribbon around her neck to bind up the symbol of their love and trust, while simultaneously Lucy puts on the (black) ribbon around her neck to hide her bite marks from her lover under a symbol of his affection/ownership (the diamond buckle).

Lucy's throat is locked up tight and is being violated anyway. Mina's is unbound upon her wedding. (Sexual liberator whomst?)

Both ribbons secure and hide evidence of vampirism (the bites / the diary)

WHAT

HOW HAD I NEVER NOTICED THIS BEFORE

*GNAWING ON THIS*

[castle-dominion]

s7 3xk audio

michael mosley rob bowman andrew marlowe nathan fillion

He has done s3, 5, 6, & 7 episodes, in fact s7 had two.

Go as deep as possible as fast as possible without lingering anywhere.

How far will a person go for someone they love?

Mosler has done it before too! & he brings it up again lol. "Even your charming innocence is creepy"

It's great for caste to throw ppl around & get thrown around.

"unless it's michael molsley, we don't care about him"

Joques Goudreau lol

People come up to him on the street & say he's creepy XD "I've found something I'm good at"

Cars pulling up does not feel like a metaphor for me but ok.

It SHOULD feel like what castle is going through. Willingness to go to the other side this patience & impatience, the darkness, also frustration.

The two month thing

3xk made this VERY personal

How do you expose a character who is not present? 3xk's manipulation.

NF: always exciting to kill off a powerful, popular character.

"he really was mike boudreau" "when the zombie apocalypse comes Tyson will be the first to rise"

the cars have gotten better on set apparently

Do they not call it a toque anywhere else...?

RB: my credit right over castle's butt

RB: what was it like to handle this (fight) scene? MM: There's a bruise

Hm, this moment was not? scripted?

How much mike & how much 3xk?

It's all backwards

Gates & Castle <3 she is resetting him, use your head.

Tracking shot of fillion & everyone following along... wow this IS bowman magic...

Everyone: right HERE!

One shot there going in & finding his girls.

colour correction

They never solve the homicide of who THIS girl is

Getting caught watching

Ah the blood was digitally added in! It is not beckett but he killed someone else half to torture him (the other half just for fun)

The slow quiet is greattttt.

we cannot see anything except from her eyes

relatively irrelevant XD

Build it & recontextualize.

Yay welcome back gen kill reunion ig!

Writing this scene was fun but seeing it come together is better

rob duncan <3

I like how they can all laugh at this Ah less lighting bc we are not seeing as much of the castle we know anymore

Yay Roe & Daryn "we only did what you would have done" "if he's listening" "how likely is it that these guys watch the commentaries?"

Yeah they shoot all the stuff "here" first & "there" all at once, so it WOULD be hard, at least for me

RB: I used to speak three paragraphs to nathan & he'd sum it up with "so faster?"

topanga canyon

the anxiety is not just camera work but also the audio "the director was anxious so the camera was anxious"

the no-dialogue scenes, such a Thing you know?

Villainy really can be overplayed but you can avoid twirling the moustache & petting the cat.

it LOOKS like bubble wrap so I am not shocked

THIS IS ALL TAKE ONE? you did it all one take, two cameras?

This room is so weird tho bc how did they get that light through the bottom of the door?

Watching it a second time "she's not here" he said out loud

WAIT PAUL SCOTT LET HIMSELF GET SHOT WITH A TAZER?

Yeah of COURSE she is not going to literally remove her face lol

I love a good monologue. Honest for this non-sane character w/o cliche

He always thinks he is in control bad guy mea culpa lol reason & thinking

Yeah it was a little bit... too much. Tilting the scene to castle

This is the journey gates sent castle on

"I'm dead I might as well tell him what I think of him" or power to him lol

Ew ew ew all the way in I hate it

No no this draining life force thing was gooood except dang what if he DID manage to shoot castle? I think that it could have been something interesting for sure. like the fic I read with the burning building

Esposito & Ryan!

the music IS GOOD but I don't much like it you don't see who killed whom castle bought her the time to rescue herself, they needed each other

that is not a lot of time, like 6 months working full-time. that is a hell of a long time I take it back

Everyone is group hugging & it is intimate & touching but then apparently huertas kept ruining it.

"oh yeah I shot you then too"

Too bad we didn't have more moke mosley commentary.

Rly fun! "letting me play in your sandbox" oh it was his first audio commentary! Good for him!