#and dang! she is in the same show as all these legends! maybe she is a legend too and I just didn't know it yet! ;)

[giantkillerjack]

Excellent news! The next chapter I am writing of my graphic novel features three characters who are based on famous actors - and I just found out EACH OF THEM HAVE THEIR OWN EPISODE OF THE CLASSIC MUPPET SHOW! As character research goes, this is such a treat! These chapters are gonna be so fun and silly!

(Also, it turns out Lynda Carter did an episode on this show!!!! Which is so wild to me because I think of her as solely a modern celebrity, since I learned about her from her tumblr. But it turns out that linear time is a thing, and so there she is in the 70s as well! Right in between Christopher Reeve and Carol Channing!!! @reallyndacarter just in case you see this, that is so cool!!!)

[kchasm]

Ryu Number: Xerxes I

Xerxes I, also known as Xerxes the Great, was the ruler of the Achaemenid Empire from 486 BCE until his assassination in 465 BCE. At the time of his ascension to the throne, the Achaemenid Empire ran from the eastern end what's now Pakistan to the west end of what's now Turkey. You might notice that that's about the same amount of empire in about the same location as Alexander the Great had—that's because Alexander the Great was the guy who took over the Achaemenid Empire and made it not-so-Achaemenid anymore.

It was awful big, is what I'm saying.

But let's be honest: You probably know Xerxes I better as the Bad Guy with the nose ring in that one weird Spartan hagiography Gerald Butler was in. Fugging Miller.

Anyway, Xerxes I almost certainly has a Ryu Number of 2, and definitely not a Ryu Number more than 3, but there's some stuff.

The problem with finding a Ryu Number of Xerxes I is that 5th-century-BCE Persian monarchs don't show up in video games that often, for some reason. He makes a historical appearance in the Assassin's Creed Odyssey DLC Legacy of the First Blade...

...but unfortunately, Odyssey takes place too far after the times of myth and legend for anyone big enough to be a Minecraft skin in Greek-mythology-inspired DLC to show up.

It doesn't help, either, that in Assassin's Creed lore, all the "gods" were just members of a Precursor Race pretending to be gods, a la Stargate. No, that's not "Hera," that's a jerk Precursor Person who's taken on the identity of "Hera," all the better to lead mankind around like a clowder of schmucks. She's pretending to be Norse elsewhere. Don't fall for it.

(There's also A Minotaur, which feels like it ought to connect via that Minecraft skin pack, but if I'm understanding the Odyssey lore correctly—and I very well might not be; holler at me—the minotaur the player encounters isn't actually the Minotaur from the myth we know and love, but some random other guy who subsequently got his hands on the Precursor Technology that turns you into a minotaur. Yeah, everything is Precursor People in Assassin's Creed. It's kind of disappointing.)

Of course, you can still get to Xerxes through Odyssey if you want to—a handful of historical characters who don't have Minecraft skins show up—but you'll need an extra step. And if we're going to have an extra step anyway, I'm going to go for the route that doesn't need Assassin's Creed, partially because I haven't played the games yet but mostly because I'm still really disappointed about the Precursor People thing.

Which means, unfortunately, it's back to Miller.

I'll say this: For all that 300: March to Glory is Not A Very Good Video Game, it left me the impression that someone behind the scenes actually did the bare minimum research into the Greco-Persian Wars. Persian commanders Hydarnes and Mardonius make appearances (if only to provide something unique to hit), and Mardonius even survives the movie-equivalent events of the game until an epilogic, post-movie level that takes place during the Battle of Plataea—which is, indeed, where the historical Mardonius bit it. It's not much, but I had to watch the whole dang thing, so I'll take what I can get. Gets me more names for The Chart, besides.

As for connecting this game to Ryu, you can, of course, count on the Ol' Dependable of Games With Historical Figures:

...Or maybe you're not a fan of Anime And Things That Look Like Anime, in which case, try this, instead:

I'm not sure I can explain how weird Spartan: Total Warrior is—by which I'm referring to its existence more than anything in the game itself, though the content's pretty weird, too. For context, Total War is a series of strategy games featuring a combination of turn-based strategy, resource management, and real-time tactical control (so sayeth Wikipedia). There are a coupla Warhammer entries in the franchise, sure, but the vast majority of the games focus on real, historical campaigns and factions.

Spartan: Total Warrior, on the other hand, is a hack-and-slash that took one look at a history book and immediately took a pair of shears to it. The story starts in 300 BCE: The Roman Empire, led by Emperor Tiberius, has conquered almost the whole of Greece, with only Sparta remaining, and Leonidas leads his men into battle to oppose him. Later, the Romans reveal a superweapon powered by the imprisoned Medusa. Sejanus, Tiberius' right-hand man, is a powerful necromancer who kills and resurrects Castor's brother Pollux. One mission involves protecting Archimedes, leader of the Athenian resistance, from assassination.

To quote someone on Discord, this is a game supposedly set circa 300 BCE that "has one side led by a king who died 200 years before, and the other by an emperor who reigned 300 years after (never mind the fact that Rome was still a senatorial republic)." If you forced a too-serious historian to play this game they'd end up on the floor in a frothing heap of rage and/or despair (actually, someone should totally do that; I want to see the Greco-Roman history version of Jonathan Ferguson having to analyze the firearms of Team Fortress 2).

Oh yeah and Beowulf is there.

At some point you've got to appreciate—no, admire, even—the Xena:-Warrior-Princess-level decision to just Don't Worry About It.

And now that we have finished with the indisputable, let us proceed with the first of the hinky. Which is to say: Let's look at God of War: Chains of Olympus.

Chains of Olympus begins with an attack by the Persian navy on the Greek Attic peninsula (where Athens is, incidentally). The opening sequence features (among a whole lot of faceless Persian mooks) this prone-ish fella, who doesn't quite get to operating a ballista, irresponsibly leaving the work for Kratos instead.

(Credit: Migeman)

Inspecting the body after all the local ruckus is over identifies him as "Eurybiades," the "leader of the Athenian army."

Eurybiades was—according to historical record—a real person, though God of War doesn't exactly nail it on the head. Herodotus (who historians depend on more due to him being one of a Very Small Number of sources rather than anything to do with actual reliability) names Eurybiades as a Spartan who, during the second Persian invasion of Greece, was given command of the Greek navy due to some political whatuppery (the Spartans said that if a Spartan didn't lead it they'd be Awfully Uncooperative).

Following this bit, Kratos confronts the King of Persia (identity unspecified), who is apparently personally leading the invasion himself, which seems dumb but was apparently the norm back in those days. I bet we'd have a lot less wars if we made our Presidents actually serve on the front lines whenever they started feeling belligerent.

(Credit: Ibid.)

Anyway, Kratos kills the King of Persia, because if the King of Persia killed Kratos the game would be a lot shorter. Now, there's no watertight confirmation that this is the second Persian invasion—the first one also featured attempted Persian inroads into Attica, and was recent enough that it's not inconceivable for Eurybiades to have shown up, there, too—but if this is the second Persian invasion, and that is the King of Persia that was King of Persia during the second Persian invasion, then that King of Persia is Xerxes I.

And now, I think, you peer up at me, gaze beseeching. "But KC," you say, anxious and afraid, "Xerxes I didn't die during his invasion of Greece! After Greek victory at the Battle of Salamis, Persian forces were forced to withdraw from Attica, including Xerxes I himself, after which he focused on lavish construction projects until he was assassinated fifteen years later for unrelated reasons! He didn't die in the Greco-Persian Wars at all!"

To which I say: You know who else didn't die in the Greco-Persian Wars? Eurybiades. And you know who definitely didn't die in a fit of paranoid, obsessive overwork in the heart of a monumental statue of Apollo on the isle of Delos?

What I'm saying here is that God of War's relationship with historicality is fleeting at best, so maybe Don't Worry About It here, too.

(Incidentally, if it's the first Persian invasion of Greece that Kratos is mucking around in, then that king is actually Darius the Great, who also didn't die in Greece in real life. Darius is in Civilization V, though, so getting his Ryu Number is a lot easier.)

And speaking of Civilization, I've finally come to the shortest route I've found that, for all its likeliness, isn't as definite as I'd like, which is why I've saved it for last. You know how Civilization works, I think—you play a historical civilization (with a historical leader to match), and go up against other historical civilizations with their leaders. Like Darius, just now—he's your leader if you decide to play as the Persians.

Civilization III is like that...but unfortunately not as much like that as a fellow'd prefer. Sure, it's got its civilizations and leaders...

...But there's the occasional glaring unspecificity that's apparently there to make life difficult for me in particular. Yeah, sure, Montezuma here is most likely the second one—the one everyone knows, the one that had the real bad experience with Spain—but are you sure he isn't the first one instead? Like, absolutely sure? The instruction manual doesn't say, you know. How sure are you? Sure enough to bet a dollar? Two dollars? Fifty dollars? Your firstborn child? Why would I want your firstborn child, anyway? I don't want to look after a child; that's literally more work for me.

The Persian civilization exhibits the same problem here. Yeah, of course that's Xerxes I! If the team behind the game is picking out a historical figure named Xerxes to represent the Persians, it's got to be Xerxes I. But at the same time, there's technically nothing saying this isn't Xerxes II, a separate 5th-century-BCE Persian ruler of the Achaemenid Empire. I mean, it's terribly unlikely, seeing as Xerxes II ruled for 45 days before being killed by his half-brother, who ruled for six months before being killed by his half-brother, making him Not Exactly The Sort Of Individual You'd Put The Spotlight On, but Mahatma Gandhi and Joan of Arc are the leaders of Indian and French civilizations in this game, and that's weird, too. Gandhi was never the Prime Minister of India or anything like that, and Joan of Arc was a military leader, not a monarch.

Still, if you're willing to follow the reasonable assumption that the Xerxes here is Xerxes I, then the path that results is pretty dang optimal:

...If this is how you found out that Mahatma Gandhi is in Minecraft DLC, I'm sorry.

[lightofunova]

( Leo @ reshi ) Leo had seen what happened from afar. He had intended to step in but by the time he got to the center of it, the flaming haired woman had dashed away. Leo glanced around the room looking for a trace of where she had gone but saw none. He had been too late.

However, he was determined to find her. He couldn't just leave someone like that. Leo wandered the facility, checking each room with no sense of privacy. Eventually, this lead him to where she was.

"HAHA! Found ya!" A grin plastered on his face as he crouched down beside her. "Man what a mess." He laughed as he pulled out a cloth and began to try and clean up the spill stain on her dress.

"Ya know I'm usually the one making a commotion at parties like these. I didn't realize I had competition." His smile showed empathy towards the woman. "Guess I'll have to go out there and show you up, eh?"

His scrubbing got faster and more focused but to no avail. "Dang, it's really in there." He chuckled. "Actually... now that I'm looking at it." He pulled his head back to get a better look. "It actually looks pretty cool, yeah? Maybe I'll do the same!"

Laughter filled the room as she watched the fabric become ruined, crimson forever embedded into the garment. She couldn’t help it, after an entire evening of trials and tribulations of course this would have had to occur. Reshi couldn’t even be mad. The fellow legend only wanted to help after all.

“Well, I don’t think you need to spill wine on yourself. You’d only ruin it more.” She tried to speak, goggles in her voice. “I’ll need you to explain the staining to my servants however. They’ll be upset to know you made it worse.” A playful tone laced her voice.

“I’m kidding, I can explain it to them. Thank you for trying to help.”

Standing on her own two feet, the albino deity glanced around the room. Somehow it still stood strong, and that made her happy. For once she didn’t accidentally set something ablaze. “Let’s go. I feel a smidge better now that things have calmed down a bit.” she said.

@life-of-kalos

[aceofwands]

ohh I love all this, it's so so juicy - I absolutely love discussing alternate versions of what could have been in Trek, and DS9 especially, because it's such a rich world that exploring the what could have beens is equally as rich, so thanks for indulging me 😊

and I should add, I also actually do think that Li's death at the end of the trilogy is the perfect way for his story to end - as you said, finally giving him that agency, letting him be free from the burden of being a legend when he wanted to just be a man. I've seen DS9 like half a dozen times at least so it's actually amazing to me that I can watch it again years later and have a completely new take or insight, and this time around it was thinking about how wonderfully developed the future recurring characters are which had me going, oh dang!!! First Minister Li Nalas!! like I'd never even thought of it before

(and you're SO right that there were so many characters who should have come back again - Pel especially needed to return to join Ishka in the fight for Ferengi feminism in later seasons, and I was just thinking, when reflecting on the season 5 Eddington episodes, how much I dislike Eddington's character and how much more meaningful that storyline would have been if it was Cal Hudson the whole time, given Sisko's backstory with him)

I can't help but see the parallels now, from your commentary, between Li and Sisko - both thrust into these important positions of power for Bajor which neither of them actually want - and think it would have been fantastic to see their parallel evolution, in the same way we see Sisko come to accept and then actively embrace his role as the Emissary, we could have seen Li's shift from reluctant leader to realising that the Prophets have placed him on this path so that he can do good and make a positive change as Bajor's First Minister. like the moment where he finally realises that even if he never wanted it, he's able to make the decisions HE thinks is best for Bajor's future - similar to Sisko's realisation in Accession that he actually wants to be the Emissary if means being able to help steer Bajor into a new future, rather than lead them back into the past.

Also it would have been interesting having a more ... neutral party for Sisko to talk to about his reservations about being the Emissary, like I feel like he was very isolated in many ways - talking to Kira about it is charged because she believes wholeheartedly that he IS the Emissary, even when he himself didn't truly believe, and he sure as fuck can't talk to Winn about his doubts, meanwhile his Starfleet officers are too much on the other side of the fence. But Li? He would understand Sisko's reluctance, his reservations, but also his desire to help the Bajorans. It would have been interesting to give them each other as confidantes, is what I'm getting at.

And in the same way I love your points about Bareil and Li and the potential there - it's funny cause I've heard the writers on Memory Alpha talk about how a lot of people didn't like the Bajoran shows back in the day, and sometimes I wonder if it's because we didn't see enough of what went on on the planet, or like, we only saw it when it related more directly to our characters - which obviously makes sense given that the show is called Deep Space Nine!! but maybe having a stronger sense of the political goings in through First Minister Li and Bareil serving as his link to the Vedek Assembly, could have given us that perspective in a way that deepened our understanding of what was going on on Bajor and how that was impacting events on the station. It also would have benefited Bareil's character to be given even more depth outside of his relationship with Kira and complex relationship with Winn as first a rival and then the Kai (like would he not have died in this version of events? who knows)

it really is pretty amazing that one character who only shows up for 3 episodes can have such richness to him, but I think it's a testament to what an interesting backstory they gave him, and how much potential there was for that narrative to go further in the wider tapestry of the show

dude, i can’t get over Li Nalas.

he knew what was going on from the beginning. sure, a moment of brief confusion and then the realization that these people he’s been trapped in a labor camp with for the past ten fucking years, Memory Alpha says, believe his return to Bajor will bring restoration. the realization that they have such confidence in him as to place his life above their own.

he gets shot and then he’s hauled off to a shuttlecraft within minutes, forced to leave behind his decade-old reality. to leave behind people who shared it with him until just moments ago. and he’s dying, maybe. in excruciating pain, so he can’t even object, can’t even think. and Kira looks at him with this intense certainty. like he’s the missing puzzle piece she’s been scouring every last corner of the universe for. only he knows he isn’t.

and then he’s off to sickbay before anyone else despite his protests, where a human operates on him. a doctor who won’t stop regaling him with all the wonderful things he’s supposed to have done, all the battles he’s supposed to have won.

he is on his feet soon after, clean and dressed in warm clothes. he has no time to rest or breathe in his newfound freedom before he is swept up for a tour of the station he knew too long ago. and now every Bajoran he comes across in this ore processing center turned glitzy space mall looks at him the way Kira does, like they know him, like they need him. their words and shining smiles of praise when he reluctantly stands to address a crowd of them tells him just how much they believe they do. he does not forget the ones he left on Cardassia IV.

it is with relief that he hands the crowd off to Jaro. a deep sigh of familiar aggravation just beneath the surface of his skin as Jaro panders to the crowd's enthusiasm for his return.

that scene where Sisko shows him his quarters, i don’t blame him for striding over so tentatively but nevertheless excitedly to the small flower in a vase. Sisko hardly notices it but it is the first thing Li locks eyes on. a plant. a sprig of life clipped and close to its end, kept alive only by means necessary for display. a being which demands nothing of him here besides fresh water and a light to lean towards.

he stows away on a ship, running now, not from the Cardassians, but from Bajor. from the lies others fabricated on his behalf. Sisko - after the Tygarian freighter captain has dragged him by the ear back to the station, after Li has laid bare his truth in earnest - tells Li they are not lies. they are legends. and Bajor needs them.

and Li Nalas, a man encased in a shell of legends crafted by hands which are not his own, is tired. but he accepts the responsibility his people have placed on his shoulders. because Sisko is right. they do need him.

in the moments just before his death, he is Kira's puzzle piece. he is the flower in the vase. he is simple. uncomplicated. dying.

only then does he rejoice. he may finally rest.

[sohin-ace]

Jolyne - No Ordinary Girl

Mermaid Y/N x Surfer Jolyne

Today was a particularly fitting day to go to the beach. Jotaro had taken Jolyne, Hermes and Foo Fighters to the shore. He mostly went for some observation and the girls decided they would take advantage of the nice weather for some surfing.

It was not long after they arrived and started installing themselves that Jolyne and Hermes' eyes fell into very familiar faces.

Annasui, upon seeing the group, walked towards the girls with a confident stance, making sure his long hair was flowing in the wind.

"Oh look who we have here. The ladies victory." Annasui exclaimed, before completely falling heart-eyed, his voice and tone softening, dreamy even, at the sight of his object of worship. "Hi Jolyne~"

"Oh! Weather Report's there! Hi Weas!" Jolyne called out to the older man arranging a parasol a few feet behind, her completely ignoring the pink haired-male that seemed to have come with him. He waved shortly at Jolyne in response.

"Anyways, what are you guys up to?" Hermes asked, sipping on some lime flavored granita.

"Well, as you can see..." He pointed at the ocean, "We just wanted to take a day to work out a bit, but the waves are real nice today."

He leaned in not so subtly towards Jolyne, despite Hermes' evident judging gaze.

"But you know what else is real nice today?" He brought his hand up to cup Jolyne's chin, but before he could even say or do anything, Jolyne leaned away and pointed behind him.

"Oh wow! My dad's coming back with drinks!" She called nonchalantly, looking behind Annasui like he was more transparent than air itself.

"...! DRINKS?! DRINKS!!" Foo Fighter gasped, pushing the feminine man off to the side with such force, he fell and slid against the sand.

"Hey, Jojo," Hermes tapped her friend's shoulder, "Let's show these pendejos how girls ride waves."

The Asian American smirked, eager to show who's boss and always ready to follow on her best friend's mischief. "I'm racing you then."

"Pfft, I won't go easy girlfriend." The Mexican cracked her knuckles and grabbed her plank.

After surfing for long enough and being outran by Jolyne's stamina, Hermes decided to go back and sunbathe next to F.F's who was playing cutely with sand.

Jolyne glided full speed over the water, the wind and droplets of salty water refreshing her skin. More than competition, Jolyne loved the acceleration, the adrenaline, the sweet fresh air through her long hair. When she was surfing, Jolyne's heart lightened up and her mind purged of any negative thoughts, anxiety, fears.

She was at peace.

Before she could enjoy the sweet taste of her peace of mind though, she caught up to a blond surfer in front of her who she recognized as she got closer. Oh god, not him of all people.

"Oh, hey! Isn't that the sexiest surfer in all Miami?" Romeo teased, admiring the girl who gained up on him, "Not bad, look at you go! Who knew my little Jojo would be so talented, hot damn!"

Jolyne frowned and clicked her tongue. She swore if she wasn't so focused on staying in balance, she would drown him on the spot. He laughed obnoxiously, satisfied with being a disgusting excuse of a human.

"Romeo, I swear to fuckin-"

Before she could even finish her sentence, something, a gigantic fish tail appeared out of the wave and flicked itself right accross the blonde, slapping him off of his plank with a painful sound.

"HUAARGHH-" He screamed before crashing into the water with the splash and disappearing behind Jolyne.

"O-OH MY GOD!" She gasped, both surprised by the sudden turn of events, and incredibly scared for her life, thinking some kind of hostile shark was in the shore currently, which was to report immediately.

The moment she decided to take a turn and leave as fast as she could, warning the others to get the hell out of here, a shadowy form within the water followed her along the wave.

Foolishly curious, Jolyne looked at it, not without her heart hammering in her chest at the potential danger she was facing.

What she saw was not a sight she'd have ever expected to ever see in all her 19 years. Her legs shook at the shock and she almost completely fell over her board.

Gliding along the water right next to her, right inside the tall wave, was the figure of... a girl.

Or was it a girl? It couldn't be. She looked human at first glance, but the more Jolyne's gaze moved sideways she noticed the long and impressive fish tail replacing what were supposed to be legs.

Jolyne's jaw felt slack. She felt like she was hallucinating. Believe it or not, she had not smoked or taken any recreative substances beforehand, but she truly wished she had because that would have at least explained what her eyes were showing her.

The girl swimming and following her only smiled, waving cutely with webbed hands, as if amused by Jolyne's disbelieving reaction and wide eyes.

"W-w-w.... What the fuck..???" Jolyne finally spoke after rebooting her entire brain, "No fucking way-...! A mermaid??!! A real one??!"

Like a bad trick from fate, the wave Jolyne was trying her hardest to not get swallowed by, seemed to grow weaker and weaker, shortening in size.

Jolyne saw the mermaid slowly retreat away in an elegant swim, her form vanishing into the deep blue.

"Wait, no!" The surfer called, almost desperate to have such a mystical meeting and ethereal moment be so short lived.

She reached her hand out to the creature, unsure of what she was even trying to do, but the force of the current got the best of her, and Jolyne lost balance, falling forward with nothing to hang onto for purchase.

Jolyne splashed onto the water and the wave died with her hope of ever living such a dream again.

"Ooohh dang it! You were almost there!" Hermes called out from the shore, her voice booming enough for Jolyne to hear as she broke into the surface.

"Fuck...." Jolyne cursed, hanging onto her board.

She felt defeated. Not because she couldn't ride that wave to the very end as she was expected to with her skill level, but rather because she couldn't immortalize that beautiful moment.

She blankly climbed onto her board again and barely even paddled her way back to land, too out of it to do so.

Was that even real? That had to be, right? She saw the mermaid. She saw her hair, her skin tone shined-on by the sun. She saw the scales over her skin, the fins along her arms and tail.

She saw her attack Romeo, he must have seen her too, Jolyne pondered.

"Aaah the champion is back!" F.F cheered as Jolyne finally walked back, drenched and with her plank under one arm. "I made a sandcastle for our ocean queen!"

"Thanks Foo..." Jolyne's small smile didn't not match her quiet tone.

"Hey, what's up, chula ? You look like you've seen a ghost, or something? You did great back there, so why the long face?" Hermes fixed the straps of Jolyne's bikini top and removed some seaweeds from her hair.

"It's just... I saw something weird it the water and I don't know..." Jolyne hesitated, "Maybe I was dreaming or something."

"Hum..." Hermes hummed in thought. "What do you think Féfé?"

"Maybe Mr. Jotaro can answer if you saw an animal? Damn, I'm thirsty." F.F stuck her tongue out, clearly expressing her thirst.

"Dude, there's water litterally everywhere here." The mexican grimaced before turning back to Jolyne. "But yeah, maybe you should ask your dad if that worries you so much."

"Uhh..."

Jolyne looked towards her father who was crouching somewhere next to some rocks, taking notes about mollusks, or so Jolyne guessed.

"Yeah, maybe not. It's fine though, no big deal." She smiled, waving her hand in dismissal.

Shrugging it all off, the girls decided to join Weather Report and Jotaro who brought food to finish the day at the beach with a relaxing touch.

And so, the day ended with an uncanny normalcy for Jolyne, who kept thinking more and more as the sun set, that it all had been in her mind. Mermaids didn't exist. It was probably a Stand user playing tricks on her.

That what she wanted to believe. When she thought of all the events that would follow, she truly wished she had spoken to her father about it. After all, if he had fought a very real vampire, then there would be no doubt that something as crazy as a mermaid could exist in her bizarre adventure.

Jolyne came back to the beach that same week. Alone, this time. She was careful to come by the time the sun started to lower in the sky and the temperature of the water and air dropped, knowing tourists and athletes would be gone by this time.

'What now?' She thought. Coming back out of sheer curiosity was a thing, but making sure she could attract the creature back to her was something else.

"Should I bring food? What do mermaids even eat? Does she like hot dogs...?" Jolyne thought out loud, looking around, secretly glad no one was here to hear her talk mad nonsense to herself like some insane crackhead.

She approached the water and drenched her feet in the small rocking waves, coming and going her way and gently splashing her. She hesitated for a moment, remembering that along with the legend of mermaids came the fact that these creatures were known to attract and enchant humans by their beauty, leading them to their inevitable death.

So maybe, Jolyne accepted, she was destined to die in the ocean.

Just as she came hip-deep into the sea, she felt a strange current shaking her legs, almost knocking her out of balance.

Before she could even process how strange it felt, she looked down into the clear water and saw no less than the same huge colorful fish tail she had seen that very day.

She gasped in realization and soon enough screamed as she felt calloused hands grab her thighs, the creature pushing herself out of the water to be met face to face with the human who had been, unbeknownst to Jolyne, her newfound fixation.

"Y-WHAAAAAHH!!!" Jolyne hollered, not expecting such a strong and surprising appearance.

The mermaid still halfway into the water, climbed and gripped up the girl's hips for leverage. She looked up at Jolyne's face, smiling wide and eyes glinting in both adoration and mischief.

"Greetings."

"HOLY CRAP-" Jolyne's voice cracked, "I mean- fuck yes! I mean-..."

Poor Jojo was completely out of it. But who could blame her, though? It was not everyday that one got to meet a real mermaid in the flesh. And certainly not such a handsy one.

She cleared her throat and mustered her most suave voice, pretending she wasn't completely flustered by the sheer beauty before her.

"Hi."

"I knew you'd come back..." The mermaid spoke, her voice almost ethereal and distant, "They always do."

Jolyne's heart wanted to stop. God, she felt burning hot and was sweating everywhere. Her voice stilled Jolyne to place in a way she couldn't explain. The legendary creature was so impossibly close to her, bodies almost touching.

She noticed she couldn't stay up overwater any other way than using Jolyne's lean body for leverage, her heavy tail anchoring her down. But the warm proximity between them and the sight of such a beautiful, rare and mystical creature right under her chest felt unreal and exciting.

Jolyne wanted to look her over for hours. Her hair texture, drenched and flowy, her skin tone glowing like gold, her holographic scales and fins shining like crazy diamonds.

"Why... Why did you...? Of all people...?" Jolyne questionned, now wondering if their first meeting in that wave was really a trick of fate, or if she was chosen in any way. "You attacked Romeo, yet you showed up to me... Why me?"

"I like beautiful humans." The mermaid smiled, her radiant features and smooth voice making Jolyne's legs weak, "You're beautiful."

The young surfer couldn't help her heart shaking and the wave of warmth spreading through her chest. If it was anyone else, she would boast her obvious beauty or maybe flip them off. But now she couldn't. Being complimented by a mythical being that was already the most gorgeous thing Jolyne had ever witnessed was truly something else

"What's your name?" Jolyne started.

"Call me Y/N."

Y/N, Jolyne's mind echoed. Cute. Even mermaids had names, she thought before realising that may be a very stupid thought to have. She didn't really know what else to expect.

"I uh, I'm Jolyne..." She looked down into the water, somewhat not daring to look at Y/N's adorable curious and sensual gaze. Oh god that was bad, she was entrancing.

"Not to be gay but...You look cute. Hot even. Can I say that? That's not weird, right? Since ya know... You're not exactly human, but you're not an animal either, like... I'm not gonna get arrested for this... I hope..."

"I'm not too familiar with human tongue, but I think Ms.Jolyne looks really pretty as well." Y/N moved to wrap an arm around Jolyne's waist, gripping her for better leverage and pointing at her chest, right in her reach. "Healthy mammals, great for feeding the young."

"Mammals...? Oh! You mean my boobs?" Jolyne glanced at her modest chest before grinning at the creature, "Aw thanks! Finally someone who likes them who's not some degenerate creep!"

Jolyne's chuckle died down and she finally took the time to look over Y/N's face. She ran a cold hand over her much warmer cheek, gliding it down to her gilled neck, mesmerized by her anatomy.

It truly was a one-in-a-lifetime meeting. Jolyne was slowly comprehending her luck to be met with a legendary sea creature like her. And a friendly one, at that.

How could this be even real? Our human knew that even though she was feeling relatively serene at the moment, the adrenaline would come down later and she would most likely cry herself to sleep.

"Hey uhm..." Jolyne was at a loss for words. There were so many things to say, but at the same time, she couldn't speak a word.

"Hm?" Y/N hummed and closed her eyes, enjoying the human's gentle touches.

Merfolks would express themselves via physical ministrations the most in the ocean, but she knew well a lot of humans did not share intimacies, or at least not before building a certain bond.

Glad that Jolyne was open to it, the sea-bound girl squeezed both her arms around the human's waist lovingly, forcing endearment on Jolyne, who felt her own heart tighten at the sweet and adorable embrace. The girls wanted to keep each other.

"Will we see each other again? I mean, I know you shouldn't be noticed by the public for your safety, but I don't know... Guess I took a liking to you or something." Jolyne mumbled, still resting her hands mindlessly around the creature's shoulders, fiddling with the ridges of her dorsal fin.

Y/N smiled, a smile that looked empty on her fish eyes, but sincere regardless. She let go of Jolyne who couldn't quite take her own hands off of her, clinging a little bit longer.

"Don't you know this, Ms. Jolyne? When human women die in the ocean, they relive as our kind."

"What? Really?" Jolyne let the mermaid get away slowly, ready to swim off to some unknown destination.

"If you want to see me again," Y/N called out cutely, waving her webbed hand like the very first time she saw Jolyne surfing, "Then perish in the ocean!"

She grinned, diving into the deep blue and splashing her tall tail strongly, giving herself a boost of speed, and disappearing away.

Jolyne could only stare into the horizon, darkening as the night arrived, stunned into place.

"...Ok, that was metal as fuck..."

H2O Just Add Water opening, but with Jolyne, Hermes and F.F

[bokettochild]

Hmmm if you need ideas I always love cultural difference shenanigans so maybe Twilight and Hyrule or Warriors and Hyrule having jarringly different cultures?

I didn't really touch on cultures much, since I'm still learning a lot about the games in general, but here's three boys discussing the educational systems of their respective provinces!

(Asks are open still, if anyone wants a story, feel free to request it! I will try my best! (Crossovers aren't off the table, but I can't promise I'll write them))

From Ordon to Catalia

“So, you’re telling me,” Warriors states disbelievingly. “That you, the Hero of Hyrule, couldn’t even speak Hylian until mere months before you saved the kingdom?”

The traveler nods, a faint flush dusting over his browned cheeks at Warriors’ question.

Twilight shakes his head, a smile on his face. “Who’da thunk it? Chin up traveler, I didn’t even live in Hyrule when I saved it.”

“What?” Warriors turns to him, royal blue flickering with disbelief as he stares from one country hero to the other. “Seriously? Both of you?”

“Well,” Hyrule tugs at one of his curls, eyes glistening with mischief as he speaks. “I mean, Legend saved like, four other countries, and he wasn’t from any of them.”

“But the first country he saved was Hyrule.” Warriors asserts. “And at least he was sent to the other places or something, unlike you two.” The captain stares from one to the other. “Traveling through the kingdom and just happening to run into the Royal Nursemaid?” He turns to Twilight, disbelief still written clear on his face. “And chasing monsters, if I recall correctly. What the heck, guys?”

He can’t help but take a bit of pity on Warriors, the captain has only ever been outside of his Hyrule’s main areas when time traveling, and the poor man clearly has little to no familiarity with the provinces and kingdoms beyond his own home, save for whatever rich and stuffy nobles talk about when royalty from the other kingdoms comes to visit. But even so, Wars lacks the faintest clue of the world outside of Hyrule’s borders, and that's just a little bit sad.

He leans back on the bed that he and Hyrule are sharing, it’s been a few weeks since they were last at an inn and he fully intends on enjoying the plush beds while they can, even if it is a bit too soft for his own comfort. “We could tell you more about them, if you like?”

At his side, Hyrule nods, smile bright if not a bit wistful. “I’m always willing to share about my home.”

Warriors hesitates, caught between disbelief and curiosity.

“I don’t think even Legend has been to Catalia.” Hyrule muses, but Twilight sees the sparkle in Hyrule’s eyes, he’s tempting the captain in a way the both of them know is sure to work.

“That so?” Warriors muses. “Well, I suppose so. Although,” He turns a cynical eye to Twilight. “I’m not sure how much I actually want to know about farm life.”

“Your loss, city boy.” He scoffs in response, a wolfish smile pulling at his features.

It’s nice, he thinks as he leans back further, letting Hyrule pull his thoughts together and Warriors shake off the surprise of their previous words, to just sit and talk with his brothers. Time and Legend have roomed with Wild so he doesn’t have to worry about the Cub making trouble without him there to watch him, and for the first time in a long tie he can just sit down and talk with his other brothers. He doesn’t know why Time let Four assign rooms like this, but he isn’t complaining if the others aren’t.

“Well, what would you like to hear about?”

Warriors frowns, staring at Hyrule for a moment as the Traveler flushes darker under his curls. Maybe the healer wasn’t as ready to talk as he first thought. “How about, your family, what sort of people are they?”

Hyrule stares at the captain disbelievingly for a moment. “You’ve met my mom, remember? And I don’t really remember much of my dad, he went missing when I was a kid.”

“Oh,” Warriors flushes, a strained smile taking over his features. “Right.”

Hyrule giggles softly. “I’m not mad, Cap, just surprised that you forgot. Although to be fair, not many people probably think about it since I look like a Hylian.”

“Yeah, about that, how does that work?”

“Hylian father, I look more like him in this form. We may be from Catalia, but he was there entirely because he was fleeing the destruction of Hyrule. He met my mom in the Aver Forests, where she’d been wandering for the last few years. Great fairies can leave their pools if they so choose, but they do so rarely. Unfortunately, mom had too because of the increase of monsters in Hyrule.”

“What is the Aver Forest?”

“The biggest, lushest forest in all of Catalia!” Hyrule spread his arms wide as if to indicate how big it truly was. “I’m pretty sure it’s just the other side of the lost woods in my time, since it’s so close to the border. It nothing like Hyrule, but it is, was, home.”

“So, did yer ma follow you to Hyrule?”

“Not exactly.” The traveler replies with a small frown. “She came after Hyrule was made safer again. I can’t exactly leave the country freely anymore, so she came to see me. It’s a good thing too, since getting potions is far more difficult than just bathing in her pool.”

“Are potions really that expensive in your time?” Warriors asks, concern flecking his gentle gaze.

“It’s not about the price,” Hyrule frowns. “It’s more that most people don’t know how to brew them, and finding a person who can is difficult.”

“Ah, supply and demand.”

“Pardon, what?” The traveler looks up to the captain in confusion.

“Supply and demand, you know,” Wars states like it’s common knowledge. “When lots of people want something but only a few people can provide it? It’s the reason shops can get away with charging so much for things.”

Both country heroes stare at him.

“Have neither of you ever heard of it?” The captain blinks at them, leaning forwards on his bed. “How is that possible?”

“Not all provinces have a school, Wars.” He replies, chuckling softly at the surprise on Warriors’ face. “For farming communities we focus on animals and plants, don’t need no fancy education to plow a field.”

Hyrule stares between the two of them. “Alright, this might be a Hylian word I haven’t learned yet, but what is a scewl?”

“A what?” Warriors echoes, turning to face the traveler.

“A scewl?”

“A school?” Twilight translates, brow furrowed until the Hero of Hyrule nods in confirmation, after which he relaxes again. “It's a place people go to learn to read and write, and to count and do equations.”

“And here I thought there weren’t any in Ordon?” Warriors teases lightly.

“Get off it, Cap’. We don’t have schools, but we do have books, I know how to read and if I can learn more than I will.”

“Ah, self-taught?”

“Mostly.” He shrugs. “Hylian’s real different from Ordon-Standard, even if they’re essentially the same.”

“That makes no sense.” The captain deadpans, staring at him blankly.

“I mean, even though they have a lot in common, the way people speak and pronounce things, the vernacular and what not, is quite different that Hyrule proper.”

Hyrule blinks at the two of them owlishly. “What are equations?”

A glance is shared between them. “Math.” Warriors answers. “You know, adding, subtraction, multiplication and division?”

The traveler raises a brow, but he's shrinking in on himself in the way he does when he gets nervous. “What are those? Multipulycation and division?”

Warriors stares cautiously at the traveler, gaze gentle but concerned. “Hyrule, do you not know how to do math?”

“Do you know how to count?” Twilight tries instead.

“Of course!”

“Can you combine numbers?”

“That’s counting, but with bigger numbers.”

“Can you subtract it again?”

“Yes.” Hyrule answers slowly.

“Can you multiply?”

The traveler stares at Warriors nervously. “I just told you I don’t know what that is.”

The captain, bless his heart, looks genuinely hurt. “Good grief, what sort of mentor is Legend? Not making sure you know basic multiplication?”

And Hyrule flushes, but his brows furrow as he pushes himself straight, always defensive of his mentor. “He didn’t know, and he’s a great mentor! He’s been showing me how to grow trees!”

“Legend knows forestry?” The captain starts.

“He has an orchard.” Twilight reminds him, light laughter bubbling in his chest at the understanding that crosses Warriors’ face at the words.

“Right.” The captain turns to Hyrule. “How about this, Legend can teach whatever it is he teaches you, but when he’s done with that for the day, you come find me? Math is a wonderful thing, even if it is a tad complex, and it'd be a shame to let you go without knowing it.”

Betrayal makes itself known as Twilight pulls away from the two. “You like math?”

Horror blooms on Warriors’ delicate features. “You don’t?”

“Arithmetic is the bane of my existence and if I didn’t need to know how to count rupees, I would willingly forget it.” Twilight spits out.

“It’s wonderful!” Warriors defends. “Everything makes sense and has a logical explanation! You can count on it having an answer every time.”

One dark brow raises as midnight blue stare back at the captain, unimpressed. “Except when it doesn’t. Except when you have to graph equations but you can’t because they don’t have answers. Except when there’s two missing numbers and nothing fits in together, except when the numbers decide to become letters and you have to spit up the alphabet along with your equations.”

“How much math do you know?” Warriors raises a brow.

“Too much.” He isn’t even ashamed of the shudder that makes his pelt tickle against his cheeks. “Wild is a literal genius at it, and I can’t even number how many time he's decided to use it to explain some hare-brained scheme. Trajectory and angles and-” He shivers again. “No thank you. It’s like he ate a math textbook and just keeps spitting it back up, every time he wants to do something dumb.”

The captain whistles lowly, royal blue eyes sparkling. “You mean he has theories and reasoning behind all that? Dang!”

The glare shot the captain’s way is nothing short of threatening. “Do not encourage him, or so help me, Wars. I can hardly contain him some days as is, he doesn’t need someone else egging him on.”

“Oh, trust me,” Gloved hands raise in a non-threatening motion. “I just want to pic his brain, maybe he can help me tutor the traveler here.”

And Twilight almost asks him not too, almost begs that the captain not, before realization hits. “You know, that is actually a good idea.” He smirks. “I’m surprised.”

The deadpan look he receives is well worth it. “You wound me.”

“Were your skin not so delicate, I wouldn’t.” He returns, smile stretching wider. “But that aside, if Wild is busy tutoring Hyrule, he won’t be off blowing things up, and if Hyrule gets a better education out of it that's even better.”

“I’ll ask him about it.” Hyrule answers, eyes lighting up in a way that looks innocent, but considering the kid is Legend’s descendant there’s a very good chance that it isn’t fully. “Maybe he can teach me some tricks while he’s at it.”

“No!” The voices ring at once, but it’s already too late, Hyrule is tapping his chin and muttering low under his breath as a wide smile stretches over his face.

“What have you started.” Twilight whispers, horrified.

“I’m sorry.” Warriors returns, just as grim. “I won’t tell Legend if you don’t.”

[innuendostudios]

Thoughts on: Criterion's Neo-Noir Collection

I have written up all 26 films* in the Criterion Channel's Neo-Noir Collection.

Legend: rw - rewatch; a movie I had seen before going through the collection dnrw - did not rewatch; if a movie met two criteria (a. I had seen it within the last 18 months, b. I actively dislike it) I wrote it up from memory.

* in September, Brick leaves the Criterion Channel and is replaced in the collection with Michael Mann's Thief. May add it to the list when that happens.

Note: These are very "what was on my mind after watching." No effort has been made to avoid spoilers, nor to make the plot clear for anyone who hasn't seen the movies in question. Decide for yourself if that's interesting to you.

Cotton Comes to Harlem I feel utterly unequipped to asses this movie. This and Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song the following year are regularly cited as the progenitors of the blaxploitation genre. (This is arguably unfair, since both were made by Black men and dealt much more substantively with race than the white-directed films that followed them.) Its heroes are a couple of Black cops who are treated with suspicion both by their white colleagues and by the Black community they're meant to police. I'm not 100% clear on whether they're the good guys? I mean, I think they are. But the community's suspicion of them seems, I dunno... well-founded? They are working for The Man. And there's interesting discussion to the had there - is the the problem that the law is carried out by racists, or is the law itself racist? Can Black cops make anything better? But it feels like the film stacks the deck in Gravedigger and Coffin Ed's favor; the local Black church is run by a conman, the Back-to-Africa movement is, itself, a con, and the local Black Power movement is treated as an obstacle. Black cops really are the only force for justice here. Movie portrays Harlem itself as a warm, thriving, cultured community, but the people that make up that community are disloyal and easily fooled. Felt, to me, like the message was "just because they're cops doesn't mean they don't have Black soul," which, nowadays, we would call copaganda. But, then, do I know what I'm talking about? Do I know how much this played into or off of or against stereotypes from 1970? Was this a radical departure I don't have the context to appreciate? Is there substance I'm too white and too many decades removed to pick up on? Am I wildly overthinking this? I dunno. Seems like everyone involved was having a lot of fun, at least. That bit is contagious.

Across 110th Street And here's the other side of the "race film" equation. Another movie set in Harlem with a Black cop pulled between the police, the criminals, and the public, but this time the film is made by white people. I like it both more and less. Pro: this time the difficult position of Black cop who's treated with suspicion by both white cops and Black Harlemites is interrogated. Con: the Black cop has basically no personality other than "honest cop." Pro: the racism of the police force is explicit and systemic, as opposed to comically ineffectual. Con: the movie is shaped around a racist white cop who beats the shit out of Black people but slowly forms a bond with his Black partner. Pro: the Black criminal at the heart of the movie talks openly about how the white world has stacked the deck against him, and he's soulful and relateable. Con: so of course he dies in the end, because the only way privileged people know to sympathetize with minorities is to make them tragic (see also: The Boys in the Band, Philadelphia, and Brokeback Mountain for gay men). Additional con: this time Harlem is portrayed as a hellhole. Barely any of the community is even seen. At least the shot at the end, where the criminal realizes he's going to die and throws the bag of money off a roof and into a playground so the Black kids can pick it up before the cops reclaim it was powerful. But overall... yech. Cotton Comes to Harlem felt like it wasn't for me; this feels like it was 100% for me and I respect it less for that.

The Long Goodbye (rw) The shaggiest dog. Like much Altman, more compelling than good, but very compelling. Raymond Chandler's story is now set in the 1970's, but Philip Marlowe is the same Philip Marlowe of the 1930's. I get the sense there was always something inherently sad about Marlowe. Classic noir always portrayed its detectives as strong-willed men living on the border between the straightlaced world and its seedy underbelly, crossing back and forth freely but belonging to neither. But Chandler stresses the loneliness of it - or, at least, the people who've adapted Chandler do. Marlowe is a decent man in an indecent world, sorting things out, refusing to profit from misery, but unable to set anything truly right. Being a man out of step is here literalized by putting him forty years from the era where he belongs. His hardboiled internal monologue is now the incessant mutterings of the weird guy across the street who never stops smoking. Like I said: compelling! Kael's observation was spot on: everyone in the movie knows more about the mystery than he does, but he's the only one who cares. The mystery is pretty threadbare - Marlowe doesn't detect so much as end up in places and have people explain things to him. But I've seen it two or three times now, and it does linger.

Chinatown (rw) I confess I've always been impressed by Chinatown more than I've liked it. Its story structure is impeccable, its atmosphere is gorgeous, its noirish fatalism is raw and real, its deconstruction of the noir hero is well-observed, and it's full of clever detective tricks (the pocket watches, the tail light, the ruler). I've just never connected with it. Maybe it's a little too perfectly crafted. (I feel similar about Miller's Crossing.) And I've always been ambivalent about the ending. In Towne's original ending, Evelyn shoots Noah Cross dead and get arrested, and neither she nor Jake can tell the truth of why she did it, so she goes to jail for murder and her daughter is in the wind. Polansky proposed the ending that exists now, where Evelyn just dies, Cross wins, and Jake walks away devastated. It communicates the same thing: Jake's attempt to get smart and play all the sides off each other instead of just helping Evelyn escape blows up in his face at the expense of the woman he cares about and any sense of real justice. And it does this more dramatically and efficiently than Towne's original ending. But it also treats Evelyn as narratively disposable, and hands the daughter over to the man who raped Evelyn and murdered her husband. It makes the women suffer more to punch up the ending. But can I honestly say that Towne's ending is the better one? It is thematically equal, dramatically inferior, but would distract me less. Not sure what the calculus comes out to there. Maybe there should be a third option. Anyway! A perfect little contraption. Belongs under a glass dome.

Night Moves (rw) Ah yeah, the good shit. This is my quintessential 70's noir. This is three movies in a row about detectives. Thing is, the classic era wasn't as chockablock with hardboiled detectives as we think; most of those movies starred criminals, cops, and boring dudes seduced to the darkness by a pair of legs. Gumshoes just left the strongest impressions. (The genre is said to begin with Maltese Falcon and end with Touch of Evil, after all.) So when the post-Code 70's decided to pick the genre back up while picking it apart, it makes sense that they went for the 'tecs first. The Long Goodbye dragged the 30's detective into the 70's, and Chinatown went back to the 30's with a 70's sensibility. But Night Moves was about detecting in the Watergate era, and how that changed the archetype. Harry Moseby is the detective so obsessed with finding the truth that he might just ruin his life looking for it, like the straight story will somehow fix everything that's broken, like it'll bring back a murdered teenager and repair his marriage and give him a reason to forgive the woman who fucked him just to distract him from some smuggling. When he's got time to kill, he takes out a little, magnetic chess set and recreates a famous old game, where three knight moves (get it?) would have led to a beautiful checkmate had the player just seen it. He keeps going, self-destructing, because he can't stand the idea that the perfect move is there if he can just find it. And, no matter how much we see it destroy him, we, the audience, want him to keep going; we expect a satisfying resolution to the mystery. That's what we need from a detective picture; one character flat-out compares Harry to Sam Spade. But what if the truth is just... Watergate? Just some prick ruining things for selfish reasons? Nothing grand, nothing satisfying. Nothing could be more noir, or more neo-, than that.

Farewell, My Lovely Sometimes the only thing that makes a noir neo- is that it's in color and all the blood, tits, and racism from the books they're based on get put back in. This second stab at Chandler is competant but not much more than that. Mitchum works as Philip Marlowe, but Chandler's dialogue feels off here, like lines that worked on the page don't work aloud, even though they did when Bogie said them. I'll chalk it up to workmanlike but uninspired direction. (Dang this looks bland so soon after Chinatown.) Moose Malloy is a great character, and perfectly cast. (Wasn't sure at first, but it's true.) Some other interesting cats show up and vanish - the tough brothel madam based on Brenda Allen comes to mind, though she's treated with oddly more disdain than most of the other hoods and is dispatched quicker. In general, the more overt racism and misogyny doesn't seem to do anything except make the movie "edgier" than earlier attempts at the same material, and it reads kinda try-hard. But it mostly holds together. *shrug*

The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (dnrw) Didn't care for this at all. Can't tell if the script was treated as a jumping-off point or if the dialogue is 100% improvised, but it just drags on forever and is never that interesting. Keeps treating us to scenes from the strip club like they're the opera scenes in Amadeus, and, whatever, I don't expect burlesque to be Mozart, but Cosmo keeps saying they're an artful, classy joint, and I keep waiting for the show to be more than cheap, lazy camp. How do you make gratuitious nudity boring? Mind you, none of this is bad as a rule - I love digressions and can enjoy good sleaze, and it's clear the filmmakers care about what they're making. They just did not sell it in a way I wanted to buy. Can't remember what edit I watched; I hope it was the 135 minute one, because I cannot imagine there being a longer edit out there.

The American Friend (dnrw) It's weird that this is Patricia Highsmith, right? That Dennis Hopper is playing Tom Ripley? In a cowboy hat? I gather that Minghella's version wasn't true to the source, but I do love that movie, and this is a long, long way from that. This Mr. Ripley isn't even particularly talented! Anyway, this has one really great sequence, where a regular guy has been coerced by crooks into murdering someone on a train platform, and, when the moment comes to shoot, he doesn't. And what follows is a prolonged sequence of an amateur trying to surreptitiously tail a guy across a train station and onto another train, and all the while you're not sure... is he going to do it? is he going to chicken out? is he going to do it so badly he gets caught? It's hard not to put yourself in the protagonist's shoes, wondering how you would handle the situation, whether you could do it, whether you could act on impulse before your conscience could catch up with you. It drags on a long while and this time it's a good thing. Didn't much like the rest of the movie, it's shapeless and often kind of corny, and the central plot hook is contrived. (It's also very weird that this is the only Wim Wenders I've seen.) But, hey, I got one excellent sequence, not gonna complain.

The Big Sleep Unlike the 1946 film, I can follow the plot of this Big Sleep. But, also unlike the 1946 version, this one isn't any damn fun. Mitchum is back as Marlowe (this is three Marlowes in five years, btw), and this time it's set in the 70's and in England, for some reason. I don't find this offensive, but neither do I see what it accomplishes? Most of the cast is still American. (Hi Jimmy!) Still holds together, but even less well than Farewell, My Lovely. But I do find it interesting that the neo-noir era keeps returning to Chandler while it's pretty much left Hammet behind (inasmuch as someone whose genes are spread wide through the whole genre can be left behind). Spade and the Continental Op, straightshooting tough guys who come out on top in the end, seem antiquated in the (post-)modern era. But Marlowe's goodness being out of sync with the world around him only seems more poignant the further you take him from his own time. Nowadays you can really only do Hammett as pastiche, but I sense that you could still play Chandler straight.

Eyes of Laura Mars The most De Palma movie I've seen not made by De Palma, complete with POV shots, paranormal hoodoo, and fixation with sex, death, and whether images of such are art or exploitation (or both). Laura Mars takes photographs of naked women in violent tableux, and has gotten quite famous doing so, but is it damaging to women? The movie has more than a superficial engagement with this topic, but only slightly more than superficial. Kept imagining a movie that is about 30% less serial killer story and 30% more art conversations. (But, then, I have an art degree and have never murdered anyone, so.) Like, museums are full of Biblical paintings full of nude women and slaughter, sometimes both at once, and they're called masterpieces. Most all of them were painted by men on commission from other men. Now Laura Mars makes similar images in modern trappings, and has models made of flesh and blood rather than paint, and it's scandalous? Why is it only controversial once women are getting paid for it? On the other hand, is this just the master's tools? Is she subverting or challenging the male gaze, or just profiting off of it? Or is a woman profiting off of it, itself, a subversion? Is it subversive enough to account for how it commodifies female bodies? These questions are pretty clearly relevant to the movie itself, and the movies in general, especially after the fall of the Hays Code when people were really unrestrained with the blood and boobies. And, heck, the lead is played by the star of Bonnie and Clyde! All this is to say: I wish the movie were as interested in these questions as I am. What's there is a mildly diverting B-picture. There's one great bit where Laura's seeing through the killer's eyes (that's the hook, she gets visions from the murderer's POV; no, this is never explained) and he's RIGHT BEHIND HER, so there's a chase where she charges across an empty room only able to see her own fleeing self from ten feet behind. That was pretty great! And her first kiss with the detective (because you could see a mile away that the detective and the woman he's supposed to protect are gonna fall in love) is immediately followed by the two freaking out about how nonsensical it is for them to fall in love with each other, because she's literally mourning multiple deaths and he's being wildly unprofessional, and then they go back to making out. That bit was great, too. The rest... enh.

The Onion Field What starts off as a seemingly not-that-noirish cops-vs-crooks procedural turns into an agonizingly protracted look at the legal system, with the ultimate argument that the very idea of the law ever resulting in justice is a lie. Hoo! I have to say, I'm impressed. There's a scene where a lawyer - whom I'm not sure is even named, he's like the seventh of thirteen we've met - literally quits the law over how long this court case about two guys shooting a cop has taken. He says the cop who was murdered has been forgotten, his partner has never gotten to move on because the case has lasted eight years, nothing has been accomplished, and they should let the two criminals walk and jail all the judges and lawyers instead. It's awesome! The script is loaded with digressions and unnecessary details, just the way I like it. Can't say I'm impressed with the execution. Nothing is wrong, exactly, but the performances all seem a tad melodramatic or a tad uninspired. Camerawork is, again, purely functional. It's no masterpiece. But that second half worked for me. (And it's Ted Danson's first movie! He did great.)

Body Heat (rw) Let's say up front that this is a handsomely-made movie. Probably the best looking thing on the list since Night Moves. Nothing I've seen better captures the swelter of an East Coast heatwave, or the lusty feeling of being too hot to bang and going at it regardless. Kathleen Turner sells the hell out of a femme fatale. There are a lot of good lines and good performances (Ted Danson is back and having the time of his life). I want to get all that out of the way, because this is a movie heavily modeled after Double Indemnity, and I wanted to discuss its merits before I get into why inviting that comparison doesn't help the movie out. In a lot of ways, it's the same rules as the Robert Mitchum Marlowe movies - do Double Indemnity but amp up the sex and violence. And, to a degree it works. (At least, the sex does, dunno that Double Indemnity was crying out for explosions.) But the plot is amped as well, and gets downright silly. Yeah, Mrs. Dietrichson seduces Walter Neff so he'll off her husband, but Neff clocks that pretty early and goes along with it anyway. Everything beyond that is two people keeping too big a secret and slowly turning on each other. But here? For the twists to work Matty has to be, from frame one, playing four-dimensional chess on the order of Senator Palpatine, and its about as plausible. (Exactly how did she know, after she rebuffed Ned, he would figure out her local bar and go looking for her at the exact hour she was there?) It's already kind of weird to be using the spider woman trope in 1981, but to make her MORE sexually conniving and mercenary than she was in the 40's is... not great. As lurid trash, it's pretty fun for a while, but some noir stuff can't just be updated, it needs to be subverted or it doesn't justify its existence.

Blow Out Brian De Palma has two categories of movie: he's got his mainstream, director-for-hire fare, where his voice is either reigned in or indulged in isolated sequences that don't always jive with the rest fo the film, and then there's his Brian De Palma movies. My mistake, it seems, is having seen several for-hires from throughout his career - The Untouchables (fine enough), Carlito's Way (ditto, but less), Mission: Impossible (enh) - but had only seen De Palma-ass movies from his late period (Femme Fatale and The Black Dahlia, both of which I think are garbage). All this to say: Blow Out was my first classic-era De Palma, and holy fucking shit dudes. This was (with caveats) my absolute and entire jam. I said I could enjoy good sleaze, and this is good friggin' sleaze. (Though far short of De Palma at his sleaziest, mercifully.) The splitscreens, the diopter shots, the canted angles, how does he make so many shlocky things work?! John Travolta's sound tech goes out to get fresh wind fx for the movie he's working on, and we get this wonderful sequence of visuals following sounds as he turns his attention and his microphone to various noises - a couple on a walk, a frog, an owl, a buzzing street lamp. Later, as he listens back to the footage, the same sequence plays again, but this time from his POV; we're seeing his memory as guided by the same sequence of sounds, now recreated with different shots, as he moves his pencil in the air mimicking the microphone. When he mixes and edits sounds, we hear the literal soundtrack of the movie we are watching get mixed and edited by the person on screen. And as he tries to unravel a murder mystery, he uses what's at hand: magnetic tape, flatbed editors, an animation camera to turn still photos from the crime scene into a film and sync it with the audio he recorded; it's forensics using only the tools of the editing room. As someone who's spent some time in college editing rooms, this is a hoot and a half. Loses a bit of steam as it goes on and the film nerd stuff gives way to a more traditional thriller, but rallies for a sound-tech-centered final setpiece, which steadily builds to such madcap heights you can feel the air thinning, before oddly cutting its own tension and then trying to build it back up again. It doesn't work as well the second time. But then, that shot right after the climax? Damn. Conflicted on how the movie treats the female lead. I get why feminist film theorists are so divided on De Palma. His stuff is full of things feminists (rightly) criticize, full of women getting naked when they're not getting stabbed, but he also clearly finds women fascinating and has them do empowered and unexpected things, and there are many feminist reads of his movies. Call it a mixed bag. But even when he's doing tropey shit, he explores the tropes in unexpected ways. Definitely the best movie so far that I hadn't already seen.

Cutter's Way (rw) Alex Cutter is pitched to us as an obnoxious-but-sympathetic son of a bitch, and, you know, two out of three ain't bad. Watched this during my 2020 neo-noir kick and considered skipping it this time because I really didn't enjoy it. Found it a little more compelling this go around, while being reminded of why my feelings were room temp before. Thematically, I'm onboard: it's about a guy, Cutter, getting it in his head that he's found a murderer and needs to bring him to justice, and his friend, Bone, who intermittently helps him because he feels bad that Cutter lost his arm, leg, and eye in Nam and he also feels guilty for being in love with Cutter's wife. The question of whether the guy they're trying to bring down actually did it is intentionally undefined, and arguably unimportant; they've got personal reasons to see this through. Postmodern and noirish, fixated with the inability to ever fully know the truth of anything, but starring people so broken by society that they're desperate for certainty. (Pretty obvious parallels to Vietnam.) Cutter's a drunk and kind of an asshole, but understandably so. Bone's shiftlessness is the other response to a lack of meaning in the world, to the point where making a decision, any decision, feels like character growth, even if it's maybe killing a guy whose guilt is entirely theoretical. So, yeah, I'm down with all of this! A- in outline form. It's just that Cutter is so uninterestingly unpleasant and no one else on screen is compelling enough to make up for it. His drunken windups are tedious and his sanctimonious speeches about what the war was like are, well, true and accurate but also obviously manipulative. It's two hours with two miserable people, and I think Cutter's constant chatter is supposed to be the comic relief but it's a little too accurate to drunken rambling, which isn't funny if you're not also drunk. He's just tedious, irritating, and periodically racist. Pass.

Blood Simple (rw) I'm pretty cool on the Coens - there are things I've liked, even loved, in every Coen film I've seen, but I always come away dissatisfied. For a while, I kept going to their movies because I was sure eventually I'd love one without qualification. No Country for Old Men came close, the first two acts being master classes in sustained tension. But then the third act is all about denying closure: the protagonist is murdered offscreen, the villain's motives are never explained, and it ends with an existentialist speech about the unfathomable cruelty of the world. And it just doesn't land for me. The archness of the Coen's dialogue, the fussiness of their set design, the kinda-intimate, kinda-awkward, kinda-funny closeness of the camera's singles, it cannot sell me on a devastating meditation about meaninglessness. It's only ever sold me on the Coens' own cleverness. And that archness, that distancing, has typified every one of their movies I've come close to loving. Which is a long-ass preamble to saying, holy heck, I was not prepared for their very first movie to be the one I'd been looking for! I watched it last year and it remains true on rewatch: Blood Simple works like gangbusters. It's kind of Double Indemnity (again) but played as a comedy of errors, minus the comedy: two people romantically involved feeling their trust unravel after a murder. And I think the first thing that works for me is that utter lack of comedy. It's loaded with the Coens' trademark ironies - mostly dramatic in this case - but it's all played straight. Unlike the usual lead/femme fatale relationship, where distrust brews as the movie goes on, the audience knows the two main characters can trust each other. There are no secret duplicitous motives waiting to be revealed. The audience also know why they don't trust each other. (And it's all communicated wordlessly, btw: a character enters a scene and we know, based on the information that character has, how it looks to them and what suspicions it would arouse, even as we know the truth of it). The second thing that works is, weirdly, that the characters aren't very interesting?! Ray and Abby have almost no characterization. Outside of a general likability, they are blank slates. This is a weakness in most films, but, given the agonizingly long, wordless sequences where they dispose of bodies or hide from gunfire, you're left thinking not "what will Ray/Abby do in this scenario," because Ray and Abby are relatively elemental and undefined, but "what would I do in this scenario?" Which creates an exquisite tension but also, weirdly, creates more empathy than I feel for the Coens' usual cast of personalities. It's supposed to work the other way around! Truly enjoyable throughout but absolutely wonderful in the suspenseful-as-hell climax. Good shit right here.

Body Double The thing about erotic thrillers is everything that matters is in the name. Is it thrilling? Is it erotic? Good; all else is secondary. De Palma set out to make the most lurid, voyeuristic, horny, violent, shocking, steamy movie he could come up with, and its success was not strictly dependent on the lead's acting ability or the verisimilitude of the plot. But what are we, the modern audience, to make of it once 37 years have passed and, by today's standards, the eroticism is quite tame and the twists are no longer shocking? Then we're left with a nonsensical riff on Vertigo, a specularization of women that is very hard to justify, and lead actor made of pulped wood. De Palma's obsessions don't cohere into anything more this time; the bits stolen from Hitchcock aren't repurposed to new ends, it really is just Hitch with more tits and less brains. (I mean, I still haven't seen Vertigo, but I feel 100% confident in that statement.) The diopter shots and rear-projections this time look cheap (literally so, apparently; this had 1/3 the budget of Blow Out). There are some mildly interesting setpieces, but nothing compared to Travolta's auditory reconstructions or car chase where he tries to tail a subway train from street level even if it means driving through a frickin parade like an inverted French Connection, goddamn Blow Out was a good movie! Anyway. Melanie Griffith seems to be having fun, at least. I guess I had a little as well, but it was, at best, diverting, and a real letdown.

The Hit Surprised by how much I enjoyed this one. Terrance Stamp flips on the mob and spends ten years living a life of ease in Spain, waiting for the day they find and kill him. Movie kicks off when they do find him, and what follows is a ramshackle road movie as John Hurt and a young Tim Roth attempt to drive him to Paris so they can shoot him in front of his old boss. Stamp is magnetic. He's spent a decade reading philosophy and seems utterly prepared for death, so he spends the trip humming, philosophizing, and being friendly with his captors when he's not winding them up. It remains unclear to the end whether the discord he sews between Roth and Hurt is part of some larger plan of escape or just for shits and giggles. There's also a decent amount of plot for a movie that's not terribly plot-driven - just about every part of the kidnapping has tiny hitches the kidnappers aren't prepared for, and each has film-long repercussions, drawing the cops closer and somehow sticking Laura del Sol in their backseat. The ongoing questions are when Stamp will die, whether del Sol will die, and whether Roth will be able to pull the trigger. In the end, it's actually a meditation on ethics and mortality, but in a quiet and often funny way. It's not going to go down as one of my new favs, but it was a nice way to spend a couple hours.

Trouble in Mind (dnrw) I fucking hated this movie. It's been many months since I watched it, do I remember what I hated most? Was it the bit where a couple of country bumpkins who've come to the city walk into a diner and Mr. Bumpkin clocks that the one Black guy in the back as obviously a criminal despite never having seen him before? Was it the part where Kris Kristofferson won't stop hounding Mrs. Bumpkin no matter how many times she demands to be left alone, and it's played as romantic because obviously he knows what she needs better than she does? Or is it the part where Mr. Bumpkin reluctantly takes a job from the Obvious Criminal (who is, in fact, a criminal, and the only named Black character in the movie if I remember correctly, draw your own conclusions) and, within a week, has become a full-blown hood, which is exemplified by a lot, like, a lot of queer-coding? The answer to all three questions is yes. It's also fucking boring. Even out-of-drag Divine's performance as the villain can't save it.

Manhunter 'sfine? I've still never seen Silence of the Lambs, nor any of the Hopkins Lecter movies, nor, indeed, any full episode of the show. So the unheimlich others get seeing Brian Cox play Hannibal didn't come into play. Cox does a good job with him, but he's barely there. Shame, cuz he's the most interesting part of the movie. Honestly, there's a lot of interesting stuff that's barely there. Will Graham being a guy who gets into the heads of serial killers is explored well enough, and Mann knows how to direct a police procedural such that it's both contemplative and propulsive. But all the other themes it points at? Will's fear that he understands murderers a little too well? Hannibal trying to nudge him towards becoming one? Whatever dance Hannibal and Tooth Fairy are doing? What Tooth Fairy's deal is, anyway? (Why does he wear fake teeth and bite things? Why is he fixated on the red dragon? Does the bit where he says "Francis is gone forever" mean he has DID?) None of it goes anywhere or amounts to anything. I mean, it's certainly more interesting with this stuff than without, but it has that feel of a book that's been pared of its interesting bits to fit the runtime (or, alternately, pulp that's been sloppily elevated). I still haven't made my mind up on Mann's cold, precise camera work, but at least it gives me something to look at. It's fine! This is fine.

Mona Lisa (rw) Gave this one another shot. Bob Hoskins is wonderful as a hood out of his depth in classy places, quick to anger but just as quick to let anger go (the opening sequence where he's screaming on his ex-wife's doorstep, hurling trash cans at her house, and one minute later thrilled to see his old car, is pretty nice). And Cathy Tyson's working girl is a subtler kind of fascinating, exuding a mixture of coldness and kindness. It's just... this is ultimately a story about how heartbreaking it is when the girl you like is gay, right? It's Weezer's Pink Triangle: The Movie. It's not homophobic, exactly - Simone isn't demonized for being a lesbian - but it's still, like, "man, this straight white guy's pain is so much more interesting than the Black queer sex worker's." And when he's yelling "you woulda done it!" at the end, I can't tell if we're supposed to agree with him. Seems pretty clear that she wouldn'ta done it, at least not without there being some reveal about her character that doesn't happen, but I don't think the ending works if we don't agree with him, so... I'm like 70% sure the movie does Simone dirty there. For the first half, their growing relationship feels genuine and natural, and, honestly, the story being about a real bond that unfortunately means different things to each party could work if it didn't end with a gun and a sock in the jaw. Shape feels jagged as well; what feels like the end of the second act or so turns out to be the climax. And some of the symbolism is... well, ok, Simone gives George money to buy more appropriate clothes for hanging out in high end hotels, and he gets a tan leather jacket and a Hawaiian shirt, and their first proper bonding moment is when she takes him out for actual clothes. For the rest of the movie he is rocking double-breasted suits (not sure I agree with the striped tie, but it was the eighties, whaddya gonna do?). Then, in the second half, she sends him off looking for her old streetwalker friend, and now he looks completely out of place in the strip clubs and bordellos. So far so good. But then they have this run-in where her old pimp pulls a knife and cuts George's arm, so, with his nice shirt torn and it not safe going home (I guess?) he starts wearing the Hawaiian shirt again. So around the time he's starting to realize he doesn't really belong in Simone's world or the lowlife world he came from anymore, he's running around with the classy double-breasted suit jacket over the garish Hawaiian shirt, and, yeah, bit on the nose guys. Anyway, it has good bits, I just feel like a movie that asks me to feel for the guy punching a gay, Black woman in the face needs to work harder to earn it. Bit of wasted talent.

The Bedroom Window Starts well. Man starts an affair with his boss' wife, their first night together she witnesses an attempted murder from his window, she worries going to the police will reveal the affair to her husband, so the man reports her testimony to the cops claiming he's the one who saw it. Young Isabelle Huppert is the perfect woman for a guy to risk his career on a crush over, and Young Steve Guttenberg is the perfect balance of affability and amorality. And it flows great - picks just the right media to res. So then he's talking to the cops, telling them what she told him, and they ask questions he forgot to ask her - was the perp's jacket a blazer or a windbreaker? - and he has to guess. Then he gets called into the police lineup, and one guy matches her description really well, but is it just because he's wearing his red hair the way she described it? He can't be sure, doesn't finger any of them. He finds out the cops were pretty certain about one of the guys, so he follows the one he thinks it was around, looking for more evidence, and another girl is attacked right outside a bar he knows the redhead was at. Now he's certain! But he shows the boss' wife the guy and she's not certain, and she reminds him they don't even know if the guy he followed is the same guy the police suspected! And as he feeds more evidence to the cops, he has to lie more, because he can't exactly say he was tailing the guy around the city. So, I'm all in now. Maybe it's because I'd so recently rewatched Night Moves and Cutter's Way, but this seems like another story about uncertainty. He's really certain about the guy because it fits narratively, and we, the audience, feel the same. But he's not actually a witness, he doesn't have actual evidence, he's fitting bits and pieces together like a conspiracy theorist. He's fixating on what he wants to be true. Sign me up! But then it turns out he's 100% correct about who the killer is but his lies are found out and now the cops think he's the killer and I realize, oh, no, this movie isn't nearly as smart as I thought it was. Egg on my face! What transpires for the remaining half of the runtime is goofy as hell, and someone with shlockier sensibilities could have made a meal of it, but Hanson, despite being a Corman protege, takes this silliness seriously in the all wrong ways. Next!

Homicide (rw? I think I saw most of this on TV one time) Homicide centers around the conflicted loyalties of a Jewish cop. It opens with the Jewish cop and his white gentile partner taking over a case with a Black perp from some Black FBI agents. The media is making a big thing about the racial implications of the mostly white cops chasing down a Black man in a Black neighborhood. And inside of 15 minutes the FBI agent is calling the lead a k*ke and the gentile cop is calling the FBI agent a f****t and there's all kinds of invective for Black people. The film is announcing its intentions out the gate: this movie is about race. But the issue here is David Mamet doesn't care about race as anything other than a dramatic device. He's the Ubisoft of filmmakers, having no coherent perspective on social issues but expecting accolades for even bringing them up. Mamet is Jewish (though lead actor Joe Mantegna definitely is not) but what is his position on the Jewish diaspora? The whole deal is Mantegna gets stuck with a petty homicide case instead of the big one they just pinched from the Feds, where a Jewish candy shop owner gets shot in what looks like a stickup. Her family tries to appeal to his Jewishness to get him to take the case seriously, and, after giving them the brush-off for a long time, finally starts following through out of guilt, finding bits and pieces of what may or may not be a conspiracy, with Zionist gun runners and underground neo-Nazis. But, again: all of these are just dramatic devices. Mantegna's Jewishness (those words will never not sound ridiculous together) has always been a liability for him as a cop (we are told, not shown), and taking the case seriously is a reclamation of identity. The Jews he finds community with sold tommyguns to revolutionaries during the founding of Israel. These Jews end up blackmailing him to get a document from the evidence room. So: what is the film's position on placing stock in one's Jewish identity? What is its position on Israel? What is its opinion on Palestine? Because all three come up! And the answer is: Mamet doesn't care. You can read it a lot of different ways. Someone with more context and more patience than me could probably deduce what the de facto message is, the way Chris Franklin deduced the de facto message of Far Cry V despite the game's efforts not to have one, but I'm not going to. Mantegna's attempt to reconnect with his Jewishness gets his partner killed, gets the guy he was supposed to bring in alive shot dead, gets him possibly permanent injuries, gets him on camera blowing up a store that's a front for white nationalists, and all for nothing because the "clues" he found (pretty much exclusively by coincidence) were unconnected nothings. The problem is either his Jewishness, or his lifelong failure to connect with his Jewishness until late in life. Mamet doesn't give a shit. (Like, Mamet canonically doesn't give a shit: he is on record saying social context is meaningless, characters only exist to serve the plot, and there are no deeper meanings in fiction.) Mamet's ping-pong dialogue is fun, as always, and there are some neat ideas and characters, but it's all in service of a big nothing that needed to be a something to work.

Swoon So much I could talk about, let's keep it to the most interesting bits. Hommes Fatales: a thing about classic noir that it was fascinated by the marginal but had to keep it in the margins. Liberated women, queer-coded killers, Black jazz players, broke thieves; they were the main event, they were what audiences wanted to see, they were what made the movies fun. But the ending always had to reassert straightlaced straight, white, middle-class male society as unshakeable. White supremacist capitalist patriarchy demanded, both ideologically and via the Hays Code, that anyone outside these norms be punished, reformed, or dead by the movie's end. The only way to make them the heroes was to play their deaths for tragedy. It is unsurprising that neo-noir would take the queer-coded villains and make them the protagonists. Implicature: This is the story of Leopold and Loeb, murderers famous for being queer, and what's interesting is how the queerness in the first half exists entirely outside of language. Like, it's kind of amazing for a movie from 1992 to be this gay - we watch Nathan and Dickie kiss, undress, masturbate, fuck; hell, they wear wedding rings when they're alone together. But it's never verbalized. Sex is referred to as "your reward" or "what you wanted" or "best time." Dickie says he's going to have "the girls over," and it turns out "the girls" are a bunch of drag queens, but this is never acknowledged. Nathan at one point lists off a bunch of famous men - Oscar Wild, E.M. Forster, Frederick the Great - but, though the commonality between them is obvious (they were all gay), it's left the the audience to recognize it. When their queerness is finally verbalized in the second half, it's first in the language of pathology - a psychiatrist describing their "perversions" and "misuse" of their "organs" before the court, which has to be cleared of women because it's so inappropriate - and then with slurs from the man who murders Dickie in jail (a murder which is written off with no investigation because the victim is a gay prisoner instead of a L&L's victim, a child of a wealthy family). I don't know if I'd have noticed this if I hadn't read Chip Delany describing his experience as a gay man in the 50's existing almost entirely outside of language, the only language at the time being that of heteronormativity. Murder as Love Story: L&L exchange sex as payment for the other commiting crimes; it's foreplay. Their statements to the police where they disagree over who's to blame is a lover's quarrel. Their sentencing is a marriage. Nathan performs his own funeral rites over Dickie's body after he dies on the operating table. They are, in their way, together til death did they part. This is the relationship they can have. That it does all this without romanticizing the murder itself or valorizing L&L as humans is frankly incredible.

Suture (rw) The pitch: at the funeral for his father, wealthy Vincent Towers meets his long lost half brother Clay Arlington. It is implied Clay is a child from out of wedlock, possibly an affair; no one knows Vincent has a half-brother but him and Clay. Vincent invites Clay out to his fancy-ass home in Arizona. Thing is, Vincent is suspected (correctly) by the police of having murdered his father, and, due to a striking family resemblence, he's brought Clay to his home to fake his own death. He finagles Clay into wearing his clothes and driving his car, and then blows the car up and flees the state, leaving the cops to think him dead. Thing is, Clay survives, but with amnesia. The doctors tell him he's Vincent, and he has no reason to disagree. Any discrepancy in the way he looks is dismissed as the result of reconstructive surgery after the explosion. So Clay Arlington resumes Vincent Towers' life, without knowing Clay Arlington even exists. The twist: Clay and Vincent are both white, but Vincent is played by Michael Harris, a white actor, and Clay is played by Dennis Haysbert, a Black actor. "Ian, if there's just the two of them, how do you know it's not Harris playing a Black character?" Glad you asked! It is most explicitly obvious during a scene where Vincent/Clay's surgeon-cum-girlfriend essentially bringing up phrenology to explain how Vincent/Clay couldn't possibly have murdered his father, describing straight hair, thin lips, and a Greco-Roman nose Haysbert very clearly doesn't have. But, let's be honest: we knew well beforehand that the rich-as-fuck asshole living in a huge, modern house and living it up in Arizona high society was white. Though Clay is, canonically, white, he lives an poor and underprivileged life common to Black men in America. Though the film's title officially refers to the many stitches holding Vincent/Clay's face together after the accident, "suture" is a film theory term, referring to the way a film audience gets wrapped up - sutured - in the world of the movie, choosing to forget the outside world and pretend the story is real. The usage is ironic, because the audience cannot be sutured in; we cannot, and are not expected to, suspend our disbelief that Clay is white. We are deliberately distanced. Consequently this is a movie to be thought about, not to to be felt. It has the shape of a Hitchcockian thriller but it can't evoke the emotions of one. You can see the scaffolding - "ah, yes, this is the part of a thriller where one man hides while another stalks him with a gun, clever." I feel ill-suited to comment on what the filmmakers are saying about race. I could venture a guess about the ending, where the psychiatrist, the only one who knows the truth about Clay, says he can never truly be happy living the lie of being Vincent Towers, while we see photographs of Clay/Vincent seemingly living an extremely happy life: society says white men simply belong at the top more than Black men do, but, if the roles could be reversed, the latter would slot in seamlessly. Maybe??? Of all the movies in this collection, this is the one I'd most want to read an essay on (followed by Swoon).

The Last Seduction (dnrw) No, no, no, I am not rewataching this piece of shit movie.

Brick (rw) Here's my weird contention: Brick is in color and in widescreen, but, besides that? There's nothing neo- about this noir. There's no swearing except "hell." (I always thought Tug said "goddamn" at one point but, no, he's calling The Pin "gothed-up.") There's a lot of discussion of sex, but always through implication, and the only deleted scene is the one that removed ambiguity about what Brendan and Laura get up to after kissing. There's nothing postmodern or subversive - yes, the hook is it's set in high school, but the big twist is that it takes this very seriously. It mines it for jokes, yes, but the drama is authentic. In fact, making the gumshoe a high school student, his jadedness an obvious front, still too young to be as hard as he tries to be, just makes the drama hit harder. Sam Spade if Sam Spade were allowed to cry. I've always found it an interesting counterpoint to The Good German, a movie that fastidiously mimics the aesthetics of classic noir - down to even using period-appropriate sound recording - but is wholly neo- in construction. Brick could get approved by the Hays Code. Its vibe, its plot about a detective playing a bunch of criminals against each other, even its slang ("bulls," "yegg," "flopped") are all taken directly from Hammett. It's not even stealing from noir, it's stealing from what noir stole from! It's a perfect curtain call for the collection: the final film is both the most contemporary and the most classic. It's also - but for the strong case you could make for Night Moves - the best movie on the list. It's even more appropriate for me, personally: this was where it all started for me and noir. I saw this in theaters when it came out and loved it. It was probably my favorite movie for some time. It gave me a taste for pulpy crime movies which I only, years later, realized were neo-noir. This is why I looked into Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang and In Bruges. I've seen it more times than any film on this list, by a factor of at least 3. It's why I will always adore Rian Johnson and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. It's the best-looking half-million-dollar movie I've ever seen. (Indie filmmakers, take fucking notes.) I even did a script analysis of this, and, yes, it follows the formula, but so tightly and with so much style. Did you notice that he says several of the sequence tensions out loud? ("I just want to find her." "Show of hands.") I notice new things each time I see it - this time it was how "brushing Brendan's hair out of his face" is Em's move, making him look more like he does in the flashback, and how Laura does the same to him as she's seducing him, in the moment when he misses Em the hardest. It isn't perfect. It's recreated noir so faithfully that the Innocent Girl dies, the Femme Fatale uses intimacy as a weapon, and none of the women ever appear in a scene together. 1940's gender politics maybe don't need to be revisited. They say be critical of the media you love, and it applies here most of all: it is a real criticism of something I love immensely.

[purplerose244]

My thoughts on Seabound!!! 🌊🌊🌊 (3/4)

SPOILERS ALERT!!!

Yep yep yep, I'm liking this season a lot! 😍 Although I hope we'll get into a more frantic situation now, like with more battles and more bonding moments (Nya and Maya hopefully, but with Bentho too 🦈🦈🦈)! We got half a season to go, I'M READY!! 😎😎

Alright, here we go!

GENERAL THOUGHTS

I do like the season a lot, maybe MoM was a little more cohesive? Idk but it's not a big complain, I still love it so far 😍

Also maybe I would've liked more interactions between Nya and Maya about how they've been apart for so long, they had a chit chat but I would've loved even more. Maybe with Nya saying that it was fine and she grew up only to realize she is still hurt by that, even though it wasn't Maya's fault. I still like how they did it, I wished there was more that's it 🤷‍♀️

While I do make sense to Maya's behavior, that while it seems a little different from Hands of Time it had its logic in my opinion, maybe Ray feels a little weird? He seems less courageous than before, and it was established that he is a hothead like his son so that came off as unusual 🤔🤔

But I do love the fact that he's here and he's bonding with his son, for real, I've been waiting for this for so long so I'm happy nonetheless 🤩

Maybe I'm just easy to please and I take all I can get idk 😅

THE STORM AMULET

Oh, are we gonna address the wind element? It feels like we haven't really seen a Morro reference since Hands of Time, that would be cool! 😍 I mean, why even mentioning the wind then 😅😅

Well what do you know, they tracked them, who saw that coming?... me, I saw that coming... we all did probably 🤷‍♀️

Jay took upon himself making a quick recap on how Ninjago will be destroyed this time, thanks Bluebell 👌

Yep nyeheh electricity makes Nya go crazy for sure ❤💙 ... wait it wasn't a Jaya pun?

Jay wear your seatbelt please, you risk you life enough 😅😅 Pff lol "are we there yet" and they are actually there, biggest plot twist I've ever heard of 😂

LEGO HUG 💜💜💜

And with someone who might as well join the League of Jay apparently 💙

I liked The Island yet it was not as exciting as I hoped for, but now understand the meaning of it. The ninja helped the keepers and they are all allies. Without The Island the moment where Mammatus gives Nya the amulet wouldn't be as meaningful

Is it just me or Nya looked even more gorgeous during that moment?... just me huh? Okay then 😂💕

Wait that's a fake? Wait... UNCLE POWERS?!? OMG THAT I ACTUALLY DIDN'T SEE COMING 🤯

Here I thought he was just messing around, he always makes things harder 😅 Or maybe better? I mean, they kinda missed a bullet on this one...

BENTHO IS SO SWEET AND COOL OMG HE IS ALREADY OUR FRIEND 💙🦈💙🦈

Jay somehow had his own TV show in the past and yet he's got that horrible acting skills wth 😂😂😂

Kalmaar is a very cool villain, like, deeply evil. Not only he's calculated and merciless, he stops at nothing to get what he wants. And the people that get in the way? He wants them to suffer because they had dared to confront him 😳

And yes the voice does help a lot, I'm sorry I'll keep saying it until the season is over 😂 (or even beyond? Please cast Giles again LEGO 🥺🥺🥺)

Awww Nya no my poor girl 😢 Jay wanted to hug her to comfort her he is so sweet my SHIP ❤💙❤💙

MOM PEP TALK MOM PEP TALK!!! 🤩🤩🤩 How cool was it?

Like, this isn't even Maya asking Nya to believe in herself, this is her saying that she KNOWS her daughter can do anything when she puts her mind into it. FINALLY SHE SEES HOW AMAZING WATER GODDESS IS 💜💜💜

MORE LEGO TEARS OMG THIS SEASON IS FILLED WITH TEARS 😱 Which... kinda makes sense considering it's a water based season 😂

Nice one, and now? NOW WE GO BACK TO KAI COLE AND RAY YAS!!! ❤🖤❤🖤

RIDDLE OF THE SPHINX

That is... surprisingly Egypt theme like? It feels like a title coming from the Fire Chapter of season 11... well we got two fire elementals so 😍😍

SPARRING KAI AND RAY

I REPEAT SPARRING KAI AND RAY!!! SPARRING KAI AND RAY!!! ❤❤❤ Lol Ray got old, but how can someone blame him? He did touch death while aging in Hands of Time, I'm just happy he is alive 😂

Yep, master prankster Wu, that's what I love 👌👌 I always thought Wu had become a father figure for Kai at the beginning, so seeing Ray and Wu in the same picture feels very wholesome to me 😚

Ah, uncle Powers, I both love you and hate you so freaking much 😌😌 But you make cool slides nonetheless 😂

ARE YOU TRYING TO KILL ME WITH BEAUTIFUL SMITH INTERACTIONS??

BECAUSE I LIKE IT KEEP GOING 🤩

Oh no you guys are stranded on an island whatever are you going to do?? It's not like you had already before and managed to survive (Skybound) or you got stranded on a rock in a sea of sand filled with giant monsters (Fire Chapter) or you were on a freaking COMET in SPACE (Rebooted). Yeee, this is the worst yet 🙂

I'm starting to think these ninja are just a bunch of drama queens so no matter what happens, it's always hopeless 😂😂 I feel like I'm kinda right on this one honestly 😛

Whoa whoa WHOA WHO IS NYAD THIS SOUNDS VERY COOL???

Aww I like that, while Ray told his kids stories about dragons and how they traveled through the Underworld, Maya told them about Nya the first water master that could summon whales 💙❤💙❤

Pff imagine if it turned out Nya was the master of fire, carrying a very water based name? Lol

Maya: I would know if it was possible!

Nya: Yeah, like she knows that I can control a bit of ice because it's frozen water

Maya:...

Maya: YOU WHAT

I find both interesting and very annoying that this explorers club thinks so highly of themselves, to the point the deny to aid even the FREAKING SAVIORS OF THEIR FREAKING LAND 🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️

Misako got good reflexes after all, Kai was probably ready to melt this guy's face 😅

Oh, so a trial by Sphinx is a challenge? A mental one? A cultural one? A physical one? Idk but Misako is actually taking charge and that is cool I guess 🤷‍♀️

Okay this is kind of weird, how is Ray so afraid? Is it because there's fire?... did he... did he grow afraid of fire for some reason? Because it feels a bit off for now, but if there is a deeper meaning that could be interesting 🤔

Wait is that the riddle from Decoded? That's fire right?

IT IS FIRE 🔥🔥🔥

Lol at least in this one Kai wasn't completely ignored 😂 I know my flame babe isn't the most rational person, but I do like that it was an answer connected to his element where he used his head!

Ah Clutch, you really got no backbone 😅 And apparently you're the only explorer who doesn't, dang look at the others go! I'm having a bit more respect for them now 😚

LOOK AT SENSEI GO FINALLY!!! 😍😍 FIGHTING SCENES HECK YES!!!

Kalmaar: I'm your conquerer

Wu: so after skeletons, the serpentine, nindroids, the Stone Army, Chen's army, ghosts, oni, more snakes but on fire and people from a game, that makes you the tenth. Have a free cookie

Kalmaar:...

Wu: you're not special

Is this a little throwback to Possession too? Nya seems to always control better water when she doesn't actually think about it. When her feelings are free, so are her powers 🌊🌊🌊

Also this opens up more possibilities! Creatures connected with other elements might get summoned too! I would love something like that 😍😍

This was NEAT, or maybe I just missed Kai that much ❤ What's next??

PAPERGIRL

ANTONIAAAAAAAA!!!! MY GIRL IS BACK!!! All my girls are back in this season, I'm so happy 😍😍😍 And if she is here, sweet little Nelson has to be around and I cannot wait! Bring in the purple ninja! 💜

Owww Antonia's last day as a papergirl? Nooo why??

She's got a job at the... DAIRY DRAGON??? OMG OMG OMG IT'S THE ICE CREAM PLACE BRAGI TOLD US ABOUT ON TWITTER!!! 🤩🤩🤩 I remember the post, he was asking about names for the place and ice cream flavors. Now I can't wait to see what did he choose 🍦🍦🍦

UNAGAMI BABY HI HONEY!!! 🙋‍♀️ I hope he's doing great 😘😘

This is so cool honestly, Antonia got her own character arc going on! Living in a chaotic city like Ninjago City must be pretty dang exhausting 😅

Was... was that Dareth in the garbage can? Am I wrong? Poor brown ninja 😅🤎😅

SPINJITZU SWIRL, BANANAKHAN, ORANGE SERPENTINE, I'M DYING 😂😂😂

Their friendship is so wholesome, I'm so happy they are still together no matter what happens 💕

I thought Kalmaar wasn't much of a fighter but DANG he's got skills! Also the fact that he uses tentacles makes the fight very cool to watch! 😚😚

RAY RUNNING IN AFTER KAI GOT HURT HECK YES ❤❤❤

Well at least you tried Ray 😅

Ah, little cameo of the original Weekend Whip, always nice to hear it again... AND DO THE WEEKEND WHIP!!! 🌪🌪🌪

EVEN NELSON GOT CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT I'M SO PROUD 💜

I don't even know what is cooler, the kids being mad lads on their bikes, Kalmaar driving a TRUCK or Kai going full parkour on the buildings to follow them 🤯

I'm sorry... am I the only one that during the Kai and Kalmaar talk kinda thought of Jestro and Clay? I miss my boys from NK, they're even more at odds now 😭😭

KAI YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO DIE OR EVEN TRY TO DIE GET BACK HERE AT ONCE 😱😱

Kalmaar just loves to make everyone feel inferior, gotta be his hobby 😶

Oh good Kai is back

OH NOT GOOD KAI IS NOT BREATHING?!? FLAME BABE I TOLD YOU YOU'RE NOT ALLOWED TO DIE 😱😱😱

Antonia, Nelson, you guys are now my heroes. You saved my fave, I'll be forever in dept with you ❤❤❤ Am I being overdramatic? Most likely, but Kai is one of the few that didn't almost die or did die in a dramatic situation and he is also my absolute favorite character so that... kinda keeps my sanity in check in this show 🥴

I wonder... does he still not know how to swim? He saved Lloyd in Possession but I wonder if he was only trying to float on the surface... THAT'S TERRIFYING

This episode was so adorable, I love Antonia and Nelson so much 💜💕💜💕 It's nice to see what the other people of Ninjago do while everything goes mad 🤣

Wait hang on my Ninjajan is a little rusty

"Ninjago City. City that never sleeps" well if that ain't the truth 😂

MASTER OF THE SEA

Like Master of the Mountain? Wait are we going back to Shintaro?? VANYA?? ANOTHER BEST GIRL RETURNS??? 💛

Hey hey hey, we got a full Nyad backstory! I really like when they do these little drawn shots, they feel more like legends! And... the ending sounds terrifying? Like, they wouldn't let Nya sacrifice herself and die... again... right? 😱

Bentho: and the world was in balance, until now because of my brother

Lloyd: and the Overlord before of course

Bentho: the what now?

Lloyd: the evil one my grandpa the first Spinjitzu Master fought?

Bentho: YOUR WHAT NOW

Why do I like this offscreen "hiiiyaaa" that sensei Wu does before actually going into the scene? 😂😂

No matter if they come from the underground or the sea, these are all snake-like creature with the same intellect 😅 Kalmaar and Garmadon would have a lot to talk about, sea king dealing with his minions does remind me of Lord Garmadon in season 2 a lot 😂😂

KAI AND RAY FIGHTING TOGETHER KAI AND RAY FIGHTING TOGETHER ❤🔥❤🔥❤🔥❤🔥❤

OMG Kalmaar is such a brat and petty villain I love him so much 😂😂😂 Yes I didn't even mention his amazing voice!... AH DANG IT 😳😳

*Misako kicks Kalmaar and is actually useful* 🙆‍♀️🙆‍♀️🙆‍♀️

*Misako gets taken as hostage immediately after* 🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️

KAI LITERALLY JUST GOT SAVED FROM DROWNING WHY MUST YOU DO THIS TO HIM!!!... and Ray and Cole and Wu of course, I care okay 😅

OMG that face 🤣🤣🤣

That some meme material right there

Whoa Vincent that voice just got super up when the Unsinkable showed up, it kinda sounded like Jay's lol

NO NOT BENTHO!!! 😢😢😢

Kai: Nya talks to whales now? (I snorted so hard at this 😂😂)

HECK YES NYA GOT THE AMULET!! 😍😍😍 ... we got, like, four more episodes to go so something needs to happen in between... do I need to be scared? I feel like I need to be scared 😅

Jay starting a fire then blaming Kai?... this is so in character I got chills 😂😂

SHARK BOY IS STAYING TO THE MONASTERY THIS IS SO PRECIOUS!!! 🤩🤩🤩🤩🤩🤩 I want all the shenanigans and we need to write fanfictions about more shenanigans and AAAAHHHHH 🦈🦈🦈

Bless these two fire idiots

They own my heart ❤🔥❤🔥 Also Vincent, this is supposed to be a fun little gag moment, your amazing voice acting is kinda distracting me 😭😭😭

ANOTHER LEGO HUG

YOU GUYS ARE SPOILING ME OVER HERE HECK YES 💙🌊💙🌊

Maya learned that her daughter is capable of everything, I love that. Nya simply understood that she doesn't have to give up when something gets difficult. She is AMAZING and can do anything she puts her mind into. She simply has to hold on until the end 💪💪💪

Omg Benthomaar playing billiard with the guys I already love this 😍😍

YES IT IS SHINTARO!!! THE UPPLY ARE HERE OMG!!! HI VANYA YOU LOOK AMAZING GIRL MISS YOU I HOPE YOU'RE DOING OKAY!!! 💛💛💛 ... I just really like Master of the Mountain okay 😅

I love how Vanya doesn't even question it. It comes from Cole and he said it needs to be protected? Done and done 👌

Wait what, did something fall?

IS THAT THE FAKE?!?!? WHAT HOW WHEN??? UNCLE POWERS??? OR KALMAAR DID SOMETHING??? SOMEONE??? I'M LEGIT CONFUSED AND EXCITED??? 🤯🤯🤯

Well dang, I didn't see that coming, now what Seabound? What do you have for me?

[anonil88]

Wandavision Ep. 9 (series finale) liveblog

Obviously there are spoilers below read at your own wishes im including a gif to give you more time to scroll away

The picture is the family together in fight stance omg omg let me hit play

We back right where we left off.

Yea she wants to absorb your power sis, nah fuck that Agatha you can fuck right off.

I can see the cgi in the window and car.

Oh fuck this white mother fucker. Vision please come save your wife. Ayyy my guy!

I mean is he her ex? Or just her exes body.

Multi boss battle time!

This has to be Peter from X-men just being manipulated.

Wanda really did create an entire man the only thing missing is the body.

Um we are missing a few scenes here. When did they capture Jimmy?

You handcuffed a magician? Stupid.

Cliff? Who's that?

So they are about to have a boss battle amongst civilians lmfao. They probably won't even notice what's happening.

On the nose entry of the Darkhold.

It's not her destiny to destroy the world at all. Even in the comics she fights and fights that destiny time and time again.

Oh no, angry puppets. Run Wanda run!

Mrs? Ralph is that you?

Oh it is Ralph they casted Evan Peters to tease us all about x-men im guessing.

That is fucked up to tease us with that.... I'm just saying that is fucked up.

She doesn't even know how she has done this, she really thought she was doing the right thing.

Ugh this feels like when grief gets overwhelming.

No WANDA NOOO, oh shit she really doesn't know how to control it fully at all.

Get out everyone get out!

Wtf is Agatha planning?

Oh no Vis! His soul, if only he gets closer to her.

No the boys....if only she could find a way to tether them to her and not the world she created.

She is going to try and suck wanda dry oh my lord.

Haha family stance too cute. A family that fights together, stays together? Maybe.

Ooo are together gonna fuse?

She is a hero and learning very very fast.

Ayyy boys

Monica lets goo! Take that Hayward.

Hayward is an entire bitch. Fuck him.

Oh they are gonna have a logic battle or a battle of the brains. Exactly you are both vision now kith.

Who will this new vision be? Not quite how I expected it to happen with an awakening but yay, the rebirth of vision!

But, will he stay alive at the end of this? This new vision not Wanda's remade husband.

Let's go red wiggly woos and nightmares. Destroy you with your worst fears or your regrets.

Dammit.

A witchhunt really?

No wanda not like this. Agatha is a liar and has shown that why would you trust her?

We all thought vision would die but what if it's Wanda? Oh no.

Me to Agatha Harkness:

Oh? Did she unknowingly cast another spell?

Ah ha that's why she was hitting the barrier so wanda is a visual learner.

I hope she gets that Darkhold book and reads it.

She is writing her own damn story. I know that's right.

COME ON CROWN

COME THROUGH OUTFIT

Ngl you can see they ran out if cgi budget this episode BUT I love this cute redone style of the comic book outfit. The new ones not the old ones.

Also she doesn't need you, she has a guy named Dr. Strange that she can call.

Awe this is so sweet but I know that this will end. I love that we see her vision and her boys happy all together because we do not get to see that in the comics really like all at the same time.

They are now friends in the comics that share kids, yaknow divorced parents that stay friends but can't make a relationship work.

At least for a couple moments we get a happy power family in house 2800, that get some last sweet beautiful moments.

They will live forever in her heart.....and cough eventually reincarnated cough. Their sound are very real.

I hope she saves that photo at least.

She healed and found out more about herself and who she loved, thats beautiful.

So he's not gonna tell her that he gave her vision the other back?

Awwww they are so in love and marvel doesn't even let them be happy in the comics.

I mean you literally will say hello again his body with his memories is flying outside right now.

Aww vision.

Emo wanda has returned in aesthetic. Starts playing BMTH or PTV

She's like I'm sorry, oh and she said it.

Oooo with the hood and cape on yesss. She is pretty much a rejected member of society and "herodom" now who runs off to discover herself after a really fucked up situation and then a messy engagement similar to comics. Kind of like how Peter is set up to be in the mid credit scene at the end of far from home.

Wanda really said:

Midcredit scene reaction!!

Is Jimmy gonna be director?

Coronet?

Yes a skrull! Talos heard? How? Yay Monica is going to space like she always wanted!!

AN END CREDIT SCENE!!!!!

Thats the lake from the other movie right? Uh all these wait is Thor around? Oh wonderful I love this oh yes give me Wanda educating herself with this book. And she has learned sustained working projections without creating another hex, I love that for her. Two places at once. WE GOING TO THE MULTIVERSE, which i don't think she will be a villain for.

For a finale this was just okay like not great but good enough to pass because after all this is Marvel not Starz or HBO (GOT aside). I understand now why the executive or was it director said this would be a dissapointment. A lot of people had so many theories running but even with my own theories i haven't been conflating them as definites. The only one i did was Monica's scientist and now Pietro being just Ralph revealed. After seeing last weeks episode I just said imma just fully enjoy this last episode and didn't pay mind to many of the new theories.

Anyways I'm not super disappointed this was just an okay finale. So was Legends of Tomorrow's last season finale which I still found some enjoyment in. But, I'm not as excited for Falcon and the Winter Soldier because I can tell from this episode we are going back into movie marvel action with little depth.

I really enjoy the non-officially but official MCU shows like Jessica Jones or Agents of Shield because they often do both. The depth and the action which this show did with a much larger budget. I get there are probably plot holes in this episode for time or filming restriction reasons but still like dang it. Well this has been fun thanks for whoever reads these haha.

[the-last-cuddlebender]

Since when young Tenzin is underloved? His dad loved him the best and treated him as the special one and his mom adores him and maybe his siblings would give him shit when they were kids because they were jealous but he had Lin as a good friend and then he cheated on her with a 20yrs younger woman. The guy gets as much loved as he deserves

Hi, anon! So there’s a few things to unpack here, so I’ll try to be as concise as I can. This is pretty much what I think Tenzin’s childhood was really like and why he should be appreciated just as much as Bumi and Kya. Also with Kataang TLOK parenting thrown in. I’m pretty tired and don’t wanna edit an essay, so I apologize if it rambles.

Also, I’m not gonna touch the whole Tenzin cheating point. I’m fairly certain that that’s just objectively wrong. Everything else I’m more than happy to discuss, though:D

To be clear, when I say I feel like Tenzin is under-loved, I mean by the fandom (and by TLOK, but to a smaller degree). Under-appreciated might be a better word. Or under-explored? Idk. I just know that Tenzin’s childhood—just his—doesn’t get the attention it deserves. Outside of Tenzin having some angsty one-on-one’s with Aang (which I love, make no mistake!), I don’t see a lot fleshing out his childhood. Bumi and Kya get a lot of it, though (or the kids as a whole, but nothing that’s just Tenzin’s).

I don’t subscribe to the idea that Aang treated Tenzin as “the special one.” Bumi and Kya being jealous—in the way that seems to be the majority consensus—of Tenzin when they were kids is a bit hard for me to imagine, too. I try to stick to canon as much as I can, but, for some things, I have to draw the line. There has to be evidence, not just anecdote, otherwise I hc it into oblivion. I’m not saying their feelings in TLOK aren’t valid. They absolutely are, and Aang would never want those feelings to be invalidated. Children just retain things differently. A traumatic accident could have no effect on them but falling in the shower and bumping their head might. Developing brains are weird. 

I can see Kya and Bumi giving Tenzin some shit when they were kids (Tenzin does admit that Kya picked on him), but I highly doubt that was any more/less than normal sibling rivalry and Cain Instinct. Sure, Aang might have given Tenzin attention for being an airbender, but he gave Kya and Bumi attention for being a waterbender and a non-bender, too. To me, it’s like having siblings who play different sports. Just because dad went to every one of my sister’s soccer games doesn’t mean he didn’t attend every one of my basketball games. The hyperfixation on airbending in TLOK makes it sound like that was all Aang cared about, but even in ATLA we can see that that isn’t true. If it was, then he would have kicked out the mechanist from the Northern Air Temple. 

To say that Aang loved Tenzin the best is to imply that he loved his other children poorly, which isn’t true in the slightest. I can entertain the argument that he spent more one-on-one time with Tenzin, but that could be attributed to different children with different personalities having different wants and different needs for validation from their parents. And I will gladly defend it, even though I personally hc otherwise.

It’s hard to talk about Tenzin without also talking about Aang and Katara, so bear with me here:

Tenzin and Kya:

Tenzin was the last airbender besides Aang. Kya was the last waterbender from the Southern Water Tribe besides Katara. To assume Aang treated Tenzin as the “special one” because he’s an airbender would, if using the same logic, mean assuming Katara treated Kya as the “special one” for being a waterbender. 

I’ve never understood why The Southern Water Tribe being inherited by the Kataang kids isn’t as big of a deal as Air Nomad culture. Both of them were recovering cultures on the brink of extinction, so they both have a lot of pressure for the kids to live up to.

Plus, if Sokka had a right of passage for being a Water Tribe warrior, then who’s to say there wasn’t a right of passage for Kya, specifically, for being a waterbender? She would be the special one, there. And maybe Tenzin struggled with his two heritages because being an Air Nomad meant being vegetarian but being Water Tribe meant using dead fish to go penguinsledding?

Tenzin and Learning too soon:

Tenzin probably learned about his responsibility of carrying the legacy of the airbenders at a very, very young age. Aang and Katara probably tried their hardest to wait until he was older to tell him (a-la Gyatso wanting to wait until Aang was older for him to carry the burden of being the airbenders’—and the world’s—last hope, too), but it was unavoidable. It was a part of the world’s history, and the aftermath of the war wasn’t exactly something a kid could avoid. Plus, I’m sure Aang wanted to correct airbender history as it was taught in schools as soon as he got the opportunity after the war.

Tenzin just has the abstract “idea” of what his bending culture was like when it was alive and well. Aang has memories to draw upon from which to imagine the future that the airbenders needed to rebuild towards. Tenzin gets second-hand notes.

Tenzin also didn’t have a baseline by which to measure if he was a “good airbender.” He had only Aang to compare himself to. ONLY AANG. This is talked about in TLOK but only in regards to Aang being his dad, if I’m not mistaken. But Aang isn’t just Tenzin’s dad. Aang is his father, the Avatar, and the youngest airbender to get his master’s tattoos. That’s a LOT more to live up to than just being his kid. And it’s the only thing Tenzin has to compare himself to to measure whether or not he’s a good airbender. I’m shocked that his spiritual ineptitude isn’t more of a haunting issue for him, quite frankly.

Tenzin and Bullying:

Tenzin didn’t have any airbenders his age (anyone like him) growing up. Even Aang had a childhood with other airbenders. As a father, Aang was as playful as a kid, sure, but, to a child, it isn’t quite the same because they don’t share that special bond of growing together and having a shared upbringing. 

Katara can especially empathize with this. 

Airbending is the element of fun. It’s kindof hard to express/embrace that facet of the element if Tenzin is the only one his age who can wield it.

I can almost guarantee that Tenzin got voted out of playing with other kids at least a few times because he was the only airbender (and that would make teams unfair). He probably learned to play by himself. That would certainly make him serious. Toph would probably teach him how to entertain himself, too. And that might lead to Tenzin and Lin hanging out. Who knows?

I honestly think Tenzin was bullied quite a bit (and not by Kya and Bumi), and that the bullying attributed to his demeanor as he grew up. Him cowering from Kya or running from his siblings when they picked on him was an exasperation of what he was probably dealing with outside his home.

In the recent comic with Katara and the pirates, we see a Fire Nation soldier flaunt some pretty nasty ideas about the Air Nomads because of Sozin’s propaganda. I don’t think that 15 years (or however long Tenzin was born after the war) is going to reverse that. Tenzin was probably picked on for being an airbender in addition to being the Avatar’s kid. 

If the rise of fashion post-war was as fast-growing as industry, I can imagine kid-Tenzin being made fun of for being bald (even though it was part of his religion/culture) and for dressing in robes when the world, especially Republic City, was beginning to adopt different clothes. 

Tenzin is an incredibly tender soul around those he loves but also incredibly serious around his adversaries. He has a soft inside and an armored shell, and that thick skin is usually forged through unsavory interactions. And he definitely interacted with plenty of normal kids his age. Aang missed the chance after the ice, and Katara was the only one her age in her village besides (kindof) Sokka. There’s no way Aang and Katara would keep their kids cooped up and strictly homeschooled. At the very least, Toph would bust them out if they did.

Tenzin and Katara:

Now, I’m not saying that Tenzin blames Aang because he obviously doesn’t. But Aang has memories of what airbender life was like, and Tenzin has only dreams. Honestly, it’s like he’s caught in the situation Aang was in when he was a young Avatar. They both have to live up to something that was pretty much just a legend. How could Tenzin possibly be expected to compare himself to something like that and be peachy fine? Aang wasn’t. So maybe, just maybe, Aang and Katara decided to have Tenzin go on private trips with Aang so Tenzin could understand that part of himself that was so hard for him to get? Inner peace is pretty dang hard to think about with THAT much pressure. 

And yes, it was Aang and Katara who decided on the trips. I will not for a second believe that 1.) Aang would make that kind of decision without her input or 2.) that Katara would let one of her kids get private time with dad that would even potentially give the illusion of favoritism. 

Katara knew how important one-on-one time with a parent was to some kids. This is why she tells Sokka to go see Hakoda instead of her in Ba Sing Se. She saw not only how much Sokka wanted but how much he NEEDED to see their dad. Sokka and Tenzin were both caught in a “passing of the torch” scenario (tbh, the scene where Aang tells Tenzin that he’s proud of him in the Spirit World reminds me of when Hakoda tells Sokka that he’s proud of him during the invasion when he’s injured. In both instances, it kindof solidifies the official passing of the torch).

“You didn’t love her like I did”—Katara learned pretty quick in tsr about how incredibly toxic the assumption of loving or being loved more/less was. She would never under any circumstance agree to anything that would show favoritism to one of her children. Absolutely no way. Aang and Katara are a team, and to villainize one for favoritism is to villainize the other.

Tenzin and Yue:

Tenzin had a stressful upbringing. I would even make the argument that he and Yue had a similar time trying to conform to a responsibility that they were told/learned about at a too young age. Their mindsets are very similar—responsibility even at the sacrifice of their own wants and happiness and an overwhelming love for their father.

Tenzin: “I have a responsibility to Republic City.” Yue: “I have a duty to my Tribe.”

They were both determined to love and carry on the legacy of their father and their people, but they did it in their own way. They both struggled with their responsibilities from an extremely young age.

Finishing thoughts I guess:

*********************************************

I can imagine a young Tenzin crying and trying to hide from the world that was shoving its weight onto his shoulders, and who, when Aang finds him hiding in the bison stables or somewhere similar, cringes away from Aang for a split second before recognizing his father and holding on so tight that it hurt. Aang tried his damnedest to teach Tenzin airbending and the responsibility of being the last airbender when Aang was gone, but even he knew that he couldn’t keep the weight of the world off of Tenzin forever. Aang never got that chance when he was told he was the Avatar. He heard the monks say that he was “the airbenders’ last hope” because storm clouds were gathering. Young Tenzin probably felt just as hopeless. The one-on-one trips he took with Aang were specifically to the places Aang had visited in S1 when he was still recovering from realizing that he was the last airbender. Maybe Aang took Tenzin with him one-on-one, just the two of them, to drive home the message that Tenzin was not the last airbender like Aang had been?

“I-I’m just one kid…I can’t. I…I-I’m just—”

“Shhh, shhh, shhh…I know, buddy. I know. But you’re my kid, too. You’re my entire world.”

“Everyone says I’m—”

“Don’t worry about them. They’re not here.”

“B-But—”

“But? What but? Are you hiding someone in your sleeping bag, Breeze-Butt?”

“N…No…”

“And do you see anyone else here?”

“…No.”

“That’s right. So don’t worry about them. It’s just you and me right now, okay? Just breathe. There you go. Just like I taught you—You’re doing so well, bud. Shhh…You’re okay. You’re not just one kid. You’re Tenzin. And you’re my son. You and your brother and sissy are my entire world. I love you so, so much...Oh, see? There’s that million-yuan smile!”

“…Thanks, Daddy. Love you.”

“Love you more. Do you want to try going in the water again? Or we can stay up here if you like. Whatever you want.”

“I wanna try again. But…But maybe just a small fish? I don’t wanna fall off again…I-I can’t do the air-chute yet…and the water hurt.”

“I’ll round up the smallest koi there is. I’ll sit right behind you, too. How’s that sound? I won’t let you fall.”

“Okay!”

*********************************************

Maybe this has been said before idk. These are just my thoughts on Kataang parents and Tenzin. I retcon the entire Kataang family as it’s presented in TLOK, but this is how I imagine it going down in canon. 

This isn’t an attack on any person or fandom btw! I just think Tenzin isn’t as appreciated as the airbean deserves😞 He’s been through so much😭

If there’s a secret stash of young Tenzin appreciation content somewhere, please share!  I might be looking in the wrong places for Tenzin love, and I would love nothing more than to be wrong, honestly. So, please, if there’s a secret stash, yeet me that link!!

[dandelionflower]

Felinette where after 10 years the school reunion happens but Mari and Felix are at the hospital since Mari is giving birth. At the reunion Lila tries her lies about Mari but the birth of Mari and Felix's kid is going live since Mari is a famous designer and Felix is her model.

[send me Felinette prompts/requests]

“Hey, girl!” Alya hugged Lila, grinning bright. “Guess who got herself an interview with Jagged Stone’s son last week?”

“You mean Shatter?” Lila smiled at her, voice softening like when a mother consoles a child. “He’s such a sweetie, isn’t he?”

“It’s Shawn, but yeah.” Alya grinned at the memory.

The wedding between Penny Rolling and Jagged Stone has happened when they were all just fourteen, and Shawn was born that next year.

The year Lila told them about her lies.

She admitted that she had lied about her trips, her connections, and being Ladybug’s friend. The only truth was knowing Jagged Stone, but that was because he was her godfather, not because she saved his kitten.

She was bawling on the floor, begging for forgiveness that the class surely gave.

Alya was twenty-nine now, and her journalistic pursuits were thriving, just like everyone else.

Rose had become a highly esteemed business woman, and Juleka was modeling so much, you couldn’t look at a magazine kiosk without seeing her face.

Ivan was a well-paid bodyguard for Mylene, who had gained fame by protesting all sorts of environmental atrocities. They had broken up after they had turned seventeen, but rumor had it that those old bonds were slowly repairing themselves.

Alix had become a famous rollerblader, breaking a record for fastest cross country time and took up ice skating; she was going to the next Olympic Games.

Kim was now the most wanted stuntmen in the world, for his lack of fear and uncanny ability to not die from heights.

Nathaniel and Marc parted ways as they went to different colleges, but were still in contact. Nathaniel often called Marc when the storyline for his comic book seemed a bit off and Marc would gladly tell him that the author was just being an idiot.

Max and Sabrina, amazingly enough, got married; they completed their medical doctorates together and, once they made enough money, went back to college to get degrees in technology and math for Max and philosophy and psychology for Sabrina.

Together, they found the cure for cancer and Sabrina ended up writing a bestselling self-help novel, Henchman: just one good friend isn’t always enough. Max had patented his AI technology and Markov got his own talk show.

Adrien was working with Child Protective Services and other organizations to help children in bad situations. His father’s company took a massive tank after Hawkmoth’s reveal and Adrien did nothing to keep it afloat.

Chloe took up acting. She was well known for her amazing performances of evil queens, heinous witches, terrifying stepmothers. She, of course, took it all in stride.

No one really knew what Lila or Marinette were up to, finding out was probably the reason most of them were here.

And Nino...

Nino was living life happily as a popular song composer with his daughter Harley, the daughter Alya missed with every passing day.

She shook her head. Now wasn’t time to dwell on recent events, now was a time to look back at the past and reminisce.

“Have you seen Marinette? I’ve been wondering what she’s been up to these past ten years.” Alya commented, barely noticing Lila stiffen up. “You too. I gave you my number for a reason, you know.”

“Yeah, but I lost my phone in the trenches and you know how bad my memory is.” She laughed, batting her hand in the air.

“Yeah, I do. So tell me now; what about trenches?”

“I’ve been doing some peace talks, you know, nothing big.”

“Like Mylene was?”

“...yeah, like that. Just on a slightly larger scale.”

“Larger than stopping the Third World War? Dang girl.”

“I’ve also been doing some acting in foreign films and donating my extra time to children in need.”

“Like Chloe, Kim, and Adrien!”

Her eye twitched. “So, is Marinette coming, or is she...”

“She’s definitely coming. She wouldn’t miss a class reunion for the world.”

“Are you sure, because I saw her not too long ago today and she didn’t seem to prepared.”

“She’s coming.” Alya spoke firmly.

“Hi Alya! Hi Lila!” Rose jumped in and hugged them both tightly. “Have either of you seen Mari? I need to give her congratulations.”

“Congratulations? For what?”

“She got married a while back! I was really busy though, so I wasn’t able to go to the wedding. Her number changed too so I couldn’t call her either.”

Alya frowned. She hadn’t gotten any invitation.

“She got married?” Lila gasped. “But who was that man she was kissing in the coffee shop?”

“That was probably him; I don’t know him well, but I remember him being blond.” Rose grinned.

“Are you sure? He seemed pretty red headed when I saw them.” She pressed her hands to her face. “You don’t think...”

“Lila, come on. Mari wouldn’t cheat on her husband.”

“Yeah... we’ll just talk to her when she gets here.” Lila agreed. “If she gets here in time.”

“She will.” Alya nodded, reassuring Lila with a smile.

For some reason, she didn’t seem too certain.

—

Hours passed and everyone had given a speech on the stage, all but one.

“Where could she be?” Alya hissed to herself, texting Marinette again and again only to get a message declaring her number inactive.

“Maybe she’s just not-“ Lila was cut off when Alya held up her hand.

“Don’t. Just don’t.”

The sound of feedback filled the room and every head turned towards the stage, where Miss Bustier was standing.

She looked almost the same, with her red hair in a bun and her crisp pale blue pantsuit. The signs of time were still there, though, in the wrinkles around her eyes and the sparkling grey at her roots.

“Hello class!” She paused and listened to them cheer. “We’ve heard all of your accounts of your school years, and now it’s time for your class president to have a word.”

Chatter filled the air, each person turning to look for the blurnette.

“Oh, I can’t wait to see her!” Rose squealed to Juleka. “I need to get her new number.”

Juleka glanced sideways at her. “She’s been texting me for months.”

“What?” Rose scrolled through her phone and stopped. “Oh! Here it is! My phone is set to block unknown numbers.” She clicked a button and grinned as she made a new contact for her, with lots of emojis.

“Where’s Marinette?” Someone yelled. “Shouldn’t she be here?”

“I’m afraid Marinette had some prior engagements.” Miss Bustier clicked a pointer to a projector. “But, luckily, we are able to see exactly what it is.”

Light funneled out of the projector and the class was treated to what looked like a home movie.

It was in a hospital, but one boys face overtook the screen. He had on a blue striped shirt and a cheeky smile.

“Hey ma peeps! For those of you just joining us, I’m Claude...”

Another boy popped up in a green beret. “And I’m Mercury.”

“...and this is the livestream of the birth of a demigod!”

Sabrina and Max rose their fists and started chanting, “Elise! Elise! Elise!”

Ivan and Mylene glared at them playfully and started their own chant. “Dean! Dean! Dean!”

“What are they talking about?” Alya whispered to Rose.

“Didn’t you know? I just found out, it’s-“ she was cut off by a familiar voice coming from the speakers.

“Claude, I swear, if you don’t turn off that camera right now...”

The camera panned to a blue haired woman lying in a bed, a platinum blond man by her side.

“Sorry, Madame Culpa-Dupain-Cheng,” he laughed as Alya gasped inside the gymnasium, “you’re bedridden, so I’m not afraid of you.”

“Felix is still here.” She pointed out, leveling a finger at the camera. “Felix, get ‘im.”

The blond looked somewhere behind the camera’s field of view and made to move, but stopped as Marinette shouted out in pain.

“Felix,” she panted, after the screaming ceased, “I just want you to know that I love you, but I am never doing this again.” She looked up at him and received an amused grin.

“Fine by me.” He kissed her temple and Claude spoke again.

“You heard it here first folks! The legendary child, the only of its kind!”

She glared at him again. “Felix, if you don’t mind.”

“It would be my pleasure.” He began rolling up his sleeves and began walking towards Claude with a brisk pace.

“Uh, Claude?” Mercury, spoke with a nervous lilt to his voice.

“Well, that’s our live secret look into the birth of the legendary child of famous designer Marinette Culpa-Dupain-Chang and her photographer Felix Culpa-Dupain-Cheng!” Claude opened the door and hurried out. “Comment below on what you think the gender of the legend child will be and what the parents should name them; Claude Junior...”

“Or Mercury Junior!”

“Or the great Allegra the second?”

“Guys?” Adrien stood up from where he was sitting next to a blonde woman in a braid and a darker haired woman. “Is everything okay in there?”

“In there, fine, but out here?”

“There is a man on a mission behind us and that mission includes the removal of our tongues.”

“Better keep running, then.” The dark haired girl shouted, not even glancing up from her phone.

“Indeed.” Felix’s voice came from close behind the camera.

Both Claude and Mercury shrieked and began running down the hall once more, the other girl beside Adrien laughing while shouting, “Get ‘em good Felix!”

Alya stood stock-still, staring at the black screen.

Marinette is having a baby.

Adrien and four strangers are there for it.

She got married.

I didn’t know about it.

Lila said she saw Marinette today when she’s clearly been in the hospital all day, and is obviously in love with that Felix guy.

Suddenly, the fact that no one else but Rose, the sweetest person in class, had been talking to Lila was making a whole lot more sense.

@virgil-is-a-cutie

[aros001]

Going in blind: Watching season 1 for the first time. Random thoughts.

This show is kind of nice because I have no memories of the original She-Ra show, or even any of He-Man, honestly. I'm not sure if I ever watched the original, so I have no frame of reference for how the series is "supposed" to be. I can just take it and judge it as is.

Of the bat, all I know is that supposedly She-Ra and Catra get together as a romantic couple later, but I'm also a huge My Hero Academia fan and the fandom around me ships every character with every other character, so for all I know that might just be shipper wishful thinking I've been seeing and hearing. Given fandoms for Gravity Falls, Thor, and Supernatural ship even siblings together, I've learned not to trust anything except for what I see in the series for myself.

By the way, this isn't a review, just random thoughts and comments I'm having as I'm going through season 1 for the first time.

Episodes 1 and 2: Right off, I really like Catra's "No duh" response to Adora about the truth of the horde. She knows they've been lying to them and have been doing terrible things, she just doesn't care. If she and Adora play their cards right they could end up being the ones in charge and then they'd have all that power. Not necessarily to make things better but enough to where they could do whatever and live however they want. That's a good build for an antagonist. Not ignorant to the fact what they're doing is wrong, just simply so selfish that they don't care.

Episode 3: It really feels like there was no good reason why Glimmer didn't just outright introduce Adora to her mother and every reason she should have known it was a bad idea to try and hide her for a surprise. Being a former horde soldier she'd probably get treated with hostility if Glimmer brought her to the front gate but you'd almost guarantee Adora would get arrested or outright killed if she got caught while no one else knew she was there.

On the other side, we have Hordak being pretty intelligent in promoting Catra. He probably knows Shadow Weaver already doesn't like him, so it's not like he's losing anything making her upset with him, and it's clear she favors Adora way more than Catra, so that little bit of advancement towards Catra probably goes a long way in earning her loyalty to him and a person on the inside with Shadow Weaver.

Also, I'm not the only one who saw Madam Razz and immediately thought Adora had found her Yoda, right?

Episode 4: I don't know how it was in the original She-Ra and He-Man series but I kind of like She-Ra being this title from legend. Adora is not the first She-Ra, given what Razz was talking about with a Mara, so instead of being something new, impressing everyone with abilities they've never seen before, and creating the legend, Adora is placed in a position WAY over her head where she's having to live up to what came before her.

Episode 5: Calling it now, as long as her personality is genuine I think Scorpia is going to be one of my favorite characters in this show. She's...endearing, I think is the best word. She's like a mix of Kronk and a nicer Shego.

For a little bit I thought Mermista was voiced by the same actress who played Poison Ivy in the Harley Quinn animated series. She's not but they do have the same kind of Daria-ish inflections, thus by confusion. Given the prom episode, Sea Hawk feels kind of like her Kite Man.

Episode 6: Okay, now it's between Scorpia and Entrapta who are likely to be my favorites by the end of this. She's fun and quirky.

Episode 7: Quite the lore drop. Shadow Weaver was once a Mystacor sorceress known as Light Spinner. I like to imagine we'll get more on that later. Her haunting Adora reminded me of the Teen Titans' episode where Robin was similarly haunted by Slade. This didn't go as far as that but that's probably for the best, since TT had two and a half seasons to build that dynamic up with Robin and Slade while we're only now halfway through the first season.

Episode 8: Well dang. Again, I don't know for sure if Adora and Catra do end up together but boy do I buy why they're shipped together after that dance. Also, good on Bow for standing up for himself. It's clear that he'll always be Glimmer's friend and this won't change that but that doesn't mean he has to just accommodate her. I understand where her issues stem from but I am still glad he gave her a reality check. It helps him feel a little more like his own character.

Also, another nice little bit of lore and worldbuilding. Scorpia's a princess, the horde landed where her people lived, and they seemed to join them willingly.

Episode 9: Surprisingly don't have a lot to say about this other than I don't buy for a second that Entrapta is dead (EDIT: She's not). This was mostly action.

Episode 10: Not going to lie, this one kind of annoyed me a little, at least the first half. The conversation between Glimmer and her mother saved it a bit. It was a bit of a trifecta. You have the alliance breaking apart, saying that the loss of Entrapta only happened because they were all together...even though Entrapta only "died" because of her own machine obsession that caused her to deliberately walk back into the purging chamber. You have Entrapta who might be turning to the horde's side because she feels abandoned by the other princesses...even though they thought she was dead, and again it was her fault they got separated. And you have Glimmer refusing to tell her mother that Shadow Weaver's dark magic has caused her powers to go on the fritz and is causing her great pain. It just feels like none of this would be an issue if most of these people would stop being self-absorbed for three seconds and talk like any normal person would. It feels very CW drama, like something I'd see in a bad season of Arrow or The Flash. The only person whose issues I buy is Adora, who is basically a soldier who was never properly raised to deal with emotion or loss and is already struggling with the burden of being She-Ra, the legendary savior. I get why she's beating down on herself for not being able to do more even if nothing that happened was her fault.

Episode 11: JEEEEEEEEEZZZZ, that was such a good episode! Focused entirely on Adora and Catra and their past together. Like, just showing someone this episode alone could probably get them to want to watch the series. That was everything you needed to know about their dynamic and history together.

Also, that moment when Catra and her past self are looking at each other, while obviously Catra takes the opposite lesson, it reminded me of this fanart I'd once seen of Jason Todd, the Red Hood, looking at his past self as Robin. The past says to the future "You ruined everything". Catra could be happy but, ironically for someone who hates Shadow Weaver, she's probably going to be a lot like her, sacrificing everything for power and ambition.

Given the way she looked, I'm guessing Shadow Weaver is either addicted to the power of the Black Garnet or she suffered some kind of past injury and its power is the only thing keeping her going. Or both.

Episode 12: I'll be honest, Swiftwind being able to talk kind of gobsmacked and I needed a moment to recover. What a great voice they chose for that character.

So She-Ra is kind of like the legendary heroes from Rising of the Shield Hero, coming from a long line of people chosen to wield the sword. I tend to dislike chosen one types of stories because I think prophecy takes a lot of weight out of the character's actions, so this and Avatar are more what I like. The MC is special but not the only one who's ever been special and they can still easily fail. Their destiny was only to be able to use the weapon, not that they would succeed in any specific purpose.

And dang, Catra's turn against Shadow Weaver happened faster than I thought it would but I'm not complaining. That great "This is what you've really been preparing me for" speech and Hordak, again, being an intelligent villain. "Oh, this experiment could net me a MASSIVE gain and all it could potentially cost me is this rock I already gave away to someone who lately hasn't been producing any results and has been consistently disobeying me. Yeah, I'm going to let this play out."

Episode 13: That was kind of a brutal fight between Adora and Catra. Not the worst I've ever seen even in other shows for this age range (Samurai Jack, for example) but those punches are connecting and those claws are leaving marks.

Also, maybe I'm just misunderstanding the exact situation but shouldn't the good guys' side be called the Resistance instead of the Rebellion? Being a rebellion would imply they are rebelling against an established power or rule over them, but the actual conflict we are shown is the established power and rule that is the kingdoms of Eternia resisting an outside force that wishes to establish a new order over them.

Season 1 verdict: I'm into it. I'm definitely more invested in the villains' side of things but that's not a fault of the series, that stuff is just way more geared towards me than the current princess stuff. I actively am at attention whenever the horde main characters are on screen. For the good guys it's mostly Adora and the She-Ra stuff I'm invested it. That isn't to say I have any real dislikes for that side. Bow especially I'm liking much more than I thought I might. He has kind of this gravitational pull around him. You will be his friend regardless of how much you might want to resist. He's definitely the rock for everyone else to hold onto.

Minor side note, kind of like Korra in Legend of Korra, I love how even when her powers aren't active Adora is shown to still be pretty strong physically with how easily she was lifting people up at the prom.

And I was right, Scorpia is my favorite side character.

On to season 2!

Original Reddit post: https://www.reddit.com/r/PrincessesOfPower/comments/nyll2e/going_in_blind_watching_season_1_for_the_first/

[secret-engima]

I'm trying to sleep but I cant bc if this this idea in my idea do here have it and fo eith it as you will; Nyx reborn into the KHR universe.

Pure. Unadulterated. Chaos.

Because if you think this boy is gonna be anything but the world’s most reckless and powerful Inverted Stormy Sun you’ve got another think coming.

Probably becomes like- a message runner/thief. Something high speed and dangerous that isn’t straight up murder-land. Despite this, he quickly gains something of his own famiglia from all the strays he keeps picking up along the way. Famiglia of info-brokers, thieves, and other sneaky mouthy folk. It’s great. He calls them the Kingsglaive out of nostalgia and everyone wears an Ulric braid.

Has 100% mouthed off to Xanxus and gotten away with it.

Misses his warping like crazy. It’s not fair. He gets sparkly fire powers and they AREN’T the ones that can teleport. Boo.

Still he gets to make stuff disintegrate and he has almost limitless energy so hah.

Finds Tsunayoshi when Tsuna is newly sealed and Smol and Sad and just Nopes his way into that situation because this is Wrong and he’s Reckless so here’s to kidnapping Tsuna and his mom and carting them off somewhere private to get those seals off (because in this universe Nana also has a seal on her that makes her so ditzy and air headed since she’s a Latent Sky who would otherwise know better than to touch Iemitsu with a thousand foot pole, but Iemitsu is all the levels of Jerk in this and wanted That Specific Pretty Lady as a mindless trophy wife so...)

Anyway Nyx yoinks the seals off with a combo of stubborn stupidity and stupidly strong Flames and Tsuna and Nana are more than a little confused and grateful. Nyx explains the Mafia thing and Nana goes Active from pure rage over being ... well ... married to the guy who robbed her of almost all intelligence and free will and then tried to do the same thing TO HER SON.

Nyx is more than happy to get them new identities and take them to Mafia Land where even Vongola can’t touch them without setting off a war and helping Nana set up the world’s best cafe on the island to support herself and her son without Iemitsu. He also gets divorce papers via his Network, all without Iemitsu’s knowing (dude really needs to pay more attention to what paperwork he’s signing).

Also Nana (now named Hestia) becomes Nyx’s Sky. And his much needed Momming Figure because he doesn’t have a Lib to Braincell him (yet). Tsuna (now named Regis because Nyx is a Sap) adores his reckless big brother.

Of course, two skies living on Mafia Land is gonna attract ALL the attention (minus Iemitsu who is an Idiot and doesn’t even register the possibility that these two are his wife and child because those are TOTALLY still back in Japan being a nice trophy family TOTALLY). It isn’t long before people are coming to the cafe for both the good food and a chance to Court either Sky in hopes of getting a harmony. Of course to Court either, they have to get past Nyx and Nyx’s info network first which is a grueling gauntlet of terror and mind-screwing because 90% of Nyx’s info network/friends are all Mists who keeping trying and failing to Braincell this reckless reborn Ulric.

One day an Inverted Cloud shows up at Hestia’s cafe, takes one (1) look at Nyx, who is on forced vacation with his arm in a sling, and starts reaming him out. People kinda side-eye the Cloud, expecting blood to fly, but instead Nyx bursts into tears of joy because IT’S LIB. LIB IS HERE. Wait that means you died DANG IT LIB YOU PROMISED.

Lib: I DIED AT AGE EIGHTY WITH GREAT-GRANDKIDS. TIMELINE IS JUST SCREWED UP HERE. YOU’RE THE ONE WHO DIED YOUNG AND DUMB AND HAVING LIED TO ME. YOU DON’T GET TO LECTURE ME ON ANYTHING.

Nyx: I HAD TO PROTECT YOU AND LUNA.

Lib: NOT BY GETTING USED AS A CANDLE BY THE GHOSTS OF SOME OLD DUDES IN A RING YOU DIDN’T.

Random Vongola agent who happens to be in earshot and knows the legend of the Vongola Rings: ????????????

Anyway eventually more formerly dead glaives show up and wind up being Nana/Hestia’s Elements and Tsuna/Regis grows up thoroughly Galahdian and self-confident and HUGELY POWERFUL as a Sky because HAH take that Vongola. Also somehow the entire mafia world, proving their SPARKLING non-intelligence, never realizes that Tsuna is like- a vongola.

Because he totally doesn’t look like a mini ghost of Primo or anything NO SIR (rolls eyes).

Also Tsuna/Regis somehow still picks up all his canon elements. 

Gokudera when they snap bond after running into each other on Mafia Land. 

Takeshi on a visit to japan with Nyx where Tsuna/Regis talks Takeshi out of jumping off a bridge and also maybe running away to be mafia with him rather than hang out with the bullies on his baseball team. 

Kyoka and Ryohei after Nyx accidentally rescues them from a child trafficking ring (blowing up the trafficking ring in the process VERY intentionally thank you).

Hibari because the little maniac FOLLOWED NYX HOME after picking a fight with him during one of his deliveries to someone in Namimori (Regis took great offense to this kid attacking HIS big brother and Threw Hands in true Galahdian fashion, Hibari was an Awe of this Smol deceptively fluffy and cute carnivore). Lambo just kinda ... shows up one day and never leaves (Nyx suspects his family intentionally “lost” him in Mafia Land while on vacation and makes a mental note to have his info network raise hell for the Bovino because HOW DARE).

However, his FIRST Elements are Mukuro and his gang. Because Nyx may or may not have busted into the lab by accident while looking to steal something else entirely and then gone on a Rampage through the facility, rescuing kids as he went. The moment Regis laid eyes on the shell-shocked, skinny, traumatized Mukuro and co, he ran over and pumped them full of Sky Flames to make them feel better and BOOM snap bond.

Libertus and the others work hard to keep Mukuro on an even keel. While also telling the Vindice to shove it when they come sniffing around because YOU CAN’T BUST US FOR BREAKING THE NO-FIGHTING LAW WHEN YOU WERE IGNORING THIS. The Vindice, surprisingly, accept this argument and buzz off.

Mukuro wandered off and came home with Chrome one day when he was twelve. No one knows how. No one knows why. But there is no way you are convincing Nyx or anyone else in Hestia’s Elements that Chrome isn’t Mukuro’s long lost twin and thus THEIRS.

Also Chrome does not have organ damage in this so yay.

Nyx takes one (1) look at Reborn when the cursed baby comes sniffing around Hestia’s cafe in curiosity of the Uber Powerful Skies, sees Reborn smack Regis with Leon Mallet, and promptly Throws Hands.

Reborn was Not Prepared for this Stormy Sun to be able to steamroll him with the vast and unorthodox experience of being a Glaive who tackles Flames with the understanding of Magic That Can Do Pretty Much What I Want Barring Some Things rather than the Mafia’s religiously conditioned rules of Flames Do This and Are Like This And Only This and then kick him off the nearest peer.

Colonello, who has already been taught to Fear The Reincarnated Feral Glaives, just sits there and laughs at Reborn’s confusion at finally meeting a Sun even more powerful and stubborn than him.

Also at some point Nyx straight up steals Xanxus because the Varia hired him to and then just .... never gives him back. Melts him free, sure, but the kid is CLEARLY unstable and in need of mental help and Vongola sure isn’t going to give it to him so Nyx just kinda ... sics Hestia on Xanxus and when the Varia come thundering in thinking Nyx had broken his contract they find Xanxus sitting there with a befuddled but surprisingly un-angry expression, holding a cup of tea rather than alcohol and with Hestia putting his favorite steak down for him.

Also Regis is sitting in Xanxus’s lap radiating so much Sky Flames that Xanxus can’t really ... think straight enough to be mad about much. Because seriously if Tsuna/Regis could defeat a trained assassin when he was a noob middle school kid while his Flames were SEALED then you better believe that when unsealed and raised in a loving, nurturing environment he can Therapy Jutsu anyone through the sheer power of his Flame aura.

Except Iemitsu.

Iemitsu gets shanked at some point.

Nobody will say by who.

But Libertus looks very, very Smug (he is a Cloud and Hestia and Regis are part of his Territory. What did you expect to happen. The only difference between Lib and Hibari is Lib is an Inverted and so is better at the Stealthy Route).

[sergeantsporks]

[deep, deep, deep, deep, sigh]

Mmmmmmkay. Not sure this is going to be a popular post. In fact, probably going to be pretty darn unpopular (making the bold assumption that anyone will see it and/or care). But I want to talk about the PROBLEMS in the Tales of Arcadia writing.

Now, Tales of Arcadia has some diddly darn good writing. I like it. A lot. And most of it is fantastic and beautiful and makes me cry. All of the character arcs are 👌. Buuuuuuuuuuut as a whole, as a multi-show story, I do find issues with the plot.

Honestly, first off, I'm not going to bring 3below into this because 3below is a bit disconnected from the rest of the series. Maybe that will change Rise of Titans, but in general, the protagonists and conflict in 3below doesn’t really intersect much with Trollhunters and Wizards. Sure, it’s in the same world, and the characters interact, but the 3below plot is only minimally connected to the Trollhunters plot, and aside from Wizards picking up where 3below left off and Krel showing up and helping with the Hisirdoux’s Eternal Time Trap, the two shows don’t intersect at all, so. Moving on.

First of all, Trollhunters. Morgana, specifically. I have... issues... with the ending. I really, really, really felt like Jim and Gunmar kind of got sidelined for Claire and Morgana respectively. Now, is this issue biased by my dislike of Claire in general? Oh, definitely, I’m not going to deny that it factors in quite a bit. But even that aside, we’re given this protagonist, Jim, and they spend 3 seasons building up this big scary troll villain named Gunmar, and how there’s going to be this invasion/eternal night thingamabob where Jim’s gonna have to face off against Gunmar and-- PSYCH! Gunmar goes out like a little punk and we flip over to the universal story constant of “if there are two girls on the battlefield, they absolutely must find each other and fight.” And okay, Morgana was built up, too. She was, it’s not like they threw her in last minute. But she was built up as the MASTERMIND, as a puppeteer in the shadows, and I don’t know, it just sort of felt like she kind of lost her place in the story and became just another endgame boss. And I 100% absolutely DESPISE the fact that Jim got sidelined for Claire. Angor Rot coming in and holding Morgana? Fantastic. Superb. Again, the character arcs in this show are great. And Jim even stabbed Morgana! It was a great fight! The protagonist overcame harrowing ordeals, stabbed the-- oh, wait. Nope. She’s not dead. Now, let’s just knock Jim out cold (albeit in a very in-character way, taking the hit for his friends) and hand the reins over to Claire, who finishes her off. And I just [sighs again] it felt a little forced? Especially since in Wizards, we re-hashed the exact same thing and just made Morgana turn good instead of killing her. I felt like Morgana was rushed in as a villain when more time should have been taken, especially if they were just going to resurrect her and do it all over in Wizards. The pacing could have been better, that’s what I’m saying.

Speaking of Wizards and Morgana. Let’s talk about Wizards and Morgana. Again, it felt like they just re-hashed the ending of Trollhunters into Wizards and changed up the ending. Now, I have no problem with Claire fighting Morgana IN GENERAL. It’s cool. However, that being said, in Trollhunters, Morgana was built up to be a puppeteer character, then became the main villain that was just a cool final boss, like I already said. And since we brought the whole fight back up in Wizards, I feel like a better alternative would have been to yes have Claire fight Morgana in Trollhunters! But for that to be the side fight and the main fight to be the fight we were originally promised of Gunmar vs. Jim. For Gunmar to get beaten in something a little more epic than “One down, one more to go!” and then for Morgana, locked in her fight with Claire and seeing that the battle is being lost, slip away into the shadows and live to fight another day. Leaves a bit of intrigue, and keeps her initially-established role as a voice in the shadows intact. Granted, this does raise problems later in Wizards as to what zombie Arthur wants and why the Arcane Order would need to destroy the amulet, but I’m sure they could find a way around it, like that Morgana’s power was severely weakened by creating the eternal night and they were unleashing more power. Instead of “Hey, I liked being dead, it was quiet” it could be more of a “without my powers, I realized the error of my ways.” There are ways to fix the issue, is all I’m saying. Plus, to leave Morgana as an unsolved, living mystery would make it even more of a big deal to see her in the past in Wizards-- instead of Claire being “Grrrrrr, Morgana, that person I killed once!” it would be “Grrrrrr, Morgana, that person who’s still at large and we never managed to defeat!” Just makes more sense for you to be mad at an enemy you have unfinished business with than one you already defeated pretty soundly.

[Deep inhale]

Okay, let’s talk about the large, stone, elephant in the room. Troll Jim and his transformation back. Pure, honest, unadulterated opinion, right off the bat? Felt like a cop-out. Now, I have to sit here and constantly remind myself “It’s a kid’s show, it’s a kid’s show, remember that it’s a kid’s show,” but I’m sorry, I like my permanent things to be a little more permanent. I liked the fact that the Airbenders remained extinct in Avatar and we didn’t [gasp!] discover more! during the show (that changed in Legend of Korra obviously, but we’re not going to get into my feelings on that). It felt a bit cheap when there was a secret colony of living Alteans in Voltron. I know, I know, it’s a kids’ show, sometimes you like a happy ending, especially when the kids’ show is Wizards and ends up getting incredibly dark (what with the amulet getting destroyed, Merlin dying, the whole Beast-Jim thing, THE PROTAGONIST STRAIGHT UP DYING, all of the emotional/psychological darkness of the Arthur and Morgana arc) through the course of it! Yay, little bit of feel-good, Jim’s not a troll anymore. That being said, again. We got told that troll Jim was PERMANENT. There was no way out of it. Apparently Claire didn’t find a way to change that through whatever gap there was between Trollhunters and Wizards. And then it got fixed, by, uhhhhhhhhh, oh. They didn’t explain what exactly fixed it. Besides I guess the [heavy sigh] *low grumbling* power of love. Felt like a cop-out, and it felt like it cheapened Jim’s sacrifice at the ending of Trollhunters for it to just *poof* fix! at the end through the power of Claire’s love. Now, granted, Jim went through the absolute wringer of first turning into a great big monster and then getting turned to stone, so sure, give the boy a break and some therapy but it still felt like a cop-out.

Okay, all this to say. I ranted for like, three paragraphs about... two issues. I COMPLIMENTED parts of the writing WHILE I WAS BASHING OTHER PARTS. That is pretty dang good, guys. Yes, I have a whole essay on why there is a PROBLEM in this WRITING, but seeing as I could only find TWO THINGS that I had a problem with? That’s some pretty solid writing. Granted, they were two pretty big things that I had essays on, and that’s not great. But hey, two big plot issues versus a multitude of plot holes? Hot dang. Not bad. So, yeah, the character arcs are all fantastically carried out, and the plots in general are sound with the Sporks seal of approval on everything but two points. Thanks for reading through, I know it was long. Feel free to tell me exactly why I’m wrong about this being bad writing. I’d love to see someone else’s opinion and/or someone making me feel better about these issues that I have.

[thebibliomancer]

Song of the Dark Crystal liveblog pt 11

Song of the Dark Crystal by J.M. Lee because Aughra. Because Aughra.

Last times in book: Kylan, Naia, Tavra, and Gurjin have traveled to Aughra’s High Hill to enlist her help in warning all Gelfling that the Skeksis ruling class doesn’t have their best interests at heart. The party meets Aughra who seems hilariously grumpy and unhelpful but at least says she’ll answer some of their questions.

Chapter 11

The meeting with Aughra goes discouragingly but Kylan gets a cool book

Aughra doesn’t offer the Gelfling a place to sit so they passive aggressively stand with the orrery spheres just zooming overhead. Except Tavra who leans against the wall with her arms crossed because she’s the Too Cool Kid.

Aughra rummages around in a box of artifacts and grumbles because she can’t find what she’s looking for. Which is the crystal shard! So I guess Aughra already has the crystal shard at this point!

“Eh! Where are they? Probably buried everywhere. No matter. Not the time yet, no point. No way to know which one it is yet, anyway.”

Because I guess this is taking after the Creation Myths story where after the crystal was cracked, Aughra spent who knows how long collecting crystal shards.

Just waiting for Jen.

(I guess it makes more sense than her losing track of the shard after the Age of Resistance show)

The following conversation is amazing, by the way. Because it contains grumpy Aughra.

“The Skeksis have betrayed the Gelfling,” Naia began. “I’ve seen the Crystal where they’ve darkened it. We need to send a message to all the Gelfling, all at the same time, so everyone knows what the Skeksis have done.”

Aughra stared at Naia with her single eye, flat face unreadable except for a general sense of disdain. Kylan worried suddenly that she would not have an answer - or if she did, that it would be impossible to interpret or understand.

“And what’s the question?” she barked.

Hahah

Kylan asks if there’s a way to send a message to all Gelfling without the Skeksis being able to interpret it.

And Aughra is like ‘hey maybe if all Gelfling could read!’ Gotcha, so our first step should be a literacy program.

“Oh yes, sure there’s a way. There’s always a way. Could be this way. Could be that way over there.”

Hah!

She’s so unhelpful!

She also adds this is something Gelfling will have to figure out if it’s something that only Gelfling can understand. How do you expect Aughra to understand a thing that only Gelfling can understand??

Naia testily says it’d be okay for Aughra to understand since she’s helping but Aughra clarifies that if she can understand it then so can the Skeksis since they’re the ones who taught her how to read. (Or the UrSkeks did but nobody else gets that.)

Gurjin changes topics and asks what Aughra knows about the Skeksis.

“I know they love a good crawly. What do you want to know?”

Naia bit at the end of the question, finishing Gurjin’s thought.

“Everything!”

“Everything!” she exclaimed. “HA! Didn’t you hear what I just said! Everything’s too much! Small questions, Gelfling. Small questions with small answers for your small head!”

HAHAHAH!

Kylan decides to switch topics again, while also having to hold back Naia from probably cursing out Aughra.

He relates meeting urVa and how he had a scar on his hand and how in the encounter with SkekMal later he had that same scar on his hand and how he suspects that the two share one life force. And because of the importance the Skeksis placed on twins, ie capturing both Naia and Gurjin, that Kylan suspects all of the Skeksis are the same with one life forced shared between two bodies.

Aughra confirms Kylan’s theory.

“Skeksis were born at the last Great Conjunction. That’s when the Skeksis appeared, and the Mystics. Can’t have one without the other.”

And when Kylan asks a follow up question about the Mystics:

“Eighteen Skeksis. Eighteen Mystics. That’s one for one, isn’t it? If the numbers are right.” She grumbled, talking to herself more than to the Gelfing in her observatory. “Twins, eh? I can see what they’re thinking, but they’re wrong. Twins are two souls, two lives, two bodies. A close connect, yes! Same blood in your veins, same Gelfling essence! But you and you, you’re two, eh? Skeksis and the Mystics are one, split. What happens to one happens to the other. And the other way around, too.”

Kylan isn’t really satisfied with her answer but it is an answer, or at least a confirmation. And again, props to the Gelfs for figuring out the big Dark Crystal plot twist with nothing but good perceptiveness.

And it gives him a new line of questioning. Maybe the other Mystics can help as urVa did. Maybe the Mystics could stop the Skeksis.

(Ha, sorry Kylan. They’re not that helpful.)

“NO!” Her response boomed over the sound of the machine. “Skeksis can’t destroy Mystics. Mystics can’t destroy Skeksis. What’s one is the other. You know! You saw it! Maybe a Mystic could keep a Skeksis in one place. Stop him from doing the really bad thing. Maybe the other way around, too. Skeksis stops a Mystic from doing the really great thing. But it’s just a wall. Just an impasse, not a defeat, not destruction.”

I don’t know. Harm minimization might be a good idea at this point? I don’t know if the good that the Mystics do is balanced with the evil that the Skeksis do. What with the impending genocide of the Gelfling?

Gurjin suggests that they just kill the Mystics, to get rid of the Skeksis. Less resistance there, probably.

But Naia and Kylan are the ones who protest this time. It just feels wrong to them to kill someone as peaceful and groovy as urVa to get to SkekMal.

Kylan asks Aughra if there’s anything she could tell them that would help, or even some direction on what to do.

“Don’t know,” Aughra said. She gave a big groan, clearing her throat, and spat, right on the floor. “Don’t know.”

She said the movie line!

I don’t know if that’s the movie line and action I would choose to echo but hey, he went for it.

She also has her own plan which is to play out the clock.

“Skeksis, Mystics. Born at the Great Conjunction. Maybe they’ll die at the next. Maybe they’ll go back to wherever they came from. Maybe the whole world will end! No way to know but wait. Nothing to do but wait until the next one. The next Great Conjunction.”

When her words got nothing but a heavy silence, she scoffed.

“See? Told you it might not be what you wanted to hear.”

Kylan is pretty disgruntled and feels foolish for pinning his hopes on magic all-knowing legend lady. Everything she’s given them is interesting but doesn’t offer any concrete ways forward. And everything she’s spoken of is from long ago.

He asks if she even knows that the Skeksis have been draining the essence of Gelfling. And when Aughra seems surprised by that, Kylan realizes she may have gotten so preoccupied with SPACE that she has no idea what’s going on.

So he tells her how the Skeksis steal away Gelfling and how the Scientist binds them in a chair and forces them to stare into the Crystal. How the darkness they’ve put into the Crystal has spread throughout Thra like a sickness. How the Gelfling can’t afford to try to run out the clock because the Skeksis could drink every single one of them before the Great Conjunction.

Aughra had become distracted by the contents of her worktable, sorting through it, though her motions were slower now, as if burdened. Kylan had never wished sorrow upon anyone, but at that moment he hoped the old woman felt at least a little. It might mean she cared.

Kylan urges Aughra to tell him that the battle is worth fighting, that the Skeksis aren’t unstoppable and that the Gelfling shouldn’t just give up.

Aughra tells him that the future is immutable and that the Great Conjunction is more powerful than the Skeksis and the Mystics. But she hasn’t seen enough of the future yet to know whether there is hope. She tells him to be patient.

“I’ve had enough of patience,” Kylan said with a sigh that left him completely deflated. “And I’ve had enough of you.”

He regretted the words as soon as they escaped. Even Tavra looked surprised.

Damn, Kylan. Savage.

Rather than respond to that, Aughra notices that Kylan is holding a book he picked up off the floor and tells him “Take that book. Aughra thinks it was meant for you.”

And then she just shuffles off.

And the conversation was such a bummer that the Gelfling all just decide to leave.

So I guess Aughra’s non-interference has been a combination of being distracted by SPACE, knowing that the Skeksis are bad but being convinced that the Great Conjunction is the only solution, losing the dang crystal shard, and not being too up to date with HOW bad things have gotten.

And like Naia and Kylan, she’s not going to brook ideas that involve killing the Skeksis or Mystics. They’re halves of her old friends who taught her how to read and look at stars.

I don’t think show Aughra had similar reservations. Like she didn’t go out of her way to plan violence but also she exploded the Hunter after convincing the Archer to jump off a tower.

Granted, Aughra in the show was a lot more proactive. Once she figured out what was up she wasted no time in marching over to yell at the Skeksis. Although, it seems that book Aughra is still expecting to have the great Gelfling conference call at some point, since she told Kylan et al that they were early.

Hopefully that’s a super great book she just gave Kylan.

Maybe it hadn’t been all bad. He held out the book she had given him. It bore no markings save for a symbol Kylan didn’t recognize written in black ink on the spine. The worn, dark blue-gray leather that bound it had long ago lost a corner but was otherwise in good shape.

He flipped through the book and found most of the pages filled. The writing within was ink - not dream-etched like Gelfling writing. Some of the words were illegible, and the hand in which it had all been writ did not match the many other scrolls and parchments in Aughra’s orrery. Splatters of black dotted the paper around scrawled sketches, diagrams, and sometimes completely unintelligible shapes that did not fit into any category. Given it was done in ink and not dream-etching, he guessed the author was not Gelfling. Yet in many places, the writing was in Gelfling letters and very fluent for a non-Gelfling. The subjects of the text were unfocused, sometimes geographical, sometimes astronomical. Sometimes they even seemed to be a record or diary, long hand for a few pages. These entries were almost always in a writing Kylan could not read, but they were dense, often accompanied by messy ink splatters and sometimes the remains of torn-out pages.

Intrigue!

So presumably not written by Aughra and not written by Gelfling. And clearly important given how much emphasis the book is getting as the outcome of the trip to Aughra’s.

Hmmmmm.

Naia comments that the message on the spiderweb rock was right and Gurjin asks what the message was.

“It said do not trust her. We didn’t want to put stock in some anonymous warning, but maybe we should have.”

“Do not trust her, eh?” Gurjin echoed. “Strange thing to write about Aughra. It’s not as if she misled us. What was there to trust... or not trust? All she did was tell us nothing.”

Tavra comments that they could have saved a lot of time if they had heeded the warning (even though I’m with Gurjin that it is a weird fit to apply it to Aughra) but Naia insists that trying to warn all Gelfling is still the right thing to do.

You’re still my number one suspect, Tavra. I’m going to assume its a plot relevant message because we’ve spent so much time on it and I believe Gurjin’s logic. So that leaves Naia and Tavra. We were just in Naia’s head last book and there hasn’t been anything that could change her level of trustworthiness. Plus, she’s not a very subtle person. And Tavra has been acting weird since she rejoined the cast. I’m onto you, Tavra who is probably a Tavra.

Since Naia doesn’t have a plan now that the Aughra visit came to not much, Tavra snootily (with a hair flip even, wow) suggests they head towards the Black River.

“By the time we reach it, surely you’ll have come up with something brilliant.”

The sarcasm was so palpable, Tavra might as well have been serving it for supper.

You’re being a dick, hypothetical-Spider-Tavra.

Naia passes the buck and decides that Kylan will find something in the book he just got.

[Kylan] wasn’t sure whether to be annoyed or flattered that Naia had struck him with the pressure of coming up with their next move, and under a time limit, no less.

Tavra shrugged and tossed her cape to the side so she could sheath her sword. She gave Kylan a challenging, dubious snort.

“Better start reading,” she said, then turned and followed Naia down the hill.

Pretty sweet dunk, I have to admit.

Also, I shouldn’t be surprised that everything comes down to Kylan reading a book super good.

He’s trained his whole life for this!

[tempural]

origins of tentaspy

Interview I conducted with Lakidaa (known as Engineer on the chan) about the origins of Tentaspy, and other old TF2chan stuff.  Interview conducted March 29th, 2020.  Content warning for discussions of Scout x Spy shipping (pre comics, no incest you sillies!) and racism on the chan.

If you were ever curious about where the Tentaspy meme came from, here ya go!  It’s also a nice lil documentation of some older fandom stuff, before it all moved to Tumblr (then combusted).

---

scumsuck: About Tentaspy.  I was on TF2chan in the pre-2009 days, and I recall it being part of a little mermaid AU?  With Scout as the little mermaid and Spy as Ursula?  Is my recollection true?

Lakidaa: Ah yes.  Yes!  I was Engineer [on TF2chan].  It was because we were on a kick of watching Disney movie songs in their native language & Beauty And The Beast is a French story.  

scumsuck: So Tentaspy started as a SpyScout thing, then it got into Teufort monster territory.

Lakidaa: Right.

scumsuck: When you say 'we were on a kick of watching disney', you mean you and other people on the chan?

Lakidaa: Yes! There was a steam chat we hung out in.

scumsuck: Do you remember who else was there on the disney movie thing?

Lakidaa: Uhhh me? Jones. Khorosho, the mod who was an Aussie, Dr.Tanner, oh! Yeah uhh Kilomonster.  Idk the exacts because it was 10 years ago.

scumsuck: The vagues are fine too!  10 years dang...

Lakidaa: A big problem was that the mod was Aussie and kinda oblivious to racism lmao.  It’s why I quit.

scumsuck: oh boy I remember a LOT of casual racism on the chan.  like the 'nickname' for demoman.

Lakidaa: Yyyyyeah. It’s why kilo bounced and why I eventually bounced.

scumsuck: bounced off the chan, or out the TF2 fandom in general?

Lakidaa: Both?  I was an actual administrator; I had full powers on the Chan itself.  And I got sick of Tanner’s racism and then Mog (that was her name)’s defense of it claiming the usual ‘oh we’re not Americans we do t Do that tee hee’ defending.  And it was the fandom.  This was before tumblr, really. I was doing LJrp at the time.  So if you weren’t posting on the chan there wasn’t really anywhere to get your fix.

scumsuck: I guess there were a lot of people sick of the racism back then, but the chan culture was too much.

Lakidaa: Yeah. We hadn’t realized that it didn’t have to be that way :V

scumsuck: I think I remember that the chan was made cuz everyone else on 4chan's /v/ was sick of the 'ironic' gay porn posting?

Lakidaa: Right.

scumsuck: So besides TF2chan , there wasn't the mass exodus to Tumblr yet.

Lakidaa: Because [LiveJournal] didn’t suck enough yet.

scumsuck: Curiously I don't remember that much of a TF2 community on LiveJournal.

Lakidaa: There wasn’t.

scumsuck: I remember ones for other shows like Metalocalypse and Venture Bros and so forth, but I guess TF2 never stuck on LJ.

Lakidaa: I was very LJ at the time.  Those shows were shows and like. I don’t think fandom had developed enough to take these characters which were, at the time, broad sketches, and do stuff with them.  All the meet-the videos weren’t out by then.

scumsuck: Now we can take vague-as-hell characters, like the ones from Overwatch, and mash em into something workable.  I wonder if the OW fandom could have thrived pre-tumblr.

Lakidaa: I don't think so. OW itself is the descendent of TF2’s character-based shooty.  I also admittedly have no fucking clue what’s up with the gator Sniper. (in reference to me asking if they knew the origins of Tentaspy's counterpart, the gator Sniper.) That was way later when I was in 40k

scumsuck: I love this stuff, and I'm trying to get together more memories of the chan and it's culture.   Do you remember Teratomarty?

Lakidaa: Yes!  And makani!  She famously did the administrator as a fan thing and got scooped by Valve.

scumsuck: Heck yeah!  Makani what a legend.  There were a lot of -isms and -phobias in TF2chan, as a part of the awful chan culture, but a lot of great art was made there too.

Lakidaa: Oh yeah.  I still have some documents too.

scumsuck: Oooh what sorts of documents?  I know the chan's been like... deleted and reformatted a couple times since I was on there so a lot was lost.

Lakidaa: Old fiction!

scumsuck: Do you recall who drew some of the first pieces of visual art for Tentaspy when it was created?  And who did the first fics?

Lakidaa: Me for fics lmao.  But for art I don’t remember.  There used to be a pictochat. (a site for multiple people to draw on the same canvas at once)

scumsuck: Do you still have your Tentaspy fics?

Lakidaa: Maybe!  I’m on phone and it’s all on the desktop lmao

scumsuck: They're important historical documents!

Lakidaa: Bro I read the post on tumblr about the 70s spirk fic in A&M University.

scumsuck: Ye Olde Yaoiz.  This stuff is honestly important!!!  I know I wouldn't have developed as an artist without all the slash I was reading back in my youth.

Lakidaa: Same.

scumsuck: Does Tentaspy predate 2010?

Lakidaa: I believe so.  Aha 2008 stuff.  I do have some [writing] that's Tentaspy, but it's chat; I'd have to find Jones and ask them if they're down

scumsuck: 12 years... Good timeframe though, that's when I was actively browsing the chan.

Lakidaa: It does have some nsfw on it which is double why I'm asking. This doesn't look like it's a chat chat tho it looks like our old DMs

scumsuck: Did Tentaspy originate as a NSFW concept from the getgo?

Lakidaa: For about 10 minutes it wasn't NSFW and was just us ragging about.

scumsuck: How do you feel about fanworks of tentaspy?  I'm working on a doujin of Tentaspy, and this is one of the reasons I wanted to contact whoever created the concept.  If I were to print comics of this concept you and your friends created, would they feel odd to you?

Lakidaa: Not really!  It's perfectly fine. It's a concept that's left my hands.  I'm not in TF2 anymore (Overwatch and 40k and my OCs honestly) so I'm like, 'at least someone's enjoying it'

scumsuck: Oh yeah, the fandom ghost that will never leave.

Lakidaa: yes :p

scumsuck: I haven't been into TF2 since like... 2009-2010, but I got back in the last couple years and have had a blast figuring out where the fandom went post-Tumblr.  I love this like.. metacontextual historical stuff

Lakidaa: Yeah! I'm glad someone's on it.

scumsuck: I think that's all I have to ask you for now, I'll wait and see if Jones responds!

Lakidaa: (._.)7