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rallamajoop · 4 years ago

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The Witcher: The Games vs the Books part 2 – Characters and Accents

So, I've already talked at length about the relationship between the Witcher books and games, but how well they captured individual characters is its whole own subject – and you’d better believe I have enough thoughts on it for a whole extra post.

Andrej Sapkowski's skill for creating vivid and engaging characters really is so much of what brings the books to life, and no matter how much work an adaptation might put into worldbuilding and plot, it's the characters you've really got to nail to get the long-time fans on board. Especially when you’ve done what the games have, framing themselves as a direct continuation of Sapkowski's story. Nothing invites comparison to your source material like basically forcing fans to read the original novels to understand even half the backstory alluded to in-game.

So how did they do? I can only offer my opinion – characterisation is necessarily going to be a lot more subjective than just telling you what plot points the games contradicted outright – but like any fan, I have opinions in plenty.

Of the main cast, I feel Yennefer is the character they've captured the best. They've done just as well with some supporting players – I have no real complaints about Dijkstra or Phillipa, for example, who are favourites of mine in both games and books. For the main players though, Geralt and Regis seem to be the ones who's differences I'm most inclined to forgive, whereas I don't feel like they've done Ciri justice at all. Book!Geralt is much less of a smartarse, for one thing, whereas Book!Ciri is much more of one. But if we're talking about the differences, I’m afraid we really need to start with Dandelion.

Dandelion

For all the genuinely good work the games do with characters, old and new, I don't think I can overstate what a disservice the they've done Dandelion, who I could not stand in TW3, but is now one of my favourite book!verse characters. Alas, Dandelion is a prime example of something the Witcher games really don't do well: camp. Being the archtypical bard, Dandelion is about as flamboyant as any enthusiastically-heterosexual man can be: you should be able to spot this guy by body language alone, he should be flouncing around and he should talk like a spoiled noble auditioning for Shakespeare. Book!Dandelion is over-the-top and ridiculous and just so much fun, and I loved him well before I'd even really gotten into the rest of the books around him.

Here's just a bit of dialogue from one of his first appearances, to give you a sense of how he and Geralt play off each other.

The bard seized the fingerboard of his lute and plucked the strings vigorously. ‘How would you prefer it, in verse or in normal speech?’ ‘Normal speech.’ ‘As you please,’ Dandelion said, not putting his lute down. ‘Listen then, noble gentlemen, to what occurred a week ago near the free town of Barefield. ‘Twas thus, that at the crack of dawn, when the rising sun had barely tinged pink the shrouds of mist hanging pendent above the meadows—’ ‘It was supposed to be normal speech,’ Geralt reminded him. ‘Isn’t it? Very well, very well. I understand. Concise, without metaphors. A dragon alighted on the pastures outside Barefield.’

Though TW3's Dandelion certainly looks the part, you have to go hunting through art from the Gwent cards to find much that comes close to really capturing his personality (see left pic below – though even there, a Dandelion who'd voluntarily break his treasured lute is a very hard sell). Though a lot of fanart does better (right-below – credit goes to Tatiana Ortaliz).

But as poorly as the games capture his flamboyance, they're not that much better when it comes to taking him seriously. TW3 left me thinking he was all talk and no substance; the books make abundantly clear that he really is renowned enough to be welcome in courts across the continent. Though he often overestimates what he can talk himself out of, he isn’t stupid either: he's lectured at Oxenfurt, spied for Dijkstra, and then there are the moments where the frivolous playboy mask slips and you realise he's sometimes much better at understanding people and relationships than Geralt will ever be (which is honestly kind of funny considering how many of Dandelion’s relationships end with plates being thrown at him from an upper story). He's not at all above mocking Geralt when he deserves it either (and especially his personal and relationship issues) – Geralt will happily mock him right back.

We never do learn how they became friends (I'm pretty sure the incident listed in the wiki is just the date of their first expedition together, not their first meeting), but Geralt just doesn't form lasting friendships or romances with anyone he can't have an intelligent conversation with. And Dandelion is a damn good friend to Geralt – one who, despite being a helpless, squishy little bard, will keep Geralt's secrets under torture, or will follow him into Nilfgaard in the middle of a war simply because you don't let a friend make a trip like that alone. (Seriously, I don’t ship it nearly as much as some, but hot damn there is some material in here if you do.) In short, it's basically inconceivable that he'd leave an amnesic Geralt wandering around Vizima alone, as he does in the first Witcher game – which is the kind of thing I can mostly forgive as a gameplay conceit, only it doesn’t really get better from there.

He’s also supposed to be blond, something I don’t think is technically specified until fairly late in the novels, but 100% what I’d been picturing since his first description as a man in a colourful bonnet with cornflower-blue eyes (let’s face it: Dandelion’s hair isn’t the only thing about him that screams ‘blond’). It’s a shame no-one from the games to the show to the novels’ cover artists seem to have noticed – but at least there are some fanartists out there who were paying attention (credit for these goes to Asphaloth, Ghostcupdraws, Hvit-ravn (tumblr deleted), 94355 and itsmespicaa).

As for the games? Well, I cannot speak to how Dandelion came across in the original Polish, but I think it speaks worlds about the priorities of the English version that they didn’t even bother to cast someone with a halfway-decent singing voice as their master bard. There are isolated moments of dialogue that come close to sounding like book!Dandelion– mostly in Witcher 2, which comes closer to capturing the spirit of the books than either 1 or 3, or his attempts to convince his captor he's a disguised noble when you rescue him TW3 – but his voice actor is just painfully ill-suited to the role.

Geralt

Geralt fares much better than Dandelion, though he’s still a little hard to square with the Geralt of the books. Book!Geralt spends a lot more time sulking, just to begin with: he sulks because his job is complicated and gets him no respect, and because the world is unjust and unfair – and, most of all, he sulks because Yennefer has dumped him again. He also gets mocked for sulking, and usually deserves it. Book!Geralt is generally a lot more taciturn and a less prone to making smart comments just to have something to say – arguably because in book!Geralt's world, making smart comments often ends at the gallows, or at least with some corrupt official making your life much harder. Book!Geralt's world kind of sucks, and he's just got to put up with it.

As much as he often plays into the expectations of being an uneducated monster hunter, he's also got a more of an intellectual streak than you’d guess. He may prefer to stay out of politics (because damnit, his job is to save people from monsters, not people who are monsters), but he attended school at Nenneke's temple and has even taken classes at Oxenfurt academy, and there's a lot of thoughtful nuance to his opinions – his speech to Ciri about why he can't in good conscience take a stronger stance against the Scoiata'el contains a wealth of historical perspective, just for one example. Even his smart comments tend to be, well, somewhat smarter in the books.

Book!Geralt’s explicitly a lot younger than Yennefer – around 50 is the usual estimate, falling far short of the 100-ish the games suggest (the scandal of having a man fall for – gasp! – an older woman clearly didn’t bother Sapkowski one bit). You don’t see nearly as much "I'm getting too old for this" from book!Geralt, who's really not that old by witcher standards, and is apparently still hunting monsters long into his future. I'm also a little annoyed by the way they play off his hatred of portals like he's a grumpy old man who doesn't like mobile phones, when his distrust originally came from having seen the gruesome deaths that result when portals go wrong. This is not to say Book!Geralt lacks other ordinary human flaws, however – twice in the last two books of the main saga, he gets severely sidetracked after his ego gets the better of him (in the adulation he receives after being knighted, then after arriving in Toussaint), and it's quite some time before he properly gets back on track for that whole rescuing-Ciri thing again. He’s also pretty hopeless when it comes to romance and relationships – breaking things off gracefully is really not in his skillset.

So why does game!Geralt not bother me more? Well, he's the main player character of a game franchise, and one who has to carry the experience largely solo. Some adjustments for genre are pretty much inevitable in that position. He's certainly fared better than Meve, for example, who's been softened far more from her book characterisation for her PC role in Thronebreaker. Then there's the whole amnesia thing – it's easy to believe that sort of experience would change a man – and if he doesn't sulk so much as he used to, maybe he's grown up a bit. Geralt's also in many ways the straight-man of Sapkowski's Witcher universe – there largely as the reliable centre for other, louder personalities to play off. But I expect the real bottom line here is that I do still like game!Geralt enough to forgive him a lot of what he lacks.

The books never do describe Geralt as being very attractive – something book-based fanart often tries to reflect. The point has been made before that the rather-alien-looking Geralt of the first game (left pic above) is probably a lot closer to his book-description. However, the main distinguishing factor you’ll see in book-based fanart is probably the ubiquitous headband, which genuinely is what book!Geralt wears to make his hair behave (the example on the right above comes from Diana Novich).

All that said, if Sapkowski really wants me to believe that nearly so many women are eager to jump into bed with him, I’m going to have to shallowly assume our witnesses are unreliable on this front, and Geralt is at least as attractive as Witcher 3′s take on him. Nothing else makes sense. *g*

Regis

Regis varies mostly in that book!Regis is a lot more smug, sometimes verging on obnoxious – and a lot keener to make fun of Geralt (who generally deserves it). But then, Regis is old and wise and superpowered enough to dance rings around most everyone else – can you blame him? By Blood and Wine, Regis' overconfidence has been recently smacked down hard after his near-death-experience at the hands of Vilgefortz, and that kind of thing could knock some chips off anyone's shoulder. Throw in the fact that with Dettlaff, we have a situation not even Regis could make light of, and the changes to game!Regis make a certain amount of sense.

I do feel it's a bit of a shame that the vocal direction didn't work just a little bit harder to capture some of Regis' smugger side, or emphasise that his long-winded philosophising on human behaviour is supposed to sound a bit pretentious. This is actually something I suspect they were going for a few times in the script, but which didn't come through in the dialogue quite the way it was meant to. Still, again, I'm sure I'm biased by the fact that I like game!Regis far too much to find much fault in what they've done with him. They've done a lovely job capturing his friendship with Geralt too.

Looks-wise, there's a tendency in book-based art to portray Regis with long hair (even some pre-Blood-and-Wine Gwent art did so – see the two pics on the left above, from Gwent and early B&W concepts. The right-most pic is cover art from the books). I couldn't rightly tell you where long-haired-Regis comes from, though – perhaps it's described more explicitly in the original Polish, or perhaps it comes up in passing in some passage I've forgotten, though it may just as well just be a fannish meme.

The books do describe him as looking rather like a tax collector, slim, middle-aged, with an aquiline nose, prone to wearing black, and his hair as 'greying' or 'grey streaked', so presumably somewhat younger-looking than the game would have it. The hammer-horror-esque sideburns are likewise a game-verse addition, though I do like the look they went with – it's distinct from Geralt in a way that making him another long-grey-haired man wouldn't have been, and that's probably the point.

Being the hopeless Regis fan I am, I have quite the folder full of different fanart takes on book!Regis, so have a selection – art here is by gellihana-art, justanor, greysmartwolf, Nastyaskaya, NatalyLanier, beidak, natalliel, ellaine and afternoon63. For what it’s worth, I feel beidak’s (bottom pic, second from the left) comes the closest to what I’d have pictured personally, based on how he’s first described.

Ciri

I find it much harder to rationalise the changes to game!Ciri, who I didn't exactly dislike, but found stuck too close to the role of generic-macguffin-girl-who-just-wants-to-be-normal to be very interesting. Having read the books, not only do I much prefer book!Ciri, I'm not sure I can emphasize enough how much the game did NOT prepare me for utter gauntlet of whump and misery that girl survives in the last four titles. Book!Ciri is a character who works for me mostly because of the same flaws the game mostly strips her free of – TW3 makes some token noise about how you can't tell her what to do, but she’s an utter little royal brat when we first meet book!Ciri, and it’s so much of what brings her to life. She throws herself into her witcher training with the enthusiasm of a kid going completely native, but still revels in getting to be girly for a change when Triss first arrives at Kaer Morhen. She hates Yennefer at first, but soon bonds with her just as strongly as she ever did with Geralt, picking up some of Yennfer’s haughty mannerisms along the way. And then she gets thrown through a portal and lost in the distant wilderness, and the whole world comes down on her head.

The build up to the first time Ciri actually has to kill someone is intense... and things only get worse from there. Steadily. For another couple of novels at a stretch. Seriously, a major caveat that pretty much has to go into any rec for these books (and I will absolutely rec these books) is that Ciri's story gets heavy. So heavy one finds oneself using phrases like, "that time that one guy died of his wounds on top of her while semi-consensually feeling her up was honestly one of the less traumatic incidents in the period."

By the end of the novels, Ciri has nearly died of thirst, been beaten, tied up, dragged around the country as a prisoner, run with bandits and killed innocent people for the fun of it, done fantasy-cocaine and got a tattoo, fought off more than one attempted rape, been drugged, lain for multiple nights next to an impotent elf who completely fails to impregnate her, watched the bodies of her friends and girlfriend being mutilated in front of her, and did I mention where she got that scar? She has survived hell, and it is absolutely a testament to her own strength that she somehow comes through it and puts herself back together at the end. When Geralt finally arrives to rescue her, what matters most isn't that her ordeal is over, but that she finally knows she hasn’t been abandoned by everyone who’d ever loved her after all.

The Ciri of the books is fierce and wild and arrogant, but she's learned her morals from the best, and she holds onto them until she can't, then picks them back up again when she can, and above all she survives. For all that her story turns arguably too much of the last two books into a slog of misery, oh boy does it pay off at the end. And that's probably about as much as I can say about her Big Moment in the last book without spoiling too much, so suffice to say that by the end of the saga, Geralt has pretty much become a supporting character in Ciri's story, not the other way around. (Seriously, you’d be surprised how few chapters of the last two books he’s actually in.)

Finding art which captures the aspects of Ciri’s character and history which are missing from the game has turned out to be pretty hard, though the fanart above from her bandit phase takes a decent crack at it (credit to Loles Romero and NastyaSkaya). I do rather like that one shot of her on horseback beside her girlfriend too, which comes from Denis Gordeev’s illustrations for the novels (below).

How much of this does TW3 get across with her portrayal in the game? Well, she's still pretty headstrong, I guess. And they let you give a 'sorry, I like girls' answer in one bit of dialogue, so they remembered her girlfriend existed. That's nice. But game!Ciri still has a kind of wide-eyed innocence that book!Ciri lost years ago, while book!Ciri is a little force of nature in ways the games hardly even hint at, and that's a really shameful loss.

You'd think, with a character so young, it ought to be easier to imagine she's simply grown up since we saw her last, but so much of what's changed about Ciri feels like a step back rather than forwards. I can shrug off Geralt and Regis' differences and still enjoy their game-verse-selves, but Ciri leaves me genuinely disappointed.

I’d say the official art that comes closest to capturing book!Ciri is that one portrait of her as a very grumpy young child (right above). Some of the early concept art (left above) feels a little more like it has her attitude, though she’s rather too yellow-blonde – not to mention too pretty. I think it also bears pointing out that Ciri isn’t really supposed to be the kind of beauty she is in the game – even before she gets what’s meant to be a seriously ugly and disfiguring scar. (Fanart below by justanor and bobolip)

But of course, the male gamer fanbase can’t be expected to give a fuck about a girl they wouldn’t want to fuck, so game!Ciri must be generically gorgeous. Le sigh.

Triss

I suppose I should at least touch on Triss, too, though she's a very odd case. She's so out of character in the first Witcher game that I am wryly amused that the biggest thing they arguably do get right is that taking advantage of Geralt the moment he showed up with amnesia is... pretty well in-character for her (look, I gotta be honest here, I'm not much of a fan of Triss in any of her incarnations).

The second game does a much better job with her – she actually feels like book!Triss, she has some good dialogue, we're finally dealing with some of her conflicted loyalties to the Lodge and to Geralt – though by the third, her characterisation has been so softened into “the nice one” that none of that potentially meaty conflict is ever resolved, or even really mentioned. Perhaps there's more buried in the Triss-romance path, which I've never bothered with, but the writers seem to have just given up on dealing with anything that might make her look less than wholly sympathetic. Heck, we hardly even get a clear statement about why she and Geralt broke up between Witchers 2 and 3.

Even speaking as such a not-a-fan of Triss, I promise there is more they could've done with the character the books give us. There's her ongoing trauma in from the Battle of Sodden, where she was injured so badly she was memorialised as one the dead: the 14th of the hill. There's her furious impatience with the neutrality of both the witchers and the Lodge: Triss has fought and died for a cause, and is ready to do so again. The second game sort of gets into this, but by and large, the games really aren't up to tackling the moral complexity of having such a theoretically-sympathetic character as Triss, who was still broadly willing to go along with the Lodge's plans to pair Ciri off and get her pregnant as soon as possible – her own wishes be damned. No, instead, Triss has conveniently left the Lodge before the rest of them go spiraling into abject villainy in the second game, clearing all that messy grey stuff out of the conflict.

Of course, the really big unresolved plot point still hanging over book!Triss is how badly she needs to terms with the fact Geralt's just Not That Into Her, and never has been – but since the games want Triss to be a serious romantic option, that's definitely not getting the resolution it could've used.

Book!Triss also pointedly avoids any outfit with a plunging neckline because her chest is covered with the ugly scars she received in the Battle of Sodden, something the games did not have the guts to reproduce. In a more confusing note, the books do consistently describe her hair as 'chestnut', which we'd usually think of as meaning 'brown' – though it turns out the games actually may not have been wrong to make her a redhead, since in Poland 'chestnut hair' apparently mean dark red hair (google some pictures of actual chestnuts, and you'll see why). Still, the firy-red-haired Triss of TW3 who wears nothing but plunging necklines remains a bit of a stretch, however you slice it. Once again, TW2 gets her best (and I must say, gave her the nicest outfit) – though even here she's conspicuously unscarred in all her sex scenes.

(Leftmost pic above is official Witcher 2 art, whereas Triss-with-scars fanart comes to us – once again – from nastyaskaya)

Shani

Shani sort of falls into a similar category as Triss as someone who isn't terribly well-served by any of her appearances, given that both exist in the first game largely to compete for Geralt's attentions. But I can't honestly say I find Shani’s portrayal in the Hearts of Stone expansion to be much better – the degree to which either version exists solely to fall all over Geralt is a bit painful, especially given that their relationship in the books is limited to a single, undramatic hook-up. Book!Shani really only appears in a couple of chapters: we meet her as a medical student friend of Dandelion's, who's been surreptitiously selling pilfered university supplies to fund her degree, then later see her again in the final book, where she proves herself as a battlefield medic during the climactic Battle of Brenna. She's pragmatic to a fault, and I really can't see her as the type who needs Geralt to point out to her that her patient is dead, for example, or who'd subject a guy with Geralt's problems to such an extended feelings-dump as you'll get out of her during the wedding.

Shani is a reasonably logical book-character to bring back, if only because she’s one of those who explicitly survives the ending, but for my money, "serious contender for Geralt's affections" is just not a role she works in.

Anna Henrietta

The duchess of Toussaint, Anna Henrietta, is another case who differs more from her book counterpart than you might think. In the books, the duchess is by far the least competent of the (pleasantly many and) various female leaders and rulers we meet – she comes across as rather young and naive, and every bit as absurd as everyone else in the ridiculous fairy-tale duchy she rules. She is, for example, most displeased to learn that Nilfgaard's war against the north is ongoing (something her courtiers have carefully avoided mentioning in her presence), because she'd long since sent the Emperor a stern note demanding he brought it to an end. She promptly has one of her ministers sent to the tower for misinforming her, and demands the others prepare an even sterner note for the emperor, which will surely do the job.

After Dandelion (inevitably) cheats on her, she has him repeatedly sent to the gallows, only to change her mind and send him a reprieve at the very last minute each time. Picture yourself a much younger and prettier version of the Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland, and you've about got her general vibe.

Blood and Wine sort of waves at this part of her character when she first speaks about Dandelion, and again in suggesting there's a widespread feeling she lacks compassion, and once more as she proves utterly immovable on the subject of her sister. But the generally sensible and insightful woman you deal with for most of the main story is a far cry from her book-verse characterisation. That’s a bit of a shame, because I feel like there's a lot more they could have done to blend the two versions of her. Still, it’s hard to argue the duchess we get suits the story being told around her.

Other characters

Much as I love Yennefer, Dijkstra and Phillipa, I don't really have much more to say about them because I feel the games have done such a good job. The Yennefer of the books gets to show a lot more depth and complexity simply because she has more scenes and more space in which to do so, but when ‘there isn’t more of her’ is your biggest complaint, the game is officially doing pretty well. I could certainly gripe her about how “dresses in black and white” seems to have been taken as “dresses in black with maybe a trace of white trim”, or how Yennefer and Triss seem to be the only sorceresses in the world capable of wearing pants, when Phillipa (just for one) is in sensible men’s clothing the very first time we meet her, but that’s getting into serious nitpicking territory.

(Not that Yen can’t look amazing in outfits with more white – art by Emily Caroll, theclashofqueens, BarbaraRosiak, and cosplay by greatqueenlina)

Vesimir, Lambert and Eskel, Geralt's fellow witchers from the School of the Wolf, fall into a similar category for me – though we spend far less time with them in the books, everything we see of them in the games feels like a fairly logical extension of their book-roles. Vesimir is somewhat over-played as the old fogey, and his death is painfully cliched, but the impact on the characters and Kaer Morhen still hits home – and the games do some especially great work expanding Lambert into a much more complex character. To my mind, the only shame is that more of the book-original characters didn't get the same treatment.

Who have I missed? There's Avallac'h, of course, but I think I've got him pretty well covered by that last post. Zoltan, perhaps inevitably, has had his personality largely flattened into 'generic dwarf', with nothing better to do than hang around Geralt and Dandelion. You wouldn't know Book!Zoltan was apparently incapable of turning away women and children in need, for example – even human women and children with the chronic inability to say thankyou for his help. Or that he eventually admits to Geralt that the luggage he and his friends are carrying comes from a decidedly unsavoury source for such a supposedly charitable, upstanding guy. Yes, even Zoltan gets to be a morally complicated character in the books – who knew?

Speaking of dwarves, pleased as I am that Yarpen Zigren gets remembered in TW2, he's an odd one to talk about, since even in the books, he appears to have had a substantial personality transplant between his two main appearances. Yarpen’s a largely comedic figure in The Bounds of Reason short story, where he cheerfully admits to having considered letting his men knock down a particularly pompous aristocrat and piss all over him to teach him a lesson, but he’s evolved into a studious voice of reason against the scoiata'el by Blood of Elves. TW2 doesn't do a particularly good job of capturing either version, which I suspect probably bothered me more than most people – I liked the later book-incarnation of Yarpen immensely (and not even just because he's one of few ever to really call Triss out on just how much she needs to stop misreading Geralt's friendship as anything more than it is). His chapter in Blood of Elves packs a hell of a punch.

On the subject of accents

I do have to wonder if I'd have warmed up to characters like Triss, Shani and Dandelion (or even Letho) more if they'd only had halfway decent voice actors. It's not just that none are exactly leading the talent at the acting part of the job, it's that their American accents stick out in TW3 like a sore thumb.

Geralt mostly gets away his own US accent by dint of being the very first character we meet, so we've gotten used to the way he talks long before we notice how he stands out – hell, maybe that's just how they talk down in Rivia (hilariously, book!Geralt eventually reveals he's not even from Rivia, but simply picked the place and taught himself the accent so he could feel a bit less like the abandoned foundling he is, which only gives us yet more excuse for why his accent might sound a bit weird). More importantly, Geralt is meant to stand out, to be the outsider wherever he goes, so having him sound like no-one else fits the character.

But neither Triss or Dandelion are "of Rivia", and by the time they show up we've had dozens of hours in a game where literally everyone else sounds British, or Scottish, or Irish, or vaguely-eastern-European in the case of the Nilfgaardians. So why do these weirdos sound like no-one else on the continent?

The short answer seems to be that every character with an American accent in TW3 is someone who had an American accent in at least one of the previous games, which were way looser with their casting and had enough incidental American accents around that they didn't stand out. Clearly, by TW3, consistency with prior games has been prioritised over consistency with literally anything else we’re hearing.

Gaetan is an exception to the rule as the only new character (at least that I caught) with an American accent – presumably because between Geralt, Eskel, Lambert, Berengar, and Letho (and cohorts), some sort of 'witchers have American accents' rule has been pretty well established (another random American-accented witcher shows up in Thronebreaker, just to underline the point). We're going to mostly ignore Jad Karadin here, since his British accent is presumably a recent affectation to go with his new identity, and so makes sense.

This still doesn't really work though, since Letho’s school is all the way down in Nilfgaard (land of the Eastern European accents), while the oldest witcher from Kaer Morhen (Vesimir) is the one guy with a British accent. He sounds nothing like any of his students, despite the fact he's logically the guy they ought to have learned their accents from. So the logic falls in a heap however you slice it, and I'm thrown right out of the game.

With TW3 as your intro to the series, it feels almost as if characters like Triss and Dandelion have been assigned American accents because they're just too important to be saddled with the same pedestrian British accents as everyone else, which did nothing to endear them to me. The only one I eventually warmed up to was Lambert, and then only because he's just such a bitter asshole that he eventually goes full circle and comes out the other side (somewhere around when you've heard his miserable backstory, then gotten drunk together and told him how much you love him, man). Gaetan similarly snuck in under the same clause – American accents clearly work better for me in this series when attached to characters you're supposed to find pretty insufferable on first impressions.

Some final notes

To conclude, it seems only fair to throw in a quick nod to some of the more memorable book-characters who don't appear in the games. Neither Mother Nenneke (Geralt's sort-of-surrogate mother) or Vissena (Geralt's biological mother) ever appear either, alas – Vissena doesn't even merit so much as a Gwent card, which seems quite the wasted opportunity.

Milva, Cahir and Angouleme – the three remaining companions of Geralt’s who died alongside Regis but who were not so easily resurrected – naturally don’t appear. But nor are even really mentioned in all the games, which seems rather less than they deserve after giving their lives to Geralt's cause.

Cahir and Angouleme do at least have pretty badass Gwent cards to their names, though I am properly offended that Milva (who has the dubious honour of being my very favourite book character who doesn't ever appear in the games) is stuck with a card of her freaking death scene – which not only gets the scene wrong (believe me, there was no grimacing and gripping the arrow buried shallowly in her chest for poor Milva), but doesn't even bother to get her hair the right colour, for fuck’s sake. Basically, Milva was a stone cold badass and absolutely deserves better. #justice4milva

One can only guess how I'd have felt about some of these characters had I read the books before playing the games – I am obviously biased towards forgiving changes to characters whom I liked in their game incarnations, regardless of how they compare. Still, I think it does speak wonders that there still all these characters who suddenly made sense only after I'd met them in the books.

Even if only for Dandelion and Ciri, I can only dream of seeing a bit more of the book-original characterisations make it into the collective fannish consciousness. There's nothing wrong with getting into the canon purely based on the show or the games, but having read Sapkowski's novels, it's no longer any mystery how they spawned this massive franchise. That the saga wasn’t even fully available in English until well after Witcher 3 was released – a solid couple of decades late, and long after it had already been translated into Russian, French, German, Spanish and more – is a real shame. For once, it’s us in the anglophone world who’ve been missing out: these books deserve so much more than to be thought of as a footnote to the games or the show.

#Dandelion #Witcher novels #Jaskier #Ciri #Regis #Geralt of Rivia #meta #The Witcher #long post is even longer this time #I blame everyone who gave me such lovely feedback on that last post *g*

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superworldunkown · 5 years ago

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Chase you to the Top

AN: Dad Bakugou fics are my favorite. I am 100% convinced, with evidence I made up myself, that Bakugou would literally be the best dad in the worst way. Would his children swear? Yes. Would they be wholesome and the righteous hero’s in the making? Fuck yes. I’m here for it. Also, Bakugou and a POC character would make the most cutest biracial babies, like I cant. But I’ll write it anyways.

Summary: The day finally came when Deku passed Kacchan on the Hero Billboard charts...but, surprisingly, Bakugou is still on top. It’s mostly BakuDeku friendship, with a nice helping of Dad Bakugou, and a sprinkle of Bakugou x POC reader. The perfect recipe.

Midoriya dreamed of this day. It was finally here. The Hero Billboard Chart JP Annual ceremony. All of the training, the battles, the wins and losses, it all seemed worth it to have his name once again be echoed in the same stadium as his mentor, All Might. Of course, Midoriya was nervous beyond recognition. But, in true Midoriya fashion, he spent all week preparing and perfecting his entrance walk, his wave to the crowd, and the speech the top heroes gave. He had it down to a science. After all, he was now a top hero! However, he was not prepared for the ranking,

Midoriya ranked 3rd.

Kacchan....4th.

He ranked higher. He surpassed Bakugou?! And now, the entire world was going to see it. This could very well be his final Hero Billboard Chart moment. He was sure Bakugou was going to blast him on live TV. Maybe he shouldn’t have invited his mother as his plus 1.

He gulped, despite how hard his body was rejecting any more fluid into his already churning stomach. The two hero’s stood side by side backstage, both dressed in their full hero costumes; Bakugou foregoing his left gauntlet. Since the war with the League of Villains several years back he only dawned both gauntlets in serious missions where the firepower was absolutely necessary.

The roar of the crowed hummed through the walls and thick theater curtains. The two hero’s haven’t spoken to each other since their rankings were reveled in private late last night. Some hero’s weren’t even given any notice to their rankings. He and Bakugou were the exceptions. Bakugou and Midoriya stood out for so many reasons. Both seen and unseen. To the public, they were the symbol of the next generation of Heroes. Also, the Hero Committee knew of Bakugou’s fiery temper, so it was probably for everyone's safety that it wasn’t publicly announced without notice.

Midoriya thought for a moment. They weren’t kids anymore. And their friendship, dare he say it, had transformed so much from their days at U.A. They were on speaking terms, they trained together. Ran missions together. Bakugou even threw himself in danger to save his life once. Hell, he was even invited to Bakugou’s wedding, and only 5 other classmates were invited! They had become so much closer, but was that all about to be destroyed?

But Midoriya couldn’t live with the silence. He had to say something. Something to cut the tension. Something to make Bakugou look at him, acknowledge him. Even if he got screamed at, he had to say something.

He began slow, and quiet, “So...Uhh, pretty exciting we both made it so high up, huh?”

Oh no.

Was that pandering? Shit!

“I mean, its great right? We’ve both worked so hard. You worked even harder you know, your quirk is so amazing and you’ve become such a great hero- not that you weren’t in the first place...Sorry not likethatKacchanijustknowyou’vebeenwatingforthismomentyourwholelifeandihopeI’mnotruiningitbecauseirankedhigherthanyouthisyearbuttheresalwaysnextyearwhoknowsmaybetheyputmehigherbymistake-”

“Damnit Deku! You’re muttering again! And It’s pissing me off!”

The green haired man didn’t know why the abrasive response made him smile, “Sorry, Kacchan.”

Bakugou huffed an inaudible response while he began tinkering with his gauntlet before setting it down at his feet, “Shit, forgot to turn the safety on.”

“You’ve gotten so strong, you dont even really need those anymore.” Midoriya pipped up, “You’re now able to set of explosions that can be felt half a mile away-”

Red eyes were cast his direction, “I should’ve gotten that restraining order. You know so much about me its weird, ya damn nerd.”

“Am I really still a nerd to you? After all these years?”

Before the explosion hero could respond, the presence of a small child caught their attention. The curly haired child stood in front of Bakugou, staring up at him with wide, bright eyes. She dawned orange dress with green polka dots and small black and red shoes.

“Oh, Hey Ki-”

“What are you doing here, kid?” Bakugou’s brash voice filled the backstage. He knelt down in front of her, snarling, “Looking for an autograph or something? Well they ain’t free!”

The girl didn’t bat an eye. Rather, her freckled face scrunched up as she responded with a giggle, “You’re mean, Daddy.”

He was beaming, “Damn right I am.” He snatched his daughter up his arms, lifting her in the air as he stood. The girl laughed at her new found height before she began reaching for Bakugou’s hero mask.

“Kiara-there you are!” You called out while rounding the corner, eyes finally set on your daughter, “You can’t run away from Mommy like that.”

Kiara was Bakugou’s 3 year old daughter. She was the perfect balance of you and Katsuki. She had your brown skin that glowed with tiny freckles, curly hair, albeit blonde like her fathers. She had your smile, big and bright. And just like her namesake, she was the princess. You were convinced she got that from Katsuki’s side of the family.

“Hey, Y/N.” Midoriya spoke, only to be enveloped in a big hug.

“Deku! I heard the news! I’m so proud of you, number 3 hero, that’s amazing! Try not to break any bones during your speech, okay?”

“Thanks, Y/N. I’ll try not to.”

Bakugou let out a small laugh. You turned your attention towards your husband and wayward daughter, “And you, no swearing during yours either! I mean it Katsuki if she learns one more word...”

Kiara watched you before mimicking your moves, waving her small finger in her father’s face, “Yeah, no spearin-” She finished with a squeal as Bakugou flashed his teeth playfully bit at her finger.

‘Top 10 heroes, take your position at the main stage. Again, top 10 heroes, main stage please.’

“Alright missy, Daddy and Deku have to go.” You reached out for your daughter who whined in protest, clearly not ready to depart to their seats.

“You sure you can hold her?” Bakugou asked softly, staring down at the small bump that showed ever so slightly from underneath your sweater.

“Trust me.” You reassured him, “If I let her feet hit the ground again, she’ll rush the stage. Okay, Kiara one last hug and it’s time to go.”

Kiara gave her father a tight hug before leaning away towards your arms, “No madder what Daddy, you’re still my mumber one hero.”

While he only witnessed the tender moment, for Midoriya it finally dawned on him. At the end of the day, he didn’t surpass Kacchan, not even by an inch. Midoriya was still chasing after him, just like when they were kids. It didn’t matter where he was ranked or what the public thought of him.

To the people that mattered. Who truly loved him,

Kacchan was already number 1.

AN: I just really want to write more Dad Bakugou. Mah Heart! Do you need Baku-dad in your life, too? Let me know.

#bakugou katsuki #bakugo #dad bakugo #bakudad #mha #my hero academia #bnha #bakugou poc

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twistedtummies2 · 4 years ago

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Ele-May-ntary - Number 6

Welcome to Ele-May-ntary! All throughout the month of May, I’ve been counting down my Top 31 Favorite Portrayals of Sherlock Holmes, from movies, television, radio, and even video games! Last time, we spoke of the Russian actor, Vasily Livanov, who’s portrayal of Holmes crossed international boundaries to become a success. Today, we’ll be discussing a Holmes a little closer to home and current sensibilities. Number 6 is…Robert Downey, Jr.

“I…Am…Iron Holmes! DADA-DADA-DADA-DA-DADA-DA!” Sorry. Couldn’t resist. XD ANYWAY…to many people Robert Downey, Jr. will forever be known as perhaps the most definitive portrayal of the Marvel superhero Iron Man, but – even as he was tackling such enemies as the God of Mischief and…um…Jeff Bridges and Mickey Rourke, I guess - Downey Jr. was also cracking cases in a steampunk-inspired rough-and-tumble Victorian London. Directed by Guy Ritchie, Downey Jr.’s Holmes films seem to be slightly polarizing. MOST people seem to like them, but I know a few people that don’t: some dislike them for their more action-adventure orientation, some dislike them because of the choice of popular actors for the roles, some dislike them because of the way it fiddles with the “classic” Holmes style, and some dislike them because of the humor they feature. Oh, yes. Because…(points to ALL THE HOLMES TAKES I’VE TALKED ABOUT BEFORE)…absolutely NONE of that has ever been attempted in the past. :P Personally, not only do I like the Guy Ritchie films, I LOVE them. I’d actually say that the twin pictures make for either my second or third favorite take on the Holmes universe, as a whole, ever made. Having said that, you’re probably wondering now why he’s only at sixth place, if that is so. Well, I’ll get to that in a minute: first, let’s focus on the positives. As I said before, both of these movies are more geared towards action-adventure than clue-sniffing crime-busting: in both cases, we know who the villains are, and it’s not long till we know what they want and why. The real mystery is figuring out how they plan to achieve their aims. Still, both films give Holmes plenty of time to use his whole arsenal of tricks: he fights plenty, sure, but he also uses his deductive reasoning to pick out details others would miss, and wears a variety of honestly often pretty good disguises. Holmes’ disguises in many versions are pretty transparent, but MOST of Sherlock Stark’s outfits are actually pretty convincing. (Most of them, lest we forget his drag outfit in “Game of Shadows.”) This is almost ironic, because Downey Jr. is one of the funniest takes on Holmes out there: half-insane, obsessive, quirky, and going to extreme lengths just to stave off boredom. He’s so reclusive he’ll lock himself away in total darkness for days at a time, and he’s always looking for something to occupy his mind. With his Bohemian sense of apparel and insufferably arrogant demeanor, he infuriates almost everybody around him – Watson, Mrs. Hudson, Inspector Lestrade, the list goes on – but you know that, at the end of the day, he’ll get the job done, and his heart is still in the right place. Downey Jr. is helped immensely by his supporting cast: Jude Law is my favorite Watson, Jared Harris my favorite Moriarty, Paul Anderson my favorite Sebastian Moran, and various other characters are all among my favorite takes as well. Even some of the original characters featured, such as the main antagonist of the first movie, Lord Blackwood (played by Mark Strong in my favorite of his performances), are really fun and interesting figures. I love the style of these movies, I love Hans Zimmer’s musical score, I love their sense of humor and tension…so how come, again, this Holmes doesn’t at least make my Top 5? Well, to put it simply…as much as I adore Downey Jr. as Holmes, I’m always kind of aware of the actor behind the character. True, I suppose there are other characters who have a similar issue – I certainly can’t miss Matt Frewer, Tom Baker, John Barrymore, and several others I’ve mentioned in the past when I see them in the role – but with Downey Jr., the issue is a bit different. It’s a bit like whenever I see, for example, David Tennant or Daniel Radcliffe in something: to me, David Tennant simply IS the 10th Doctor from “Doctor Who.” And Radcliffe simply IS Harry Potter. Anytime I see them in (almost) ANYTHING else, all I can see is the 10th Doctor or Harry Potter, and it’s incredibly distracting. It’s one thing to be distracted by the actor, but it’s a whole other issue to be distracted by an actor’s CHARACTER, if that makes sense. That’s the kind of relationship I have with Downey Jr. a lot of the time: I just so identify him as Iron Man now that it’s hard for me to get that out of my head, no matter HOW good his performance is. And it IS a great performance – heck, alongside Iron Man, Holmes is the next character I think of with the man, and he’s equally grand in both roles. But something about the performance he gives, mixed with that familiar face, just leads to me seeing Iron Man as Holmes, rather than seeing Sherlock Holmes or even RDJ as Sherlock Holmes. It’s just a weird quirk of my own mind, and it sadly does keep Downey Jr. out of the top five…but only just. On that note, tomorrow we move into the Top 5! Who will be next? Check in and find out!

#robert downey jr #iron man #sherlock holmes #sherlock stark #tony holmes #iron holmes #i've got a million of 'em #well #no #more like...four #three of which are here #bleh #ele-may-ntary #top 31 sherlock holmes portrayals #number 6 #guy ritchie #game of shadows #sherlock holmes 2009

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radramblog · 4 years ago

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some time to perish

So I saw the new bond movie.

…

Eh?

(heavy spoilers, for those who care)

I seem to recall the reception to this film being much more negative than what it is now that I actually look at it. I had hesitation going into this thing, and to be fair, I think there was good reason to- Spectre was a mess, after all, and this film leans heavily on the plot of that story. I haven’t seen Quantum of Solace, but my understanding is that even with the actual lines of continuity drawn between the Craig movies, none of them were as much a clear sequel as No Time to Die was to Spectre.

So what is the good here, because there is a fair bit. I do like Craig’s performance a fair bit- in the 15 years since Casino Royale, he’s managed to portray both a younger and a much older Bond just as well as each other, and the idea of a deliberately aged Bond isn’t something I think we’ve really seen. Save for Never Say Never Again, but that doesn’t and shouldn’t count. Similarly, we have solid performances from all the returning cast- say what you will about Desmond Llewelyn, who obviously owned the Q role for a very long time, but Whishaw’s iteration is still charmingly dorky, and Ralph Fiennes’s M is still as solid as ever. I do kind of wish the movie stuck a little closer with him as a potential antagonistic character, as it did a bit in the first half or so- if nothing else, so we could get more In Bruges-esque vibes.

Some elements of the baseline story are also pretty good, with the new characters it brings with it. The idea of a new 007 replacing the retired Bond is something I’m shocked we haven’t seen before, and I do like the character they’ve got started for her. While I know they Will Not Do This, because Eon Productions are cowards, they absolutely should have Lashana Lynch as 007 going forward- it would not be hard to just…have them be 007 movies, and not James Bond movies.

(hell seeing as Skyfall made it “canon” that James Bond was his actual name, and considering the ending of the film, gonna be hard to justify continuing to use it?)

There was a fair bit I did like about this film in general. The action was pretty good, as expected from the franchise at this point, and the soundtrack worked pretty well. One of my biggest issues with Casino Royale, great as that movie is, is that it just refused to use the Bond Theme like, ever? And this movie does not make that same mistake. Along a similar line, I’m not really into Billie Eilish’s work overall (just not my thing), but the theme she performed for the title was solid enough. I dunno. Still salty about everything to do with Radiohead’s Spectre, so.

There is, unfortunately, a lot I also don’t particularly like about the film. For one, we have yet another example of a Bond movie completely wasting its villain- Rami Malek is an incredible actor, and I’m sure Safin’s character could have more to do given the chance, but they don’t and as a result he’s barely bloody in the thing. Also, it’s yet another instance of Bond Villain With Disfigurement- in this case, one of two, what with the main henchman (Primo, apparently) being a one-eyed man. Kinda.

Similarly, they did Felix Leiter so fucking dirty in this film. Leiter is a character with pedigree- not quite as much as the main characters, but he’s been in 10 of the 25 movies, and Jeffery Wright is a great actor doing a great job in the role. And then he gets wasted by the biggest shitheel side-villain the franchise may have ever seen, and it feels completely pointless. Like, Bond doesn’t need more motivation in this film? My guy has plenty, between the other characters at stake and the severity of the plot in general, you didn’t need to do that to the guy. I think this might be worse than the one where his wife gets murdered and he gets maimed by a shark.

Speaking of said shitheel, Logan Ash is probably my least favourite character in the film. Just a smiley asshole who we never get a motivation for and who’s neither interesting, funny, or intimidating. I genuinely think this character was just a waste of time. Along the same line, the character of Obruchev, despite being super plot-relevant all the way through, is just a little annoying- he reminds me of Boris from Goldeneye, but Boris had the decency to be in like, three scenes.

Honestly, the middle third of this movie is generally much too long and half of it feels like it could have been cut. The movie is long, like almost 3 hours, and it feels it. You know you’re in for a long one when the pre-title sequence has two parts, each of which is probably longer than most average Bond pre-title sequences in general. A lot of setpieces felt unnecessary, and certain threads go unanswered- Ana de Armas’s character is really cool once she gets going, but then she just disappears from the fucking film immediately after that part of the plot is resolved, despite clearly being set up for a larger role- not to mention things like the shootout in the forest feeling like kind of a waste of time. Again, it’s a section where Logan Ash gets a bit of focus (among other things happening to him), and this time could have been better spent developing Safin.

Speaking of Safin, his motivation is completely unclear and his plan makes little sense. I think he just wanted to, um, kill the world with nanobot disease? Which, side note, I think it’s very funny that they just killed all of Spectre, Blofeld included, in this film, like, wow you really didn’t like how that movie was received, huh. Kind of undermines the whole “super-secret and powerful organisation” thing. But Safin’s motivation for wiping them out…well, I’m not sure they ever give one? Like, they justify some of the other stuff, but the specific dialogue about his motivation just doesn’t explain shit whatsoever.

And the plan…sigh. Yet another film where DNA is the magic word that does whatever the fuck you want it to do, sure. Fine. It shouldn’t get my goat as much as it does, but it does, so. There was the bit where Q is analysing the data from a USB stick and it’s just full of a bunch of people’s DNA profiles and just. Erghghghg. It was A Mess, and I don’t like it, and I wish people would stop writing plots that basically treat genetics or molecular biol like they are arcane majykks that can do anything, everything, and all in between.

Overall? Probably, like, a 7/10 or something. No Time To Die is, ultimately, a send-off to Craig and his era of Bond movies, and it definitely does that. To my knowledge, this is the only Bond film they’ve ever made where they knew going in that This Is The Last Movie With This Guy- and certainly the only one to actually take advantage of that fact. I don’t know that I would have gone out of the way to watch it if I wasn’t kind of already invested, but it’s not as awful as it very much could have been, so we’ve got that going for it. It’s a pretty solid action flick, one that promises a future for the series that I almost guarantee we aren’t going to see, but one that also ends an era conclusively and satisfyingly.

As a closing note- I do think it’s funny that this is a movie where the only “Bond Girl” is the one from the last movie. For the best, really.

#ramble #film #no time to die #james bond

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madexinxheaven · 4 years ago

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@whoxyouxhate said: 💊 - Is your character on medication? If so, why? @ the mains

"In this line of work and after everything we've been through? How could I NOT?"

Seriously, no one saw the kind of things Caitlyn had seen without developing serious cases of PTSD, SEPARATION ANXIETY & PARANOIA. She couldn't even HUNT these days without being hopped up on meds. After all, the last time she went out on the hunt, she'd come back to a BLOODBATH; With every last servant DEAD and her parents MISSING. Since then she'd risen up the ranks of the L.G.D as far and the way most prolific SNIPER they had. And from INFECTED to MURDER to RAPE to THIS VERY WAR, well... They hadn't made the nightmares any easier... The meds did, though. (Kinda...)

"This world breaks people. One way or the other."

"I, uhh... Texas says I SHOULD..."

Hyperactivity, blunt impulsion and a struggle with maintaining her own attention had LONG been problems that had cast Exusiai into danger TIME & TIME AGAIN. The youthful Sankta had a whole list of bad run-ins, mistakes, REGRETS, to her record. Yet, still, for the most part, she remained UNBOTHERED -- UNBURDENED. Fact also remained that she'd grown RECKLESS, CARELESS & IMPULSIVE in many things. Definitely didn't get enough sleep at night. And had a tendency for getting herself KNEE DEEP IN SHIT. But she meant well, and had fun, and only hurt the BAD PEOPLE, right? So it couldn't have been THAT IMPORTANT... -- RIIIGHT??

"But... What's the WORST that could happen?"

"I... What exactly are we counting as medication here?"

Did they count the CANDIES & TREATMENTS that protected against FROSTBITE? Did they count the various ways she'd tried over the years to actually feel some level of WARMTH? To warm the CHILL that was in her deathly rattling bones? Or were they just talking about the medications that Rhodes Island filled Infection with to pretend like they were actually making a DIFFERENCE. Then again, maybe they WERE making a difference... And it was all just so much harder for FrostNova to see from so far away. Irregardless, the answer was: No. she DIDN'T take any official medications. But she had her own self-medications. For what they counted for.

"I make do."

"Mmh? Oh, no..."

Shake of her accompanied her simple answer. Sometimes she wondered if she should have. Mostly whenever her personality PISSED OFF Blaze, but in truth she spent more time ADMINISTERING medication than TAKING IT. After all, she may have been a designated SNIPER, but she still was an operator working for Rhodes Island. And every last INFECTED in the world NEEDED medication. In fact, the more she thought about it... Maybe they should've been screening people more closely on a PSYCHOLOGICAL basis rather than observing their levels of ORIGINUM CRYSTALIZATION, no? Not to say they didn’t. They absolutely did. PRTS was surprisingly adept at it. But... But just like with treating the Infected, couldn’t they always do a better job at that, too?

"It's surprising, really. Or... Or maybe we're just not thinking about that kinda stuff? Maybe it's just become the new normal, y'know?"

"Medication? Me? Oh, no. I'm not any medication."

Granted, for every pill Makoto DIDN'T take she had a line in her contract with JOHANNA that all but unshackled her from the constraints of her greatest mental battles. Including her OBSESSIVE COMPULSION, PERFECTIONISM, CODEPENDENCY & INABILITY TO SAY NO BORN OF NO SMALL AMOUNT OF SELF-DEPRECATION. But then, didn't Johanna make everything in Makoto's life turn monochrome? Flirting in that moral grey area, caught between her duty as a Lungmen Guard and her own INFECTED VIGILANCE. In many ways, she supposed she was LUCKY for that. Every last inch of that self-deprecation came with another inch of herself she GENUINELY didn't like. And since Johanna had come into her life, Makoto had step-for-step came closer & closer to someone she could be PROUD OF.

"But I don't blame people if they need it. This... This world is... It's hard... So very hard..."

"Huh? Medication? What on Terra possessed you to ask a question like that?"

For once, Swire was NOT acting out of self-defence but, rather, asking very genuine questions. Albeit... She still didn't exactly ask them WELL. Confrontation was Swire's life. The bitch wore her heart on her sleeve, and her heart was big but easily wounded. To answer: Swire was not presently on any medication. She'd had her BOUTS of issues and therapies, usually when those insecurities ADDED UP, and she stopped being able to SIT ON HER FEELINGS, but largely she remained clean. At her standard, she liked to think she was HANDLING IT WELL... ALL THINGS CONSIDERED... But deep down? Well... Her episodes DID speak for themselves. (And it was usually Ch'en picking up the pieces.)

"Not right now. But sometimes life just gets to ya, y'know?"

"Medication? Hm. Sounds almost novel at this point, in all honesty. One might say, NAIVE."

If ANYONE was a poster-child for SHOULD BE ON MEDICATION, it was far and away TALULAH ARTORIUS. The girl had been broken for one or two decades far too long. & now she was FAR TOO FAR GONE. Pretty sure anyone who rallies together a radicalized group of freedom fighters to take over Lungmen & Ursus through TERROR TACTICS with a central goal of enacting revenge on the friends and family that HURT THEM as a child most certainly qualified for needing therapy. (Or maybe an ASYLUM.) Maybe if people had cared back when she was still BREAKING, all of this coud've been avoid. And, no, Ch'en DIDN'T count. How could she? What was her baby sister SUPPOSED to do about her abused sister who had been driven to psychosis by their very own family?

"We're far beyond the point of no return by now. Sometimes tells me I'm going to die before even taking one pill."

"Kee-Ahaha... Haha... Ahahahahahaha... Oh... That's cute."

Holy. Fucking. Shit. They really had to ASK that question? No. Of course she wasn 't on MEDICATION. The psychotic bitch didn't even let Rhodes Island treat her for Oripathy and she'd SIGNED ON AS THEIR MERCENARY. Of course, being feared by every last motherfucker in the galaxy kinda had some BENEFITS in that sense. Now, should she have been? Of course she should have been. Girl had one of the highest Originum densities in all of Rhodes Island. Oh, and there was the little tid bit of her being a PYROMANIACAL, MURDEROUS LITTLE PSYCHO. Yeah, that level of destructive psychotic mania PROBABLY needed a maximum security INSANE ASYLUM, let alone anti-psychotics and sedatives. But as they say somewhere else in the world: Y.O.L.O!!

"I'd like to meet the doctor that can actually make me take my pills~~!!"

"..."

Silence spoke louder than words, as they always say. And the truth was... Yuhsia was on SEVERAL medications as a result of the youth she spent alone in Lungmen after the disappearance of TALULAH and the abandonment of CH'EN & SWIRE. Would anyone really be surprised to learn that? Probably NOT, in all honesty. Mafia girl was left alone with some of the corrupt narcissist this side of the Ursus border and later forced to do all of the Rat King & Wei Yenwu's DIRTY WORK. Not to mention the sting of BROKEN PROMISES. To this day, Yuhsia had never EVER let anyone get remotely close to her. Most of all, Ch'en & Swire. Though they persisted like nagging little GNATS. But back to the question at hand... Yuhsia had developed a certain... TEMPERAMENT that she liked to keep on top of. The Rat King saw the worst of it. But she'd be damned if she EVER let Ch'en and Swire see it in the slightest. Meds HELPED with that.

"You should be careful asking questions like that to people like me. Who knows what might happen to you..."

#NKFDLN DFSFKLN WWELP #THESE ARE SOME VERY CURIOUS ANSWERSSS SLKFDN AND GIVE ME LOTSA GOOD HEADCANONS AND STORY IDEAS #NOMNOMNOMNOM #ALSO YES MAKOTO 1000% IS GONNA TURN OUT TO BE INFECTED #UH OHHHHHH #THATS TBH PROBABLY WHAT SHE NEEDS TO TALK TO CH'EN ABOUT #CAITLYN GIOPARA #[ CAITLYN GIOPARA ] + [ SHERIFF BY DAY. HUNTER BY NIGHT. ALL ALONE IN THE MOONLIGHT. ]#EXUSIAI #[ EXUSIAI ] + [ A FALLEN ANGEL WITH A KILLER SMILE ]#FROSTNOVA #[ FROSTNOVA ] + [ IN LIFE WINTER MAKES WAY FOR SPRING... WHAT DOES MY WINTER MAKE WAY FOR? ]#GREYTHROAT #[ GREYTHROAT ] + [ EVERYONE KEEPS SAYING I DON'T UNDERSTAND. BUT I'M TRYING TO UNDERSTAND. AND NO ONE'S HELPING ME... ]#MAKOTO NIIJIMA #[ MAKOTO NIIJIMA ] + [ I WILL DO WHATEVER NEEDS TO BE DONE. HOWEVER IT NEEDS TO BE DONE. ]#BEATRIX SCHWIRE #[ BEATRIX SCHWIRE ] + [ THE NAME'S BEATRIX SCHWIRE -- SENIOR SUPERINTENDENT OF THE LUNGMEN GUARD DEPARTMENT... AND YOU BETTER NOT FORGET IT #TALULAH ARTORIUS #[ TALULAH ARTORIUS ] + [ I THINK IT'S TIME FOR A FAMILY REUNION. A FAMILY FUNERAL. AND HONEY I HOPE YOU SHOW. ]#W #[ W ] + [ FINALLY THINGS ARE STARTING TO GET INTERESTING~~!! ]#YUHSIA LIN #[ YUHSIA LIN ] + [ BLOOD RUNS DEEP; THROUGH VEINS & THROUGH STREETS; HAIL TO THE RAT KING; BUT IT'S HER TIME TO RISE ]#WHOXYOUXHATE

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yue-muffin · 4 years ago

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Ultimate Note (2020)

Episode 1

I put off watching this one for long enough, but I am back with my wildly inconsistent dmbj watch-blogging adventures! Gosh, do I miss this series.

I honestly love how barely anyone reprises their role in this franchise, and if you’ve been in for a few seasons worth of dramas, it barely even fazes you anymore. The cast this time includes Zeng Shunxi as Wu Xie, and his name did not ring a bell until I looked at his profile - he was Zhang Wuji from the 2019 Heaven Sword Dragon Sabre! Not sure what popular consensus is, but I liked his performance there. Then, we have Xiao Yuliang who is actually reprising his role as Zhang Qiling from the flashbacks in Tomb of the Sea. He doesn’t 100% fit my image of Zhang Qiling, but I thought that about Cheng Yi and ended up loving him, so. Cheng Fangxu is a new addition as Pangzi. Haven’t heard of him or seen any of his works.

Aside from the main cast, there’s Liu Yuning who is playing Hei Yan Jing??? I honestly would have pinned him more of a Xie Yuchen and I also forgot he is also an actor haha (I know him from Our Song/我们的歌).

That’s all the speculation from me, time to get into the episode itself!

Serious talk for a moment.

One of the reasons that this series is so appealing to me is the slow integration of the overarching conspiracies behind the mysterious places our main characters have visited, and the fact that the mysteries begin to tie into the characters’ histories and pasts is the motivation to keep watching. The character relationships are the glue that binds all of the zany events together.

This series is one where I seriously wondered why I was still watching it well into TLT2, because it isn’t the type of genre I usually watch. It just has a lot of charm, strong enough to endure the multiple cast changes and out of sequence timelines.

Anyways, episode 1, here I come.

I loved the opening sequence, as it gives you a mysterious vibe - the sort of wonder you get when you look at an abandoned building and try to imagine the lives that once inhabited it. I also appreciated the recap. It’s much needed at this point, especially given the timeline of the dramas’ release dates, the change in casts, and the absence of the heavenly palace arc.

The episode opens with a scene that will very soon become the bane of Wu Xie’s existence: Wu Sanxing running off without a word, leaving Wu Xie to chase after him looking for crumbs of the truth and possibly uncovering even MORE trouble than if his uncle simply told him what was up in the first place.

Then, of course, the highlight of my day was seeing Wu Xie so damn possessive of ANYTHING that involves Xiaoge. He snatched that box up so fast as soon as Pangzi said “Zhang Qiling” lol.

There’s also something hilarious about Pangzi being fed up with the empty tape and kind of joking about a hidden code in the static, only for Wu Xie and his uncle to take it seriously and take a closer look. Love the family resemblance lol.

I am definitely missing context with the whole heavenly palace/Changbai Mountain segment of the story but the great thing about dmbj is that I’ve long gotten used to missing parts of the story but can still enjoy what I’ve got right in front of me at the moment. Anyways, apparently Xiaoge is supposed to be elsewhere but he is actually once again stalking Wu Xie lol. Wu Sanxing was right, without his friends, Wu Xie probably would’ve died several times over at this point haha...

Ah Ning shows up again! Less antagonistic this time, and I really like how she is portrayed across the shows honestly. Definitely a sort of frenemy haha. It’s going to take me a bit to get used to this actress, I still prefer TLT2 Ah Ning the most out of all the ones who have played her I think?

Also lol at Hei Yan Jing following Xiaoge around.

??? Wu Xie doppelganger! Or is it the other way around? Now that’s not something I expected. Nor do I recall reading about it in a spoiler, which is pretty amazing given all the events I’ve spoiled for myself. Also has something to do with the missing women who were part of Wu Sanxing’s archeological expedition team...

Oh no, Wu Xie is going off alone on this one. He’s lucky that Xiaoge is following him, otherwise he’d probably end up being monster chow or something.

Really going for horror movie vibes with this one, haha. That creepy hand reaching for him under the bed and the accompanying soundtrack...

I love how he’s self-aware about his habit of waking the dead with his prodding around tombs and coffins lol...

Eeey, Xie Yuchen! Seems more straightforward than he was portrayed in TLT2, though perhaps that’s due to the situation/subject.

And it looks like this notebook is starting to tie everything together.

Yes, Xiaoge, come save Wu Xie! He doesn’t even realize he’s got a creepy thing stalking him lol.

Ooh, blooper reel in the credits! I love bloopers haha.

Anyways, first episode done, and I look forward to seeing what the rest of the season has in store!

#daomubiji #dmbj #the lost tomb 3 #ultimate note #the muffin's drama watching adventures

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hydeanachronism · 4 years ago

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Hello, Icarus! Please infodump to me about Danganronpa?

okay so! I had written out a whole thing but then tumblr deleted it! so that was fun! /s but now that I know what I'm going to write it's much easier, so that's good 😌

n e ways, I'm gonna do like a basic timeline w explanations and some other stuff that hopefully I'll remember once I start writing!! so let's go :D

a list of everything danganronpa in chronological order (not the order that you should play/watch the stuff in, I'll put that in the explanations)

Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School - Despair Arc (DR3) - second anime, watch along with the Future and Hope arcs after playing the first two games (and UDG if you want to). backstory for the cast of the second game.

Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc (THH) - first main game, play first. also has an anime that's basically the same as the game, but since there's not enough time to put everything from the game into the anime I definitely recommend playing the game. high school students from a prestigious school trapped in said school are forced to play a killing game, hijinks ensue.

Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls (UDG) - third game, not main. play after playing the first two games. very different game mechanics from the main three, and widely considered not cannon by the fandom. I like it though, and it introduces a lot of really interesting characters along with giving a v underdeveloped character from the first game a lot more character development. it's not necessary to play it (though one of the characters plays a pretty big part in the third anime, so that would make more sense if you already knew her), but I think it's interesting and fun. there are also robot fights.

Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair (DR2 or SDR2) - second main game, play after playing the first game. same basic premise as the first game, except it's a different class (same school though) and this time they're on an island. even more hijinks and plot twists than the first game.

Super Danganronpa 2.5: Komaeda Nagito to Sekai no Hakaimono - (I could only find the Japanese title for this one, sorry 😔) kinda also part of the second anime? watch after playing the first two games (and UDG if you want) and watching DR3. character is woken up from a coma via overdramatic and overpowered other character.

Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School - Future and Hope Arcs (DR3) - second anime, watch along with the Despair arc after playing the first two games (and UDG if you want to). aftermath of the first two games.

Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony (DRV3) - third main game, fourth game in total. I don't actually know when it happens bc they're v secretive about everything, so I'm just putting it last. play last. same premise as the first two, the class is trapped in a school with a courtyard and a huge sort of dome around everything. peak hijinks, too many plot twists to count.

woo!! that's the timeline as I know it, hopefully I didn't miss anything. and I have managed to remember what else I was going to say, so let's move on to section two:

the mechanics of the games

danganronpa is, at its core, a glorified visual novel. every character has a certain amount of sprites for when they talk, as well as voice lines that aren't usually the exact text on the screen but fit the vibe of whatever they're saying. and as I've said before, there's quite a lot of talking. these games have more plot than should really be possible and most or all of it is done through dialogue. cutscenes and class trials are the only parts that are reliably fully voice acted, but there are a lot of those.

as for the parts that are less visual novel-y: you can walk around, and the settings are pretty much as 3d as the 2d-ish style of the game allows. you can also click on things, and sometimes clicking on stuff will get you monocoins, the currency of the game, which means you'll be able to buy presents for the characters!!

"now why do I need presents for the characters?" you ask. well, that's because you're given a certain amount of free time each game to hang out with characters you want to get to know better! the game's ending is fixed, so you won't change the course of the game by who you do or don't hang out with, but you can learn more about characters and become closer to them! giving them presents they like makes them like you more :D

and the most exciting part of danganronpa, what a lot of people play the games for, the true lure of the game.... the class trials!!

so these characters are in a killing game, right? basically, they're faced with a sort of lose-lose predicament: stay trapped in the school forever, or kill one of your classmates to "graduate". but it's not as simple as that, because in order to graduate, you can't be caught. and how do you determine whether or not a criminal has been found out? well, a trial of course!

enter the class trials. every student (barring dead or severely wounded ones) is required to participate in a kind of mock trial- except someone's really dead, and they need to find the murderer or they'll all die too.

(right, did I forget to mention that? only one person can graduate. getting out alive insures that none of your classmates get the luxury of doing the same.)

so, yeah. the class trials are a true fight for life on both sides, because who ever loses will be executed.

and they're really, really fun.

entirely voice acted! enough minigames that the list of them is probably longer than this entire post! the joy of solving the mystery! the... execution, right in front of everyone.

hey, it's a dark game. not like they're trying to hide that. and the executions aren't actually all that gory most of the time, but they're still very much there and onscreen. also as close to fully animated as the games ever get, which is pretty cool.

so how the class trials work is this:

there's a murder. dun dun duuuun. you investigate everywhere related to the murder to get "truth bullets", which are the reason you don't immediately fail at the trials. you don't have to remember all of them, they're all written down in your e-handbook. plus, the protagonists all seem to have really good memories.

time for the actual class trial!! Monokuma (asshole bear running the killing game) introduces everything, explains the rules. and everyone starts talking.

there are a lot of different parts to the class trial, but most of it is "nonstop debates". everyone talks one after the other, and you have to find inconsistencies and shoot the right "weak spot" with the right truth bullet. you refute the lie or mistake and everyone goes back to arguing normally.

there's also hangman's gambit (weird hangman to find a key word), multiple choice things (self-explanatory), and plenty of others.

near the end of the trial (or sometimes only a little over halfway in, it varies), the killer will.... kind of become obvious. there's a specific kind of change in behavior that's the mark of the murderer in these games, but I'm not sure how to describe it exactly. a lot of times there's an accent change, and in general they start acting much more erratic. since it's a trial, though, even after this presents itself you still have to prove your case beyond reasonable doubt.

and once it's become clear to the killer that they're backed into a corner, you have to do the "bullet time battle". it goes by different names in different games, but the basic mechanics are the same: you battle against a student (usually the killer, but not always) in a rhythm-based battle where you have to click to the rhythm to refute your opponent's statements. once you've dealt enough damage, you shoot the final piece of evidence, and that's the end of it.

the murderers react differently different times. sometimes they break down and confess. sometimes they keep denying it. sometimes, they're just calm. however they act, though, the end is the same. they are caught and punished accordingly.

but before that, there's one more thing to do. the closing argument.

your final task is to explain how the murder was committed, from idea to execution (look, a pun! see I can be funny too 😌). and you have to do it... as a manga.

you don't have to draw the whole thing yourself ofc- you just have to fill in the missing panels and then watch as the protagonist narrates it to the rest of the class.

and that's all for the class trial, not counting the long talks after every execution while still in the courtroom.

wow, this is getting...... really, really long. there's only one more thing I'm gonna add, and I promise it will be much shorter than the other two bc it is late and I am officially Incredibly Fucking Tired.

with no further ado, a very short part three:

my general impression of the game. its vibes or smth, I dunno this is just what i think about it

when I first heard of danganronpa, I thought it was a horror game. I can now assure you that it is not. thriller? maybe. debatable. but definitely not horror.

and despite its extremely dark premise, this game is not all doom and gloom. there's so much stuff about hope, and overcoming despair even when it seems impossible... it's not exactly a happy game, but there's a lot more of that in there than you'd probably expect.

all in all, I love this game. so much. it means a lot to me, and I think it's a really good game. thanks for letting me talk about it so much asdhfd :D

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cherry-valentine · 5 years ago

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Fall 2020 Anime Season:

Golden Kamuy Season 3 is, so far, just as good as the first two seasons. For anyone unfamiliar with the show, it follows a former soldier called “Immortal Sugimoto” (nicknamed so for his tendency to survive a lot of shit that would kill most people) and a young Ainu (the Japanese equivalent of Native Americans) girl as they search Northern Japan (and even parts of Russia) for hidden Ainu gold. The story is pretty wild, with threats coming from the wildlife and the harsh, snowy conditions as often as from mercenaries, assassins, and various other human dangers. The cast has expanded enough that we have several separate groups of cool, well-written characters roaming about (and they’ve shuffled a bit from season two, making their interactions very interesting). Sugimoto remains one of my favorite anime protagonists. He’s one of the more brutal, violent main characters I’ve seen, but, strangely, also one of the nicest. He’s kind to innocents (both people and animals) but will slaughter his enemies without hesitation. He’s also pretty funny. Then again, almost every character is subject to the show’s weird but endearing humor. It’s very hard to dislike any character, even the ones who are quite cruel. The show is also notable for having a lot of homoerotic subtext. The beefy, handsome men sure do love taking their clothes off and wrestling. Like, taking it ALL off. Multiple times per season. Yeah. Watch this show, everybody.

Ikebukuro West Gate Park is a new show this season that I was initially interested in because it reminded me of Durarara!! in that it’s set in Ikebukuro and features color gangs. That’s where the similarities end, however. Whereas Durarara!! had tons of supernatural elements and just plain craziness, IWGP is more realistic by comparison. The show follows Makoto, a seemingly normal guy who seems to function in a sort of “odd jobs” type of role for a color gang called the G Boys. While they’re a gang, they don’t seem like criminals or thugs, or even delinquents. They really feel more like a club, held together by their respect for the leader referred to as King. So far the series seems to be episodic in nature, with most stand-alone episodes focusing on some sort of social issue, from drug addiction to immigration. It’s interesting to see these issues presented in such a sympathetic light, viewed through the lens of Tokyo’s youth. The art is nice, with varied character designs and animation that’s just good enough that you don’t notice the problems very often. The music is a highlight, with my favorite opening theme of the season and one of the better ending themes.

Magatsu Wahrheit is a show I was very iffy on at first. It has a lot of things working against it. It’s based on a video game I’ve never heard of, the opening theme is one of the cheapest, most unimpressive things I’ve ever seen (note: it does improve a few episodes in!), and the series overall has a low budget feel (though nowhere near as bad as Gibiate from last season). But the story is actually very interesting and very well written. The basic premise is that Young Man A (I’m not remembering these weird names, sorry) works as a delivery truck driver in your usual “modern fantasy” setting (kingdoms and monsters and other medieval fantasy trappings alongside trucks and cars and advanced science laboratories). When he’s loading up his deliveries, Young Man B, a fresh recruit in the kingdom’s military and general goody-two-shoes, randomly offers to help Young Man A load his truck. Young Man B spots some boxes off to the side and, assuming they were part of the load, puts them into the truck while Young Man A is talking to his boss. These boxes turn out to be illegal weapons being smuggled by a group of... freedom fighters? I guess? This, in turn, drags Young Man A into a shit storm of trouble when the illegal weapons are discovered in his truck. It also leads directly to tragedy for Young Man B as well, setting them both on wildly different but similarly dangerous paths. The whole idea that a simple act of kindness for a stranger sets off such a terrible series of events is pretty engaging. As it stands in the show right now, Young Man A is the more compelling character. He’s just a truck driver. He’s a coward who runs from danger and wants no part of any of this. But at the same time, he can be surprisingly brave at times (usually when a child is in danger). In a twist on the usual trope, these spurts of bravery are rarely rewarded. At least twice, his decision to act has led to heartbreaking tragedy. So far Young Man B is your typical “idealistic youth realizing the military isn’t comprised entirely of nice people” type of character. As such, he’s just not as interesting. He hasn’t had as much screen time though, so hopefully he’ll grow as a character. I guess it says a lot that I’ve written so much about the show, and almost all of it is about the plot. But the plot is really the only remarkable thing about it. In this case, that’s enough.

Higurashi no Naku Koro ni is, well, a bit of a trainwreck. And I’m not necessarily talking about the quality of the show. Let me explain: The show was marketed as a remake of the 2006 anime, which was one of my all-time favorite series. I was pretty excited about it. Lots of new fans who had never watched the original started this one. The first episode was okay. I wasn’t crazy about how shiny everything looked (I realize the original’s visuals are a bit dated now but at least they were unique, this new one looks like pretty much every harem anime from the past five years) but the story seemed to be doing good and I looooooved the use of the original opening theme song as the closer. Then episode two dropped, and the fandom basically exploded. The first few minutes of episode two reveal that this is not a remake, but a sequel! Shock! At first, I was impressed by this little bit of manipulation. It felt exciting to realize the truth. But then it dawned on me (and the rest of the fandom) that new viewers who came to watch this were screwed over. Those first few minutes of episode two spoil some very important things from the original series (we’re talking major spoilers here), and it’s going to ruin a lot of plot points for those who never watched the original and now want to go back and watch it first. So here’s a PSA: If you’re new to Higurashi and want to try this new series, DON’T unless you’re okay with watching a sequel that spoils the original.

Okay, so now let’s talk about this new series/sequel. First, the good points: The ending theme is GORGEOUS. Just... go watch it. Soak it up. The opening isn’t bad but I can’t help comparing it to the far superior original opening. Aside from the overly shiny and generic character designs, the rest of the visuals are pretty great. The scenery in particular is very nice. In terms of story, I like the idea of beginning each new “arc” by staying close to the original story, then throwing in some pretty wild deviations that make them end in completely different ways because a character that lived through the original is trying to make subtle changes (that so far have ended up turning out very badly). When it comes to the bad points, one in particular sticks out: It’s not scary! The original had some truly unsettling moments, and so far this one hasn’t even been creepy. It’s had some moments that obviously tried to be scary but have failed miserably. For example, the early scenes with Rena in the original were actually terrifying. But I felt none of the intensity or creepiness in this sequel. Still, it’s nice to see these characters again and to see how this story deviates as someone tries desperately to change the outcomes.

Haikyuu!! has another new season and... I don’t really know what to say about it. I’ve talked about this show several times now. Looks like this season is going to focus primarily on one long match, a concept I’m not crazy about. They also made the baffling decision to cut in with a full episode about a rival team’s match right in the middle of showing the match with the main team. I mean I love seeing more of the rival teams but it felt disjointed to do it this way. Still yet, it’s a fun and energetic show full of great characters and easily understood volley ball matches.

Jujutsu Kaisen is probably the most hyped up new show this season, and I would say it definitely deserves that hype. It’s a pretty familiar shounen fighting anime setup: A teenage boy acquires special powers and joins a school to train so that he can use those powers for good. However, following that formula does little to negate just how fun and well-done this series is. A lot of people have compared it to Naruto (the protagonist is a vessel for a powerful entity, he joins a trio of characters with a more serious and moody black-haired boy and a chick, and they have a badass teacher with silver hair who keeps his face partially covered). So sure, it’s like Naruto... except it’s much better than Naruto in every conceivable way. The animation and fight choreography are consistently fantastic. The main character is not the least bit annoying. The only chick in the group (there are more cool ladies in the story, just not in this group!) is a badass in her own right and her story and motivations have absolutely nothing to do with romantic interest in any of the guys. Even the teacher character is incredibly fun. The music is great, with my favorite ending theme of the season. You know it’s an excellent ending theme when people start making different versions of it using characters from other shows. It’s so, well, fun. A word I keep using here, because that’s the first word that comes to mind when I’m watching this series.

Talentless Nana is one of those shows that’s going to be difficult for me to talk about without spoiling a very cool surprise. This surprise comes at the end of episode one (basically, the show makes you think it’s about something, but turns out it’s about something completely different). So if you want to really enjoy that surprise, stop reading this and go watch episode one before coming back. If you’ve already watched it or don’t mind having the surprise spoiled, here we go: The first episode sets up the series to be a cheap Boku no Hero Academia knock-off. We have a school of “talented” (super powered) kids training to use their powers to save humanity from (so far) unseen monsters referred to as “the enemies of humanity”. We are told one boy has no “talent” or special power and he’s ridiculed for this. There’s a new transfer student named Nana, a super sweet and cheerful girl with pink hair who has the ability to read minds. There’s also another transfer student, a sullen and quiet boy named Kyouya who hasn’t disclosed what his “talent” is. With that setup, I think a lot of people were ready to dismiss it as “BNHA, but not as good”. But then, a few minutes before the first episode ends, we’re hit with the twist that reveals what this show is really about: Nana is the one with no “talent”. She lied about being able to read minds (the boy we thought had no talent did actually have one). She’s a totally normal human being, and she has been sent to infiltrate the school and kill off the students, the true “enemies of humanity” (called so because their powers make them incredibly dangerous). Thus, the show is about a normal human girl using only her wits and skill in manipulation to kill off super-powered individuals. Watching her work is an absolute delight. She is ruthless and incredibly intelligent, but she does have one major problem: the other transfer student Kyouya, who is at least as smart as she is and is suspicious of her right off the bat. But since he’s not sure she’s up to no good, he can’t really act on his suspicions. Nana in turn knows he suspects her, so she has to be careful around him. As a result, the two become “friends”, constantly watching and outmaneuvering each other. In this way, the series reminds me of the early, best parts of Death Note, with the mental sparring between Light and L. But the most fun you’ll have with this show is watching Nana come up with ways to deal with each new “talent” she comes across, from the ability to time travel to necromancy, all while having no special power of her own. The art is nice, a bit generic, nothing too fancy. The music is great, with one of the better opening themes this season.

Moriarty the Patriot focuses on the classic Sherlock antagonist Professor Moriarty. Let me get this out of the way first: I know next to nothing about Sherlock. I haven’t even watched any of the various tv shows about him. What I know of the character basically comes from mentions of him in Detective Conan. So I’m coming into this series with no preconceived notions about these characters and no other versions to compare them to. Anyway, Moriarty as a series is about class warfare. Moriarty as a character pretty much embodies the phrase “eat the rich”. If you’re familiar with the phrase and understand its meaning, you’ll probably like this show. Moriarty works as a professor, but his side job is as a “Crime Consultant”. He helps the poor lower classes get revenge on the cruel nobles and elites who have wronged them. This revenge most often involves murder. There’s something refreshing about how unapologetic it is. In most anime, the hero tries to find other ways to punish evil than by actually killing them, or there’s some lesson involved about how revenge isn’t the answer or how killing someone who wronged you makes you as bad as them. In this series, there’s absolutely none of that. People get their revenge and, so far as I’ve watched, seem to be living much happier lives afterwards. In this way the show totally avoids being preachy. The art is gorgeous, with classy character designs and lovely backgrounds. There’s a certain lushness to it. The music is very nice as well (particularly that poppy ending theme). The only downside is that this has probably ruined me for watching other versions of these characters now. I mean, once you see them as sexy anime pretty boys, it’s hard to see them as anything else.

Carry Over Shows From Previous Seasons:

Black Clover

Best of Season:

Best New Show: Jujutsu Kaisen

Best Opening Theme: Ikebukuro West Gate Park

Best Ending Theme: Jujutsu Kaisen

Best New Male Character: Moriarty (Moriarty the Patriot)

Best New Female Character: Nana (Talentless Nana)

#anime reviews #seasonal anime #fall 2020 anime #anime recommendations #text #jujutsu kaisen #moriarty the patriot #munou na nana #ikebukuro west gate park

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starandquill · 5 years ago

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Hunter’s Game

My excuse to write an interaction with these two and also to write a poem about Cater sknkjgdn cross-posted on Ao3!

Characters: Rook Hunt, Cater Diamond

Summary: Rook finds Cater in the woods and decides to mess around with him. Cater soon learns he can’t outsmart the hunter in his own game.

The sun was low on the afternoon horizon and a soft breeze rustled the leaves in the forest. There within the chilly undergrowth, a hunter stalked their prey. They were a skilled predator, a figure obscured in the shadows refracted by the leaves above with footfalls so delicate and swift that not a leaf or stick was left behind disturbed. The hunter watched with sharp eyes through an obscuring bush as their prey, a figure across a grassy flowered clearing, shifted directions and bright green eyes narrowed as their main target was left perfectly open.

Quickly and seemingly with the grace of an eagle taking flight, the hunter raised their weapon and an arrow alongside it. Nock, aim, pull back. All done in several swift movements. Release.

Thunk.

The arrow struck its target perfectly and Cater's phone was knocked from his hand just before he could snap a photo of the flowers in front of him. The Heartslabyul student exclaimed his surprise in the form of a shout and immediately spun on his heels to face the direction the arrow came from with wide eyes and a defensive arm raised, magic pen in hand.

"Ah, my apologies~" Rook took this moment to slide out from the bush. Once more with enough grace that only a singular leaf remained stuck to the fabric on the shoulder of his uniform. A leaf which he then plucked and cast aside without breaking eye contact. "I missed."

Cater knew very well that Rook was not the type to miss and that the close-eyed smile and exaggerated shrug the self-proclaimed hunter gave him was a sly mockery that made his eyebrow twitch.

Despite this, Cater forced himself to return the smile, pocketing his magic pen. Both knew exactly what the other was really thinking and inwardly both were staring daggers, but they kept niceties.

"Ah! No problem." Cater said, particularly making sure to let a bit of his annoyance drip through between the cheerful tone. He reached down to retrieve his phone, brushing some dirt off of it as he looked it over quickly for any cracks in the screen. When he found nothing damaged, he quickly shoved it in his back pocket and looked up again to see Rook had already crossed the space between them and was now standing practically in front of him. With the same shit-eating grin still plastered on his face, Rook knelt down and retrieved his arrow from where it had fallen, returning it to his quiver and slinging the bow he'd been carrying with him around his shoulder as well.

When he stood back up to his full height, a silent exchange passed between their smiling expressions. Cater's read something along the lines of 'Hey you shit-faced bastard, you could've cracked my screen. There are, like, a million other things out here to aim at. What did I do to you, dude?' And Rook's expression assured in return that he was perfectly capable of using enough strength and precision to pierce the device clean through and that Cater should count himself lucky Rook had decided to merely knock it away with one of the blunt arrows he saved for non-hunting purposes.

"I was aiming at a bird." Rook finally said. "Such a shame, it seems it flew away now." He says this with a dramatic sigh. Cater noted he was making an effort to purposefully emphasize the obvious lie. He tried not to fall victim to whatever it was Rook was clearly doing.

"Sorry to hear that! Good luck with the rest of your.. Er.. Hunt! I was just taking some photos of these pretty flowers here and I'd like to continue if you don’t mind." Cater gestured toward the bright yellow and blue scattered among the grass of the clearing they were standing in. When Rook remained uncharacteristically silent, Cater shrugged and went to retrieve his phone again. However, his hand was stopped short as Rook caught him by the wrist. Instinctively, Cater moved to twist his hand from the other's grasp but Rook's grip was firm and that shit-eating smirk remained.

"A trickle of color amongst a sea of green, colorful raindrops fallen upon the ground. Oui, le fleur, a true beauty of the forest.” His eyes pierced Cater’s. “Do you know what else is beautiful, Monsieur Magicam? The thrill of the hunt. Since you're here and a hunt is always better done in a pack, I'd like you to help me catch that sneaky little birdie."

"Ehh?! Wh-" Cater protested as Rook began to pull him into the trees. "Hey!"

There was no bird! Rook was no fool and neither was Cater. Cater was well aware he was just playing games and Rook clearly knew of this fact, yet he smoothly continued the lie and used it to his advantage rather forcefully and expertly without revealing his intentions. The hunter had cornered its prey merely to force the prey to hunt for it. What sort of game was Rook playing at? Or rather, what sort of game was Cater being asked to play?

"Come, I saw it fly off this way." They were nearly in a jog at this point. Rook was clearly athletic, his speed leaving him practically dragging Cater along behind. He leapt easily over rocks and protruding roots, leaving Cater to stumble over said obstacles.

Finally, Rook paused within the shade of a young tree, seemingly completely unfazed by the length of which he had run. When they halted to a stop, the Heartslabyul student doubled over, gasping desperately for air as he looked to Rook, who appeared to be smelling the air for scents that carried in the slight breeze. Again, searching for nothing in particular but keeping the facade.

It wasn't as if Cater was unfamiliar with spontaneity of mischief. After all, it was quite the familiar theme among the Heartslabyul dorm. He knew a game of wits when he saw one. Aha! That was it! If Rook wants a game he'll get a game. This was a game two could play at and two would play indeed. ..Or perhaps, more than just two..

A wide grin spread across his face.

"Don't you think it would be easier,” Cater suddenly said. “If we split up to find it?"

Before Rook could even open his mouth to speak, Cater used Split Card. He got a boost of confidence from the look of genuine surprise that crossed Rook's eyes for all but a tenth of a second and it allowed Cater just enough energy for all four versions of himself to split off and scatter into the trees.

“Hmm?” Rook called into the forest. “Playing games with a hunter are we? That's never a wise move.” A pause, no Caters answered. “But I guess I do enjoy a game of hide and seek. Alright, I give you 10 seconds to hide, Monsieur Magicam. Let's play a game. I know there are four of you, so if I find the real one, you must help me find my little bird. If I guess incorrectly, you win and you're free~” A beat. Then, “Neuf.” Another beat. “Huit.”

Cater realized he had begun counting and took off into the trees. The other Caters realized this too and all of him set off in completely different directions. The real Cater stumbled through the bushes as if his life depended on it (and perhaps it truly did) looking desperately for a place to hide. He glimpsed a dip in the ground ahead and dropped down into a creek bed where he flattened his back against the grasping roots of a tree. He then allowed his breathing to steady and his heart rate to calm. Mud stuck to his uniform and shoes from where he crouched and his hair had come undone at some point and cascaded across his face, obscuring parts of his eyesight.

“‐Deux. Un! Let the hunt begin~!” Rook’s voice rang through the trees. There were several beats of silence, then Rook's voice echoed from somewhere distantly off to his left.

It was.. Of course he was reciting poetry, leave it to Rook Hunt to add such a thing to the most unusual of situations.

"A card for the hunter, a card for the prey.

Neither side knows what the other might play.

A four of diamonds, or a joker?

A risky game, this game of poker."

Cater sank lower into the creek bed as Rook’s voice grew closer, praying that he’d chosen the best place to hide out of the other Caters.

"His pawns cannot protect him yet.

For they can only move ahead.

The others turn their path astray.

While the king can only outrun the fray."

He frowned. That was.. There was a deeper meaning to Rooks echoing words.When the hunter spoke again, he was closer. Much, much too close.

“He who waits upon his throne

Is first to fall when left alone.

He begs and pleads them, but alas,

They took the crown right from his grasp.

Diamond diamond in the mud,

the hunter calls out for your blood.

If you so truly wish to hide,”

A moment of silence.

“You really shouldn't shine so bright~”

It wasn't like Cater to freeze, and yet in that moment he'd been listening so carefully for Rook's next words so he would know when to run that he'd underestimated the hunter's location. When Rook spoke that last verse, he sounded as if now stood directly above the creek bed, close enough that Cater could hear his breathing. Rook took a breath, likely preparing to speak those final lines of his oddly morbid poem.

..When an obnoxious ringtone went off.

Cater's reflexes were automatically programmed to reach for his own cellular device when he suddenly stopped himself upon the realization that the ringtone was not his own.

“Bonjour!” He heard Rook answer from above him in a cheerful voice, an immediate switch from his previous tone. He was close enough that Cater could hear the murmurs of another voice on the other end of the line. “Roi de Poison! Is everything alright?” An exasperated tone answered and he heard Rook hum in surprise at something. “Really? Are you sure? Alright alright I'll be there soon. Au revoir~!” The other end of the call said something in a loud voice, likely protesting the abrupt hang up, but Rook ended the call regardless.

"It seems the little birdie got lucky. Ah well, I'm sure I'll catch it someday! You win today, Monsieur Magicam. Enjoy your victory, it's not every day someone escapes my hunter’s grasp~” He chuckled, then Cater heard his footsteps turn and begin to walk back the way he came. He let go of a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding as Rook’s steps grew distant and nearly slumped down in relief before remembering he was crouching over a mud puddle. As he stood up, he allowed his clones to disappear and his full magic returned to him. Regardless of the abrupt end, it was clear the hunter had given up on his game for the day as the previously tense and threatening air had dissipated entirely. Cater dug around in his pockets for a hair tie and double checked that his phone was still there. He tied his hair back up and went to brush the drying mud off his pants, knowing how much he'd get reprimanded by Riddle for returning in such a state regardless of his efforts to tidy his appearance.

The setting sun cast long shadows among the trees and the orange-red colors of the sunset sky above reflected in the water of the small creek making the steadily running water look much too similar to that familiar red paint that dripped from the roses in the Heartslabyul gardens before a party.

..Or perhaps a trail of blood, running over rocks and away from the ashes of the fallen and defeated among a broken battlefield.

He shook his head. No! Bad Cater! Stop that, you’re thinking too dark!

As he began wandering back through the forest the way he came, the hunter's poem remained on his mind. He hated admitting it to himself but though Rook hadn't gotten to finish his game properly - whatever that meant - the hunter had most certainly won. Whether intentional or not, the words cut deeper than any arrow would. That hunter.. He knew much more than he would ever say. Cater suddenly paused, drawn out of his thoughts as he remembered that he hadn't even gotten the chance to do what he originally came there for. Putting on a bright grin, he pulled up his phone and snapped a selfie.

#walkinthewoods #NRCforest #beautifulsunset #prettyflowers #checkoutthiscreek

Uploaded.

Anyone looking at the photo would not see the exhaustion behind his smile or how dirtied his lower uniform was. They wouldn't know the oddity of an afternoon he’d just been through and it would always continue to stay that way.

Humming a cheerful tune to himself, he began the walk back, the only goal currently on his mind now being to return before Riddle’s set curfew as it was quickly getting dark.

Much farther away, and hidden once more within the darkness of a shadow cast behind a gnarled tree, those green hunter’s eyes watched the Heartslabyul student as he left with a knowing gaze.

"Though ages to polish a diamond may take,

To sculpt to perfection without a mistake.

No gem is flawless, no effort doth matter.

For with enough pressure, that diamond can shatter.”

#twisted wonderland #twst #twisted wonderland fanfiction #cater diamond #rook hunt #fanfic #apologies for my odd writing style sjgdgjgn #looks kinda like a ship but i swear that wasnt my intention pff #star writes

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bemused-writer · 5 years ago

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The Great Roland Comparison

I've been meaning to write this for, um, ages now (I finished the poem, "Song of Roland" last year), but I wasn't completely sure how I wanted to organize the comparison. Did I want to investigate each stanza? Separate it into specific important moments? But what I've decided to do is break it down more loosely by pertinent character relationships and plot points in the poem and see if any of those are actually relevant to our manga counterpart. Roland & Aude The relationship between these two is actually somewhat important in the poem and completely missing from the manga. Aude is Olivier's sister and Roland's fiancee, so she's of relevance to both men. That does not mean she is given a great deal of character development (although I would hesitate to say anyone in this poem was), but she is utterly devoted to Roland and, in fact, dies upon learning of his own death. I'd say she also serves as a way of emphasizing how close Roland and Olivier are. They're best friends and Roland is actually about to join Olivier's family. But as I said, Aude is not in VNC and Roland definitely isn't acting like he's engaged to anybody considering Olivier has remarked on his numerous failed relationships. I think we can also safely say Roland isn't engaged to Olivier's sister given how flippant he was about the whole thing. This kind of fits in with how these two are more... comrades than typical friends in the manga. If Roland were engaged to Olivier's sister in the manga, I think they'd need a drastically different relationship. There would hopefully be less pseudo-antagonism at the very least. Which brings us to: Roland & Olivier These two are in both versions with a few changes. In the poem, Olivier takes Roland's lead on things. He's not a servant exactly, but there's no doubt that Roland is in charge. His opinion of Roland in the poem isn't wildly different from the manga, though. XD When Roland says he will take care of their war he replies with, "'That shall you not,' Count Oliver let loose; 'You're high of heart and stubborn of your mood, you'd land yourself, I warrant, in some feud.'" (Bold is mine.) I mean, yeah, that sounds like our Roland. XD He maintains a lot of cheer in the manga, but he seeks out trouble without hesitation. Olivier has reason to worry in both versions. And, likewise, in both versions Roland's decisions directly impact Olivier. In the poem, Olivier dies at his side, in the manga, Olivier is afraid of the repercussions Roland's decisions will have on him because, much like his poem counterpart, he is loyal to Roland, even if we can't quite say why in this version. It seems like, while Olivier goes out of his way to help Roland in the manga, Olivier is the one in a position of power more so than Roland is in contrast to the poem. Even so, I have no doubt that Roland is going to get his way more often than not. I am curious why this is, though. As I said earlier, Roland isn't engaged to Olivier's sister, so there isn't that familial bond to connect them. We know they've known each other for years, but how did they meet? In the church more generally? Or only after they became chasseurs? I get the impression Roland hails from a lower income class than Olivier, and considering how fussy people were about different classes interacting at this point, it seems unlikely they would have met casually, but who knows?

Roland & Astolfo Astolfo was nowhere to be found in the poem, so there isn't any comparison I can do there. What I can say is that Astolfo is serving as a way to show us a different side of Roland: a more serious, somber side. Roland saved him from a miserable death at the hands of vampires, but rather than bring them closer together this is the wedge that keeps them apart. Astolfo resents Roland for saving him instead of his sister, despises how relaxed he acts around others, and probably doesn't enjoy the fact he gets none of that treatment himself. (I'm making an assumption there. If he does, he probably hates being treated like a child, so Roland isn't going to win either way.) I think Astolfo will show us how far Roland's kindness goes. We know he has several siblings, but does he see Astolfo as one of them? Or merely a misguided paladin with too much power and an irresponsible nature? Roland & the Church This is probably the most important facet of Roland's personality both in the poem and the manga: his loyalty to the Church. The poem paints him as zealous, loyal, a bit hardheaded, but ultimately the absolute image of a hero. No one doubts him. Likewise, in the manga, Roland is seen as extremely faithful, but Olivier casts doubt on his faith. He says Roland doesn't really believe in God so much as he believes in himself, and that is a stark contrast to the Roland of the poem. I have no doubt poem!Roland had a lot of self-confidence. Indeed, he probably had too much given Olivier's opinion of him in it, but no one was suggesting he had more faith in himself than God. I should clarify that Olivier said he believes in himself "as a follower of God." And what that's saying is that Roland believes in God, yes, but in his own interpretation of God, not that of the Church's. That goes a long way towards explaining why he could change his perception of vampires at the drop of a hat. It would also make him a threat to the Church; he's a powerful paladin who is willing to follow his own beliefs above those of his superiors. In the poem, Roland dies defending the French people and the Christian faith. But I sincerely doubt that's how it's going to go down in the manga. I'm pretty well convinced he's going to die, but my guess is he will die in opposition to the Church, but in full faith that he has served God the way he was meant to. In other words, I wouldn't be surprised if he dies helping Noé and Vanitas. Already he has mentioned he wants to protect Vanitas, that he worries for him, and rightly so. Olivier also died in the poem, and honestly, I don't think he's getting out of it in the manga either. In the poem, he died at Roland's side, with him to the last. In the manga, I suspect he will also die by Roland's side, though perhaps more reluctantly than in the poem. He keeps helping Roland despite knowing how bad this is going to look for him in the future. He wants Roland to remain loyal to the Church and to stop doing all his suspicious activities, but I think they both know that isn't going to happen, so his only hope is that Roland will keep it under wraps, which, well, he's tried, but other chasseurs are already suspicious. This isn't going to end well for either of them. There's always a slim chance Olivier will "betray" Roland and side with the Church, but based off of what we've seen so far, that seems an unlikely resolution. I'd say the main takeaway I have from the poem in regards to the manga is that the themes of the poem, loyalty to God and country, are going to be inspected more thoroughly. What does it mean to be faithful to God? Or yourself or your country for that matter? Those are the questions Roland will have to contend with while Olivier will have to contend with where his loyalties lie: Roland or the Church itself.

#vanitas no carte #vnc meta #Bemused's post

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eclecticanalyst · 4 years ago

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We’re Expecting You...To Boldly Go [part 2]

In my last post, I expounded on the similarities in the general premise and structure of The Love Boat and Star Trek: The Next Generation, two shows that on the surface seem not to have much in common but on closer examination have some unexpected similarities. In my follow-up post on this theme, I will be drawing parallels between the main/regular characters of both shows. The crew lineup on each ship can be broken down into six character functions/profiles: The Captain, The Captain’s Confidant, The Big Brother, The Two Buds, The Chick, and The Kid.

The Captain

Star Trek TNG: Captain Jean-Luc Picard

The Love Boat: Captain Merrill Stubing

“The Captain” is...the captain! Beyond his role as the primary authority figure, he can be characterized in the following ways. Being the one to whom the rest of the crew reports, he is a bit socially removed from the rest of the main characters. While they can pal around with each other, they still treat him with a bit more deference even as he comes to be just as integral a part of their found family as the rest of them. The Captain can be rather intimidating at times—especially in the early days, when he had a tendency to be overly gruff with his crew. Part of that gruffness is the fact that he has very high standards for the people who serve under him. At the same time, however, he cares deeply for those people and is willing to put himself on the line for them, even bending the rules a bit in order to help them out of a difficult spot. He’s full of thoughtful advice should one of his crew ask for it, and is the most likely of the crew to give speeches about moral responsibility. He also has a playful streak, which he keeps under wraps but uses to mess with his crew from time to time. In terms of appearance, he’s older than the rest of the cast and he is bald(ing). He’s played by the best actor of the cast—Patrick Stewart is, of course, Patrick Stewart, I don’t think I really need to say more there, and Gavin MacLeod was a veteran actor (probably best known at that point for his role as Murray on The Mary Tyler Moore Show), able to handle both the comic and the dramatic whenever needed.

The Captain’s Confidant

Star Trek TNG: Dr. Beverly Crusher

The Love Boat: Dr. Adam “Doc” Bricker

I could have called this character profile “The Doctor,” following the same pattern as “The Captain,” but there was another aspect to Beverly and Doc that I wanted to draw attention to, beyond their being the respective healers of their crews. Both Beverly and Doc have a slightly different relationship with the Captain than the other members of the crew. They are a bit closer to the Captain, able to address him easily as a friend instead of as a superior officer if the situation calls for it. Notice that when working, Beverly will address Picard as “Captain” and “sir,” but when it’s just the two of them chatting in a more intimate setting she calls him “Jean-Luc.” Beverly is also one of the few people on board that Picard is comfortable with opening up to regarding his own insecurities or worries, while he takes more care to maintain his “self-assured captain” persona with everyone else. The same dynamic plays out between Stubing and Doc: there are several instances of Doc addressing his friend as “Merrill”—which none of the other members of the crew would even consider doing—and the power difference between the two is not as pronounced as it is between the captain and the other crew members. Whenever Captain Stubing has a personal problem, he goes to Doc for advice, and vice versa. Dr. Crusher and Captain Picard have a history, having been friends long before he took command of the Enterprise. In the same vein, Doc seems to know Captain Stubing’s past more intimately than the rest of the crew, as there are a few episodes in which the two of them discuss Captain Stubing’s alcohol addiction and current status as a teetotaler as if this is something Doc has always known about Merrill.

The Big Brother

Star Trek TNG: William Riker

The Love Boat: Adam “Doc” Bricker

So this is cheating a bit because I already have Doc listed under a character profile above, but TNG’s main cast has more people than that of TLB, so a one-to-one mapping wasn’t going to happen anyway. Doc’s “Captain’s Confidant” role deals with his relationship with the captain, and his “Big Brother” role deals with his relationship with the rest of the regulars. The fact that Doc is a bit older than Julie, Isaac, and Gopher means that even though he, like the rest of them, is under the supervision of the captain, he has a slight position of seniority over the other three. He balances the by-turns mischievous and responsible aspects of an older brother figure—he’ll tease Julie about her latest infatuation, and set up elaborate pranks to mess with Gopher, yet whenever Gopher and Isaac get swept up in some not-well-thought-out scheme, he’s the level-headed one who tries to point out that they’ve gotten carried away—or sometimes refuses to get involved altogether. William Riker is, of course, first officer of the Enterprise, and therefore has the same seniority-among-underlings position (in a more official chain of command capacity than Doc does). His big-brother-ness manifests as the poker-playing, jazz-loving guy who will do things like give Worf’s son music recordings that he knows Worf will hate one day but get actively upset and almost personally offended at the idea of Data getting hurt the next.

Not necessarily related to the “Big Brother” role, but another little parallel between Doc and Riker that I would like to point out—they are each the designated ladies’ man of their ships, yet both are able to completely switch to focusing solely on their job responsibilities the moment it is called for. (Honestly, Doc always struck me as going beyond “ladies’ man” and skirting dangerously close to “creep” territory at times, but I did appreciate how he would always drop everything the instant there was any sort of medical issue on the Princess.)

The Two Buds

Star Trek TNG: Geordi La Forge and Data

The Love Boat: Isaac Washington and Burl “Gopher” Smith

Although both the TNG and TLB crews form a group of close friends, The Two Buds are best friends. They are the two most likely people to hang out together in their down time, the two who understand each other the best, the two most sympathetic to each other’s problems and most likely to indulge the other long after everyone else would have put their foot down. When Gopher gets some conspiracy theory into his head about a passenger, Isaac will hear him out and sometimes even help him investigate. When Data wants to do some questionable experimentation on his positronic net, Geordi is there with a tricorder making sure the whole thing doesn’t go completely haywire. Data once said that he didn’t know what a friend was until he met Geordi, and Isaac once told Gopher that he (Gopher) is the only one Isaac would resign in solidarity for. All four men/androids have a tendency to get a little too wrapped up in their obsession of the week—see Isaac’s novel-writing attempts, Geordi’s holographic Leah Brahms, Gopher’s conspiracy theories, and about half of anything Data does.

Each pair also consists of one white guy and one Black guy. (Obviously, Data is an android and therefore is not technically any human race or ethnicity, but he’s played by a white guy and his artificial skin is paler than anyone else’s skin on the senior staff.) The white guy representatives, Gopher and Data, are almost polar opposites—Data is calm and logical, and Captain Picard trusts him implicitly, while Gopher is a goof who freaks out easily and who is often upset with the way Captain Stubing dismisses him (those dismissals are especially prominent in the first few seasons—Gopher does mellow out later on). But they do have some similarities, one of the most striking being that they both struggle with appropriate social behavior as well as their own emotions. This is more readily apparent with Data, of course, who is literally not human and is trying his best to understand the nuances of things like humor and love, constantly asking his friends to explain behaviors they take for granted. Gopher’s struggles are more understated—he has a tendency to make comments and observations that the rest of the crew find slightly tasteless, he goes into several anxious tailspins over the course of the show, and he at one point believes his emotional attachments to his friends compromise his ability to fulfill his job duties. Both Data and Gopher use their respective best friends—each of whom are the more level-headed of the pair—as a steadying force.

Now for the characteristics shared by those respective best friends. The Black guy’s job responsibilities root him in a specific place and often set him slightly apart from the main action. While Geordi can and does go up to the bridge on several occasions, as Chief of Engineering he spends most of his time hanging around the warp core, communicating with the bridge over the com system. Meanwhile, Isaac can be seen wandering hallways and so forth, but he spends most of his time behind the bar, whether that’s in the Acapulco Lounge, on the Lido Deck, or in Pirate’s Cove. The rest of the crew, despite having nominal work stations like the Enterprise bridge or the Pacific Princess purser’s lobby, are seen to roam more extensively. (I’m pretty sure we never see Julie’s office.) Isaac is busy serving drinks in pretty much every episode while Doc and Gopher are chatting and dancing with passengers on the dance floor of the Acapulco Lounge. The Black guy also gets the short end of the stick in the romance department. When you see a Black guest actor on the opening credits of The Love Boat, it’s a good bet that Isaac will be involved in their storyline. If it’s just one Black woman, there’s a 99% chance that Isaac will be involved in her story, and his involvement will be as her love interest. I remember one particularly glaring example of the show going to extreme lengths to avoid even hinting that Isaac could potentially do something vaguely romantic or sexual with a white woman—Julie’s hosting her high school reunion on the ship, and there are a few scenes where everyone is discoing in the Acapulco Lounge. Isaac gets out on the dance floor, and conveniently some random Black woman appears out of nowhere as his dance partner. This woman is not named or acknowledged at any other point in the episode. Over on the Enterprise, Geordi isn’t restricted along race lines like Isaac, but I find it highly suspicious that the one Black guy is the least successful in romance out of everyone on the senior staff. Geordi struggles to even start up a conversation with women he’s attracted to, let alone flirt with them. Data has a better romance track record than Geordi does, and Data usually ends up in a romantic entanglement by accident! It’s as if the show was afraid to let Geordi enjoy those kinds of relationships to the same degree as the rest of the crew, which is a different kind of restriction than Isaac’s, but still a restriction nonetheless.

The Chick

Star Trek TNG: Deanna Troi

The Love Boat: Julie McCoy

The standard lineup for both TNG and The Love Boat consisted two female main characters, thus allowing the ladies to gossip about “girly” things in keeping with gender stereotypes, but Vicki was a preteen/teenager and Beverly had a sort of matron vibe going on, which left Julie and Troi to be the respective sex appeal characters out of the main cast. The Chick has non-standard dress that sets her apart from the others and their status as officers. While Doc, Gopher, and Captain Stubing wore nautical stripes and white uniforms (and Isaac usually had a variation on this outfit, wearing a red or blue jacket), with very little in the way of costume changes whether they were greeting boarding passengers, chatting on the Lido deck, or dancing in the Acapulco Lounge, Julie had no stripes to speak of. She would wear a (feminine) uniform at boarding, switch to a casual outfit during the rest of the day, and was always wearing a gown of some sort in the evenings. Deanna Troi for her part cycled through purple jumpsuits and asymmetrical dresses, her Starfleet badge precariously pinned to her neckline. We didn’t even get to see the pips indicating her rank until she was finally given (in story, ordered into) a normal uniform in season six.

The Chick gets saddled with way too many romance plots, some creepier than others. Giving Troi something substantial to do in an episode usually consisted of making her the love interest of whoever happened to be boarding the Enterprise that week, like the ambassador with the telepathic interpreters or the quarter-Betazoid interplanetary negotiator. Deanna also got her mind invaded by a man who was interested in her, prematurely aged by a man who took advantage of her, and kidnapped by Ferengi (who have a disturbing species-wide infatuation with non-Ferengi women). I’m not as upset about Julie having several romance-related plots, as romance was the name of the game on The Love Boat and the men on the crew had their own share of romantic entanglements—but I do find issue with the fact that when Julie was in love she always seemed on the verge of getting married and leaving the ship, which was a vibe we didn’t really get from, say, Doc or Gopher when their love lives turned particularly intense. In terms of creepiness, Julie had to deal with fending off the extremely aggressive advances of Captain Stubing’s uncle, a computer programmer who rigged his dating algorithm to ensure he matched with her, and a college acquaintance of Gopher who actually came to her door to badger her as she was getting dressed.

The Kid

Star Trek TNG: Wesley Crusher

The Love Boat: Vicki Stubing

For some reason, both of these shows thought it necessary to have a preteen/teenager in the cast whose character has way more responsibility than is realistic for either a cruise ship or a pseudomilitary starship. Instead of Vicki wearing a uniform and checking in guests on the Pacific Princess, we really should have seen Julie’s or Gopher’s staff fulfilling check-in duty (Doc and Isaac were also too often seen checking in passengers, which I will say again is a duty that on a real cruise ship would definitely not fall to either the ship’s doctor or chief bartender, but we’re talking about Vicki at the moment). Wesley, meanwhile, was made Acting Ensign on the Enterprise, saving the ship way more than he should have and probably earning the ire of all the official ensigns who actually went to Starfleet Academy and were losing precious time at the conn due to Picard’s favoritism.

Speaking of Picard, The Captain has a paternal relationship with The Kid—literally in Vicki Stubing’s case, emotionally in Wesley Crusher’s. He is very concerned with imbuing The Kid with strong morals, and has a vested interest in The Kid’s upbringing and making sure The Kid has a bright future. Meanwhile, the rest of the main crew are like an assortment of aunts and uncles, being the cool, approachable sources of advice when The Captain’s not around. In fact, The Kid hardly seems to have any friends their own age. Instead, they hang out with the adult crew members and get involved in their social drama, which may or may not have always been appropriate.

Isn’t there someone you forgot?

The TNG fans among you may now be thinking to yourselves, “What about Worf?” Alas, there seems to be no satisfactory Worf counterpart on The Love Boat. After all, there isn’t really any need for a tactical officer on a cruise ship, so a warrior-type personality is not represented on the Pacific Princess crew. Other Worf characteristics would be that of an outsider, or one who is occasionally not sure if they truly belong on the ship, but everyone on the Princess seems pretty happy to be there. I guess in a pinch I could say Ace, the late-addition ship’s photographer, might serve as Worf’s counterpart, but other than the fact that Ace’s family is rich and it is established that he doesn’t really need a job on the ship to get by, I’m not sure there’s much of an “outsider” status brought to the table here. I also haven’t watched enough Ace episodes to have a really good read on his character.

Thus ends my Love Boat/TNG comparison! It was nice to finally get this analysis out of my head and onto the page.

#the love boat #star trek #tng #comparison

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afterspark-podcast · 4 years ago

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My Little Pony/Transformers: Friendship in Disguise, Part 1 Transcript

[This can also be found on AO3!]

[Stinger]

O: So I'm like, “No, I'm just fine with pretending this never happened, honestly.”

[Intro Music]

O: Welcome to our April Fool’s Special!

S: The Transformers/My Little Pony: Friendship in Disguise crossover.

O: Specifically, issues 1 and 2 here. An episode covering issues 3 and 4 will be released in a few weeks. Um, so obviously our podcast doesn't normally talk about ponies.

S: For all that it too was a popular Hasbro franchise in the 80’s- I mean, still is.

O: Yes. I will attempt to give a short blip about My Little Pony characters that show up, but we're gonna kind of assume that you know the mane six. Which is Twilight Sparkle, Fluttershy, Rarity, Applejack, Rainbow Dash, and Pinkie Pie. Ah, Specs has seen some of the My Little Pony episodes, whereas I have seen... all of it at this point. Um, so I'm reasonably familiar with most of the characters. And uh, for the record, Twilight Sparkle is my favorite, but that's because she's basically me. [laughs]

S: This was a crossover comic that was released in 2020 (for your information).

O: Uh, most of the Transformers characters in here are part of kind of the regular G1 cast that you're all probably used to seeing in various things. Most of them we've talked about. There's a few we haven't um, because they just haven't popped up in the series yet. [Like Arcee.] The exceptions being Gauge who's from IDW2, and Windblade who's from IDW1, Cyberverse, and several other things.

S: Mm-hm. They did some fun things with the fonts and some of the other visuals in this.

O: Such as using the Transformers font for ‘Equestria’ and the My Little Pony font for ‘Cybertron’.

S: Mm-hm. And the character’s speech bubbles use the fonts from their respective series.

O: Some of the issues are done by who I think is the current artist for the My Little Pony comic series. While the rest are done by Transformers comic artists- like, plural, several of them.

S: And with that we begin.

O: Part 1: Transformation Is Magic!

S: In Equestria, a pony by the name of Quibble Pants is standing in front of a newsstand complaining about some very applicable meta issues.

O: Quibble's a side character. His whole shtick is that he picks apart plot and whatnot.

S: He's a bit of a nitpicker.

O: The newsstand pony tells Quibble (and by extension us) that this is all for fun. So don't worry too much about continuity here, guys.

S: Mm-hm, a loud clap of thunder transitions us to a nearby mountaintop where Queen Chrysalis is up to nefarious plots

O: She [Chrysalis] is villain. She is the queen of the changelings. She can transform into different creatures, basically, or different ponies. I think, judging by some of the background characters in some scenes later, that this is after she's lost control of most of the other changelings? Though she does have a small group working with her here.

S: She plans to bring forth other changelings from other worlds to take over Equestria.

O: I'm sure you can see where- where this is going. [laughs]

S: Mm-hm, and now, on cybertron.

O: The Autobots and Decepticons are fighting, shocker.

S: The Decepticons are clearly trying to take control of a malfunctioning space bridge.

O: A space bridge that Shockwave is convinced is breaching other dimensions.

S: Suddenly, all of the Autobots and Decepticons are zapped away through a portal.

O: Leaving only poor Grimlock to smash into view a few seconds later... thinking they have all ditched him.

S: Poor Grimlock.

O: Poor Grimlock. [laughs]

S: Back in Equestria, Twilight shows up with several royal guards to stop Chrysalis but it's too late and a portal opens, sending the Cybertronians zooming past through the air.

O: Twilight is horrified to see that Chrysalis has summoned living things that are about to go ‘splat’ onto the ground, or more likely ‘crunch’! [laughs]

S: Or possibly clank, if someone slows them down-

O: [laughs]

S: But I mean, who knows? Twilight speeds off to try and save the newly arrived Cybertronians. While Chrysalis stays behind to acquaint herself with Megatron.

O: Bee is both surprised and resigned to see himself falling to a colorful death.

S: But Optimus grabs Bee's hand, and intends to break his fall with his own body.

O: Optimus, are you okay? Do you need to talk? I feel like you need to talk. We need- we need to get you into therapy, dude.

S: It's all the self-sacrificing, but yes.

O: [laughs]

S: Yes, he needs some therapy. The two are saved by Twilight’s a very timely arrival and magical powers.

O: The Cybertronians are just as surprised by the ponies, as the ponies are of them.

S: Bee attempts to blend in by transforming into vehicle mode, to Twilight's consternation. But Twilight says that doesn't really help him blend in, but it's okay if they're different!

O: She comments on their ‘shape-shifting magic’ and that Chrysalis will be disappointed that they're friendly.

S: To which Optimus says... unfortunately, they are not all friendly.

O: And then we are given the most amazing image. [laughs]

S: Queen Chrysalis, as happy as a kid in a candy store, on top of a tank, aka Megatron.

O: Seriously, it's one of the best images in the comic. [dissolves into laughter] And one that was shared I think, pretty frequently after the comic came out? So it's very funny.

S: Mm-hm.

O: And we begin part 2 of issue 1: Shine Like A Diamond.

S: Rarity and her staff at her Manehattan boutique have been volun-told to get Starscream all dolled up for his coronation.

O: You know, the outfit he's in in the G1 movie, the purple cape and the crown get up.

S: Rarity attempts to calm him down, because he is being a snippy asshole during all of this.

O: Yes, with vague, implied threats throughout.

S: Mm-hm, so Rarity says, “Happy, healthy subjects show just how good their king is, don't they?”

O: A car is heard in the distance, much to Starscream's surprise, as he didn't think the ponies had cars. Which, he is correct!

S: Mm-hm, Arcee barrels into him with a flying kick.

O: And Starscream retreats.

S: Leaving Arcee and Rarity to introduce themselves.

O: They seem to become fast friends as Rarity thanks Arcee, and Arcee tries to help clean up the mess Starscream has made.

S: Unfortunately, Starscream returns with the rest of his trine in tow.

O: Arcee intends to fight them alone, but Rarity generates a magic shield to help protect Arcee while she fires on the jets.

S: Thundercracker takes a direct hit, while Starscream and Skywarp are herded closer together by Arcee's fire.

O: Once they're close enough, Rarity uses her magic to wrap the fabric from Starscream's cape, that she was helping make earlier, around the two of them.

S: Skywarp says, “This is stupid! I'm out,” and teleports away.

O: Leaving Starscream to nosedive to the ground with a boom.

S: Arcee compliments an exhausted Rarity on her help.

O: While they both agree they would do anything for their friends, and for each other! Now, you may notice that none of the My Little Pony characters have been shown in the Transformers universe, but that is about to change.

S: In issue 2, part 1: Inspiring.

O: It would seem that Twilight's assistant, Spike (the dragon) is wandering around the Ark writing a letter to Twilight.

S: Of course, with Grimlock being the only one left behind, he's presumably found Spike and brought him to the Ark.

O: Spike is of course very enamored with the big old Dinobot.

S: And Grimlock seems to like Spike quite a bit too. Even holding him in his open palm while they get an alert from Teletraan about an attack.

O: Said attack, by way of the Constructicons, who have come to destroy the Ark while everyone else is away.

S: Grimlock transforms into dino mode and meets them.

O: Grimlock makes the mistake of saying, “Puny Decepticons, even together you no match for Grimlock!”

S: To which, they respond by forming Devastator, and stomping the absolute crap out of him. “Grimlock and Grimlock's big mouth.”

O: Spike shouts words of encouragement to Grimlock, but quickly sees that the Dinobot is losing.

S: So he thinks, looks at the Ark, comes to a realization, and then runs inside to make his realization happen.

O: Inside, Spike flips through two large books. ‘Modern Cybertronian For Everyday Conversations’ and ‘Teletraan I For Dummies’.

S: He then climbs onto Teletraan’s console and starts the main engine cycle countdown.

O: Spike yells at Grimlock to get down.

S: Which is, you know, not that hard as Devastator is still stomping on him.

O: Devastator is then blasted by the bit of the Ark that's still sticking out of the ground, causing Devastator to fall to pieces.

S: The Constructicons flee, and Spike checks on Grimlock. Spike still feels pretty down about himself, because all he did was press some buttons. But Grimlock says Spike did even more than he did.

O: “Spike learned new language, and operations system in short time! Spike think of using busted engine as canon! Spike use pronouns!”

S: Grimlock tells Spike that Spike inspires him, and that he's full of potential.

O: Spike collapses into a happy little puddle of dragon that Grimlock called him, “Inspiring.” Their friendship is so cute! [laughs]

S: And now it's time for part 2 of issue 2: They Eat Ponies, Don't They?

O: We are brought onto the stage of a cooking show, “Prepping With Pinkie,” hosted by Pinkie Pie.

S: And a special guest, Gauge!

O: And all I can think is- Arcee she still one of her parents in this continuity? Is Arcee worried about her child!? [laugh]

S: And in the spirit of cultural exchange, Pinkie and Gauge will be sharing some of their favorite recipes in today's program. I never thought about giant robots having recipes before this, and I didn't want to think about it.

O: [laughs] Pinkie is, of course, making cupcakes. While Gauge has brought iron filing casserole.

S: Poor Pinkie and ah, several audience members are questioning their decision based on their facial expressions.

O: Pinkie goes to start her cupcakes, but suddenly everything starts shaking.

S: [singing] Dun, dun, dunnnn!

O: [snorts]

S: A space bridge appears with Shockwave stepping out of it.

O: He has, by his own admission, come to ‘spice things up.’

S: Ah, time for some puns. Unfortunately, his recipes require a bit more audience participation.

O: Shockwave’s apparently come to discover how much pony it takes to fuel one Decepticon.

S: [sighs]

O: [laughs]

S: He transforms his hands into a grater and a whisk, respectively.

O: Pinkie and Gauge evade him, causing him to demand that they stay still so he can finish his experiments.

S: Oh god, by attempting to whisk them!?

O: [laughs] I know, I know! I'm not saying it's sane!

S: I know, I mean, I read it too.

O: [laughs]

S: It’s just, now I have vivid mental images of this being attempted and everyone being very…

O: Confused? [laughs]

S: Yes. Gauge whacks him in the head with a cookie sheet, completely bending it out of shape, and tries to get Pinkie to flee.

O: Pinkie refuses, but in the background the show's audience is running through the exit door- at least part of their audience is running through the exit- exit door.

S: Mm-hm. Shockwave transforms his hands again, this time to a spork and spatula. Sporking them to death is not gonna work, dude!

O: Tell him that! [laughs]

S: Mm-hm, again, with the mental images. Gauge rips off the spork and spatula, sending Shockwave falling backwards, where Pinkie trips him.

O: Pinkie and Gauge grab some frying pans and bean Shockwave's face in between them.

S: Shockwave, thoroughly beaten by a small Cybertronian child and a pony, is kicked back into the space bridge and disappears.

O: The remaining audience claps.

S: And 47 minutes later, the duo tries the other's culinary... contributions.

O: Pinkie declares it as success, though her face implies she didn't enjoy the iron filing casserole.

S: In the background, Gauge is clearly trying to politely spit out the cupcake in a towel. [laughs]

O: And that ends issue 2. So, join us next time for issues 3 and 4 where we will finish this mini-series.

S: And that just about wraps it up for us today. Remember to check us out on Tumblr or Pillowfort as Afterspark-Podcast for any additional information, show notes, or links we may have mentioned. You can also find us on Facebook and Twitter at AftersparkPod (all one word), and various other locations by searching for Afterspark Podcast, such as AO3, iTunes, Spotify, and Youtube, just to name a few. And feel free to send us questions on Tumblr, Youtube, or AO3. Till next time, I’m Specs.

O: And I’m Owls!

S: Toodles.

[Outro Music Plays]

#transcript #afterspark #afterspark podcast #friendship in disguise 1 #friendship in disguise 2

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dragonstoravens · 5 years ago

Text

Trinity: First Appearance

Since I haven’t posted many longer excerpts from Rebel Blue, I thought I’d post this short story introducing my boy Trinity and his complicated relationship with the crew of Rebel Blue-- specifically Periwinkle.

A bit of background-- Trinity was originally intended to be a one-off or minor character, and actually started off as a sort of pseudo-villain, working for Fate (the series’ main villain.) This is the first piece I wrote for him, edited and updated to fit his character now.

Trinity now features in Babylon, a several-novels-length offshoot of Rebel Blue’s main story written by myself and @charlottedotexe. His eventual slow-burn romance with Azure was a total surprise, and has lead to me developing this one-off villain into someone I really love! While Trinity still takes some time to be a truly good person, he was always meant to draw the line somewhere, and I think this piece illustrates that really well.

READ ON WATTPAD HERE!

“So… I guess I’ve just seen her around here a couple of times, and I wanted to let her know that I… even exist?” Trinity chuckled self deprecatingly, rubbing the back of his neck with an embarrassed look on his face. Felicia cooed and wiggled around slightly from her position on his lap, reaching up to pinch his cheek.

“Awww, look at little Ty growing up. You’ve been coming here for years, and a pretty girl finally caught your eye? I’m almost jealous.” She giggled as he playfully smacked her hand away. “Tell me about her, then.”

“Well…” Trinity paused, casting his thoughts back to the woman he’d seen in the security footage. He had, in fact, seen her here at Absolute Zero before, but never close enough to describe. All he knew about her was that she usually sat up near the front, always by herself, or chatting with the bartender or even the owner rather than other patrons. Still, the auburn hair and striking height were hard to forget, and really the only reasons he’d recognized her on that recording. The fact she knew the workers here was good, but she was so often alone. It worried him, if he was being honest. Anyone in his position knew loners were the easiest targets. But Felicia was still waiting for him to answer. He let his eyes go a bit far away and misty as he leaned back in the plush booth, a lovestruck smile coloring his face. “She’s real tall. And pretty. Her hair’s long and wavy, it’s… brown? Maybe red. She always dresses so nice. She sounds like maybe she’s British, or from one of their colony planets. I’ve seen her a couple times, but… I never worked up the courage to buy her a drink.”

Beneath his field of vision, Felicia’s eyes narrowed for just a moment. Only a moment, though, and then she returned to her teasing smile, eyes flashing mischievously. “Sounds like someone’s smitten. Why don’t you go talk to her yourself, lover boy? Put that pretty face to good use. If she says no to that, she clearly doesn’t deserve you.” She leaned into him, adding a bit of real encouragement into her tone and ignoring the urge to mix pronouns and risk tipping Ty off that she knew his target as more than just another patron. She wanted his guard down, for one thing, and on the off chance he was telling the truth, maybe she could get him to prove it and actually talk to her in person. But he shook his head, and despite that bashful look on his face as he did it, Felicia’s suspicions were back full force.

“Nah, I can’t do that. What if she’d rather be alone? I don’t wanna force her into anything. I was thinking you girls could get her a note, buy her a drink on me next time she comes in? The ball’s in her court that way.” He shrugs. “If she ignores it, at least I tried, huh?”

As if anyone could force that person into anything. That alone proved he was lying… or that he honestly knew nothing about the person of which he spoke. But there was protocol to follow here, and Felicia was a professional before all else. Sure, Ty had never been anything but respectful and sweet, but almost everyone working here had learned the hard way that sweet things hid poison better than sour.

“Such a dear.” She ruffled his hair, and slid languidly off his lap, trailing her fingers down his neck and shoulder as she pulled away. “Alright, but you know I’ll tell the other girls. Your reputation as a hot-shot lady killer is in danger.” Her voice remained light and flirty, but the warning was real. Unless he changed his tune now, this was going straight to the top.

Trinity laughed, waving a hand at her. “Ah, go ahead. You all call me ‘little Ty’ anyway, it’s not like my reputation here was tough-as-nails in the first place.” Unconsciously, he rubbed a hand along his thigh, feeling for the tiny cybernetic attachment he already knew was there. He’d been around the block enough to know what this bar really was, and to notice that subtle warning from Felicia. That little note of his wouldn’t be staying secret for long, and they both knew it. In an establishment like this, information trade always passed through the top of the pyramid before being sent along to its target. He didn’t know much about the manager here, but he did know it was dangerous to pass information this way, especially in his position. Who knew what his boss would do to him if he found out about this interference. Still, Trinity couldn’t let this slide. He had to warn that poor woman, without doing anything to actively help her. This was the best chance he had.

Felicia giggled, using the charade to cover a disappointed sigh. Well, his loss. “You could at least pretend to be upset. You’re abandoning us for romance, Etta’s gonna be crushed.” She gave him one of her patented cute pouts, to which he responded with a good natured eye roll. “Well, I’m gonna go see some customers that aren’t too distracted by their mystery girl to appreciate me. You know where to send that note of yours, yeah?”

“Course I do. Thanks, ‘Licia.” Trinity’s eyes trailed her as she made her way back up to the bar. When she disappeared through a door behind the counter, he leaned forward in his booth, pulling the displaced table back towards him and resting his elbows on it. He let the casual, goofy persona of “Ty” slip away, face turning serious as he considered his task. How did you warn a woman about one of the world’s most dangerous men-- without drawing his attention yourself?

~~~

“You can stop laughing now.”

A few moments passed as the person Siren was calling caught their breath, letting out an almost musical falling sigh. Their posh, accented voice, something like old Terran British, was still tinged with laughter. “Sorry, darling, but this one really takes the cake, I think. Either he somehow hired someone with a conscience, or this is his worst plan yet.” A second voice on the same end of the voice call broke its silence with a snort.

“Yeah, Si. I don’t want to make light of another one of these attempts, but… they happen almost every time we go planetside. And I’m not gonna lie, this one was pretty funny.”

“Stalking is quite the word for it, though,” the first mused. “I think my favorite part is when he insinuates I should leave the planet to avoid this ‘stalker.’ For my own safety, of course, nothing to do with the job I’m working on. What do you think, Cadet?”

Before the second person could respond, Siren interrupted with a soft clearing of her throat. “Perry--”

“I know.” The humor had disappeared from his voice. “I take this sort of thing very seriously, especially considering he’s gotten your operation involved this time. Is everyone cleared out?”

“Nearly. We don’t want to make the patrons too suspicious, so the rest will report to secure locations after the mole has left. I’m sending an agent out with him, one of his favorites, so it’s nothing unusual for either of them. She can probably hold him on her own, although--”

“I’ll go,” Cadet interjected, beating Siren to the punch. “No need for Perry to get too close to the creep, that way.” Perry sighed.

“I suppose it doesn’t matter if I say that’s unnecessary?”

“Look, I know you could take him down, but all his boss’ tricks are focused on you. They won’t work as well on me or Si’s agent, and that way you’re free to focus on questioning him. It’s why we’re in a team, Per.” She added a bit of teasing to her tone, and Perry responded with a slightly begrudging hum of assent. Hearing that, Siren continued.

“Alright, if you’re both set, I’ll ready my agent and wait for your signal. We have two hours. Be safe.” The weight of the last two words seemed somehow directed at both her listeners at once, but with a different meaning for each. Cadet echoed Siren’s unspoken message to her, pressing her fingers to her lips for a moment in a gesture she knew her wife would mimic without even needing to see her.

“Love you too, Si.”

Perry said nothing. Siren’s meaning for her was something she already knew. They also knew they’d disregard it in a second if it meant keeping that bar standing. With a click, the line disconnected, and the clock began to tick.

~~~

Trinity hoped he was hiding his nervousness alright. He still hadn’t heard anything back from the woman about his message, but today his sensor had picked up new security footage of her. Recent footage, from just hours ago. His boss definitely had it by now, and it meant she definitely hadn’t left the planet. In fact, she seemed to have moved in even closer. So even though there was a chance it’d get him caught, Trinity was back at Absolute Zero. Felicia had even bent the rules a bit and bought him a drink, although he’d been careful to filter out the alcohol through his cybernetics as he drank. He couldn’t afford to be compromised. He tried to pay attention to Felicia’s attempts to cheer him up, but her reassurance that he could talk to his “mystery girl” in person next time she came in didn’t help much. What would he say if she did? And if she didn’t, would he just have to give up? Maybe it wasn’t any of his business, anyway.

“What’s that?”

Felicia’s voice jerked him out of his thoughts, and he realized he’d muttered that last bit aloud. “Oh… I mean, I just don’t know if I should get involved in her business anyway. I did say she could ignore me if she wanted. Why can’t I just get over it?” He let his arms slide down across the table in front of him, laying his head on them pitifully.

“Aw, Ty. It’s not even for sure yet, and you’re getting all heartbroken?” A flicker of blue registered in the corner of Felicia’s vision, and she surreptitiously glanced down at her right hand where it rested on Trinity’s back, firmly out his sight. Sure enough, the tiny chip embedded in her thumbnail flashed once, twice, and then faded. She tapped the nail twice with her forefinger-- message received-- then slapped Trinity on the back playfully and stood up. “Alright, that’s enough alcohol and self pity for you, babe. We’re going for a walk.”

“Really, now? But--”

“It’s my job to cheer you up, and that’s not gonna happen if you’re just sitting around here moping. Come on, I know you love Andromeda Park this time of night, we haven’t been in days since you’ve been pining like this.” She leaned in, tucking her arm through his and pulling him out of his chair with strength that would have been surprising if he hadn’t seen it in action so many times before. With a sigh, he allowed her to lead him through the bar and out into the mild night air. They walked slowly, turning down familiar alleys towards the park. Trinity let Felicia’s arm slip from his as he walked, turning a contemplative gaze up to the sky. The slight wind against his face did seem to clear his head a bit. Perhaps she was right, and this really would give him some time to think things through--

Without warning, his right arm was twisted behind his back. Just as he started to struggle, a second pair of hands, these ones gloved, grabbed his other arm and the back of his head in a steely grip, pushing him to his knees and holding his head forward so he couldn’t see his attackers. Trinity swore, cursing himself for being so distracted. Even his cybernetics were no help if he didn’t have line of sight, or at least a hand free to activate the taser function from the port on his thigh. He knew better than to try and speak, let alone yell for help, given the almost unnaturally strong fingers pressing into the base of his skull right where it met his neck. Held like this, he could do nothing but stare down the shadowed stone alley in front of him, waiting to see what would become of him.

A shadow moved at the end of the alley. Moonlight flashed off of a cascade of shining red fabric, shifting to reveal a smooth expanse of pale thigh… and the matte black hilt of a knife, placed just so it would remain concealed beneath the fabric until the wielder chose to reveal it. As the figure took one more slow step forward, new details revealed themselves to Trinity one by one, his brain registering each as if in slow motion. His eyes traced up from the knife… a long way up. The curve of a hip, clad in red. Wrists and neck free of jewelry or adornment, save a thin black metal band tight around one wrist, leaving nothing that could be caught or grabbed. And finally, a curl of auburn hair caught the moonlight like silk, tumbling loose over one bare shoulder.

“Fuck.” It came out as almost a whisper, his voice cracking a bit, and he cleared his throat. It was an affectation, of course. It was safest to keep trying to sound like Ty, well meaning if a touch dim, though it was tempting to drop character and coldly insist to be allowed to explain himself. “Guess I didn’t need to worry after all.”

Trinity’s mystery woman chuckled slightly, but there was no humor in the sound. She kept her face obscured in shadow— honestly a good move on her part, since with a clear view Trinity could at least try to activate his eye— and tossed her hair back almost contemptuously. “Please. I know why you’re really here. Do you?”

“Do I— of course I know why I’m here!” Because you’re too soft to survive, his brain supplied, unhelpfully. Whenever he was in danger like this, that internal voice sounded uncomfortably like the velvety tones of his employer. You’ll walk right into a death trap if you think you’re defending a defenseless woman from assault, it whispered, but he ignored it, setting his jaw. Defenseless or not, he still stood by his original plan. No one had the defenses to stand up to Fate— the addition of the Jericho company had only made that fact more stark in his mind. He gave up on keeping character. It was easier to be convincing if he truly wasn’t lying to her. He relaxed slightly despite the arms holding him down. Ty might struggle when outnumbered, but Trinity knew better. His words were his most powerful weapon. “Look.” His voice was more even than before, his word choice more eloquent. “I don’t know who you are, and I’ll be the first to admit that I underestimated you, but please at least hear me out. The man I’m talking about is… truly dangerous. It isn’t this job alone, he’s—“

“So you’re one of those.” She smirked slightly, lowering her voice for a moment. “Azzy owes me 10 cred, she thought you were one of the less stupid ones. You really think you’re the one who came up with this plan?”

Trinity opened his mouth to tell her that in fact, he had, but the woman held out a finger and the hand on the back of his neck tightened almost imperceptibly. He closed it again.

“Let’s see if I can predict this story. You’re new still, so you’re trailing his footsteps like a little puppy, trying to learn all you can. He can do anything, after all, open and shut. You want that kind of power, so you do whatever he says. Until suddenly a simple job starts dragging on far longer than it should.” She tapped a finger to her lips in a gesture of vaguely mocking consternation. “How can this be? It doesn’t make sense, until one day he just so happens to let something slip to you. An accident, of course. A bit of footage, or a location, or maybe some sad poetry fragment he’s written on the back of a lipstick stained napkin.” Her words grew more and more sarcastic. “You, being the charitable type of power hungry pup, are worried for this poor unknown woman’s safety.” The oddly bitter emphasis on the word woman threw him for a moment, but she moved on before he could puzzle it out. “So you track her down, leaving a sweet little trail of breadcrumbs along with your warning— but it’s alright, it’s all behind his back! And you can go back home to your war profiteering and dirty money, content in your own altruism. Does that sound about right?”

Trinity just gaped at her for a moment before pulling his thoughts together. “Listen to me. I truly don’t enjoy seeing a woman in danger—” She frowned, cutting him off.

“Not a woman, but continue. I’m curious to hear your side.” The tone was biting, and the odd emphasis before suddenly made a lot more sense.

“Oh. My apologies, I assumed.”

“I noticed. Most do. Continue.”

“Right.” He pursed his lips. “Well. Moving past the sheer amount of sarcastic bullshit in your little story, I believe you have the bones of the issue. I won’t argue with you on your assessment of my character, but there’s one thing you’ve missed.”

“And what is that?” To his surprise, they sounded genuinely interested. He filed away that tidbit for later.

“He didn’t ‘let something slip’ to me. I don’t act on things I’ve simply stumbled upon.”

“Please. You think you’re the first to believe you got your information on me genuinely? Of your own merit? With the amount of stock you seem to put in his abilities, that seems rather conceited of you.” They sighed, almost seeming to deflate a bit from that perfectly poised stance. “He knows you’re here, and he knows I’m here. And if that establishment is destroyed tonight along with the livelihood of all who work there, it’s on you.”

Trinity flinched slightly at the accusation, but kept his gaze level. “He does not know that I’m here. I swear that.”

The figure pinched the bridge of their nose. “After all of this, that’s the hill you’re dying on?”

A rough sigh came from Trinity’s left side, and the hand on his neck tightened again as one of his captors finally spoke in a low, slightly gravelly voice he didn’t recognize. “We can’t keep dragging this out, Per. Two minutes, then you gotta call it.”

“I know.” They ran the hand that had been pinching their nose back through their hair, and took a half step forward. “Ok, then. What makes you so sure?”

Trinity bit the inside of his lip, the way he did when he didn’t want people to see him sweat. This was getting dangerous, in more ways than one. The longer this went on, the more likely it became that his boss would find out somehow, and this person was right— anything that happened would be on him. If he didn’t say something soon to convince them, he had no doubt they could have him killed or detained as quickly as they had subdued him in the first place. But the only way to prove what he knew was true was to reveal something he’d managed to keep secret for four years, now. Two minutes. It’d probably be less if the hand on his neck had anything to say about it, so he didn’t exactly have much time to come up with a better plan. Fuck it, if he was dead either way he might as well die knowing he was in the right.

“I’m sure because the way I saw it was with my cybernetic eye that two people in the entire galaxy even knew existed... until just now. It’s one of a kind. You were right, I have been watching him. It’s the best way to learn. So I planted my sensor in his office, and watched him creep on security footage of you alone in there for hours when he thought no one could see. That’s no convenient slip up.” He didn’t bother to disguise the disgust in his voice. He respected the man, but this was one thing he couldn’t abide.

“Cybernetics…” They lifted their wrist to their mouth to speak. That black band must be some kind of communication device. “Azure. Is that possible?”

There was a pause as they listened to some response Trinity couldn’t hear, then their gaze slowly panned back to him, staring him down like a hawk to a rabbit.

“Secret, one of a kind cybernetics. An interesting story, but not an easy one to make up on the fly. Either you’re a far better liar than you seem and have been completely in on his plans from the beginning, or…”

“He’s telling the truth.”

Oh. So that’s where Felicia has gotten to. In the heat of the moment he hadn’t really thought about that until he heard her voice from his right side— his other captor. Wonderful.

“You know about this?”

“I knew his eye was cybernetic. He played it like a fancy prosthetic, but that’d make sense if it’s one of a kind. What he’s saying isn’t impossible, and he’s a regular. I know when he’s lying.” The red clad figure nodded slowly, processing Felicia’s endorsement.

“I trust you to do your job.” Even while they spoke with Felicia, they still hadn’t broken that piercing gaze, focusing on Trinity. “Well. I suppose you’re a first, then. In that case, take this advice.” Their weight shifted slightly, and Trinity could almost feel the danger radiating from them. The energy was spine-chillingly similar to the danger that Fate projected just by entering a room, a mirrored twin. “Know that I know far more about your employer and his abilities than you do. I can’t stop you from going back to him, and you can’t stop me from ruining this lovely, easy job you’re trying to finish up.” They spoke with perfect confidence, without a hint of conceit. “He and his other lap dogs will continue to pull this kind of shite, it’s a given. But if you ever try to track me down again, you will die. Are we clear?”

“Crystal.” Trinity narrowed his eyes. “And so we’re clear on one more thing— I’d never bring harm to this place. It’s been as much a home to me as anywhere.”

“People like you never do, intentionally. That’s why you’re less trustworthy than the ones who do intend harm.” The low light of the alley caught a hint of a bitter smirk as it crossed her lips. “At least you know where they stand. Cadet, let’s go.”

The grip on his left arm and neck loosened, and he felt his unknown captor shift to stand next to him. “Four, hold him till we give the all clear. Then Siren says protocol’s down to your discretion.”

“Got it.” Felicia took over the grapple, pushing him further to the ground. His cheek pressed up against the pavement, the craned position of his head and neck keeping him from seeing anything but a sliver of wall in front of him. He sighed, listening to the thud of two sets of heavy boots as they faded down the alley and into the sounds of the night.

“...Four, huh?”

“You’ve been a regular long enough. In your line of business, you suspected. Just like I suspected ‘Ty’ was a front.” Felicia’s voice was much more matter of fact than he was used to. “It’s a useful place, and you can play all sides, but there’s always priority one.”

“I get it. I could’ve put the place in danger.”

“It’s home for a lot more than you.”

“I know. I was telling the truth, but if I can’t come back—“

“That’s up to me.” Felicia glanced down at her thumbnail as the tiny chip flashed again. All clear. She lightly moved off of him, releasing his arm from the position she’d held it in twisted behind his back, and Trinity could see a compact blaster in her palm. She flicked her wrist, and it disappeared. “I say you can, if you can take it for what it is.”

“Just a bar. People gossip and flirt and trade information. It’s a good place to land at the end of a day.” He shrugged, rubbing his shoulder. “You could have dislocated that, you know?”

“Fair enough.” She ignored his last comment, and tapped her nail twice to acknowledge. “Maybe I’ll see you again then, Ty.” The name was a promise in its own way— he could keep his cover if she could keep hers. “Stay out of trouble.”

With that, she turned and began walking purposefully back towards Absolute Zero, leaving Trinity alone in the alley to nurse his bruised shoulder and pride.

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