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stop-breaking-my-heart-telltale · 4 years ago

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Top 5 Favorite Louis Moments

So... have I ever told you guys that Louis is my favorite character in TWDG? No? I didn’t have to? You could tell by the everything that is my blog that he’s my favorite?

Well your deduction skills are great because it’s true-- Louis is, indeed, my favorite character and after all the nonsense going on with last week’s T5F, I wanted to talk about my boy to get that salty taste outta my mouth, y’know?

I want to talk about some of my favorite Louis moments from The Final Season, and in turn, about why I love him so much.... also this challenge of giving myself only 5 moments was just cruel and I struggled because I love nearly every Louis moment. I had to narrow it down to the favorite moments where I believe his development as a character were at its greatest, because that’s something I love about him-- his growth through the season.

Wanna give a quick shoutout @pi-creates for letting me use some screenshots for this post! I’m also doing a bit of a collab with Pi and a few others for this T5F. I thought it would be fun if they did some lists for other characters! I’ll update this post with links to their Top 5′s as they come out. :D

Pi’s Top 5 Aasim Moments @kaylee-wolf’s Top 5 James Moments @taurusicorn2400′s Top 5 Favorite Things About Violet @akemi-rose578′s Top 5 Favorite Ruby Moments

5. Appealing to Louis

I won’t spend too much time on this one because I talked about this entire scene in great detail in my Marlon character study, but I do truly love everything about it.

When you appeal to Louis, he’s pretty insistent about staying out of it... even though you can tell this whole situation is hurting him. With Marlon still having a grip on him, Louis feels like he has to side with Marlon because he’s his best friend, he’s always had his back, he’s gotta trust him... Marlon wouldn’t kill Brody like that, it just doesn’t make sense, right?

Add that on top of the fact that Louis is already established as “Marlon’s lap dog,” as Aasim puts it, and Marlon himself even implies that Louis is irresponsible and doesn’t ever step up.

So to have Louis instinctively puts his hands up like “Oh no, no, noooo I am not involved! Sorry, I like ya Clem but yeah, you’re on your own.... sorry,” makes sense with how he’s established, and you as Clementine have to sway him to your side by giving him some much needed courage and a chance to break from Marlon’s control to do the right thing, which is executed super well.

My personal favorite choice is to ask Louis if he’s really going to just let Marlon shoot me just so that he doesn’t want to get involved. You can see from his body language and facial expressions that Clementine’s words struck a nerve... he doesn’t want that to happen, that he doesn’t want Marlon to murder Clementine like this, and that he knows this is all wrong.

Also, Clementine’s “I thought you were more than that” is just.... so good. When you consider his entire arc... as far as we know, this is the first time someone has said something like that to Louis and it shows.

So he tries to talk to Marlon the first time, and Marlon intimidates and manipulates him to where you believe he’s not going to help you... and I love it. I love the way this is shot where Louis, with his hands up, slips right in front of Clementine and talks Marlon down. He sees that Marlon has a damn gun pointed at him, but he puts himself in danger to protect Clementine [and Marlon, in a way]... someone he doesn’t know that well, and he even walks towards Marlon while the gun is still pointed at him to protect her and those around him.

There’s also the other bits where Louis tries to be reassuring to Marlon, that they’re gonna help him out, that they’re all they got, that Marlon wasn’t always pathetic.... which that last one prompts the “Yeah I was, you’re just the only one who didn’t see it,” and that’s... a whole thing.

This is the first glimpse of growth we see with Louis and I love it.

4. The talk in the dorms

Okay... this scene.

I love this scene... obviously. One of my favorite’s from Ep2. After AJ is patched up and recovering in the dorms, Louis comes by to bring AJ some new clothes since his got torn up from Abel’s magic shotgun.

At this point, we already know that Louis is dealing with a lot of shit-- his best friend of 8+ years was murdered right in front of him, he’s traumatized, mourning, and hurting buuuuuut most of the Ericson crew don’t seem to care that he’s going through this. Violet keeps invalidating this pain and calling him a shithead while talking shit about Marlon right in front of him without any care. Mitch acts like Louis should be more aggressive because he was Marlon’s best friend, which results in Louis feeling even shittier.

He doesn’t know what to do about Clementine and AJ, all he knows is that them being there makes everything feel worse and he’s scared... AND on top of that, he just learned what Marlon was really like, Brody did indeed die because Marlon hit her, the twins might be alive because Marlon traded them away, AND there are asshole raiders coming to kidnap and/or murder them.

AND because he took part in the vote that got Clementine and AJ kicked out and insisted they follow through, AJ ended up getting shot by Abel’s magic shotgun and could’ve died... and Louis feels responsible for that, but he’s conflicted because this kid literally murdered his best friend that’s why they were kicked out in the first place.

Also, presumably, he’s dealing with all this by himself.

Honestly, I’m surprised he’s still functioning because that’s a lot.

Despite all that, he still sticks with Ruby in helping patch AJ up, and is thoughtful enough to bring him new clothes so he’s more comfortable. It says a lot about him, y’know? He’s still hurting, he’s still angry, but he doesn’t hate Clementine and AJ for what happened. He never did, he just didn’t know what to do. He’s still processing what happened and sorting out his feelings.

Oh and then the talk with Clementine... okay, I love the talk.

It’s quiet, sincere, and emotional. Clementine kinda begins to pry about whether or not he’s okay with them staying after AJ gets better and the raiders are taken care of, and he avoids giving her a straight answer until she pushes, to which he answers with an honest, “I don’t know, Clementine.”

Then AJ wakes up, and I love the way Louis responds to AJ asking if they’re friends again. He doesn’t lie to make AJ feel better, but he’s not a jerk about it.

And finally, we get the final dialogue prompt with him. I usually tell him I really missed him, to which he responds with, “Missed you, too. Goodnight.” and I just... it’s so good.

Honestly, Louis could’ve turned into a real bitch and not bothered, he could’ve remained angry and took every opportunity to remind Clem and AJ of how terrible they are... I can think of plenty characters that would’ve done that in his situation, but that’s not Louis. He’s not that kind of person... which is interesting when you consider his backstory and what landed him at Ericson in the first place. He’s seen what that kind of resentment, no matter how great, can lead to.

Overall, one of the best moments in his character development.

3. Louis opening up to Clementine in the music room

Oh, where to begin?

First off, not gonna gush too much about the clouis because this is a list focusing on Louis, not necessarily his romance with Clementine... I’ll only bring it up when it pertains to his character development, y’know? Second, not gonna get into the poor lead up to this scene where the writers dropped the ball with the ‘go with Violet to protect the school vs screw around with Louis and probably die’ thing. That’s a topic for another day. Just talking about the scene itself.

Because this moment is so damn good. Honestly, these last three entries I could probably do entire posts picking them apart and analyzing everything but we don’t wanna be here for hours so I’ll try to condense it the best I can.

So Louis invites Clementine to the music room because he needs up with a project. Clementine enters to find him playing a song that he wrote, and they have a fun conversation. Right off the bat, we get Clementine mentioning that they haven’t heard any music for a while [implying that Louis hasn’t been playing] and Louis responds with, “Some say you’re not about to hear it now.” which we all know is him trying to make light of people telling him he doesn’t have any music talent and like.... his face. The way it falls as the music goes from cheery to sad. The way Clementine looks at him.

I talk about Louis having a wall around him a lot. Well, that’s because he does. It’s the irony thing where the happy, loud, funny character is actually putting that on as a façade because they’re hiding behind a wall too scared to let anyone in because it’s either bit them in the ass before or no one has bothered to ever take them seriously anyway or a number of other reasons.

Louis seems to let that wall down for little bits at a time without realizing it, then when he does, it shoots right back up. A great example of this is in ep1 when he and Clementine talk in the woods. The shift is obvious, and here he’s still doing it.

He turns around and asks Clementine how they feel about their imminent deaths in a jokey tone. My favorite thing to do is here is remain silent. When you do that, he becomes serious again and in a soft voice, he tells Clementine that he’s here for her.

I find this whole sections of the scene, including the tuning the piano part, so interesting because it’s him testing the waters with Clementine, if you will. He’s inching the wall down until they’re both sitting comfortably at the piano when he begins to play his song for her. They mark the piano, and I think that seals it for him that they’re here together, that Clementine isn’t like the others who have never taken him seriously or never bother to look below the surface.

So, he takes a chance and fully brings the wall down, opening himself up to her as he thanks her for being there with him, even after everything.

Like... Louis is just so aware of people’s perceptions of him. This is a discussion that I’ve had with people before where Louis is very much a people person in the way that he’s not just charismatic, he’s observant, too.

Anyway, you can have Clementine confess she has romantic feelings for him, establishing them as a couple, or you can remain friends but now you’re super best friends. You know me, I go the romance route because clouis.

I do wanna point out that Louis does have romantic feelings for Clementine no matter what you pick, but if you do wish to remain friends, he’s incredibly respectful of that. There’s no bitterness, there’s no pushing. He’s maybe a little sad for two seconds before he realizes that he has a new [and probably better] best friend and embraces it. He’s just happy to have Clementine at his side.

As for the romance, I will never get over his reaction to Clementine confessing. His face? So good. Then he becomes so giddy talking about how he was hoping Clementine felt that way and “Holy shit, it’s me!”

Then he names the song he wrote after her and they smooch~!

uhh sorry, said I wasn’t gonna gush about clouis but can’t help it... and hey, in my defense, it does pertain to his development because this relationship influences him greatly.

What else can I say? It’s fucking great.

2. Louis finally shares something from his past & plays Don’t Be Afraid

Yeah I’m combining them, they go hand in hand okay.

Listen.... like I said before, I could write an entire analysis of Louis in this scene, but I’m gonna reel it in.

We finally get the reason Louis was sent to Ericson in the first place-- he was stupid rich with parents who gave him whatever he wanted except singing lessons, and being the spoiled child he was he didn’t take kindly to that... so he broke into his father’s credit card accounts and faked an affair in order to break up his parents marriage, and then when it was all said and done, he threw his fathers words back in his face.

Like.... I’m pretty fucking sure not a single one of us thought this was going to be the case when it came to Louis giving us his backstory.

He finally puts it all out there and now Clementine knows what kind of person he was before he arrived at the school, what he was capable of before she met him. That wall is gone.

But this is what I was talking about before. Louis knows first hand what can happen when feelings go unchecked, when resentment is held onto, when you don’t apologize or try to repair mendable relationships, when you’re vindictive and bitter and take it out on others. He’s been there and now he’s here, and he holds a lot of that with him. You can see he does in the way he talks about himself and struggles with confidence in his abilities.

I also love the line he says when you remain silent about how he doesn’t even know the person he’s talking about, how it’s like the only thing they share is the same name. He then goes on to say that Clementine should know who she’s riding into battle, which I’ve always seen as his way of telling her she should know who he really is, good and bad, before she puts anymore effort, faith, love, etc. into him and their relationship.

Then there’s the song.

Tenn asks Louis if he can play Don’t Be Afraid for them, a song that he composed with Minerva back before she was taken by the delta, and it’s my favorite version.

Just the way he looks at Clementine before he starts and she gives him a small reassurance before he starts, and he fucking dedicates the song to Minnie... who is going to try to kill him later and that’s a whole thing, but it’s still a sweet sentiment.

Then the song plays and it’s that calm before the storm moment, y’know? Like, everyone is sitting there listening to him play this beautiful song while realizing that shit’s going down soon and this might be the last happy moment they get.... and then as he’s playing, Louis looks over at AJ’s drawing of Violet, Aasim, and Omar and just.... his expression.

Also, he looks up at the ceiling as he’s playing and given how glossy his eyes look at the end of the song.... you know he was trying to hold it together. And that last look he and Clementine share? ugh.... it hurts my heart.

I adore this scene.... We finally got something about Louis’ past, which is something he hardly shares up to this point. Anything shared is minor, like how he used to play baseball or he hates cantaloupe.... but nothing major, y’know? So good.

1. The walk back to Ericson

This is it.

When it comes to Louis’ development as a character, this is it. Let me tell you about this moment because oh my god.

To start things off, Louis gets back to the school with everyone and then alone decides he’s gonna go look for Clementine, AJ, and Tenn. Which I don’t know if that’s something he would’ve done in ep1, at least he wouldn’t’ve gone alone. This to me says that he got back, made sure everyone was taken care of based on his comment about Violet’s eyes, and then set off on his own to look for them.

Then we get the cute clouis, Louis celebrates victory a little too early, and they begin their walk about to the school... and it starts off so quiet. He and Clementine steal glances at each other before Louis brings up Dorian. Y’know, the woman he killed.

We learn that it’s his first human kill ever.... in the 8+ years of the apocalypse, Louis has never had to do that and it’s one of the things he was so scared off. We were supposed to get a bit about that during the party but y’know, it was cut for budget reasons.... which is lame but you can figure it out from his behavior before they snuck onto the boat anyway.

It’s a great talk between them. I usually tell him that it’ll get easier, and he acknowledges that it’s fucked up, but he believes it will get easier and he’s just glad he has it in him at all. He tells Clementine that having a home means protecting it, he shares some things about his past, and then he and Clementine talk about a dream house together.

And this.... THIS. Okay look. Listen. I know people give Louis shit for how he behaves in ep1. You don’t have to go far before you see people writing him off as lazy, irresponsible, blah blah blah..... and like, I think people forget that character growth is a thing? That a character usually starts out flawed and over the course of a story, they change? for better or worse?

I’m perfectly okay with Louis being portrayed as irresponsible and carefree and whatnot because from that point he grows.

Remember what he said in ep1? He says he prefers to think of survival as a day-to-day task, he says that the future doesn’t exist and there’s only today, that the only thing anyone has is this moment.

Louis didn’t look at the future because he didn’t care, or rather, it wasn’t a priority for him. He slacked off because he turned away from responsibility when Marlon needed him, and while I don’t disagree with his view of appreciating the now, I do believe the future should be considered.

Now compare that to Louis in ep5.

That whole conversation is Louis telling Clementine he wants a future with her and the rest of Ericson, and while maybe they can’t build that 914-floor purple mansion, they can still try.... they can still create a home together. I think he still believes his this moment talk, but has a better grasp of what he really wants, y’know?

His whole journey when you stick with him is just.... so good. It’s not perfect, I mean y’all know that I have my issues with how some things were done, but Louis’ development as a character is one of the greatest accomplishments in TFS.

Also, Louis lost the 4th grade spelling bee because of “recommend” and he had a pet turtle named Geoff. My patience has been rewarded and I know more about his backstory.

I don’t even know what else to say? It’s #1 for a reason? Because it’s a great showcase for how far he’s come? and I love him so much? Seriously this scene is so good?

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Honorable Mentions

-Louis’ introduction in the music room. It’s a classic fave. -The walker piñata moment where Louis lets his guard down around Clementine to tell her his view point on survival. -The archery moment where Louis apologizes to Clementine and opens up a bit about Marlon. -The card games. Both of them. He’s great. -Everything in the dorms in ep3. -y’know what? Just everything that isn’t the cell scene okay? 90% of Louis scenes get honorable mentions.

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So there we go. There’s all my gushing about Louis. Could do it for much longer, but I don’t think we wanna be here for hours. So, what are your thoughts? Do you agree or disagree with any of my choices? Or have anything to add? I’m always down to chat about muh boy.

Have any suggestions for future T5F’s? Feel free to send ‘em in! :D

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Next week’s T5F Top 5 Reasons Doug Was Pretty Great

#twdg t5f #twdg louis #twdg clementine #twdg aj #twdg violet #twdg marlon #twdg aasim #twdg tenn #twdg minerva #twdg mitch

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bullshittierlists · 4 years ago

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Spoiler Warning!!! - This review will contain spoilers for all of SDR2 and the first chapter of DRV3 as well as slight spoilers for DR1. You’ve been warned.

I see no god up here other than me

Gundham Tanaka- His name is GUNDHam TaNAKA

Sonia Nevermind- This is my third time typing this rant. I literally don’t know why people hate her so much?? There are two main arguments that I’ve come across. The first is that she is boring and shouldn’t have survived, but that’s the same as Asahina and everyone seems to love her. (Don’t get me wrong, I also love her, but all she had were donuts and her relationship with Sakura) She’s just a cute girl with some occult-ish quirks and I don’t see why that has to be such a bad thing. The other, more prevalent, argument is that since she’s at the center of the infamous love triangle, she must be the root of all its problems. It’s really frustrating when people blame her for Kazuichi’s faults. I’ll talk more about Kazuichi later, but his terrible qualities are a result of his own actions, and Sonia shouldn’t be blamed for being the object of his affections. It’s honestly blaming the victim and I’m sick of it. Obviously, she hasn’t treated him perfectly and I understand why people are frustrated with it. The only example of this, though, is in chapter four when she goes back-and-forth between treating him coldly and praising him when she should’ve just rejected him a long time ago. However, I think I can understand where she’s coming from in this chapter. I think it was kind of a Shuichi/Kaede situation. She had already figured out that Gundham was the killer, but didn’t want to admit it to herself, and definitely didn’t want to tell everyone else even though he was more than ready to admit it. Therefore, she treated Kazuichi coldly whenever he was getting close to the truth (or treating her poorly) and praised him whenever he was leading the group in the wrong direction. I don’t have any evidence that these were the times she treated him this way, but that’s how I remember it. Anyway, Kazuichi should stop being a creep, and apologists should stop rationalizing it. Her one slip-up in this case when she was panicked and worried for her closest friend does not make up for all of the other times Kazuichi treated her terribly.

You’re the best

Fuyuhiko Kuzuryuu- Boss baby boss baby boss baby. Also, he’s a fantastically fleshed out character and his relationship with Peko makes me cry literally every time :) I just wish his character development had been a bit more stretched out, instead of on-the-spot like it was. I also kinda wish his sudden development had been a result of the despair disease, but you can’t have everything.

Nagito Komaeda- Recently, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about how SimpleFlips calls softlocking in SM64 “gay baby jail” and Komaeda makes me think of that.

Chiaki Nanami- I’m not quite as attached to her as everyone else seems to be, but I totally see the appeal. Cute girl, cute backpack, and plot-relevant??? Incredible.

Ibuki Mioda- She’s just so fun. I don’t typically like characters who are loud for the sake of being loud, but I can’t help but love her. This was the first game I fully voice-acted for fun (the girls, at least) and Ibuki was definitely one of my favorites. It just feels good to yell sometimes, you know?

Hey, I think you’re pretty cool, I like you a lot

Peko Pekoyama- I’m a simple woman. I think of chapter two, I cry. At least, the epilogue of that case. I wasn’t the biggest fan of Twilight Syndrome Murder Case and I definitely didn’t like the, albeit fake, serial killer twist. It didn’t feel natural and just felt bad. Loved hearing Sonia say “Sparkling Justice!”, though.

Hiyoko Saionji- I totally understand why people hate her. I get it, I do. But I just can’t bring myself to hate her. She’s obviously not a good person, but I have shit taste. Byakuya and Kokichi aren’t good people, but everyone loves them anyway. I just think she’s so funny and terrible, I can’t help but get attached. I’m not usually the type to like little sister characters, or even bullies, but she’s just such a perfect combination of the two that I can’t help but love her. I also obviously am not the biggest fan of Mikan (I’ll explain, I swear) so the bullying didn’t really affect me too much.

Hajime Hinata- He’s the protagonist. I don’t really know what to tell you. I used to believe in Hajime supremacy, but I’m starting to understand the Shuichi supremacy now, so idk, Hajime might end up lower after I finish V3.

Byakuya Togami/Ultimate Imposter- He’s just such a good guy. I know that the real Byakuya is an ass, but the imposter is so nice and supportive. I can’t even take him seriously as Byakuya anymore because of how supportive he is. The real Byakuya could never. I just finished his last free-time event and he really feels like his own person now, which I can imagine is all he’s ever wanted. He isn’t Byakuya to me anymore, he’s himself. I just don’t have a unique name to call him by.

I remember you

Mahiru Koizumi- Her photography thing was cute, I liked it a lot. I don’t know the basic stance people take on her crush on Hajime, but I thought it was really cute and believable. I don’t know if I ship it, but I can see it in canon. It makes sense and works well.

Akane Owari- She’s a jock. I feel pretty neutral about jocks unless they have another prevalent thing that fits my interests.

Nekomaru Nidai- Again, a jock. I’m just not the biggest fan. I know that his backstory makes up for a lot of his inherent jock boringness, but I just can’t get into him as much as some other people can. I definitely see the appeal, though.

Usami/Monomi- She’s a mascot. Cool. Honestly preferred Monophanie.

You are literally the worst. Actual scum. Leave this planet and never return

Mikan Tsumiki- I told you I’d explain. First, I need to explain some personal reasons I didn’t like her, rather than objective characteristics. Like I mentioned with Ibuki, I voice-acted the whole game with each of the girls. Never before has a voice physically affected me as much as Mikan’s. In order to make her voice so high and quiet, I have to close my throat and tighten my jaw. It makes my throat, jaw, and head hurt all at the same time and it feels awful. The only time this wasn’t the case was during her breakdown and that’s because I couldn’t make her say those things with that voice, it didn’t make sense. Which brings me to my next point: her breakdown. I didn’t like it. At all. It wasn’t interesting and it didn’t make sense. I know that everyone else was sad because she was bullied a bunch and began to romanticize it, and yeah, I feel bad, but it wasn’t enough to make me like her. Her breakdown made a little more sense after watching the anime, believe it or not, but it was still not great. She could’ve been easily redeemed for me if she had a different motive for killing Hiyoko. I don’t really have an opinion on whether or not Ibuki should’ve lived longer, or even survived, but I definitely agree with Hiyoko dying during the third case, I just wish the motive had been different. It would’ve been so powerful if Mikan’s despair disease had made her remember her past with the bullying, and then she realized how much she hated it. She started to notice how Hiyoko was treating her and finally snaps. She kills Hiyoko in cold blood on purpose, instead of on accident, and covers it up in a more reasonable way instead the literal impossibility that we actually got. Then, in her breakdown, instead of pleading for forgiveness, she tries to rationalize her actions and convince everyone else that she was in the right by killing her. It would’ve been much more interesting and would’ve made much more sense. I also wish she had made use of Ibuki’s despair disease (which made her gullible) and commanded her to hang herself instead of staging the other thing, because it was a lot of extra work that was really unnecessary and it would’ve made more use of the despair disease other than a plot contrivance for Junko’s entrance. This kind of turned into my review for the third chapter, but still. Killers are always more fleshed out in their respective chapters, so their existence is often pretty much tied to the events of that chapter, since everything typically revolves around them. I might as well add here that her execution was really basic and underwhelming, but as far as I’ve seen, I’m not alone in that opinion.

Monokuma- It’s kind of an ironic hate with Monokuma. Sure, he makes me laugh, but he’s also fuel for the killing game, so... I don’t know. He pisses me off sometimes, but he’s also pretty funny at other times.

Kazuichi Souda- This is basically a continuation of the Sonia rant, so here we go. I would like to preface this by saying that in the context of Kazuichi’s free-time events, he’s one of my favorite characters. However, in the main story, I placed him here. I would normally average out my opinions of his different forms, but his optional events don’t make up for his actions that are required to be experienced. While some of his quips toward Sonia made me laugh, they still made me uncomfortable to some extent. It’s honestly frustrating to see him try so hard when she obviously isn’t interested in him. Some people choose to see this as an underdog story, but I think it’s just annoying and low-key creepy. He’s constantly fetishizing Sonia and keeps making moves on her even after she treats him coldly. He isn’t brave or cool for doing this, like the media would like you to believe, he’s creepy and persistent, and not in a good way. While I do agree that Sonia should’ve just turned him down from the very beginning, I still don’t put all of that blame on her. I’m sure she’s had her fair share of creepy guys making advances on her and she’s just had to take it, since she’s a princess and it would hurt her noble reputation. Kazuichi should also be able to think for himself and see that she’s not interested. It shouldn’t be completely up to her to get him to stop. He should be able to take a hint and back off, whether she tells him directly or otherwise. She definitely hints to him that she’s not interested in some of the later chapters, but he completely ignores it and keeps trying anyway. I wouldn’t have such a problem with him if he didn’t represent a very real issue that we are facing in the world today. Nice guys will, unfortunately, always be plaguing our society and it doesn’t look like they’re getting any better. It doesn’t help that the media continually raises them up and convinces them that they are in the right, even though they definitely aren’t. No man is entitled to any woman and people need to stop sympathizing with men who are rejected and keep pushing. In almost every post I’ve seen from Kazuichi apologists, they explain that Sonia should’ve given him a chance. Really? She did give him a chance. She gave him several chances, in fact, more than she was entitled to. The first time she acted coldly towards him was at the end of chapter 4. That’s four entire chapters, plus a prologue, of chances that she gave him. She was always polite and talked to him when he approached her. Maybe she saw this as her noble duty, but either way, she didn’t reject him outright the first time she saw him. She tried to be friends, he was creepy, and then she started to hint that she wasn’t interested. This is a natural progression for her character and is in no way wrong of her. He is not entitled to her attention and should learn to back off when he’s not wanted. The other big reason I see that people don’t like Sonia is because she basically ruined any chance of Kazuichi and Gundham having any sort of relationship other than rivals. Again, it’s not Sonia’s fault that they both liked her. It’s also not her fault for choosing Gundham over Kazuichi, since he treated her respectfully and they also shared interests. She also didn’t need a specific reason to choose Gundham over Kazuichi, because she is free to make her own choices based on anything she wants, including nothing. Even though I said all of this, I do actually wish that Gundham and Kazuichi could’ve had some kind of relationship. I think it could’ve been very interesting, but it didn’t need to be devoid of Sonia. I think it would’ve been just as interesting for Gundham and Kazuichi to talk with Sonia as it would’ve been for her to introduce them to each other more formally and get them to become friends. I think it could’ve been fun for Kazuichi to have a little playful resentment towards Gundham for getting the girl, but instead, he went completely off the deep end. If he had just backed off like I suggested earlier, maybe they could’ve had that relationship that everyone longed for. I am also obligated to say here that I think all of his free-time events were absolutely adorable and the fact that he gets motion sickness is the single best piece of comedy every written.

Teruteru Hanamura- I’ve been doing a lot of rants and I’m kind of tired of it. You know why I don’t like him, I don’t need to explain it. He’s shitty, blah blah blah. His tiny bit of plot with his mother didn’t really do anything to redeem him for me and I just plain don’t like him. Sorry, not sorry.

Wow, this took way too long. I forgot I had so many opinions on these characters. I would’ve said a lot more about Gundham, but it’s kind of my thing here to say more about my second favorite characters and characters that I don’t like than my favorite characters, and I knew there were going to be several rants, so I decided to keep his very short. My definitive favorites list is Gundham and then Sonia, with a pending Fuyuhiko in third. The four dark devas are the best characters and I’m so upset they weren’t on here. I would apologize for my Kazuichi rant, since it had two parts, both of which were very long, but it all needed to be said because I’m sick and tired of Kazuichi apologists. They keep coming across my dash and I would like to be rid of them. If you like Kazuichi, that’s fine, I actually quite like him, too, you just need to acknowledge his faults instead of just rationalizing them in a bad way. If someone wants to send me reasons why Sonia is terrible, I’ll listen, because I’m sure I’m probably being a bit of a Sonia apologist, although I feel like her actions were a lot less impactful. Sondam supremacy, thank you, goodnight.

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mysterylover123 · 5 years ago

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My Top 10 Todobakudeku Moments

mysterylover123

So a while back I did a post about the OT3 moments of Baku/Deku/Ocha, since i’d noticed a bunch of em. But since we’re in the Todobakudeku arc in the manga right now, I figured I’d do another one for the OT3, especially since I’ve made posts about Top 10 moments for each component (a whole whopping 40 in total for BKDK, since I had 2 lists of 20). These three are basically considered the three MCs of BNHA, and I may as well talk about the bits that throw ‘em all together.

BTW I’m pretty sure this current arc will add about ten more to the list so this is a preemptive strike for now.

#10. What about our extra lessons?

Episode 61 “Deku vs Kacchan Part 2″

What happens; After the big BKDK blowout, Todoroki takes the time to ask Bakugou if he’s still gonna have time for their extra lessons. Bakugo gets annoyed and yammers about how this has nothing to do with Shoto.

Why I Like It: Both Ochaco and Shoto throw their hats into the ring after the big blowout in terms of their role in the rivalry; on the one hand, this looks like Katsuki telling Shoto to butt out of their Rivalry bromance...but it still means we highlight Shoto’s place in this group, nonetheless.

#9. "Perceptive and Dense”

Chapter 217 “One for All and All for One”

What Happens: MANGA SPOILERS Shoto goes up to Deku to ask him about his new power and how he apparently lied to him about having multiple quirks. Deku comes up with a plausible lie, while Bakugo rolls his eyes at Shoto’s inability to get it.

Why I Like it: After a big BKDK chapter, where we see their new dynamic, Shoto again pops up to remind us that he has a stake in this part of the story: he has a connection to Midoriya, and now to Bakugo, that is important to his personal growth. Also it does, as fans pointed out, look like a shot out of TDBKDK doujin.

#8. Locker room Challenge & Obstacle Race

Episode 15-16 “Roaring Sports Festival”/”In their Own Quirky Ways”

What Happens: Shoto goes over to Deku and challenges him. Bakugou gets rather jealous of this and insists that Shoto “declared war on the wrong person”. Deku surpasses them both, coming in first place by jumping on their backs and riding the wave.

Why I like it: This is kind of the official ‘beginning’ of TDBKDK as a thing, since before this Todoroki just kinda exisited in tandem with the Wonder Duo instead of being a part of their rivalry thang. It’s not entirely clear how this triangle works - is Bakugou jealous because Deku picked another rival or because Todoroki isn’t interested in him? Is Deku more keen to surpass one or the other? Would Todoroki challenge Kacchan if Deku wasn’t connected with All Might? It’s not so simple.

#7. “How sad, Todoroki Shoto”

Episode 45 “What a Twist”

What Happens: Knowing that the LOV wants to kidnap Kacchan, Todoroki, Deku and some other people band together to save him. In the moment of his kidnapping, it’s both Deku and poor, frantic Shoto who fail to save him, highlighted by “how sad, Todoroki Shoto” and “Don’t come, Deku”.

Why I Like It: While everyone in Class A is protective of Bakugou in this arc, Todoroki and Deku go the few steps beyond into Shippy territory. Not only do we have Shoto take the time to express his concern for Deku in the ep before this, but we also have Todoroki’s uber-protective giant-ice-wall attack on Compress, Deku’s “Give him back”, and this final, devastating failure, to remind us of the reciprocal OT3-ness of them. Nicely played.

#6. Hideout Raid Arc

Episodes 46-50

What happens. Following the aforementioned failure, Deku and Shoto are among the most gung-ho of all Class A to go do the incredibly stupid and reckless thing and save him. When he is before them again, they both move in sync to save him, with Iida having to stop them both. Thanks to Deku’s planning, they succeed.

Why I Like It: Continued mostly from the appeal of the previous one, but this one has: Todobaku (Todoroki risking everything to save Kacchan), Tododeku (Todoroki and Midoriya moving in sync to save him) and of course BKDK all over the place (”I can’t help feeling I have to save him” “You’re the most concerned of all” “Don’t give up All Might”, etc.) It’s very nice and circular.

#5. Deku vs Todoroki

Episode 23 “Shoto Todoroki Origin”/chapters 38-40

What Happens: Midoriya gets furious at Shoto for holding back on him, because everyone else, including OP bosses like Kacchan, is using everything they’ve got to win. Channelling Baku, Deku refuses to lose, and eventually does the “Your power” thing, which makes Todoroki have his big epiphany moment and change forever. And throughout it all, we cut back to Bakugou, reminding us of his role in this whole thing.

Why I Like It: Well, obviously first and foremost because “DEKU VS TODOROKI OMG”. But for TDBKDK, this is another one that just keeps them all inside each other’s orbits in this pivotal moment. Bakugo is deeply interested and invested in Todoroki’s deal. BKDK show their mind-mates sync think when they talk together, like they just know everything. And of course it’s the #1 big TDDK moment. But significantly, the inspiration on Deku’s side is a very Kacchan-like moment of “take me seriously” from him.

#4. Bakugo vs Todoroki

Episode 25 “Todoroki vs Bakugou”/Chapters 43-45

What Happens: Where to start? Bakugou and Todoroki brooding over Deku in the prep room; Todo losing his spark post Deku-match and Baku being jealous, Baku yelling about how there’s no point in not doing better than Deku, Deku cheering Todoroki on to do his best and Baku appreciating it...it’s more like five moments but I’m counting it as one.

Why I like It: So much TDBKDK vibe in this one. Bakugo needs to do better than Deku and wants respect from Todoroki. Deku wants Bakugo to get his respect and Todoroki to take care of himself. Todoroki feels guilty for hurting Bakugo and comes alive at encouragement from Midoriya. They all kinda benefit from each other in ways that go in all 3 directions.

#3. Wanna come intern with me? (MANGA SPOILERS!!)

Chapter 242 “Merry Christmas”

What Happens: Todoroki notices how Midoriya and Bakugou both have nowhere to intern. He offers to let them come learn from the #1 with him.

Why I Like It: This one is pure, fanservice-y fun, though it did set the direction for this new arc. But while there isn’t too much BKDK in this one, outside of their posing, Todoroki noticing his two bfs issues and offering them a way out is just pure peak Shoto. He’s so nice, ya’ll, and he cares so much about both Deku AND Kacchan at this point. If you don’t believe me on that one...

2. Training with these Guys (MANGA SPOILERS)

Chapter 247 “Progress Check”

What Happens: Todoroki, relaying his backstory after Deku and Kacchan already gave theirs, explains how his entire perspective was changed “by fighting with these guys” - not just Midoriya, but both of them. He makes it very clear that they’ve changed his life.

Why I Like It: This chapter also has some bKDK-y goodness in it too, since Baku flashes back to his adorable childhood with Deku in his motivation monologue. But here, Todoroki firmly establishes how much both characters mean to him, how they’ve affected him. I love that little correction, too, as he reminds himself there’s other people he cares about too.

BONUS:

#1. Todoroki’s Backstory

Episode 19/Season 2 Episode 6 “The Boy born with Everything”/Chapter 31

What Happens: Todoroki tells Deku his backstory and Bakugo overhears.

Why I Like It: I’m a big sucker for “I know your secret” stuff. This one has Todoroki opening up to Deku about his tragic life, which Bakugou also over hears, making these two the only people who know what Todoroki’s real deal is and therefore able to help him through with it. Bakugo followed them there, either to follow Deku or Shoto or really both, and gets a wake-up call from hearing the extremes this can bring. Deku thinks of Kacchan when he thinks of “those who have helped me” and tells Todoroki the best version of his backstory he can. It’s just...such a reciprocal moment.

#todobakudeku #todobaku #bakudeku #katsudeku #tododeku #shoto todoroki #katsuki bakugou #midoriya izuku #todoroki x bakugou #todoroki x midoriya #midoriya x bakugou #top 10

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beevean · 5 years ago

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So I’ve finally given up and I started watching She-Ra, I finished season 1 yesterday

I’ve always avoided it because the fandom... really did nothing to make it look appealing to me. And, I was half-right?

(disclaimer: I am not judging the entire show, I’m sure it will get better in future seasons)

The writing is so weird. It excels in interpersonal relationships, which is the most interesting part of a story to me. People have written essays on Catra and Adora’s relationship, and I have little to add. Glimmer and Angella is a great representation of a troubled but loving mother/daughter relationship! The friendship between Adora, Glimmer and Bow, while a bit rushed, is lovely and they bounce one off the other in an endearing way. The whole dynamic between Shadow Weaver, Adora and Catra is intriguing as well as painful, and I really want to see, what pushes SW to be so obsessed with Adora and so hateful towards Catra?

I also love the main villain trio. As sad (and unexpected, although I should have guessed it) as her face-heel turn was, I’m happy Entrapta became one of the bad guys, because I fell in love with her the moment I saw her and I’m glad she gets to be part of the Interesting People gang (and I’m going to be mean and say she’s a better writter Peridot don’t @me). Scorpia is adorable but quite creepy when she wants to be and I love the dissonance, and once again I don’t need to explain why Catra is such a great antagonist. I feel about her like I felt about Bojack, constantly torn between rooting for her and screaming “what the fuck are you doing you absolute idiot”.

I still don’t know how to feel about Shadow Weaver and Hordak, mostly because it’s obvious there’s more than meets the eye. The first one spent half of the season being so Obviously Evil that I found funny how Adora never questioned her (made worse by how quickly she deflected), but then she gradually revealed some weaknesses and by the end I almost felt sorry for her so... we’ll see? Apparently she becomes more sympathetic later. I haven’t seen enough of Hordak, but he seems far more reasonable than SW so he’s probably going to be a good villain.

And then everything else goes from average to mediocre.

The plot itself made me realize how many tropes we moved away from - the Chosen One, the Magical Sword of Destiny, pastel princesses... It’s not the writers’ fault the story is so dated, but it needs something to shake it up, and so far there’s been little of it - the most interesting part of the lore is whatever happened to Mara, and the implications of the She-Ra identity. Some of the plots themselves have been a bit on the cliché side - the hero that doesn’t know how to live up to the village’s expectations, the protagonist making a fool of themselves because nobody believes them, the whole “normal people can be useful too!” moral that other cartoons did in a more subtle manner... the only cliché I forgave relatively soon was Entrapta’s Disney Death, because as the next episode showed, it wasn’t us that were supposed to believe she was dead, the protagonists were.

The heroes themselves are... okay? Glimmer got a scene where she revealed the depths of her angst, and I’m a simple person, I see a child feeling like they disappointed their parents, I immediately connect to them (hello Amethyst and Bojack). But so far, Adora and Bow are far less interesting.

Adora is like a tamer version of Korra and Aang - as soon as I saw her and her ponytail I was like “she’s going to struggle with her new identity of savior of the universe because she doesn’t feel worthy”, and, well so far I’ve been right. I do find interesting how she keeps referring to She-Ra as her own separate identity while it’s clear it’s still Adora but in a fancy costume, but so far they haven’t explained why yet (there was a chance to create a disconnect between Adora and She-Ra in that episode with the robot virus, I was so sure they were going for a corrupted, evil She-Ra, but for some reason they ignored it in favor of “shitfaced Adora”... okay).

I also wish they used the “raised by the Horde” part of her backstory more than for a couple of jokes - so far the clearest sign of her messed up upbringing is that she sometimes takes a military approach to things that don’t need it. I still can’t accept that she, SW’s golden child, took a few hours at best before accepting the fact that she was raised in an evil army and that is not her place. A protagonist raised by the “evil” faction is a really interesting trope, I was actually surprised it comes from the original She-Ra! I’d like to see more serious consequences of that.

Bow is... Bow. He’s a feminine Sokka. I like Sokka just fine so it’s not a problem, but I’ll wait for his moment to reveal his deep-seated angst. My money is on “I have no powers and I can’t compete with all these magical people”.

Anyone else is there. Perfuma’s “bloodthirsty hippie” personality was funny, but Mermista has a punchable voice that prevents me from liking her (she reminds me too much of Mai and I never liked Mai), Frosta... I don’t know, I found her irritating the first time I saw her but there are good reasons for her acerbic personality so I can’t be too mad at her, Netossa and Spinnerella apparently will become important in season 4, and Seahawk is just plain annoying - he has his funny moments, but unless the writers manage to write a character with an Awesome Ego, I can’t stand buffoons full of themselves like him. But again, this is just for now.

I must say, despite all the disappointing stuff, there is still something that pushes me to keep going. Maybe it’s really just Catra and Adora’s relationship. I really wish the writers ignored all the princesses lore and focused more on their messed up friendship, because that is easily the highlight of the show.

#spop #yes i'm two years late so you're free to ignore this #i just wanted to vent a bit

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wonderfulworldofmichaelford · 5 years ago

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Psycho Analysis: The Grinch

(WARNING! This analysis contains SPOILERS!)

What can be said about the Grinch that hasn’t already been said a million times by a million different people? The Grinch is easily one of the most iconic Christmas characters of all time, up there with the likes of Scrooge, and he even has a similar character arc in which he learns the true meaning of Christmas and becomes a better person. The original Chuck Jones animated short has gone down as one of the most beloved Christmas specials of all time as well as one of the best Dr. Seuss adaptations ever (if not THE best), and it gave the Grinch his iconic theme song which every other adaptation has seen fit to use.

The Jim Carrey live action take and the Illumination version which featured Benedict Cumberbatch in the title role both tried to bring a fresh take to the world’s most beloved classic Christmas curmudgeon, but did they succeed in making him entertaining and engaging as a villain is the real question?

Actor: In the original Chuck Jones short, none other than Frankenstein’s monster himself, Boris Karloff, portrayed the Grinch, but this is mostly due to the fact he was the narrator of the story and the Grinch is the only character who really speaks due to the tale being mostly shown from his POV. Still, let’s not pretend like Karloff isn’t the definitive voice here, especially considering his competition.

Carrey and Cumberbatch are both good actors, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t think they really do the Grinch all too much justice. Carrey, bless his heart, at least comes fairly close, with his Grinch being in line with the original, but at the same time this is a comedic Carrey character coming off of his 90s run as a wacky comic actor. Carrey injects that manic Carrey energy into the performance, and while I think it’s a good performance, I don’t necessarily find it to be a good Grinch,

Cumberbatch faces a similar issue, not helped by his decision to use a weird American accent as opposed to his natural British one, leaving his Grinch sounding like a nasally dork. Again, he doesn’t do a terrible job by any means, but his performance certainly does nothing to convince you the Grinch is a mean, rotten soul.

Motivation/Goals: The Chuck Jones Grinch sticks to the original book to a fault; the Grinch is just a cranky jerk who hates Christmas for some inexplicable reason, and so decides to ruin it for everyone out of petty spite. Yes, it lacks any sort of depth, but the Grinch is a character from a children’s book and he just puts so much darn effort into his plan that it’s really easy to forget he’s just doing this because he is just a miserable bastard.

The two other attempts at the Grinch have gone a long way to giving him some sort of tragic backstory explaining his hatred for Christmas. And… I actually really like that. Yes, yes, villains can just do villainous things because they’re jerks, but I do appreciate the other adaptations attempting to do something interesting with the character and make him a bit more engaging in a feature-length product. In the Jim Carrey film, the Grinch becomes bitter and evil due to a childhood of constant bullying, while the Benedict Cumberbatch Grinch was a lonely orphan who never got to celebrate Christmas. While obviously it’s up to the viewer to decide whether or not these backstories add any sort of interesting element to the Grinch’s hatred of Chrtistmas, it’s hard to deny that it makes a bit more sense than the Grinch suddenly and randomly deciding after half a century that this Christmas was going to be the last ever.

Personality: While this section of Psycho Analysis is going to be semi-retired, the three Grinches are actually a perfect example of where examining the personalities of the characters can actually show a lot about the overall quality. Obviously, the original Grinch is exactly what a Grinch should be, at least in my eyes: a bitter, miserable curmudgeon who takes great joy in bringing misery to others with his selfish, senseless acts of holiday thievery. He’s a mean one, Mr. Grinch.

The Carrey Grinch does still have these elements, but it’s a bit outshone by Carrey’s hammy performance. His Grinch is about as wild as Ace Ventura or the Riddler, and while hammy villains are always fun – and there’s no denying the Grinch is – it makes it a lot easier to see him eventually turning to the light side, especially since he’s actually shown to have some redeeming qualities.

These issues are continued into Cumberbatch’s Grinch, and in fact here the problems peak. Cumberbatch’s Grinch from the start comes off as more as mildly irritated jerk, yet one who really doesn’t seem evil at all, and as the story continues he seems far more like a depressed, unhappy man with undiagnosed mental illness who is suffering due to childhood trauma. You don’t want to say this guy has termites in his smile or that he’s slippery as an eel or that you wouldn’t touch him with a thirty-nine and a half foot pole; you just want to give him a hug and tell him that things are going to get better. He just seems like he needs a friend, not a total life-changing epiphany.

Final Fate: We all know how it goes; his heart grows three sizes and he learns the true meaning of Christmas. Each of the adaptations keeps this in, though obviously to diminishing returns as each successive adaptation has made the Grinch nicer from the get-go in some regard due to the tragic backstories and whatnot.

Best Scene: At least for the original, his best moment is, of course, the montage during “You’re a Mean One Mr. Grinch,” in which we get to see all of the slippery ways this green meanie is ruining the holidays. Of course, this is matched by the epic moment at the end where the Grinch gains super strength from his heart growing three sizes and lifts the sleigh of stolen goods, which is equally awesome whether it’s te animated one or Jim Carrey doing it.

Cumberbatch’s Grinch manages to have a different moment to call his best: after he has redeemed himself, he gets invited to dinner in Whoville, and the scene where he nervously goes to the house and makes small talk is just very sweet and endearing. It’s easily the best scene in the movie and shows that even watered down there’s still plenty of heart to be mined from this timeless tale.

Final Thoughts & Score: I think that the fact that the Grinch is constantly being reimagined is a sign at how impressive and enduring he is as a character, and he’s easily the greatest Christmas villain of all time (with apologies to Hans Gruber, Mr. Potter, Burgermeister Meisterburger, and Kirk Cameron). The original special is obviously the definitive portrayal of the character, to the point where the Grinch became a household name and got himself two more specials, one in which he once again terrorized Whoville (this time with a wagon filled with nightmarish hallucinations) and one where he faced off against the Cat in the Hat, the latter being especially notable for beating Zack Snyder to the punch at making “Crossover Versus Movie in Which One of the Title Characters Is Redeemed By Mentioning His Mother” by 34 years.

The original Grinch even effected himself; his iconic green, almost goblin-like appearance was a departure from the book, where he sort of resembled a more mischievous Who, and it has ended up sticking for the character ever since. Throw in that iconic villain song about how foul he is sang by Thurl Ravenscroft AKA Tony the Tiger, as well as the fact that “Grinch” is up there with “Scrooge” as shorthand for someone who hates Christmas, and it’s easy to justify letting the Chuck Jones take on the Grinch steal not only Christmas, but an 11/10.

Carrey’s take on the character is different, but not bad. I’m not going to say it’s good either, though; I still think Carrey hammed it up too much and just let loose his manic energy. And it’s really weird, because I have a soft spot for the film and I love the performance, and I think the insane energy of Carrey’s performance is what elevates the film and has helped it become a sort of holiday cult classic, but I think that it kind of misses the point of how the Grinch should be. It really boils down to the usual thing with these adaptations that try and add complexities to characters that just work better when they are simple: Jim Carrey’s Grinch is a great, fun character, but he just isn’t a great Grinch. Still, the makeup and costuming is so amazing that I’d feel like a Grinch myself if I stole too many points, so I think a 6/10 is a solid score for a performance that manages to be a bit above your average villain.

And then we get to Cumberbatch. I’m just going to say it: I barely consider his Grinch a villain. He’s just too nice and sad and cranky to really be evil. Sure he has wacky inventions, sure he is a bit passive aggressive to the Whos, but god this guy is just not mean enough. The fact he can just walk into town and interact with the townsfolk and they don’t even bat an eye says a lot about how watered down and toothless this take on the character is. Not helping is the safe, soft design Illumination gave him, as well as Cumberbatch’s weird American accent. Still, I don’t think this Grinch deserves worse than a 4/10 when it comes right down to it. In this case, it’s more that what’s interesting about him as a character saves him from sinking any lower than just being subpar as opposed to the problem with Carrey being that what made him interesting as a character made him less appealing as a Grinch. This guy does still try and steal Christmas, after all… It’s just that he’s so nice to begin with that you really aren’t too shocked when he does end up turning over a new leaf.

While it’s obvious the Grinch has had his ups and downs over the years, the fact he is such a legendary figure and an enduring cultural icon really says a lot for his staying power, as well as that sometimes a simple villain that lacks any complex motivation beyond “he’s a jerk” can really resonate with people. Maybe all of these other adaptations don’t quite measure up to the original animated special, but they don’t need to; it’s just interesting to see what different visions for the Grinch look like from different creators. Whether it’s good or bad, one thing is for sure: he’s a mean one, that Mr. Grinch, and we all love him for it.

You know what we don’t love him for, though? His dental hygiene.

Merry Christmas!

#Psycho Analysis #The Grinch #how the grinch stole christmas #Dr. Seuss #Chuck Jones #Boris Karloff #Jim Carrey #Benedict Cumberbatch

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gheckoe · 7 years ago

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JAMES’S CURATED QUALITY FANFICTION PRIMER

for @rev0lutions-of-ruin, who tumblr does not like letting me tag

foolish bird avoids ao3 for years and misses out on the Good Shit, but it will be okay! she has THIS now. ft. DUMB LONG-WINDED CAPTAIN AMERICA MOVIE EXPLANATIONS, because i don’t think you would watch those movies willingly.

lots of selection - pick and choose, but if you don’t read “out of the dead land” i will be very sad. just treat this as really weird queer genre fiction and you’ll be alright. fics with pornographic content are marked as such, but said content is easy to skip as long as you can pick up on the warning signs.

we’re gonna start with the funny stuff.

nanananana BAT-DAD! (no ships, just bruce being a dad. safe for work and hilarious,)

who needs therapy when you have microsoft excel.

tim drake (robin 3) is a transgender teenage disaster. and bruce wayne is just generally a disaster. (same series.)

okay, now let’s get kind of sad. but not TOO sad.

nananananananana BATMAN (and superman)

this one made watching batman vs. superman worth it. not quite. but kind of. it’s fantastic.

i forget what happens in this one but i know i enjoyed it!

snk? why this, james. why this.

bad show, i know, but. formative experience. i figured out i was trans by projecting my feelings onto jean kirchstein. (not sure how, that’s just what happened.)

this one is stupidly fucking huge, in first person, and still isn’t finished.

included by virtue of some weird nostalgia. it’s half a million words long. try the first few chapters; i can’t guarantee anything that happens. don’t fucking judge me.

boring, punch me in the feelings already. more angst!

STEVEBUCKY

i don’t think you’ve watched the captain america movies, so i will explain them.

the saddest, gayest shit you will ever see. will fuck with your heart, ideally! but (as per always), skip the porn. this fandom is really big on it. UGH.

BUT it’s based off of movie adaptations of comic books, so the backstory is... ridiculous. i will summarize it for you. (tumblr ate this so here goes again)

THE DYNAMIC/history/massive goddamn ship manifesto

two guys, sitting in the great depression, two feet apart because it’s not socially acceptable to be gay

steve: tiny, blonde, always mad and big on SOCIAL JUSTICE. gets into fights for SOCIAL JUSTICE, despite growing up in the great depression when SOCIAL JUSTICE was not a commonly-known phrase or a common thing. he’s a bit of a shit, and he gets into shit. with his scrawny lil fists. he has all sorts of chronic illnesses but somehow manages to survive in a time with shitty medicine, and grow up to get into MORE shit. likes art, but is (partially?) colorblind

also he’s VERY HEAVILY coded as trans.

bucky: taller, brown hair, very popular but secretly a bit of a nerd (loves scifi, and is good at math). likes dancing, girls, and getting steve out of situations that he’s clearly over his head in and talking shit about it after. a bit of a charmer, etcetera.

there are some good fics from this era (”pre-war”) but idk where they are in my bookmarks. will update later.

so wait, what happens?

bucky gets steve out of dumb situations (like fighting a guy for talking during a movie) for pretty much all of their life. childhood friends until after high school-ish.

BUT, bucky is either drafted into the us army (it’s wwii now) or enlists, and steve is left alone in brooklyn, new york, to get into shit, without anyone to bail him out or prevent him from getting into MORE shit. so he finally manages to lie his scrawny, ill ass into the army, and (as one does) volunteers to get experimented on by the american government.

wait, what the fuck

comic books, okay. don’t @ me.

steve manages not to die! he finds a really pretty, badass lady to bisexually fawn over in the army (peggy carter is a fucking miracle), the experiments are a success and he ends up BIG and cured of all his ailments and with superfast metabolism (no alcohol) and superfast healing. he’s made it! (he basically just got really fast, unrealistic HRT hahaha)

... except the army can’t replicate the embiggening process they did with steve because the scientist that did it got killed, and steve is made into a glorified prettyman mascot to sell war bonds, instead of going to punch nazis, which he would be better at. he is a terrible mascot.

meanwhile, bucky has a shitty goddamn time in the european theatre. it’s terrible. he gets kidnapped by the EVIL SCIENCE NAZIS and put in a freaky camp and experimented on, poor guy.

you said you ship them, right? they’ve barely interacted so far, man. what the fuck.

alright alright i’m getting to it

steve the dancing monkey (in his words) is doing a Morale-Raising tour in europe for the troops and they hate it and he hates it. he discovers that... oh shit... bucky and his regiment (?) have been kidnapped by HYDRA! (the science nazis.)

naturally, he of little training MUST go save bucky, because the people that actually know how to save people know that it would be pointless to try. but steve “dumb shit” rogers will do it his own damn self. don’t @ him either. it’s the 1940s so he doesn’t have a phone.

steve will walk to austria, if he has to!... but he actually just gets a plane ride there, from peggy carter the badass and some other guy who’s not that relevant right now.

he KICKS NAZI ASS, SAVES THE PRISONERS, and MAKES MEANINGFUL EYE CONTACT WITH BUCKY ONCE HE FINDS HIM IN THE EVIL SCIENCE NAZI EXPERIMENTATION ROOM. bucky’s so out of it that he barely even tries to question why his old friend is suddenly hot TALL.

steve and the lads walk back from austria, and he is a Bona Fide War Hero and not just a mascot. he has the stylish grime and everything. on the way, he realizes that the lads are pretty cool, and assembles a Diverse Crack Squad of Guys That Really Wanna Kill Nazis from the cool guys he just met. upon return to wherever they were earlier, steve is made a REAL CAPTAIN now, and his Diverse Crack Squad is at liberty to... go kill nazis.

bucky tags along. he is very handsome and talented at math, so he is a SNIPER and saves steve’s dumb ass (from getting shot by nazis, instead of getting punched in the face) like he used to. the Diverse Crack Squad gears up to take down THE WORST OF THE SCIENCE NAZIS, on a train in the mountains! they can change the course of COMIC BOOK WWII!

you said it was tragic. show me the tragic.

the TRAIN INFILTRATION does not go as planned, and bucky is knocked from the train and falls to his cold, painful, (presumably) death. steve can’t watch.

they catch a REALLY BAD SCIENCE NAZI, but it is a very hollow victory. steve goes and tries to get drunk in a blown-up bar where he hung out with bucky and they were really queer together.

the OTHER really bad science nazi now has a plan to BLOW UP COMIC BOOK NEW YORK! steven will NOT allow this to happen.

he’s also kind of given up on life. he has a flair for the dramatic, and also the ambiguously suicidal.

not that being ambiguously suicidal adds to the Dramatic Romance of this. it doesn’t, and that would be creepy. the point is that steve rogers has a LOT of issues, including the ones that science can’t cure.

this SPECIFIC PLANE is headed towards new york, full of explosives. steve manages to get aboard the plane... and doesn’t even try to escape. he crashes it into the water in the atlantic ocean, saying goodbye to peggy on the radio as it hits. he is also presumed dead. it’s... basically a suicide attempt.

flash forward seventy-some years.

wait, wasn’t he in the avengers?

steve rogers is found inside the frozen plane encased in ice in the ocean. he’s revived (super healing, woop) and... doesn’t say anything, because he’s really not up to expressing feelings.

he has a TERRIBLE time. all of his friends are dead or old and went about their lives without him, and he’s alone in a confusing new world. (but the food is better, vaccines are good, and no polio.) he’s not fantastic at making new friends, because, as shown by him and bucky’s entire relationship, he’s a bit of a sad introvert and just picks one person and... holds on.

blah blah avengers one blah blah, new team and fighting BAD THINGS. but steve is too angsty to make friends. he joins the new security organization that peggy founded, SHIELD, without really inspecting it that well because... he didn’t plan to be alive past flying the plane into the ice, much less in the 21st century. he doesn’t know what he’d do otherwise.

idk that sounds a little slow

he has DEPRESSION. it is a little slow. but it’ll pick up! (not emotionally.) now it’s very anti-establishment action flick. enter CAPTAIN AMERICA (2): THE WINTER SOLDIER.

steve makes a friend. actually, two! sam and natasha are wonderful, and they have some things in common. but steve obtains friendship while realizing that SHIELD is corrupt to the core and actually infiltrated by HYDRA, so he and his new friends have to... burn it to the ground. he “died” (or tried to) to stop HYDRA, and it’s still here and worse then ever. things feel pointless.

to make it worse, he’s fighting this creepily effective impersonal masked assassin on a bridge and oh fuck, oh fuck it’s bucky and didn’t he die years and years ago and his arm is METAL what happened to him, and he’s pretending not to recognize steve.

HYDRA is planning to eliminate sources of resistance for their new world order via shooting them from the air, so steve has to take one specific FLYING DEATHMACHINE down. he does, and brainwashed HYDRA bucky, the winter soldier, is there to stop him.

steve makes an appeal to emotions. “bucky stop you can’t do this”

bucky is confused, but he’s been programmed to do this.

steve tells his coworkers to JUST SHOOT THE DEATHMACHINE DOWN ALREADY, because he’s... given up again. he’s very talented at equating heroism with self-sacrifice/suicide. but he disables the DEATH part of the DEATHMACHINE without it getting shot down.

bucky has been trapped underneath a beam, but steve’s with bucky till the end of the line, even if bucky is brainwashed and lacking memories. steve drops his shield in the water and falls.

it’s another attempt to die. stop that, steve. go to therapy.

bucky doesn’t remember who he is, but he jumps after him. steve is very injured from his fight with bucky, and wouldn’t have survived the fall, but bucky drags him to shore and... leaves.

steve wakes up in the hospital with his new friend sam. they’re going to track bucky down, even if it takes forever.

ISN’T THAT FUCKED UP? isn’t that sad? it’s terrible. now, fics. most of them are after ca:tws, because that’s when the ship got popular. a lot of them center around Finding Bucky and Getting To Know Him Again.

there’s a lot of sappy sad let’s-teach-bucky-how-to-be-a-person-again-and-get-steve-to-be-less-sad but i like the ones that are like sad action movies, or sad queer movies, and less like sad romance movies. my bookmarks are a mess, so here’s the best stuff i could dredge up.

out of the dead land: this one kills me every single time. there’s something terribly cinematic about it. but, as fandom is wont to do, there’s porn near the end. skip that part. ew. it’s an introspective scifi action epic, with just enough identity issues to make you want to cry! READ IT, IT’S IMPORTANT.

this: alternate universe, sans steve “dying.” epistolary. sad, as far as i can remember. (i’d rec the rest of this series but i think it’s best if you read this one first?)

courtroom/media fic. what if the winter soldier got arrested after the movie? (cap fandom does this kind of fake-media thing very well. i just reread it. it’s still good.)

this one isn’t exactly groundbreaking, but it’s a different take on the fandom’s typical post-winter soldier bucky interpretation. quite short, 100% safe for work.

in this one, steve successfully gets drunk, makes some friends, and gains some coping skills. good for dark humour. there’s porn somewhere but i’m sure it’s easily skippable, otherwise i wouldn’t have bookmarked it. not 100% the best thing every but it’s pretty fun.

if you aren’t team s/b all the way then we can’t be friends, but here’s some other marvel stuff i guess

lesbians, ballet, feelings? it’s a rarepair but it’s pretty lovely. au, no background knowledge required. basically a beautiful indie film that’s kind of oscar-bait. you will like this one, i think. there’s probably porn somewhere.

trans black widow. (that chapter only, not sure what the rest is). not very well-written and i have terrible memory but i’m 75% sure it made me cry.

ENJOY! or try to. don’t feel obligated to. but please at least TRY out of the dead land, it is groundbreaking.

#teya #personap #fandom

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redorblue · 7 years ago

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Books 27-29/2017 - The Black Magician Trilogy by Trudi Canavan

If you have any kind of positive feelings for this book - stay away. I mean it. This was possibly - probably - the worst read of my life. The only reason I made it through all three of them was that I wanted to make an educated complaint and pick up everything I could of what is wrong with these books. And believe me, it’s a lot: not just quality-wise, it has a whole lot of other issues like misogyny, racism and internalized homophobia. I just finished the last part, and normally I let a book settle for a few days before I write about it, but I’m so mad about this, and I have been since I was a few chapters into the first part, that I can’t put this off.

I’m gonna put this under a cut because I don’t wanna spread my hate for this book farther than necessary where possibly underaged fans could see it, and because it’s gonna be looong. I have a lot to say.

First, let’s start with why it is simply not a good book. I have to add, I read a German translation that I picked up from the flea market (thank God I didn’t spend more money on this. I get why someone wanted to get rid of them now). I’m not used to reading in German, and there are bad translations, but there are also very good translations, and normally I get used to German a few chapters in. I guess in the end it happened here, too, so although the translator may be to blame, I really don’t believe so, because even if she screwed it up, there’s so many other things screaming that Trudi Canavan is a bad writer that I strongly tend to blame the author. Again, I may be wrong, and she may have improved, considering that this is her first published work - however that happened - and after all style is subjective and all that, but I really didn’t like the way this book was written. I don’t mean to be arrogant and play the high-and-mighty literary critic here, there’s lots of books that aren’t considered literature which I love, and many of those are YA books with some fantasy elements. So these books could have appealed to me. But apart from all the things that alternately made me mad, annoyed, and second-hand embarassed, the way this series is written just didn’t do anything for me. Not even the gay romance, which is normally a pretty sure-fire way to get me interested. Everything about these characters, their interactions and the story in general just felt so way beyond belief, so implausible, that it didn’t make me feel anything at all at best, and cringing away at worst. And to me, that’s just bad writing.

Let me elaborate on why I found so many things so implausible. First, the romances. The books cover around 2,5 years I think, which means that there would have been time to develop them properly, but most of them just went from either hating the other person or not knowing them at all, to all-out love in two or three weeks. And while that may happen in real life, you have to lay the groundwork for that in a book, drop some hints, have some reflections, show the audience where this is going, instead of just dropping it into their laps. It wasn’t a surprise who fell for whom because it’s all very predictable and cliché, but still, you can’t just do that and expect your readers to accept it and get emotionally invested (only it seems like you can?? Because there’s people who like this book and give it good reviews?? Dear God how...). Like, it was soo obvious that the main protagonist (Sonea) was going to pick the tall-dark-handsome mystery guy in the end, and that at first she was going to have a thing for this shiny Nice Guy^TM who was the first to ever pay her any attention, all while her childhood friend was pining away for her which of course she never noticed evva. This childhood friend thing I was still ready to overlook because it happened early when I was still optimistic that these books would get better, and because they at least had a relationship at some point - even though they hadn’t seen each other for years and he fell for her in about an hour. Sorry, but love on first sight is really not a thing for me. But yeah, okay. With the second guy, the Nice one, I was starting to get really impatient, because they had two short scenes together in which they barely talked, and all of a sudden they were kissing and talking about the future and she was thinking about waiting for him for four more years while he disappeared into his backwater village... I’m sorry girl, but didn’t you have a life, and dreams, and plans for the future?? Like those you talked about for the last book and a half so that even the dumbest reader would get sick of it? But hey, who needs a personality, or (female) agency, especially in your protagonist, when you can have so much love with this really dreamy guy? Not the author, I guess.

And then, there’s boyfriend No. 3, the one who makes it all the way into her heart in the end, but then he dies and she loses all her will to live. After hating him for two years, falling for him for three days and being with him for two weeks. Yeah, sounds romantic, and it gets even better when you consider the fact that she’s half is age. If you thought the first two guys were stereotypes, this is the one to rule them all. He has it all - tall, dark, mysterious, handsome, powerful, and I guess the author wanted him to have a soft and loving heart under his unapproachable shell, but she waaayyy overdid it. He’s not just gruff, he’s downright cruel, he’s a narcissist who believes he’s the only one who can be trusted with anything, he’s dismissive and arrogant and indifferent even toward those he calls his friends (until they die, but then it’s a bit late for that buddy) and just overall an awful person. Which really doesn’t make me inclined to care for his oh so terrible backstory. Yes it’s sad that you were a slave for a few years, kept for the magical energy your master could harvest from you, I get that, but it doesn’t give you the right to behave like an asshole and manipulate and emotionally abuse everyone around you. The author has him sacrifice himself in the end, which comes straight outta nowhere character-wise, so he ends up a glorified martyr and war hero with no one ever challenging him in any way, making him face up to his mistakes and the consequences they had for everyone’s lives. I’m sorry, but this is bad writing, this makes it look like he was right to treat everyone like shit. And, even worse, this is the guy who gets the girl and is presented like this oh so desirable man that he really is not. This isn’t supposed to sound sexist from my side, it’s just the way this relationship is presented. At some point the protagonist even says it exactly that way, when Nice Guy and Asshole have a fit of jealousy because of course she’s something to possess and have a pissing contest over. God I hate him, this whole relationship is so cringy, and I don’t even wanna get into the misogyny yet because it is not an isolated incident and I’m not done with him yet.

So he fails as a person, and also as a boyfriend, but even the one thing that he could do well because of all his power and forbidden knowledge - he fucks it up. The third book ends with an invasion of the magician guild’s city by some Bad Guys, and yes, he fights them then, but he knew that they were a danger for the last ten years or so, and he never told anybody although people were dying because of it, because of course he knows best and doesn’t need anybody to help him. So when the bad guys finally arrive the city is woefully unprepared because he told them all of two weeks ago, as part of his defense while he is being accused of practising black magic and having killed people - so the whole thing doesn’t look at all like an excuse, oh no, not coming from him who lied to them for like ten years. Don’t get me wrong, this guild is terrible and annoyingly obstinate in its own way, but I don’t blame them for not entirely believing him when he tells them after such a long time, as part of an excuse for committing pretty much the worst crime they can think of, and without offering any easily verifiable evidence. Good plan, yeah. You just managed to severely weaken the one force that has at least a tiny chance of fighting off the bad guys by dividing them and being too secretive to give them any proof, instead of having spent the last years preparing them for a war that you knew very well was at least a possibility. Amazing job.

So yeah, that’s the guy young girls reading these books are supposed to pine for. Great message. By comparison the two other romances in the books are better than this, but it hurts my fingers to write that because one is laden with orientalism and fetishization, and the other, while trying really hard to be progressive, falls into so many silently homophobic pitfalls, it’s pathetic. In both cases I’m pretty sure it’s not intentional, but when you’re a writer creating a whole new world and you want to include diverse ethnicities and sexual orientations - which in and of itself is laudable - you have to be careful how you write your LGBT+ and your characters of colour. There’s many harmful tropes out there, and I certainly don’t expect a book to avoid every single one out there, or claim to notice every problematic thing, but in this book it’s not an isolated incident, it’s simple ignorance and lazyness to do a bit of research about the harmful stereotypes you have inadvertently absorbed your whole life so as not to repeat them.

This kind of reflection clearly didn’t happen neither during the writing process nor during editing, so what we get is a mess. What we get is one relationship where the woman is described as looking like someone of Central Asian descent, with all the stereotypes commonly to be found in an Oriental tale written by a Western person. This woman never gets a backstory, she just kinda appears on the scene and the reader never really knows what she wants, only that she’s there to help out her white, male love interest in his time of need, before maliciously abusing his trust and disappearing into the woods again. We’re told that she’s good at fighting, but we never see her really doing it - the only one she ever really shares screentime with is her love interest with whom she has a whole lot of sex. Really, every scene either ends with them having sex, or her talking dirty to him, which makes it appear as if all that’s on her mind is sex! And ain’t that stereotypical of the mysterious, Oriental seductress who spends all of her time either spinning intrigues or plotting how to get the next innocent white boy into her clutches. So, overall, absolutely terrible romance, and I’m gonna come back to this because like sexism, this orientalism/racism is not an isolated incident either.

The other relationship lacking reflection that we get is the one between this gay magician from the very conservative country where the main story is set, and this also gay scholar from a slightly less conservative, but all the more patronizing culture. The book at least questions the first country’s stance on the issue, although it only does so through its gay characters, which severely restricts the validity of the point considering that none of the straight characters ever even thinks to reflect if this stance on homosexuality might be wrong. What I can’t forgive is that the narrative never once questions the stance of the slightly less conservative country, which treats its gays (only men, mind you, there’s never once mention of a gay woman) as lewd weirdos and outcasts and calls them “boys”. This is so bad. It’s one thing to present a culture that views gay men as not-quite-men - we all know it happens often enough - but if you write such a culture and you don’t want this to be the point you’re making, you have to criticize and contradict such a view through your narrative. Have them talk about it, have them think about it, I don’t care, just make it explicit that it’s wrong. And don’t be lazy and hide behind this excuse that the readers will get it through plot alone - you have to write it down somewhere so that casual readers won’t miss it. Otherwise you end up with something like this where this culture you wanted to present as so progressive and kind of a save haven ends up patronizing and emasculating your gay male characters, and this doesn’t subvert neither harmful tropes nor real-life views. Just like the fact that your gay characters hide their relationship until after the end of the books, and find nothing wrong with it because it’s just the culture they’re living in. This is a latent confirmation that it’s right that gay couples have to hide their relationship and don’t confront others with their being different, and again, if this is not what you wanted as a writer, make it explicit. And for God’s sake, include more than one kiss in three whole books between your gay couple, when the straight ones kiss all the time and even get explicit scenes. Because otherwise your oh-so-progressive gay couple is just two really close male friends who happened to kiss once. Better write a great platonic relationship then and leave the gay stuff to the people who actually know how to handle it and won’t turn it around on itself.

So, I think I’ve established that in my opinion, the romantic relationships are absolute rubbish. I would like to say that the platonic ones fare better, but honestly, they just don’t get enough screentime for me to say. It’s quite astonishing - in a book series with 1840 pages (in my paperback edition) there doesn’t seem to be any space for friendships or family bonds. We’re told that they exist, mind you, but I personally didn’t really understand why those two people are friends, what makes their friendship special, what characterizes it. Not even what characterizes the characters, for that matter, because even the way the main characters are fleshed out feels a bit half-assed, and don’t even get me started on the secondary characters. And with a bit of good will, I could ignore that fact if the plot was really great, but it’s not either, so I honestly don’t get what the author did with all that space. I can summarize what happens in each book with one sentence: The first is about Sonea hiding from the mages because they’re bad, then being scared of them because they’re bad, and then suddenly joining them because plot. In the second book, she’s bullied by her classmates, but doesn’t do anything about it on her own because oh no, she could hurt them, and doesn’t tell anyone who could do something about it either because plot. The third is about the great conspiracy with the war and all that and fares a bit better action-wise, but it’s still mainly Sonea following this guy of hers along because apparently he needs her, and I guess he does, but he still treats her like shit right until they have sex. So yeah, plenty of space for character development, but for some reason it just doesn’t happen.

To be fair, I guess Sonea developed a bit, considering that she’s not as scared of pretty much everything as she was in the beginning - although the number of times that “her blood froze in her veins” really made me dislike that phrase. Her childhood friend developed a bit in that he gained a higher position in the city’s underworld. And Mr. Tall-Dark-Mysterious (TDM, for future reference) opened up a bit about his oh-so-tragic past. But is that really character development? I guess if you squinted you could count it as that if these were some unimportant secondary characters, but these are the main protagonists and POVs! In almost 2000 pages there should be a bit more than that! And if that’s what the main characters get... There was this one character that I kinda liked, another POV but a secondary one, who was Sonea’s first mentor in the guild and some kind of father figure for her. That was the one relationship where I saw a bit of potential - until the second half of the second book, when TDM takes Sonea hostage (romantic, I know) and forbids her to ever speak to her former mentor again, which effectively ends their relationship for good. So no development there, either.

But for a character to develop, and especially for a relationship between two characters two develop, you first need exactly that: characters. And this book doesn’t have any. There’s very few things I could tell you about the POVs’ personality traits, and it’s mostly just stereotypes - Sonea’s a classic Mary Sue, TDM is... well, TDM, the mentor is fatherly and benevolent, the childhood friend is adventurous, and the gay magician represses his feelings for his friends. I’m not kidding, that’s basically it. The same goes for backstory - none of them seems to have parents, siblings or other relatives, except for Sonea who has an aunt and an uncle that she’s apparently close to, but who briefly show up on screen around three times and get mentioned three more. Everyone’s fathers just kinda disappeared into the void, and the mothers are all dead to make it a bit more tragic - another tired trope that is a bit beyond belief because how on earth did all those mothers get dead, and why doesn’t even one father seem to care for his offspring? There’s one exception, the mentor guy about whom we’re told that he cares for his son, but again, it’s just that - we’re told he does, because otherwise, from their interactions, we wouldn’t get it. And that doesn’t count. The same goes for all other aspects of backstory, which is typically limited to a handful of sentences except for when we’re supposed to care for TDM - he actually gets a handful of paragraphs. So generous. I normally prefer character-driven stories over plot-driven stories, so I don’t mind that much when there’s not an awful lot of plot if (!!!) the characters are well done and engaging. But they’re not, they’re basically walking paper stands, and that I can’t forgive.

So far I mainly talked about what makes this trilogy lazy writing. Now I’m gonna talk about what makes it not only bad, but really problematic. I already touched on homophobia, but due to the lack of real gay representation there’s not much more I can add to that, so I’ll focus on misogyny/sexism and on racism/orientalism. I’m not sure how established the latter concept is outside my academic circle, so here’s a good summary of what it means. Basically, orientalism refers to a binary worldview that presents the West as progressive, dynamic, and inherently superior to a backward, barbaric and static East that therefore has to be rescued and remodeled by the West. Of course there are other issues like racism and imperialism tied into it that also refer to other non-Western cultures and ethnicities, but orientalism transports a specific set of stereotypes about people and cultures from the Middle East and North Africa, typically Muslims. It’s hateful, it’s patronizing, it harms people, and it’s all to be found in these books.

There’s two main examples of this. This fantasy world that the author describes includes two countries inhabited by people of colour: Lonmar, where the people are described as dark-skinned, and Sachaka, where they look like someone of Central Asian descent. First of all, there aren’t many characters from these countries that even get a bit of individuality - they’re mainly just there for background noise and never step outside the crowd (a stereotype that is also to be found in orientalism, specifically in the “Arab Street”). For Lonmar, there’s one named, recurring character who isn’t entirely to be trusted, but overall a decent guy - because, and here’s the problem, he has been socialized in white Kyralia (another thing typical of orientalism - the distinction between the “good”, Westernized muslims, and the “bad” oriental ones, easily distinguishable by dress and socialization). All the other (few) characters from Lonmar are not characters but crowds with not a single speck of individuality and one feature that unites them all: they’re all members of this really strict, intolerant religion specific to Lonmar that is so obviously modeled after - you guessed it - Islam. Or rather the monolithic, prejudiced version of Islam an uninformed Westerner might think of if they only consumed what was given to them by mainstream media and never talked to a Muslim person in their entire life. This religion locks up its female adherents, it punishes homosexuality with public execution, it talks a lot about the unbelievers and is generally intolerant, it doesn’t give a f* about individual wishes and desires, and - maybe worst of all - it’s canonically all based on a lie. On the imaginary ramblings of a madman who for some reason was able to trick people into believing in him and making him a prophet. I can’t begin to express how awful this is. With the homophobia I don’t believe it was intentional - but this is. This has to be. And I’m so, so mad at this woman for mocking the beliefs, the worldview and the very lives of 1,6 billion people on earth in such a an offhanded, cruel way.

And that’s not even the only example, oh no. There’s also Sachaka. Sachaka, happens to be the homecountry of the murderous lunatics who terrorize the city in the first two books and assault it in the third, and who all happen to be brown-skinned. There are a few more characters from this country who had the honour to receive a name, but the way they’re described is in no way less problematic than the Lonmars. The only character who’s not openly evil, is the deceitful nymphomaniac who serves as a love interest to the white childhood friend. I already mentioned how unbearably sexualized she is, which is terrible in and of its own, but takes on a whole other dimension in combination with her race. It’s another feature of orientalism to either present oriental women as sheepish victims of oppression waiting to be rescued, or as eroticized/fetishized succubus-like beings, beautiful and alluring and generally a (white) man’s slavering fantasy. And not only is the only woman and morally okay character from Sachaka presented in such a way, she also - surprisingly- doesn’t get not a single line of backstory. We don’t know what she does back home, who she is, why the hell she ended up in this white-hot mess of a story, what she wants... Nothing. She’s literally just there to seduce the white guy, help him get over the protagonist, and save his ass once before she betrays him and disappears again. A ripped-out page out of a playboy edition could fulfil every single purpose she has in the story, even the saving part. There, white guy gets attacked by one of the evil magicians, and she mainly buys him time to get away, although we’re told (ha!) that she’s a good fighter. Put the playboy page in evil guy’s face, wait until his sex-crazed oriental mind gets distracted, run away, problem solved.

Because of course he’s sex-crazed, he’s oriental, what did you expect? They’re all that way, men and women, sexual predators all over the board. In addition to being cruel, sadistic, conniving, good at killing but bad at healing and collaborating, power-hungry, scheming... And did I mention that they keep their slaves like cattle? Yeah, no idea what that reminds me of. Plus, as cunning as they are presented, they’re also really stupid. Before the invasion, the bad guys have been sending slaves to the magicians’ city for years to spy on them and find out whether they know how to use black magic or not (they don’t, except for TDM which is why he’s the only one who can kill them and has to go on this lonesome quest alone, isolated from everyone he ever cared about... You get the idea). This is so stupid. They do it for years, they send slave after slave with no result at all, when at the same time it’s a well-established fact that when magicians communicate with each other mentally, anyone can listen in! You can’t tell me that in all this time, no one ever mentioned black magic being forbidden! Because it’s not a secret anyone except for TDM even knows is necessary to keep, so no one knows that they can’t talk about it. This is another instance of the plot being unnecessary complicated and like a desperate attempt to create some artificial conflict that could have been solved within five minutes... But I’m digressing.

And it’s not only the evil mages who are presented in such a bad light; the few lines we get about the country (it’s a desert, by the way, just like Lonmar. Surprise) suggest that the rest is pretty much the same. Not as mad maybe, but just as power-hungry and conniving as the bad guys, and certainly not as civilized as the white countries around it. So it’s no surprise when the protagonist, no less, starts thinking about some White Man’s Burden kind of shit. The backstory is this: Some 500 years ago there was a war between Sachaka (bad) and Kyralia (good). Kyralia won and, when drawing back, operated on a scorched earth-policy, leaving behind a wasteland and turning their backs, for which the people from Sachaka still want revenge (500! years! later!) because that’s what orientals do when their honour is scratched. The protagonist reflects on that story and then honestly starts thinking about how Kyralia should have stayed in Sachaka, basically occupying it, in order to try and teach the backward Sachakans how to be civilized. This... is some seriously fucked-up shit. My dear author, not only is every single one of your big bad guys a person of colour, and not only is the description of their cultures and their characterization creaking under the weight of all your prejudice, but now you have your protagonist want to civilize them? Who are you, George Bush? Or some 19th-century missionary despairing under the terrible weight of his burden to make the barbaric indigenous half-apes wear silk hats? Whoever your soul was in the last go-round, let me tell you, you’re not making a point for the almighty Western civilization if you write crap like this.

Okay deep breaths. Last issue, sexism and misogyny. I feel like the author wanted these books to make a point about female agency and Strong Female Characters^TM, but as with gay representation she entirely missed the mark and instead wrote something that’s more detrimental to positive female representation than anything. I already mentioned in the relationship part how her boyfriend treat the protagonist as a possession to fight over and how she has apparently internalized and endorsed that view, and in the character part how the mothers were all killed off before the story even started in order to add some trauma to the characters’ backstories. This is lazy, it’s misogynistic in that it robs these women of everything that makes them human (mostly they’re not even named) for the sake of shock value, and then the narrative doesn’t even use what it bought so dearly and minimizes the effect the deaths of the mothers have on the characters, and thereby a mother’s contribution to her child’s development. It makes the mothers mere means to an end, and it doesn’t do the same to the fathers, which makes it deeply misogynist.

This misogyny is glaringly obvious in the off-stage deaths of two women: the mentor guy’s wife, and TDM’s first love. About the mentor guy’s wife, we know barely more than that she was the mentor guy’s wife, and that her name was Yilara. Mentor guy loved her, and had a son with her, and then she died of... something. Doesn’t matter what it was, really, because her only purpose in the story was to give mentor guy a sad past. And it can’t have been that sad, because he mentions her like twice, and their son doesn’t mention her at all. I don’t know how old he was when she died (see what I mean), so he might not remember, but considering that mentor guy claims he still loves her, he could think about her a bit more often and remember a bit more about her than her lying in her bed, softly smiling, like a saintly martyr. This is already bad, but the other case is infinitely worse. Naturally, it involves TDM. He got to know his first love while he was a slave in Sachaka as she belonged to the same evil guy he did. She was evil guy’s sex slave (this author has no imagination), and when evil guy found out she and TDM loved each other, he raped her to death. Poor her, you might think, what a terrible end to a terrible life. Well, that’s not what our dear protagonist thought. What she thought was, poor TDM, this is so sad for him, he had to suffer through so much. Him, him him, him. I don’t even want to call the slave girl (no name)’s death shock value or manpain any more, because this is on a totally different level. There’s this girl, probably a woman of colour, against whom a horrific, sexualized and clearly gendered form of violence was used repeatedly, and in the end to kill her no less, and all our also female protagonist can think of is how much her boyfriend must have suffered. She doesn’t spend a single thought on the girl. Not one. And neither does the narrative itself, this is all we ever hear about her. TDM had the hots for her, she was brutally murdered, he got sad, the end. It’s astonishing how often the sheer wrongness of these books leaves me speechless.

And there’s more. I’ve read a few times that this book has some Strong Female Characters^TM and generally does well on female representation. Well, no. I recently came across this amazing article about this particular brand of Strong Female Characters that comes to the conclusion that lots of allegedly strong women in media, typically tomboy-like women with “male” interests and skills and no meaningful relationships with other women, are nothing but empty tropes whose only function is to prop up the male protagonist who saves the day. This is exactly what happens here, with the male skill being magic/fighting. Not only is there an astonishing lack of female characters featuring exactly no diversity at all (except for the nymphomaniac of course), but they also don’t interact. There’s a few snippets of conversation here and there, but those are all influenced by social hierarchy and consist of barely more than small talk, and none of the women except Sonea get any depth at all. They get names and functions, if they’re lucky, but that’s it. And even Sonea, whose head we spend more time in than anyone else’s, is so consumed by his wishes every time a man comes along and expresses the slightest interest in her that it’s hard to spot a personality underneath. Like honestly, she looses the will to live, along with all of her plans and other relationships, because the guy she was in a relationship with for all of 2-3 weeks died. That’s so over the top, and so frustrating... I mean I get it, you loved him, love can be quick I guess, but that quick?? I get that you can’t turn to your girl-friends or your mother for support because oopsie daisy you don’t have any of those, but there’s some men who care about you, and not even in a sexual way, so come on.

And then there’s the ending. Oh how I love the ending. I mentioned that TDM dies in the end - the first good decision the author made, although I can’t shake the feeling that the protagonist’s role in the end is mainly to augment the impact his sacrifice has. Not only is he presented as a martyr and the ultimate hero of the story who gave all of his life energy to save the city from evil, conveniently never having to face up to all the wrong he’s done and the impact it had on the lives of those around him. His death also practically ends life for the protagonist with his death being her last POV scene. I guess some may find that romantic, but it seems as though her voice just disappears after he’s dead, never to be heard of again, and that robs her of all agency of personality. It’s as if she only has those things with him, while through his backstory we know that he had them without her. And I can’t shake the feeling that that’s because he’s male, and oh so dreamy. But that’s not the last we hear of him, oh no. Because after the last chapter, there’s an epilogue where we learn (from another person’s POV) that he left something of his behind. Namely his sperm, inside the protagonist, who’s pregnant with his child now. She mentions at some point that it’s too early for her to have a child, but now it happened, and we have no idea how she feels about that because this huge turning point in her life still isn’t told from her point of view to drive the point home that TDM’s death really meant the end of her. Again the narrative puts him over her although she’s the supposed protagonist of the story, which fits neatly into the Strong Female Character concept I mentioned earlier.

And it’s not only that, the story of how she got pregnant in the first place is incredibly sexist, too. Apparently there’s a way for both male and female magicians to avoid pregnancy. But the males are only taught how to do it per personal request because obviously it’s not a man’s responsibility whether he puts children in the world or not. The women get taught a bit more regularly, someone takes them aside to teach them when they begin to show interest in boys and the danger arises, but no one ever did that for Sonea because as far as the teachers knew, no one wanted to sleep with her. First of all, this is stupid because what if the teachers don’t notice in time or the sex just happens without a lot of courting before the actual act? And second of all... The message is basically that if no one likes you while you’re in school, or probably if you’re ugly, you are never going to have sex anyway, so you don’t need to be told how to avoid unwanted consequences. If you’re a woman, that is, for the men it’s different. This is so incredibly sexist. And in Sonea’s case this kind of thinking had the worst possible consequences: he thought she’d take care of it, and she thought he would, so now there’s a baby, and not even a father to match (bad as he would have been) and that is that. I’m yet undecided as to whether this sexist arrangement is just another carelessness from the side of the author, or a way to get the author what she wanted plot-wise because an ending to a romance novel needs to have a baby, no matter if it makes sense together with the rest of the story or not.

I could elaborate further on pretty much any point I made here, but I think I got the gist across, so fear not, I’m gonna stop (if anyone even made it to this point which I doubt). Writing up all of this made me so mad that I’m actually considering writing to the author to let her know what I think of this trilogy of hers. A bit more politely than this (maybe), but I feel like this is so problematic that I can’t just let it stand there without objecting to its messages in any way I can. After being done with this I have no doubt whatsoever that this was the most awful book I’ve ever read, and I dearly hope that it will keep this position for the rest of my life.

#books #2017 #the black magician trilogy #book review #racism #sexism #misogyny #orientalism #islamophobia #homophobia #a whole lot of other phobias and -isms #worst book of my life #trudi canavan

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bts-love-sweat-tears · 7 years ago

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Third Base

Title: Third Base (title is more provocative than actual story, lol)

Pairing: BTS x Reader (feat. cameos by Tae and J-Hope! I love them just as much, but I feel like Tae as a fuckboy has been done better than I ever could, and I just can’t see Hobi as a fuckboy at all-my love for him is too pure. To Tae and Hobi-stans, please don’t be sad or feel that I love them any less!)

Type: baseball!au, fuckboy!au, fluff (surprise!), Also, I guess my Yoonseok/Sope shipper side is showing?

Rating: PG

Word Count: approx. 1,517

Inspiration: For @allbtsvideos, based on this post! also: I’m learning how to use gifs lol, sorry I went a bit crazy! I hope you like this story // This doesn’t count as my Tuesday upload-this is just something extra I wrote for fun. I’ll be posting the final chapter of Ice Princess tomorrow night as planned.

You sighed and adjusted your hat lower onto your forehead, desperately trying to avoid sunburn as the third base line coach. Why had you agreed to this to begin with? Your dad was obsessed with baseball, and had played semi-professionally for a local team. He had been hoping for a son to “carry on the torch,” but when it became clear that you were going to be an only child, your dad coached you non-stop at softball, and was the embarrassing parent at every game who shouted things at the opposing team. You were perfectly adequate at softball (actually better than that, due to the intensive training your dad had subjected you to after official practices had ended), but it was clear that you didn’t really have the passion for it.

After your junior year of high school, you gave up softball to focus more on college testing. Your dad had begrudgingly accepted your choice, and then had promptly gone back out and volunteered as a practice coach for the team he used to play for. You had agreed to join him as a sort of father-daughter bonding experience. This was how you found yourself in your one free afternoon, surrounded by your dad and seven strangely-haired men around you. Did they think they were in a boy band or something? Despite their weird hair, they were surprisingly good, and your dad was excited about their prospects for the season.

The first one you had noticed when you stepped onto the field was a boy with a razor jawline and bubblegum pink hair. He kept smirking and winking at you. At first you had thought that he was cute, but his behavior was weirding you out. Anytime he’d come past third base, he’d stand way too close and casually wipe the sweat off of his forehead with the bottom hem of his shirt, conveniently giving you a full view of his (admittedly excellent) six-pack. You know, because using his sleeve would have been too convenient. He was only a little taller than you, but he seemed exceptionally pleased with that quarter of an inch for some reason.

His friend with the box smile and golden skin kept shouting across the field about the height difference, which made Bubblegum Boy blush and smile shyly. You seriously couldn’t get a read on him. He kept going from shy to overly sexy in the span of 0.0005 seconds and it was honestly giving you a little whiplash. Before you could ruin your professional demeanor and call him out for crowding you (among other things), he was gone, moving so beautifully it almost hurts physically. He threw you yet another wink, while simultaneously swooping his hair back, when he realized he got the run in. You can tell that boy is dangerous, and are perfectly content staying on one side of the field with him on the other.

Before you can recover and rally your defenses, there another person arrived on third. You should really be focusing on the “game,” but it’s just practice and you know they know the rules. It’s not like you could get a word in edgewise with your dad’s (happy?) emphatic shouts. What you are focused on instead are the dimples on the cheeks of the very tall person in front of you. For some unnecessary reason, he’s wearing glasses during the practice, but somehow it makes him all the more appealing.

He didn’t seem too interested in the baseball game, but rather in debating the meaning and origin of the phrase “don’t hate the player, hate the game.” You were pretty sure there’s no compelling backstory there, and when that didn’t work and you rolled your eyes, he tried another strategy. He started quoting Rilke and Neruda right there, as though you were already dating. How presumptuous. He began the famous quote about princesses and dragons, but he was forced to run (awkwardly, you might add, with flailing arms) to home plate, where he was struck out. Clearly, poetry and not sports, were his forte.

The same however, could not be said of his friend, who had more muscles than anyone his age should. You tried not to stare at his legs, forcing yourself to stare straight ahead. He was blatantly staring at you, but whenever you would look over, he would freeze, like a bunny in the headlights.

You had seen him around school, since he was only a year or two older. You were pretty sure he had just graduated. Maybe his stare was him trying to place how he knew you? When you caught him looking, he started talking a mile a minute, trying to explain the rules to you. You couldn’t decide if it was awkward or endearing that he was mansplaining baseball to you. Hello? Your dad was obsessed and you had been captain of the varsity softball team. Not to mention, you were his coach. He seemed to realize your displeasure, and apologized, calling you “noona.” Knowing that he was actually your sunbae from school, you said, “It’s okay, I forgive you, Jungkook-oppa.” Before you the word oppa had even finished leaving your lips, he was running for home. Why had he run off like that? Hadn’t he just been explaining the rules to you? Who snuck for home? You had to admit that he could run insanely fast, but he was struck out by the pitcher, a boy who seemed to be radiating positive energy. The pitcher laughed, and Jungkook (oppa?) glared in your direction for the rest of practice. Very mature.

The next boy gave dimple boy a run for his money in term in lack of success. Dimple boy at least tried to run, but this pale, slow-moving person seemed like they were actively hoping to be struck out by the pitcher. He had an earbud in one ear, and you could hear Kendrick Lamar’s new mixtape blasting. He was also wearing a light hoodie with the hood up-watch out, we have a badass over here, you thought to yourself, wondering why your dad didn’t enforce the uniforms. You looked at him and tried a small smile, and he looked back disinterestedly. He was somehow even paler than you, and you wondered how often he skipped practice. Whereas the other boys had been winking, philosophizing, or generally being awkward, this guy clearly thought he was the metaphorical cool guy in the corner of the party who didn’t talk to anyone.

Or at least that was what you thought, until the pitcher got hit in the arm by a return hit. Despite his earlier lethargy, Mr. Badass practically sprinted over, where he looked his teammate over and made sure he was ok. He calmly examined where the other boy had been hit, and when it was determined that Mr. Sunshine wasn’t seriously injured, the previously cold boy smiled the warmest, gummiest smile you had ever seen. It warmed you through, and you would be lying if you didn’t admit that you felt the smallest twinge of jealousy that he hadn’t returned your smile that way. Not that you would ever admit it out loud.

Before you could follow that train of thought further, you were literally swept off your feet by someone who looked like a prince out of your childhood storybooks. He had been running full speed, and hadn’t been able to stop quite in time, throwing you off balance. He caught you as you were falling, using something straight out of a k-drama.

The mood was totally ruined though (not that you were the kind of girl to go for that sort of thing- not at all, not even a little, you repeated to yourself) when he joked, “Don’t fall for me too, fast now.” From there he proceeded to barrage you with jokes your dad would have thought of as comedy gold. You however, did not. You tried to keep a straight face, but then started to cringe in secondhand embarrassment. Shoulders mistook your facial expression, and blew you an air kiss as he ran away.

Needless to say, by this point you were utterly exhausted. Practice was winding down, and you felt like you had been there for days rather than hours. You hadn’t paid any attention at all to the practice, but rather each boy that had stopped by third base. Your father, on the other hand, was elated.

“I can’t believe how well they practiced today! They were so focused,” he beamed. “I guess you’ll just have to come to every practice then.” Without further discussion, he ran into the locker room leaving you on the field alone. You were in shock. This was focused? You sighed as you knew that once your father put his mind to something there was no way to change it. You sighed once again and trudged back to your car. Your Saturday afternoons were about to get a lot weirder.

Bonus: Tae & Hobi

#bts #bts fanfiction #bts fluff #fuckboy!au #baseball!au #sports!au #bts x reader #bts x you

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douxreviews · 6 years ago

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Twin Peaks - ‘Pilot’ Review

“Mr. Cooper, you didn’t know Laura Palmer.”

Twin Peaks is both cultish enough and popular enough that there’s a thrill every time one fan meets another—and those thrills aren’t too far between. When it premiered in early 1990, people went wild. Remember when we were all so excited about Lost? Move those conversations to the water coolers instead of the internet, add some hairspray, and that’s about it.

And just like that, it was gone. After the initial adoration, viewers quickly drifted away or were turned off by the more surreal aspects. When the show’s second season finished (completing a total of just 30 episodes), viewership was way, way down. The follow-up movie, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me did okay…and yet the die-hard fans remained as intense as only fans can be.

I only experienced those early days by proxy. I was deemed too young to watch the show (looking back, I agree with that decision, but it made me so angry at the time—if I could watch Murder, She Wrote, why not this?), but my father loved it. My father lets himself get involved in exactly one TV show at a time. Sometimes he picks a clunker—The Event was his choice in this past season, poor guy—and sometimes he strikes gold: 24, Twin Peaks, The Sopranos. Back in the day, he loved Twin Peaks enough to buy the soundtrack, which he frequently played on our family’s only CD player, in the living room. My pre-teen years were scored by Angelo Badalamenti. No wonder I turned out so odd.

My first real Twin Peaks experience was in high school, when the boyfriend recommended we watch the prequel (made after the episodes aired) Fire Walk With Me to prepare for seeing Lost Highway in the theater. FWWM was okay, given that I had no back-story (fore-story?), but Lost Highway was great. It appealed to my desire to dissect things. (Well, not living things. I’m squeamish.)

It took me five years to finally watch Twin Peaks, the series. The only copies in the town I then lived in were on VHS, rented from the tiny independent video store housed in a house. (When they went out of business, I owed them a late fine of $2. I still feel bad about that.) I promptly got the bug, watched the tapes as fast as I could rent them, and theorized like mad with the one person I knew who also liked the show, a kindly bartender. He explained the finale to me over strong drinks, and then I was done with the show. This was before the internet was fun, so it didn’t occur to me to look elsewhere for more theories and speculations, much less a fan community. I haven’t re-watched it in the many years since.

All of that backstory is by way of warning: I’m not a die-hard Peakean. In fact, I don’t even know if TPers have a name for themselves. That’s all information I could easily find out, now that I’m used to spending my days glued to a computer screen, but I’m oddly disinclined to eavesdrop on 20-year-old arguments, get tangled up in sides, camps, or even the dreaded ‘shipper wars that every show has. When I review this show, I want to watch the show and talk about the show. I don’t want to pick sides, start fights, or invest in a SuperDuperGold DVD set. Twin Peaks isn’t that kind of show for me.

What kind of show is it, then? The pilot episode doesn’t do justice to the delightful zaniness that is to come. Frost and Lynch shot the pilot, Lynch did a movie (Wild at Heart), and then Frost and Lynch began work on the first non-pilot episode. The pilot establishes important characters and a few of their relationships. It welcomes us to the town of Twin Peaks, pulls back the lace curtains a bit—but not all the way—and leaves me with a strange impression of humor-laced tragedy. In other words, even in the face of tragedy, people still make bad jokes, still have bizarre personality tics, and generally still live their lives.

That tragedy, of course, is Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee), who is found dead in the show’s opening minutes. Laura Palmer is screen-siren beautiful even in death, and just as inscrutable. We learn in the pilot that she is a homecoming queen who dates the football quarterback, a tutor, and a beloved daughter.

But for some reason, no one seems surprised that she is dead: At the end of the episode, her secret boyfriend James Hurley told Donna, Laura’s best friend, that “It all made some sort of terrible sense that she died.” Even before that, her mother’s panic in the morning when she can’t be found feels like she had been waiting for that moment for months, and her father, once warned of Mama Palmer’s panic, tells the sheriff that his daughter is dead, rather than the other way around. Even the opening lines, when Pete Martell tells Sheriff Truman “She’s dead. Wrapped in plastic,” the first question isn’t “Who?” but “Where?” When Donna (Lara Flynn Boyle) and James (James Marshall) see the police at school, their first thought is of Laura, and their first reaction is to cry.

The overall impression is of a town, and a girl, on the brink. Laura finally tipped over into something—shocking but not surprising itself. The town, meanwhile, continues on its way for a while, but might never be the same. With a population just over 50,000, Twin Peaks may be “a town where a yellow light still means ‘slow down’ instead of ‘speed up,’” but the main industry is intrigue (with a healthy dose of tourism and logs).

And the intrigue industry is definitely impacting the tourist and log economies. The Hornes, who own The Great Northern hotel, are trying to con some Norwegians into building a golf course (with houses), but son Johnny has “mental issues” and daughter Audrey (Sherilyn Fenn) is one breakdown away from a borderline-personality diagnosis. Meanwhile, Benjamin Horne is working with Catherine Martell to take down Josie Packard (Joan Chen), Catherine’s sister-in-law who inherited the mill. The Sheriff is dating Josie Packard, while his friend Big Ed (James’s uncle) is cheating on his crazy wife Nadine with sexy Norma (Peggy Lipton). Norma, of course, is Shelly Johnson’s (Madchen Amick) boss—and Shelly is married to a crazy truck-driving maniac who beats her and just so happens to come home with blood on his shirt after Laura’s death.

While the adults play those games, the teenagers follow suit. Laura was dating Bobby in public and James in private; Donna was dating Bobby’s best friend Mike in public and falls for James in the pilot. Bobby and Mike, unfortunately, are terrible actors: I sometimes wonder if the director just said, “Give up acting! Just stare and vibrate a little without blinking!” This makes their teenage rages and exaggerated misbehavior all the more disturbing, as they seem just like the cartoon villains one would find on a Lifetime special. No wonder Donna’s dad doesn’t let Mike in the house.

In life, that was Laura’s world. Now that she’s dead, her place in that world—and whatever else it might encompass—has to be discovered by a hero, a man who should need no introduction, the greatest detective who ever lived: Special Agent Dale Cooper.

Special Agent Dale Cooper is a straightforward man who appreciates good coffee, good pie, plain speaking…and absolutely loves the process of detection and discovery. In the pilot, some of his smiles seemed horribly inappropriate, until I realized he was So Very Happy that he had found a clue—he is certainly not haunted by Laura Palmer’s death, at least not in any traditional sad-detective way. How he will come to relate to Laura and the circumstances of her death is one of the main arcs of the series.

How the town relates to that death and those circumstances is equally important. In the pilot it emerges that Laura did not die alone: Ronnette Polanski lived through whatever rape and torture killed Laura, but remains comatose. Ronnette gets short shrift in the town’s imagination, perhaps because the cast of characters the show focuses on knew Laura better, perhaps because Ronnette was working-class and Laura came from Twin Peaks’s small aristocracy.

In the pilot, the town is like a live wire. When the kill site is discovered, there’s a quick shot of the train car surrounded by men who aren’t police officers, holding rifles as though they expect the killer to still be inside. The pilot effectively captures the way each member of a small community can be struck differently but with equal virulence by the same tragedy. Likewise, it introduces the idea that no one can really know Laura Palmer, not James the secret boyfriend who claims she wasn’t acting like herself, perhaps not even Donna who claims to know her better than Laura realized. And if we can’t know Laura, perhaps we can’t know anything that’s going on in this tiny town.

Bits and Pieces

• Quick shout-out to the folks at the Sheriff’s Station: Lucy, Andy, Hawk. We’ll see more of them.

• Dr. Jacoby (Russ Tamblyn), wacky shrink, was rubbing a very inappropriate place on his hula-dancer tie.

• Crazy Nadine seems to have a fixation with her drapes.

• The severed moose head on the table in the bank. Yep, it’s a David Lynch TV show.

• Zooming in on an image to catch a reflection of the person taking the film is equally Lynchian, as are the flickering light in the morgue (symbolizes a reality-shift or a personal satori) and the stoplight.

• Diane, to whom Special Agent Dale Cooper dictates his every move and every thought—I do not envy your job.

Clues?

• Laura’s diary entry for a few weeks previous said she was “nervous about meeting J tonight.” Who is J?

• Cooper says that the letter “R” under Laura’s finger matches her case to that of Teresa Banks, a year ago in another part of the state.

• Laura’s half of the broken-heart necklace was found in the traincar on a mound of dirt with a scrap of paper on which was written, in blood, “Fire walk with me.”

• Ronnette Polaski advertised her services in Flesh World, and Laura kept a copy.

• According to James, Bobby had told Laura that he’d killed someone.

For all its atmosphere, the pilot episode of Twin Peaks does not give an accurate picture of where this series is headed—and, trust me, it’s going to some very weird places. Having said that, it does a very impressive job of establishing relationships both covert and overt, and focusing on the two emphases of this show: Laura Palmer and the town itself. The final shots, of an unidentified hand taking James’s half of the heart necklace from the woods, of the stoplight, and of Mrs. Palmer’s sudden screaming as though she has seen something—in the living room? The scene in the woods?—are just a hint of the mysteries to come.

Three and a half out of four Douglas firs.

(Let’s try to keep spoilers for future episodes out of the comments. There might be someone out there who still doesn’t know who killed Laura Palmer.)

Josie Kafka is a full-time cat servant and part-time rogue demon hunter. (What's a rogue demon?)

#Twin Peaks #Dale Cooper #Laura Palmer #David Lynch #Mark Frost #Twin Peaks Reviews #Doux Reviews #TV Reviews #something from the archive #29 years old today

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cromulentbookreview · 6 years ago

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Quarantini Time!

Or: Quarantine: a Love Story by Katie Cicatelli-Kuc!

Poor, anxious Oliver is just wrapping up a Spring Break volunteering trip in the Dominican Republic. He just wants to go home, attend a party and somehow work up the courage to ask a girl out. Flora just spent the past week on a disastrous visit to her dad and her airheaded stepmom. Flora and Oliver find themselves on the same flight home from Punta Cana to Miami, and from there, back to NYC. Because they both live in Brooklyn, obviously.

Sidenote: a message to Brooklyn from the people of Portland -

And now back to the book review.

Oliver, unfortunately, gets stuck to some guy who is visibly sick, aka every fliers worst nightmare. In an attempt to get away from the obvious disease vector, he moves one row back and sits right next to...you guessed it, Flora. Sparks fly - she calms him down while he has a panic attack on the flight, she thinks his eyes are like a cool breeze. He finds her refreshingly forthright and honest.

Meanwhile, I’m sitting there reading all of this like:

There’s just one problem: the flight attendants take notice of obviously sick dude, whose backstory, name or anything like that we never learn. They call the CDC, because apparently there’s a new, fun, mutated form of infectious Mononucleosis. Gotta love that Epstein-Barr virus! But this isn’t your average mono, this is tropical mono. It’s tropical, which apparently, with diseases, makes it worse. Seriously, how come we always act like diseases from the tropics are somehow scarier or worse? There are plenty of diseases you can catch in the Northern Hemisphere that are super scary. Like the hantavirus. Or an infection with Naegleria fowleri. Also, you can catch leprosy from an armadillo. We’ve had cases of Plague here in Oregon, yet another reason why I rarely stray east of the Cascades (sorry Central, Eastern and Southern Oregon, but...come on, Plague) or visit the desert (sorry, Arizona and New Mexico, but, come on, look at that CDC map!). Anyway...I had a point here but I’ve lost it. Anyway: mutant mono. Scary stuff.

If you don’t know about mono, you’re in luck! I happen to have a thing for infectious diseases, which I may have mentioned here before. Infectious mononucleosis, sometimes but almost never called “glandular fever,” known by most as just “mono” is an infectious disease caused usually by the Epstein-Barr virus, but some can be caused by other viruses (like the human cytomegalovirus) though those are in the minority. The Epstein-Barr virus is a virus in the herpes family and is a kind-of cousin to my arch-nemesis, Varicella Zoster, the virus that causes chickenpox, and, if you’re me at 24, shingles. You can get shingles at any age, people! And it hurts! Jesus H. Christ, it hurts! It’s like having a white-hot cheese-grater just scraping off your skin at all times. If you think you have shingles, go and get treatment right away, don’t just go “oh, it’s just mosquito bites” and over a week while it feels like your skin is melting off your body...

Uhm. Get your shingles vaccine, that’s all I’m saying.

So anyway, Epstein-Barr. It can cause a ton of different conditions, including a whole bunch of cancers. Most people have had an Epstein-Barr infection at some point in their lives and probably just mistook it for a cold or the flu. But with mono, what happens is you get a fever, a very sore throat, you feel tired as all get out, your glands - especially the ones around your neck - swell up...you know. Mono. Sometimes there are complications to mono, including what is probably my favorite word in the English language but something that doesn’t sound pleasant at all: splenomegaly. That’s just when your spleen swells up. Hurray for the spleen!

Mono is primarily spread through saliva. Like, if you share a drinking glass or kiss. Fun fact: I never got mono as a teen because nobody ever wanted to kiss me or share their drinks. Or be that close to me. Or even hang out with me. Yay? Only in rare, rare cases can mono be spread through other bodily fluids, like blood or semen, so...there’s that.

And now, once again, back to the book review.

Once Flora and Oliver’s flight arrives in Miami, the plane is greeted by none other than the CDC. Yay! Frankly, if I were on a flight that was greeted on the runway by the CDC, I would geek out so hard. The CDC puts all the passengers on a 24-hour hold to see if any of them develop a fever. While they’re going through their final checks, Flora impulsively fakes a fever. She does this by taking the thermometer out of her mouth and then rubbing on it while the CDC worker isn’t looking which...you know what, suspend your disbelief for a while, OK? As soon as it becomes apparent that she has a fever and needs to go into a 30 day quarantine, Flora kisses Oliver. As one does. Now they’re both going to be stuck in quarantine for 30 days. They’re given a room together because...reasons.

Once in quarantine, Oliver and Flora don’t have much to do other than just hang out with one another. Once Flora starts the hashtag #quaranteen on social media, though, she and Oliver become online famous. Suddenly Kelsey, the girl Oliver had been crushing on back in New York, has come down to Miami and is declaring herself to be Oliver’s girlfriend. Tension ensues! Will Oliver and Flora get sick? Will Oliver finally realize that Kelsey is the absolute worst? And will Flora and Oliver finally just get together goddamn it???

Quarantine: A Love Story is the wonderfully light and fluffy read that I needed in my life right now. The past two books I’ve read were both really sad and depressing - Internment especially takes on a whole new relevance now in light of recent events - so a happyfun YA romance about two teens in a weird situation that appeals to my weird love for infectious diseases was just what my brain called for at the moment. If you happen to know anything about medicine, though, er...don’t come in to this book hoping for a medically accurate depiction of quarantine. I happen to be one of those weirdos who has spent many, many years reading up on infectious diseases and quarantine/isolation treatment in hospitals. Why? Reasons. So there are a few times where I had to go aaaagh, they’re not called hazmat suits - HAZMAT is short for “hazardous materials” in medicine, you wear Personal Protective Equipment. PPE, people! Remember your PPE! Also, did you know the CDC has videos of the proper donning and doffing of PPE? Yup, they do. And it’s not like I haven’t watched all of those videos. I mean, I’m an adult, I have a life and a job and friends, I swear! I don’t spend a lot of my spare time reading about infectious diseases and proper treatments of infectious diseases...

Also, for some reason, in this fantasyland Quarantine, they let visitors take their phones into the room with them. And let the patients touch said phones. And they let their moms bring their purses in with them. Because...quarantine? I could put on my infectious disease nerd hat and go on and on and on about how that’s not how it works, but honestly, I don’t care. I didn’t come here for an accurate depiction of a hospital quarantine situation, if I wanted that, the CDC website is right there, waiting for me. I’m here for a cute YA love story about two teens in a weird situation. And to hate on that awful, selfie-obsessed bitch Kelsey. Yeah, we all know someone like Kelsey. She’s the worst.

But what I did love about this book was both its portrayal of anxiety, and the realistic depiction of how teens communicate. Plus, the romance is adorable. Team Floriver, bitches.

However, If you, like me, are super fond of learning about infectious diseases, go listen to This Podcast Will Kill You - it’s a fantastic podcast all about infectious diseases and probably one of my favorite podcasts, ever. (Go listen to their measles episode, it’s brilliant and sadly very, very timely, particularly for me, currently in the center of a full-scale epidemic caused entirely by stupidity).

In fact, if you’re wondering about the title of this review (if it can even be called a review, I haven’t really remained on topic for more than ten seconds) I shamelessly stole the Quarantini from This Podcast Will Kill You. The Quarantini belongs to the two Erins. A Placeborita is the non-alcoholic version of the drink, and since Quarantine: A Love Story is a YA novel, I figure I should make a Placeborita in its honor.

So, behold! The Quaranteentini!

Made out of the best non-alcoholic ingredients I could find in my kitchen while resisting the urge to add delicious, fruity vodka. (Hey, they are a local company, therefore I must drink it!)

The Quaranteentini:

Raspberry La Croix water

Lemon Juice

Grenadine

Lime Wedge

Garnish with gumdrops

Then add Huckleberry Vodka because I’m an adult. Best enjoyed with a general desire to forget the awfulness of the world and lose oneself in a cute teen romance.

RECOMMENDED FOR: Anybody in the mood for a book that is fun and happy and romantic.

NOT RECOMMENDED FOR: Infectious disease nerds and medical professionals.

SERIOUS BOOK REVIEWER RATING: 3/5

YA ROMANCE FANGIRL RATING: 500,000,000/5

RELEASE DATE: March 26, 2019

#quarantine a love story #katie cicatelli-kuc #scholastic #ya romance #ya fiction #ya contemporary #book review #mono #infectious disease #this podcast will kill you #quarantini #placeborita #mononucleosis #epstein-barr #quarantine #quaranteen #social media #anxiety in fiction #floriver

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amalgamezz · 8 years ago

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Re: Jumin Discourse | P1

Warning: Abuse TW, long post, heavy graphics content.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

Submission by Anonymous

(Since you mentioned the fear of backlash, I’m gonna put you on anonymous. If you prefer any other way, please let me know.)

Hopefully you will take these into an account. As a survivor of an abusive relationship with a man who is almost scarily like Jumin, I get frustrated at Jumin stans for frequently making fun of and acting aggressive towards people who say Jumin is abusive or reminds them of an abuser. I didn’t even play Jumin’s BE2; his route alone made me feel so uncomfortable towards him and I grew to hate him even more. When I first started playing the game, knowing nothing about the game or characters, Jumin was my favorite. At face value, he seemed like my type - tall, dark, and handsome, likes cats, and gave off the impression that he would be the stern and reserved tsundere romance option who takes a while to admit his feelings for you. But boy, I was wrong.

I don’t think many people take into account how much Jumin controls your every move in his route. You don’t even get many options to tell him no to something, or that you feel uncomfortable. Like, I chose to never say the “I love you” option when it was available, but he decided you do anyway. He kisses you without your permission. There’s several points where the MC speaks to Jumin or about him as if he’s just a friend, while he is confessing his feelings for her and talking about how much he wants her. That’s very uncomfortable. Remember, you go to his penthouse in the first place as a concerned friend. Jumin is basically a “friendzoned” guy who has power and money and decides he wants this girl, so that means he talks for the both of them a lot of the time, proposes to her in front of a bunch of people giving her no room to refuse, talks about choosing her clothes, hair style, what she can and can’t do, who she can’t talk to (He expresses that he doesn’t want her talking to Zen at one point), and where she can and can’t go. Zen calling him out on his controlling nature in that chat (on Day 10 I believe) was exactly how I feel. But Jumin didn’t take it seriously, and says he’ll think about including MC in decisions more, only to promptly go propose to her without discussing it at all. In his after endings (both VDay and Good Ending after endings) she is basically his trophy wife who doesn’t do anything and stays in his penthouse all the time. That sounds horrible.

I felt like I had to say this because Jumin has so many “protect” blogs (while Zen has none - hmmm.) and is probably the most defended and over-analyzed character in the game. I barely see any Jumin hate, but I see a lot of people complaining about Jumin hate and making lengthy posts about why we should forgive all the shitty things Jumin does.

Honestly, his backstory is really not that sad. I would say it’s the least tragic in the game. The worst thing in his life is that he’s neglected emotionally. But he always says that the reason he acts rude and cold and callous is because he could never tell if people were being genuine or not because of who he is and his money. If that’s the case, why not actually be nice and caring to people so they have a reason to act genuine to you? He also is a huge misogynist, and talks all the time about how he hates women. He blames all the women that his dad goes through for their part in his dad’s affairs, but doesn’t really dislike his dad except for saying he doesn’t like his behavior? Why isn’t his hatred directed towards cheating and promiscuous men, instead of all women in general? He generalizes all women to be fake and gold diggers, save for Rika and MC. He doesn’t even see Jaehee as a woman - he’s said that specifically.

Honestly, Jumin’s behavior and character are extremely unlikeable, and I don’t think he’d be as popular if he wasn’t a conventionally attractive cis male designed to appeal to straight and bi women. The reason the whole RFA acts standoffish towards him is because his actions are terrible, and he acts like an overgrown privileged man child most of the time. The phone calls and conversations you posted of the RFA during Jumin’s route weren’t mean at all??? Literally most of them were saying “you need to put your own safety first. If you feel uncomfortable, leave. You don’t have to prioritize his feelings over your own.” Which is the proper response??? Like honestly if you’re mad about them all reacting that way - 5 characters (including V, because he tells Jumin he needs to stop) who are wildly different all thinking that Jumin is in the wrong and are worried about what he will do. That’s telling.

I hope you don’t take this too negatively; I felt like I needed to add this to the argument because it’s so one-sided right now in favor of Jumin. I’m not trying to change your opinion on him, I’m just hoping this will help you see other people’s point of view, especially those who are abuse victims. Because most of the time I’m afraid to post anything that’s anti-Jumin because I’m afraid of the backlash. You can like him all you want, but please don’t go around hating on people who dislike him because he makes them uncomfortable and/or is a reminder of past abuse. I just wanted to help Jumin stans understand where us abuse victims are coming from. We don’t have to agree, I just don’t want to keep seeing the aggression towards people who dislike Jumin anymore. It’s victim blaming.

First of all, if any of my posts gave you a vibe that I was mocking victims of an abusive relationship or victim-blaming, then you will have my sincerest apologies and I can assure you that I did not have any intention of doing that at all. Perhaps I was too salty about those who were blaming only Jumin for getting BE2 even though it was decided by their own choices, so I’ve inconsiderately used words that may be offensive to you. If that happens again in the future, please let me know so I will choose my words more carefully.

Please do know that I’m fully aware that Jumin’s Route is not for everyone. Different people will experience the same event differently due to their different past, background, or personality, etc. I’m sorry to hear that it made you feel uncomfortable. It would be a lie if I said I have never once had a moment where I arched an eyebrow at his actions.

Before I continue, I would like to straightforwardly clarify that I do not condone or ask anyone to condone any of these, as you said, shitty behaviors of his:

[HE] Control Issue:

[IS 100%] Control Issue/Possessiveness:

[FUCKED UP, FAM] Control Issue/Obsession:

His control issue, obsession, and possessiveness definitely need addressing. I’m not gonna make any excuse for him regardings this matter in this post.

Moving on. I can see why some people may feel uncomfortable or even remind of their abuser because of Jumin. But saying he himself being abusive? I genuinely cannot understand.

He does acknowledge his mistakes and keeps apologizing while you are there?

He might get paranoid but genuinely means no harm...

...and only wants to try his best to ensure your happiness.

He knows what he’s doing is wrong. That’s why he keep on fighting against his own mental illness just for you.

Side notes: Due to personal reasons, I can see where he came from and why he did what he did. But then it might come off as excuses to you, so I will just leave it at that. Again, I must stress that I do not encourage these fucked up behaviors of his or ask everyone for forgiveness. Whether you want to forgive him or not, you have the right to decide it. I’m only hoping you would understand that he sincerely does not mean any harm to you.

#jumin discourse #abuse tw #042017 #character analysis #unc.talks

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livingwithashipname-blog · 8 years ago

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Ermanda’s Inner Sanctum: Into the Badlands “Chapter XVI: Wolf’s Breath, Dragon Fire”

This post is not an easy one because of the ending, so I will start with the easier stuff. Overall, the season 2 finale was solid. Some long-standing motives were revealed. We saw loyalty and obligation constantly interchange. We saw more of the Badlands, learned more about the other barons, and caught a glimpse outside the wall through Sunny and Bajie’s captivity and escape. The fight scenes were spectacular, as always. Have I mentioned that these weapons, but mainly the swords, are truly works of art?! They really are! Even though this finale didn’t answer a lot of questions, the unanswered ones have an opportunity to be resolved in a 16-episode season 3.

Azra & the Abbotts: Past, Present, & Future

The Widow

As seen since season 1, The Widow's ultimate plan was attached to the Azra book. She wanted what she once lost in order to defeat her enemies. Her reputation as a ruthless killer to create a free society where men and women are equals was a constant hurdle to overcome, but there was nobility in that plight because it was formed from personal experience. However, her strategy clearly revealed that saving women and offering freedom from the oppressive construct of the Badlands was a secondary goal. Once she unapologetically made decisions that were contrary with her message to her followers, it tainted her character in their eyes to the point that she lost the trust of those in her inner circle. But don't get it twisted. She still has power in this game, but she will eventually reap the consequences of these decisions. Those she wants most in her life are aware and making moves to protect their own personal interests from exploitation.

M.K.

M.K. feels free of the burden his power created. He doesn't want it back. This is understandable given that his gift has been used as a pawn by everyone he has encountered while he sought answers about Azra and his mother. Yes, even Sunny used him at one point (back in season 1). Though he’s convinced his mother is dead, he is still in the dark about how Azra ties to the Abbotts, his "gift," and The Master. The course of events suggest that M.K. lost his power by means of the operation he saw in the compound, but this is not entirely clear. Therefore, I still consider the cause unknown. Furthermore, he has made a deal with The Widow that could end in his death or enslavement if he doesn't win. It will be interesting to see how his story unfolds next season since we didn’t get much progression on this story in the finale.

Bajie

Let's just point out one thing that has been apparent since Bajie and Sunny met: Bajie knows a lot more than he leads everyone to believe. He is also a lot more noble than his actions suggest. The reason he hasn't been written off by Sunny, M.K., and others after some sketchy moves is because of his uncanny ability to show up at the right moment to save the day. However, one must hold tight to the skeptic hat with this guy! He swipes the Azra compass, acts oblivious when asked to interpret the Widow's book, surrenders/sells Sunny to captors by revealing his identity as a clipper, and travels to this obscure location on Sunny's bike, leaving him, Veil, and Henry behind. Good intentions are present, but one is always left wondering who is to benefit at the end of day. I am happy that we are returning to the intrigue of the Azra plot through Bajie. It’s becoming obvious that the first things we learn about Azra, or whatever/whomever Bajie summoned, will start with him, not M.K. or The Widow. I want to see more of his nobility contrast with questionable decisions. It makes things very interesting and fits the overall message in the show!

Quinn & Lydia

Lydia

I can see why Quinn loved to keep Lydia close despite his obsession with Veil and Henry. She is a formidable woman who can defend herself when necessary. But she has been on this roller coaster ride with Quinn for a long time. She has made some terrible decisions to survive - all being a caveat of a victim of abuse and oppression. She tried religious redemption, but that got tossed to the side when Quinn returned and murdered their son, Ryder. Though she came back to Quinn and got trapped in his clutches once again, she fought to take him down in his own compound. It didn't work, but Sunny's arrival gave her the chance to create her own path. Where will she go? What is her next move?

Quinn

Quinn was such an intriguing villain! His quest for unquestioned power and a royal family made him a force in the Badlands. Everyone knows it's "kill or be killed" more with Quinn than anyone else in this world. But at the end of the day, he was an abuser and master manipulator. His untimely end was coming by Sunny's hand - a man he tried to emulate in a very twisted way. That time came. And I am not gonna lie and say that I am sad and gonna miss him. It's quite the opposite... BOY BYE!!! He had his moment. But he had to take a final sacrifice with him because he's like a cat with nine lives! I will say that I will miss Marton Csokas and his mastery of villainy! He portrays it so well!

And now this brings me to the part of the episode that I absolutely hated from a writing perspective...

A Moonlight Family Reunion: Sunny, Veil, & Henry

Veil dies. It's not shocking if you take foreshadowing in seasons 1 & 2 into account. Veil’s eventual death became apparent this season when Waldo's advice to Sunny about focus and the tribulations of the clipper/regent life came up again during his chat with Tilda about her new role. I also figured that Moon's prophecy would eventually come full circle since Sunny's use of his sword after battle serves as a symbolic reminder of familial sacrifice and identity struggles. While I am sad that Veil is gone, I am upset with the setup that leads to her death!

First, Sunny was destined to return and duel with Quinn one more time to save his family. Considering what happened last time, he should have made sure Quinn was dead by slitting his jugular for good measure. When I watched Sunny run to Veil and Henry and drop his sword to the ground instead of returning it to his holster, I sensed something provocative was coming. I wasn't convinced that Quinn was finally dead. I took Sunny's eagerness to finally depart with his family distracted him from ensuring Quinn was dead into consideration, but it doesn't fit with his characterization for these two seasons. He is not a dumb clipper! Or else he would have been dead already. He is super focused in battle and doesn't make silly mistakes. Therefore, I have a hard time believing that he could be so careless.

Second, Veil is a brilliant doctor and inventor. How can I believe that she doesn't have better precision with the choice to stab herself to clip Quinn simultaneously?! It's really hard for me to grasp this when other characters have worse injuries from battle and survive. If Veil HAD to die in order to fulfill that prophecy, I would have preferred her succumbing to a bad injury in the battle crossfire (i.e., an unfortunate casualty), which would have been just as emotionally riveting without insult to Sunny or Veil's characterization. But alas, that move was taken with Bajie to create the mystery in the final scene so... Another avenue could have been to give the family the win and let them walk off to create the life they've desired since season 1 but insert some type of latent PTSD element - a battle of intent vs. reality - that could be seen as a flip of Sunny's dream when he was hit with the fingers of five poisons. I think the latter would fit with the message in the show that the Badlands always leaves a mark no matter how badly one wants or tries to change.

Overall, the nature of Veil's death possessed no honor in my opinion. It was a dramatized means to complete the foreshadowing. Ava died protecting M.K. with more honor than Veil sacrificing herself to save Henry. As one of the purest characters in the story, she was a glimmer of hope amongst many others whose lives are a lot more complicated whether by choice or circumstance. And now that light has been snuffed out. We barely had a chance to see Veil exist separately from Sunny's story or Quinn's. Her relationship with Sunny in season 1 had to remain under wraps. She and Henry were victims of abuse caught between Quinn and The Widow's alliance all throughout season 2. She had her faults while making moves to survive and escape Quinn's compound. But for a show where diversity is celebrated, it's hard to see the only black female series regular written out of the story via death without any true victory held for longer than 2 minutes. It adds to a Hollywood pattern that is seen FAR TOO OFTEN!

Now a fan suggested on Twitter (and probably by more fans on other sites) that the power of the Abbotts or whatever Azra possesses could bring Veil back to life. I like the idea, but I am skeptical of it for several reasons. The season finale provided closure in some stories, but not a lot. Plus, we don't know if Azra is technological, mystical, or both and how it ties with The Master and the Abbotts. Until these elements are fully realized in the story, I don't see what literary advantage is found in Veil's revival without some type of catch like the redemption stone in the Harry Potter series. Despite all of this, Daniel Wu (Sunny) has confirmed that both Quinn and Veil are dead. There are no plans to bring either one of them back, especially Quinn.

Lingering Questions

What is Azra? Is it a technological hub or some type of mystical city?

How did The Widow, M.K., and Bajie completely lose their powers? It's not entirely clear and I think that we have to learn more about Azra and secrets of the Abbott compound to get this answer and understand it.

Is there more to Waldo's backstory? How does it fit to where he is a known traitor but respected and feared despite his disability? What's the appeal in him being a baron?

What is Tilda's path now that she is free and running with Odessa trying to figure out a way to save M.K. from The Widow?

Where is Jade?

Is the conclave the only time we learn more about the other barons (whether they are dead or alive) and their lands in the show?

What's The Widow's new game plan?

#ermanda's inner sanctum #into the badlands #s02e10 #chapter xvi #wolf's breath dragon fire #episode review #itb season 2 #into the badlands amc #color me badlands #livingwithashipname

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scenarios-on-ice · 8 years ago

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That you are!

“Ma'am, I don’t know what you’ve heard, but whatever it is- either Furuta or the toxic side of the YoI fandom started it!”

I used to be firmly for Trans!Mutsuki but now I’m not so sure. I’m mostly just annoyed and kinda sad at how this particular issues is tearing the fandom apart…keeping away from major spoilers, when Saiko was trying to ask Mutsuki about something important a few chapters back Mutsuki was like “So….yeah. You figured out that I’m actually a girl.” and then abruptly left. That was mostly where the doubt started: Mutsuki refered to themself as a ‘girl’. Did this stem from insecurity about revealing themself as trans or was it because Mutsuki actually sees themself as female?

And then later on, “I’m almost embarrassingly female.” Does this mean that they find their female body a burden/embarrassing, or that they can’t help but acknowledge that yes, they do identify as female in the end? Doesn’t help that their expression during this scene is very difficult to read (the scene itself is quite disturbing in nature as well).

Then people started connecting the dots. During the auction arc Mutsuki once said to themself ‘It’s not that I think like a man’ and was disgusted when they felt men’s gazes following them. Add this to "I want to ‘live’ as a man" instead of “I 'am’ a man” and the fact that they were probably molested by their father as a child and the theory that maybe they’re just pretending to be male because even as they fear men, they believe being male to be a symbol of power, one that will keep them safe, becomes quite a bit more plausible.

Even more confusing since most of Mutsuki 'I am female’ moments seem to come during mental breakdowns so the fandom is up in arms about that too. Does the mental breakdown mean that they’re not in their right mind and just rambling, or does it make them speak the truth and stop hiding (like Kaneki’s memory breakdown during the Tsukiyama arc; it was then he finally stopped warping/denying his own memories about his mother)?

I personally believe that Mutsuki might turn out to be female after all (especially since this is a Japanese manga; Japan might be more accepting of the LGBTQ community than other East-Asian countries but from what I’ve learned it’s still got quite a bit of prejudice and stereotyping going on and LGBTQ individuals are viewed differently from how they are in the West. It would also tie in with Ishida’s overall writing style) but I don’t bash those who believe them to be trans because I really, really wanted them to be trans too…

I just wish the fandom would stop being so aggressive about this ;-;

(That parody tho)

True, true, Jean would make a good Angelica ^^ as for Dear Theodosia, don’t most of Burr’s songs fit really well with Jean? I think it’s proof that the Jean-Burr casting was meant to be.

OH YEAH I totally forgot about that. Hide-Peggy makes much more sense now XD they should form an 'awesome forgotten characters’ club!

Speaking of Hinami though, SPOILER but apparently she’s going to meet Akira soon.

Yeah, the only realy Hamilton AU we could achieve with TG is one where characters are forced into roles that don’t necessarily fit their personalities and therefore changes the outcome of the story (which could actually be a good thing; for example, if we cast Amon as Hamilton Say No To This would never happen).

But wait (lol). Doesn’t Urie actually fit much better with Burr?

In that case, it doesn’t matter who we cast. Urie-Burr would probably make the exact same mistakes as Musical!Burr did (if we’re talking about pre-character development Urie).

Well, to make up for Hide’s second death (who am I kidding nothing could make up for that) you now have the mental image of Tsukiyama rapping Guns and Ships at Yoshimura-Washington (or Shinohara-Washington).

And Koma like

“THE DEVIL APE A BARISTA SPYING ON THE CCG I TAKE THEIR COFFEE ORDERS, INFORMATION, AND THEN I SMUGGLE IT UP TO KANEKI’S REVOLUTIONARY COVENANT I’M RUNNING WITH THE GHOULS OF LIBERTY AND I AM LOVIN’ IT SEE, THAT’S WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU’RE UP AGAINST THE RUFFIANS WE IN THE SHIT NOW, SOMEBODY’S GOTTA SHOVEL IT ENJI KOMA, I NEED NO INTRODUCTION WHEN YOU KNOCK ME DOWN, I GET THE FUCK BACK UP AGAIN”

(I could probably have made it rhyme/fit in with the actual lyrics if I wanted to but unfortunately I’m too lazy OTL maybe some other time

Also fun fact if you didn’t get to that point in the manga: Kaneki does have his own 'ghouls of liberty’ now)

As for Furuta, I think he’s probably going to get a tragic backstory too- everyone in TG gets the angst treatment. Ishida’s probably going to expand on his daddy issues. Also, there’s that one birthday poem Ishida wrote for him that strongly implies he’s suicidal/places little value on his own life, plus the fact that we can already assume he had a terrible childhood.

I’ve never heard of that anime but now you make me want to watch it…is it really worth a watch despite the 'wth’ elements? (Your Lie in April was the only exception I made for romance animes, but I’m willing to give anything a try as long as it’s got decent character development, is respectful with whatever themes it chooses to handle and doesn’t have too much fanservice (because frankly I find anime fanservice more cringey than anything…I always feel so embarrassed for everyone involved when it happens XD)).

And oh, thanks for letting me know! :D I hope it wasn’t too weird of a request ^^;;

Thank you so much for the ‘ripped s/o’ request! :D I really liked it!

Like, maybe it’s just me but I think Viktor (once he got used to it) and/or Chris might actually think it was hot. Dunno, just, in VIktuuri I can see Viktor being the sub (plus it’s kinda obvious that he’s really, really into Eros!Yuuri) so I think he’d find the idea of his s/o being a powerhouse appealing…especially since they don’t look it outwardly (what with being so smol and cute). He’d probably be determined to 'unleash the beast’ lol

(or maybe it’s just my personal bias because while I don’t have much of a preference when it comes to figure I still think muscular women look great)

Yuuri would probably be very much in awe once he recovered from the shock.

As for JJ, I think once he stopped flailing around his reaction would be a mix of betrayal and slight jealousy- “Wait, so all those times I was totally not struggling to carry you bridal style, you could have told me there was a reason you’re so heavy! And also, did you just let me treat you like a fragile doll when you were actually (not) stronger than me all along? WERE YOU JUST STROKING MY EGO BABE NO

Also let’s go to the gym together as soon as possible because I cannot wait to kick your ass

Nobody is allowed to be stronger than the King JJ

Not even his girlfriend”

Then s/o picks him up, throws him over her shoulder and takes him to his bedroom like 'boi, you need to calm down’

Peek-a-boo!

“Nimura Furuta died this morning (if only). I need a favour.”

That seems so complicated >_< I think I’m gonna stick to trans!Mutsuki (referring with he/him), simply because I haven’t reached that part in the manga and am still in the ‘Mu is male’ mode. Yeee, I don’t wanna go into that part of the fandom, I get enough shit from the yoi fandom already. Gaah, it really is complicated. I mean, I’m open to any Mu and don’t quite care if he decides to be male/female or genderfluid or whatever. I just want everyone to be happy ;-; And that’ll never happen because we’re talking about TG here. No one can be happy. It’s simple impossible.

The only thing we need now is a Hamilton for Jean... Ye, I don’t quite think we’ll be getting one. Except for Eren, but that LEAVES ALL THE PROBLEMS WE’VE DISCUSSED. SHIT. I’d pay to see Jean singing Dear Theodosia.

We can add Hide and Peggy to the club of forgotten characters along with Hinami (she is being forgotten it seems) and a few other characters I can’t think of right now XD

That’s the problem with TG. Most AUs are impossible, since the characters just don’t fit the roles nicely, they’re too grey to fit in. Gdi Ishida, you love making us suffer.

Oh yeah, Urie would be the best Burr! He’s a calculating character who’ll kinda suck ass to advance in positions. To think that this guy’s my favourite character along with Haise/Kaneki and Ayato...

I WANNA SEE TSUKIYAMA RAPPING HELL YEAH HIS ACCENT WOULD MAKE IT SO MUCH BETTER LIKE, HED BE ABLE TO IMITATE LAFF SO WELL I AM CRYING HELP

You’ve seen my ‘I’ll manipulate everyone out’, didn’t you? That one fits evem worse than this, so shush. I did reach that part, tho. One of the last things I remember is that hella sexy white suit Kaneki panel. I liked that one a lot ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Doesn’t everyone in TG basically have a tragical backstory, though? Like, name one (1) character who lived a nice and happy life without daddy issues suicidal stuff and so on. There are none I can remember. Well, I guess you could say that Tsukiyama had a pretty nice childhood, but he’s pretty messed up now, so I don’t count him.

Hmm, I think some people would be able to ignore them, but I’m pretty sure that you wouldn’t like the anime. I mean, it’s quite rushed with little character development and has sO MANY WTH MOMENTS, HE’S 15 FOR FUCKS SAKE, WHY DOES HE SLEEP NAKED WHY ARE THERE SO MANY INNUENDOS WHY DO THEY KISS IT LOOKS CREEPY WHYYYYY

No, don’t watch that anime. If you want to watch a romance anime that’s really good and has development, watch Kyoukai no Kanata. AND MAGI. AND HOUKAGO NO PLEIADES. I can always hit you up with anime suggestions if you need them *finger guns (and ships)*

Ooh, I like those additions so much! Would you mind if I added them to the actual post?

#evans #tokyo ghoul anon #submission

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