#and so when you have a pre-existing superpower you have to look at the Core Themes of them and their backstory

[writingwithcolor]

Arab Character Joining Corrupt Superheroes, Police Parallels

Anonymous asked:

I’m writing a story with a Arabian diaspora main character. The story is about corrupt superheroes, and how they affect an oppressed superpowered minority. The main character is one of these superheroes, naively joining them in his teens believing he’s going to help people. Doesn’t help that his parents are having money trouble. Eventually he ends up fighting a superpowered crook, and gets a bystander killed.

1)I know portraying an Arabian character committing violence is a pretty touchy subject, even if accidental. Is there any way I can write this that makes it clear to the reader that the action itself is messed up without the unfortunate implication that Arabs are violent? 

2)A large part of the story is the MC’s parents reaction. They are loving parents, however after this incident happens, they are confused and ashamed. While they still love him, they temporarily cut ties with him. Eventually they reconcile and start to be a family again. In my research (they are diaspora Saudi Arabians), Family is very important and tight-nit. Shame towards the family is to be avoided at all costs. However I’ve also read that disowning a family member rarely ever happens. Is there a way to write this kind of narrative with respect to this aspect of Arabian culture?

Let us begin with some terminology.

- If a person is from Saudi Arabia, they are Saudi Arabian, or more commonly, Saudi. This is their nationality.

- They may or may not be Arab. Arab is an ethnicity. Not all Saudis are Arab. Not all Arabs are Saudi.

- Arabic is a language. Lots of people across the world who are neither Saudi nor Arab speak Arabic.

- Arabian on its own is a word used to refer to a specific breed of horses.

If you are referring to humans, you want to either say "Saudi Arabian" (both words) or ��Saudi” to indicate nationality, or "Arab" to indicate ethnicity. If you’re looking to describe your character’s culture, you probably want to call it Saudi culture. (While grammatically correct, talking about “Arab culture” doesn’t make much sense because Arabs are an incredibly diverse ethnic group and there is no such thing as a single monolithic Arab culture).

Now for the first question. In my mind, the issue is less about the character committing violence, and more about the premise of the story and how it mirrors real-life oppressive structures. You have an organized group of superheroes who think they are doing good by fighting “crooks” but in reality are enacting systemic oppression upon a marginalized group. This immediately brings to mind police violence, racial profiling, and the way that policing in North America is used as a tool of white supremacy while glorified in propaganda as a force for good. Essentially, you are telling a story about a character who joins an oppressive policing force, enacts violence upon a marginalized group as a result, and (I’m assuming) eventually realizes that they are not, in fact, the good guys. This is very close to being a “bigoted character learns not to be bigoted” story. I recommend re-examining your premise in light of the real-life parallels and asking yourself whether this is the story you want to tell. 

The issue is compounded by the fact that your character is an Arab teen, who in real life is more likely to be the one facing racial profiling from the police. Taking this character and making him the oppressor in your story makes the already flawed premise even more problematic, especially if the characters in the oppressed group are white.

As for your second question, it seems believable to me that a teen’s parents might reject him if they learned that he committed a crime. However, when the family in question is Arab, you are suddenly feeding into harmful tropes about oppressive and violent Arab parents. You are asking if there is a way to write this respectfully. I believe that there is, but it requires a great deal of care, nuance, and cultural awareness. While it is possible to write a Saudi Arab character grappling with the consequences of violence and familial estrangement in a compelling way, the way your ask is phrased leads me to believe you are not equipped to do it justice. 

- Mod Niki

Think about why Arab people committing violence is a touchy subject, and then think about the general propaganda narrative that came about from the act that made things so touchy. 

It’s going to sound one hell of a lot like what you have here.

Military and police use buckets and buckets of propaganda to continue hooking in young, impressionable teens to commit state-sanctioned colonialism and oppression. That propaganda looks suspiciously like “we have health insurance, we will pay for your education, you just have to do what we tell you even if that means hurting or killing others, but it’s okay because you get to be the hero in the situation.”

Now, propaganda is a very powerful tool. I was taught, in my media classes, that controlling the message means shaping reality. The media is built as a propaganda machine, and when you start to see who owns what media properties you start to see some really disturbing patterns (Rubert Murdoch owns a lot of right-wing sources across America, the UK, and Australia, and he’s too rich to investigate his culpability in spinning terrible narratives found in right-wing publications. He owns the big names).

As Niki said, this situation mirrors police violence and police-sanctioned terrorism. And the very, very unfortunate implications of making the target of police violence be in that wheel. But I want you to look at the media situation that has made the plot happen.

Because even if you swapped out ethnicities, you’d still have a reckoning to do with the American culture that their primary social safety nets involve killing people.

I am not kidding.

Some of the most well-funded unions in the country are police unions. These people have pensions. They have health insurance. It’s damn near impossible to fire them. They get overtime very well mandated, and it’s a known thing among defence lawyers that arrests happen right before a cop’s shift will end so they get the overtime of filing the paperwork. They absolutely go into poor neighbourhoods and recruit based off people needing an escape, and them having the money to provide it.

A similar sentiment is true for the military, except they push for college education a bit more and don’t really have overtime, but they do have deployment bonuses. So the way to get extra pay for yourself is to go out and do colonialism outside the borders. The military doesn’t necessarily like it when the economy is doing well, and don’t like the idea of college being affordable, because they rely so heavily on poverty and fear of college debt to recruit. 

The story you’re telling here goes so far beyond an individual’s actions and instead taps into America’s single biggest cultural investment: that oppressing others makes you a hero. 

The Pentagon funds most military media out there as a propaganda tool, including most superhero movies and a large number of video games. This is in their budget. They will also go so far as to literally commission the games to exist. Part of getting that funding is you cannot critique America’s military, basically at all (the only exception I’ve seen is Ms Marvel, but that’s set in the 90s). This turns any sort of military-using media into a potential propaganda tool.

And the thing is? Even if you fall for that propaganda and were part of the military or the police, you still have to reckon with the fact you put whatever your own desires were above a huge track record of those groups being terrible. You still have to reckon with the fact you didn’t realize they were wrong, and were complicit in a lot of crimes.

This goes very far beyond “the action is terrible” and goes into “the system is rotten to its core, and you chose not to believe it, or to believe you could change what was built with blood.”

“Good” police officers get fired. If you try to question anything, if you try to say this action is wrong, you will absolutely get destroyed. Military’s much the same. You need some degree of buy-in to the concept of white supremacy to sign up for the military or the police, because you need to see their actions as not deal breakers instead of actions that violate multiple international laws. 

In short: you need to see the people being oppressed as deserving of being oppressed to some degree in order to participate with police and the military.

Marginalized people can hold this belief, it happens. But that is a very sticky situation that outsiders shouldn’t touch. 

It’s possible but difficult for you to write a white person having this sort of arc, but it would be extremely challenging to have it not come across as a white guilt story. To not have a socially aware audience roll their eyes at how long it took. You’d definitely not be writing a story with a diverse audience in mind, because you’d mostly appeal to those who saw the propaganda as just fine and not that bad.

This isn’t even getting into the oft-cited adage that boys who bully others become cops, while girls who bully become nurses. And the more police atrocities become mainstream news, the less and less people can convince themselves that becoming a police officer is a good thing.

Which brings me to the point of: how well-documented is this oppression? Is this character walking around in an oppressive situation like, say, pre-social-media where there was no direct access to the oppressed groups and you could close your eyes and look away even if it made national news? Or is this in a media connected world where these oppressed populations have a voice in the narrative?

The former has an angle of the character slowly realizing the horror and it’s slightly more forgivable for their early ignorance. But in any sort of world where there’s access to the people getting hurt? Things get more and more “ignorance is indistinguishable from maliciousness.” And keep in mind, these stories are read in the real world, where police brutality and war crimes go viral, and a lack of knowledge is getting harder and harder to defend as a position.

Media plays a huge role in shaping our perception of what’s happening. Cameras on a situation makes different activism tactics work, as we can see with how activism changed in the 60s and 70s as tv reached the masses. Social media has made it possible for you to look up firsthand accounts of discrimination within seconds. 

This is a factor you are absolutely going to have to consider, when you want to look at how nice your hero is seen by marginalized or otherwise socially-aware people. If there is a way to find out how bad this superhero organization is before you sign a contract with them? Then that doesn’t look particularly good on the “hero”. You’d really have to establish them as super idealistic, super sheltered, super desperate, and/or just swallow the knowledge that they really don’t see anything that happens “over there to those people” as that bad. 

All of the above is more than possible. And they’d still be seen as complicit no matter what justification you gave, because they are.

Does this mean all corrupt organization stories are off limits? No. The reason these stories have such deep cultural resonance right now is because of the propaganda I outlined above. 

But you as the author are going to have to examine your own engagement with the propaganda narrative and do your own private reckoning so your own sense of guilt and compliance doesn’t bleed through the narrative too strongly, so you can tell a good story instead of an overt message story that’s you working out your own feelings.

By all means, write a story where police and the military are taken down, where propaganda is weaponized and the media is controlled (because that’s sure as hell the modern world). 

But know that stories where the hero discovers the corruption already have a ticking clock because we, in the real world, are slowly being faced with a mountain of apathy instead of ignorance. The knowledge of oppression is out there so much that marginalized people are tired of the ignorance defence. 

As the saying goes, “privilege is the ability to ignore the oppression of others.” 

Propaganda, centralized media, and strategic cultural investment made it possible for police and the military to have a chokehold on their public perception. But that’s changing. The chokehold is starting to fade, people are starting to question their beliefs. 

The past year has shown that knowledge isn’t the issue; it’s white supremacy. People don’t want to believe that any of this is that bad. People want to believe that oppression is justified, that if people just followed the law they’d be fine. They don’t want to question themselves. And marginalized people are tired of these narratives where, suddenly, people snap out of it. Because there was so much evidence to show it was bad, but it was only when you do one of the worst crimes imaginable that you realize this is bad? It’s only when it becomes personal that things are worth looking at critically?

No. And you need to examine where you are in processing your own complicity before writing a story where you’ve swapped around the ethnicities to try and distance yourself from the problem, where in the end you made the target the oppressor.

~Mod Lesya

[kingofthenorth49]

Made in China

I don’t know about you, but it sure feels like we are living through the start of World War III.  

Now before you scroll past and think my tin foil hat is on too tight this morning, hear me out. It’s not like this doesn’t make sense or anything, if you connect the dots it would appear that the next global conflict will look much different than the previous two.  

Think about it. China has been posturing for years to become the next world superpower, and if you can see through the medias bullshit you can read the overtures that are being made in the Asia region along with the saber rattling in the Middle East, you can see that it didn’t take long for Biden to unravel almost 50 years of progress towards peace.

War is inevitable and necessary to the state, and if you ever read Sun Tzu “Art of War”, a Chinese war treatise from the 6th dynasty you would understand the supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting. He also said that the outcome of war is pre-decided and gave solid advice on the best way to conduct campaigns to conquer foreign powers.

Now before you get your panties in a bunch, I’m not accusing China of deliberately inducing a world-wide pandemic through the use of a genetically modified pathogen after spending years devaluating the US dollar using printed money (not like we have room to talk, but we also haven’t been on a buying spree like the Chinese have in say, Canada for example.), but if I were President Xi Jinping that’s what I’d do. The best war is one where you risk no resources.

Again, not saying the Chinese are attempting to destabilize the United States, not at all. Just saying if I were going to take over the world that’s how I’d do it, from a far, using disinformation and creating confusion and chaos in the streets of my enemy. Not like it hasn’t been done before.  

See many of you see people like me as conspiracy theorists, people who are to be dismissed because we believe in things others’ think are foolish, things that seem farfetched and impossible to be going on in a frame of present reference. I just see myself as a guy who likes history and reads a lot of books that were written before Google came along and dumbed down our nations. Anyone who has ever read a book on the rise of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party in 1920’s Germany would understand completely. If you were to pick up a couple other books on how Hilter rose to power on the back of that party, you’d understand also how quickly people can be manipulated, and how the media and ideology can quickly create a firestorm of hate that makes it easy for societies to crumble. Read even further on how the German army used deceptive tactics to invade Austria and Poland so quickly they didn’t have a chance to prepare.  

That’s not a conspiracy theory, that’s history and we all know those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.  

I guess watering down history is a good thing, right? Taking down statues, changing historical accounts in the name of political correctness, and not encouraging people to critically examine all aspects of history to learn from them helps us become a better society.  

Let me give you the Cole’s notes version of how quickly things can go off the rails when the wrong ideology gains traction in a society where people intend to do evil. Again, not saying our current situation is remotely commensurate with our current situation, but it’s a good example of how quickly things can go from good to evil.

Here we go.

1933 - The Nazi Party takes power in Germany. Adolf Hitler becomes chancellor (or Prime Minister) of Germany. Nazis temporarily suspend civil liberties.

1934 - Hitler combines the positions of chancellor and president to become “Fuhrer” or leader of Germany. Jewish newspapers are no longer allowed to be sold in the streets of Germany.

1935 - The Nazis intensify the persecution of people that do not agree with their political philosophy. Jews are deprived of their citizenship and other basic rights.

1936 – Nazi's boycott Jewish owned businesses. The Olympic Games are held in Germany; Signs barring Jews are removed until the event is over. Jews no longer have the right to vote.

1938 - German troops annexed Austria. On Kristallnacht, the “night of broken glass,” Nazis terrorized Jews throughout Germany and Austria and 30,000 Jews are arrested. Jews must carry ID cards (papers!) and Jewish passports are marked with a “J”. Jews no longer had businesses, attend plays, concerts etc. (maybe they were unvaccinated??)  All Jewish children are move to Jewish schools. Jewish businesses are shut down; They must sell businesses and hand over securities and jewels. Jews must hand over drivers licenses and car registrations. Jews must be in certain places at certain times.

1939- Germany takes over Czechoslovakia and invades Poland. World War Two begins as Britain in France declared war on Germany. Hitler orders that Jews must follow curfews; Jews must turn in radios to the police; Jews must wear yellow stars of David.

Now I’ll stop there.  

Those are all non-debatable historical facts, no subjectivity in my interpretation, just the facts m’am. Look how quickly one ideology took hold in a country ripe for change. At the time of the 1930’s German’s were desperate for change as they had just came out of world war 1 and were suffering from paying reparations for their conduct during that conflict and when Hilter came along he lit a fire under the German people by blaming the Jews for the loss of WW1.  

Five years. Five years from the time a tyrant took power until he was able to start killing 6 million people.

Now if you are one of those types that believe “it can’t happen again” look no further to all the other genocides over the past 100 years, up to and including the Uighur crisis currently going on in China where they have over 1 million Uighur Muslims in concentration camps and they are mass sterilizing these people to the point it’s actually consider a genocide, as it’s reducing the Muslim population in the western provinces of China though declining birthrates. If these women don’t submit to forced intra-uterine devices or monthly pregnancy tests, they are put in prisons.  

Put in prision because they needed to take a test, shot, or device and wouldn’t?  

Say it ain’t so Joe, say it ain’t so.

Folks, some people are evil. Rotten to the core. They have no soul and are in the most desperate need of getting laid of any person on the planet. That’s reality. You can choose to stick you head in the sand and pretend the boogeyman doesn’t exist, but in truth the boogey man will always exist because humans are nasty evil creatures capable of the most horrendous conduct, and if you think ignoring them or passing laws to prevent them from doing things are going to stop them, well you are just stupid. Sorry, I can’t soften that up any because I owe it to you to be blunt in these times.

Now if you’ve made it this far I think you would agree that something is amiss these days, there’s too many conspiracy theories of the past few years that are now seeming to be true, yet no one wants to talk about where the end game is. I’m not sure what it is, but I have some theories, most involved China or George Soros, but the data indicates more towards the former versus the latter.

Trudeau loves China, he’s said so on many occasions to the point of gushing over their communist form of government. His father was a Marxist, and his mother loved communists. Literally. **bow chica bow wow**

Hunter Biden and the Big Guy are in bed with the Chinese in a different way that Margret and Fidel. We’ve seen the emails, the testimony, and the allegations. For them, it’s about money. Last week the Big Guy shut down the investigation that Trump started into the Wuhan lab. That’s now created a firestorm that will likely make 9/11 look like a traffic accident. Coincidence? I think not.

We recently had two Chinese scientists with ties to the Chinese People’s Army kicked out of our highest security epidemiology lab here in Canada after CSIS had concerns they were passing information back to the Wuhan lab (a lab so highly classified Canadian scientists have a hard time getting security clearances to access it), and Trudeau drew the ire of senior Canadian military personnel when he bullied them into allowing the Chinese to hold winter war games at CFB Petawawa. Why is Trudeau so moonstruck with China?

Dot, Dot, Dot.

Once again, I hope I’m wrong. I really, really do, but go back and walk that timeline again and ask yourself if you now understand why Netanyahu hit Hamas as hard as he did.

Never again.

Can you blame him Comrades?

Now as you sit here in North America today, especially in Canada, does it not seem eerily similar to what has happened before in history? Keep in mind that Jews were loaded onto boxcars under the premise to take them to safety from the angry German peoples.  

I really do hope my tinfoil hat is too tight and it’s cutting off the circulation to my frontal lobe, I want the Canada back I grew up in, and the America I fell in love with. I just hope this really is just a bad bug that’s part of a cyclical pattern of virology and this isn’t the start of a global war to reorganize the planet power structure and de-populate the globe.

The dots just tell a different story.

Jim Out.

[mermaidmovieclub]

Common Mermaid Movie Tropes (With Examples)

I’ve noticed with a lot of mermaid movies that a lot of them tend to share common tropes. I mention common mermaid tropes a lot on the Mermaid Movie Club, but thought, hey, maybe I need to come up with a handy list that’s easy to follow? Hey, that’s what blogs are for. Without further ado, a list of Common Mermaid Movie Tropes, and examples for each one. Since these are going to be part of the Mermaid Movie Club going forward, I thought I'd compile them neatly into a little list. Of course, this will be updated as I go through more movies. 😉

These are not taken from TVTropes, these are just things that I have found from watching these films/TV shows, so I just kinda made stuff up. Perhaps in due time I could make a list of tropes taken from TVTropes but that’s a loooooooooot to sift through.

(Also, this is not necessarily negative. Understand a lot of these will be interpreted differently from film to film. It's all about looking at something from a different angle, which a lot of these filmmakers do in their own way.)

1. The Only Way To Get What You Want is to Become Human Yourself

Literally what it says on the tin. The mermaid has to become human to achieve some kind of goal. Usually a romantic objective.

Examples: The Little Mermaid and most adaptations of it, Splash (1989), Aquamarine (2006)

Subverted in: The Little Mermaid 2: Return to the Sea (2000), Barbie in a Mermaid Tale (2010)

2. Teenagers Scare the Living Fish Outta Me

Mermaid as a coming-of-age metaphor. For me it comes across as a kind of "fish out of water" metaphor but in the case of one film I have to rethink that.

Examples: The Thirteenth Year (1999), Scales: Mermaids are Real (2017), Blue My Mind (2017), Barbie in a Mermaid Tale (2010)

3. You Can Take Your Mermaid on Land Adventures, When She Dries Off, She Gets Legs

Again, what it says on the tin. The mermaid can achieve a human form but only when dry. When she touches water again she reverts back to her mermaid form.

Examples: Splash (1989), H2O and all of its spin-offs, Aquamarine (2006)

Splash: Obviously there’s the iconic scene with Madison unfolding her fins in the bathtub, and rushing to dry off when Allen calls for her. There’s also the scene where Walter Kornbluth sprays her down with a hose as she and Allen leave their dinner, effectively revealing her tail to the public.

H2O: This is revealed in the first episode where Cleo gets stuck in the bathtub after her tail develops, Emma transforms while swimming in the ocean, and perhaps the most telling of all is Rikki transforming after getting hit with a sprinkler. There are many more examples as the show goes on.

Aquamarine: Had an additional stipulation that she would have to be a mermaid at night, so it was almost like a werewolf-mermaid situation.

4. Born Yesterday

Mermaid is a bit naive to human things.

Seen in: The Little Mermaid (especially the Disney one), Splash (1989), Aquamarine (2006), Siren (2018-present)

5. Human Stuff

Mermaid falls in love with a human.

Examples: The Little Mermaid and all of its adaptations, Splash (1989), Aquamarine (2006), Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011), Siren (2018-present)

6. For Science

Mermaid is pursued by scientists for science.

Examples: Splash (1989), Scales: Mermaids are Real (2017), The 3 Tails Movie: A Mermaid Adventure (2015), Siren (2018-present)

7. Hush Hush

The mermaid has to keep her mermaid identity a secret, potentially as a result of For Science, as well as You Can Take Your Mermaid on Land Adventures, When She Dries Off, She Gets Legs. The mermaid might have to avoid water to avoid being exposed.

Examples: H2O and all its spin-offs, Aquamarine (2006), Splash (1989), Scales: Mermaids are Real (2017), The Thirteenth Year (1999), nearly all of them except for some older pre-Splash ones.

H2O: Just Add Water: The mermaids even have to drink water through straws to prevent the water from touching their skin.

8. The Power of Three

There's likely a trio of mermaids. Mostly common in H2O copycat shows on YouTube.

Examples: H2O and all its spin-offs, Mermaids (2003), as I said, a lot of H2O copycats on YouTube. Aquamarine includes a main cast of three, but Hailey and Claire are not mermaids.

9. Power Up

They have superpowers. That's it that's the trope

Examples: H2O and all its spin-offs, The Thirteenth Year (1999), Scales: Mermaids are Real (2017), Barbie in a Mermaid Tale (2010)

H2O: The core mermaids (Rikki, Cleo, Emma, later Bella) all have some kind of different water-based superpower.

Scales: Siren's powers in this movie are pretty similar to those in H2O, particularly, the ability to move water. At the end she kills a hunter by dehydrating him to death.

The Thirteenth Year: Cody Palpatine Griffin emits force lightning--I mean, static electricity

Barbie in a Mermaid Tale: Royals of Oceana are capable of producing Merillia, a sort of oceanic life force. 

10. I'm In the Sea, and I'm SINGING

Mermaid can sing, which checks out given the mythology honestly

Examples: The Little Mermaid and nearly all of its adaptations (especially Disney), Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011), Siren (2018-present)

11. You Should See Me In a Crown

Mermaid is part of a royal family, most likely a princess. Her father is likely Neptune or Triton or Poseidon, or some non-specific King of the Sea. (Notice that the Queen of the Sea is rarely mentioned? That's weird, right?)

Examples: The Little Mermaid and all its adaptations, Aquamarine (2006), The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie (2001), Barbie in a Mermaid Tale (2010), implied in Scales: Mermaids are Real (2017)

The Little Mermaid: It's kind of the basis for the story itself. In Disney's The Little Mermaid (1989), Ariel is the daughter of King Triton and has six sisters. Her mother, Queen Athena, is not revealed until 2008 in The Little Mermaid: Ariel's Beginning, but it's revealed that she was killed when Ariel was very young, so she doesn't exist by the time the original film takes place.

Aquamarine: Aqua's father is a non-specific king

SpongeBob: Mindy's father is King Neptune

Barbie in a Mermaid Tale: Merliah’s mother is Calissa, Queen of Oceana, overthrown by her sister Eris

Scales: Siren's birth mother is referred to as "the leader of the mermaids," and it is later revealed that they are both pureblood mermaids, which implies that Siren and Emerald are some kind of royalty. The film uses the word “leader” which is fairly vague, however.

12. Kids' Show

(I read this in my mind like the Will Ferrell/Molly Shannon “Dog Show” sketch from SNL.)

A character from a kids' franchise becomes a merperson themselves, most often to help other merfolk. This might also be reflected in a corresponding toy line.

Examples: Barbie (numerous titles), Dora the Explorer, Paw Patrol, Monster High, Sofia the First, Shimmer and Shine.

Barbie: Numerous mermaid characters exist in the Barbie Cinematic Universe (if that isn’t already a thing it is now), but at least five mermaid-centric Barbie films exist: Barbie Fairytopia: Mermaidia (2006), Barbie in a Mermaid Tale (2010), Barbie in a Mermaid Tale 2 (2012), Barbie the Pearl Princess (2014), and Barbie Dolphin Magic (2017). There have also been multiple Barbie mermaid lines throughout the years, the most recent being part of the Dreamtopia line. A number of lines corresponded to the films, such as the Mermaidia and Barbie in a Mermaid Tale lines. (I’ve got one of Kayla from the first one somewhere)

Dora the Explorer: In the 2007 TV movie Dora Saves the Mermaids, Dora became a mermaid to help the crown of mermaid princess Mariana. Dora later reunited with Mariana in the Dora and Friends episode “Magical Mermaid Adventure” (1x13) in 2015. Dora once again became a mermaid in the 2012 episode “Dora’s Rescue in Mermaid Kingdom” (7x01). I remember there being dolls for Dora Saves the Mermaids but not for the other two.

Paw Patrol: The six main pups of the Paw Patrol become merpups (it’s exactly what it sounds like) in the 2016 episode “Merpups Save the Turbots” (3x21B). Initially it’s just Marshall after he is turned by a mother merpup but later all the pups have a merpup form. I don’t remember a ton of toys for this one, but I often run into the merpup bath squirters, namely Skye.

Monster High: Lagoona Blue, daughter of a sea monster, is a part of the core team of monsters, but she’s more Mermaid-Adjacent. The first true mermaid character to be introduced to the franchise was Sirena von Boo, the daughter of a mermaid and a ghost, in the 2014 Freaky Fusion movie and doll line of the same name. Later on, the 2016 Great Scarrier Reef movie coincided with a corresponding doll line of the main monsters as mermaid-like creatures, with the addition of some new aquatic characters such as Posea Reef, Kala Mer’ri, and the two-headed Peri and Pearl Serpentine. (Mattel had a similar line called Ever After High that featured Meeshell Mermaid as the daughter of the Little Mermaid, but there was never any kind of mermaid line or movie made for it, which, come on, I wanted mermaid Raven Queen.)

Sofia the First: 2013′s “The Floating Palace” was a special episode that aired toward the end of the show’s first season. In it, Sofia meets mermaid princess Oona and Queen Emmaline, and helps them stop Cedric from taking the magical Mermaid Comb of Merroway Cove. Of course, in order to do that, she has to become a mermaid herself. Along the way, her magical amulet summons Ariel because this is a Disney Princess show and her amulet just magically summons Disney Princesses when she needs a pep talk because of course it does.

Shimmer and Shine: In the 2016 episode “Mermaid Mayhem” (2x06), Leah wishes she and her genies, Shimmer and Shine, were mermaids. If only it were that easy. Yep. There were toys. Just expect it at this point.

Subverted in: Elena of Avalor: Song of the Sirenas

13. Looks Like a Seannamon Roll But Could Actually Kill You

This is really just a trope for sirens or "darker" mermaids

Examples: Siren (2018-present), She Creature (2001), Killer Mermaid/Nymph (2014), Mermaid's Song (2018), Night Tide (1961)

14. Mermaid-Adjacent

Not quite a mermaid but similar human-fish hybrid.

Examples: The Shape of Water (2017), Creature from the Black Lagoon (1953), also the Zora race from the Legend of Zelda games even though that’s not a movie, shut up it counts

15. Gadgets and Gizmos Aplenty

There is some kind of magical trinket used by the mermaids, typically a piece of jewelry with magical properties.

Examples: The Little Mermaid 2: Return to the Sea (2000), Scales: Mermaids are Real (2010), H2O: Just Add Water (2006-2010), Mako Mermaids/Mako: Island of Secrets (2013-2016), both Barbie in a Mermaid Tale movies (2010 and 2012)

TLM2: Melody's locket, a gift to her from King Triton, projected an image of Atlantica when opened, but otherwise didn't do a lot.

Mako Mermaids: The mermaids possessed blue moon rings, which store moonlight and can be used to perform different magical functions dependent on the situation.

H2O: The necklaces worn by Rikki, Cleo, and Bella in the third season serve a similar function to the Moon Rings of Mako.

Scales: Siren Phillips was given a special necklace by Crystal which seems to serve as a kind of homing device. It's not explained in depth what it does exactly, but it performs a similar function to the Wailing Stick if I remember correctly, which was a sort of mermaid distress signal.

Barbie in a Mermaid Tale: When Queen Calissa gave baby Merliah Summers to Break, she gave Merliah a magical necklace that, years later, revealed to her and Zuma that Queen Calissa was still alive after Eris overthrew her from the throne of Oceana. Merliah is later given a necklace by Calissa that allows her to alternate between human and mermaid forms at will. In Barbie in a Mermaid Tale 2, Kylie Morgan steals the necklace out of Merliah’s hoodie when Hadley is distracted and uses it to become a mermaid herself, so it’s clearly not specifically made for Merliah to use.

If it counts, Ursula’s soul-stealing necklace in The Little Mermaid (1989) is one of these as well.

16. You Want Thingamabobs? I've Got Twenty

Girl is a hoarder, or fascinated by human trinkets.

Examples: The Little Mermaid and nearly all of its adaptations (especially the Disney one)

17. The Mermaid Elder

An old woman that’s sort of a mermaid wise woman.

Examples: The Mermaid (2016), most interpretations of The Little Mermaid apart from the Disney one

18. Foreshadowing Name

Very very very obvious mermaid name.

Examples: Barbie in a Mermaid Tale/2 (2010/2012), Scales: Mermaids are Real (2017), Aquamarine (2006), Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011)

Barbie in a Mermaid Tale/2: You really expect me to think a girl named Merliah isn’t gonna be a mermaid? Come on.

Scales: I feel like naming your kid Siren in a town full of mermaids AND where there are known mermaid hunters is just a great example of not thinking things through.

Aquamarine: Self-explanatory.

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides: Astrid Berges-Frisbey played main merm Syrena in this movie. There were other named mermaids in this, I think, but Syrena was the most prominent, obviously.

[traincat]

Can you share why you like the 2015 Fantastic Four movie?

Must a superhero movie be “good”? Is it not enough for a superhero movie to criticize the US military, large?

Okay, seriously, a little bit of background in three points: 1) I followed this movie from the beginning. Through the casting, through the reshoots, through the cryptic articles about how the movie would feature an unexpected romance that turned out to be right but not how we all thought -- I’m pretty sure a Ben/Sue cut of this movie exists somewhere, but it’s hard to argue that the only romantic subplot that exists in the finished film is... Ben/Reed, so. I got excited over stuff in the trailers that was cut from the finished movie entirely. I analyzed the hell out of previews. I almost stole a theater stand but it wouldn’t have fit in my friend’s trunk. I, no joke, bought the Fantastic Four peanut butter. And I had friends who were also excited for the movie, so we were having fun together. So the anticipation definitely has a part in my enjoyment of the movie. “Even though it came like that?” Oh, 100%. 2) I really like Ultimate Fantastic Four, a bad comic, so in a way I was primed to already be like “must a movie be “good?” Must it not simply give me the Mole Man?” (It did not give me the Mole Man.) Fant4stic is much more heavily influenced by Ultimate Fantastic Four than it is by 616 Fantastic Four, especially in its Reed and his relationships with Ben and with Franklin Storm and the think tank. Finally, 3) I really, really dislike the 2005/2007 movies. I think they’re flashy, sexist, shallow hot garbage pieces of filmmaking and I hold Chris Evans’ Johnny from all angles -- writing, styling, performance -- largely responsible for a wide fandom perception of Johnny Storm as a hotheaded playboy. I like Reed and Alicia but that’s basically it. 

And I can -- and have already -- gone over Fant4stic’s faults. It’s very clear that the movie largely falls apart after the time skip, but especially during the final battle, which is messy to the extreme. The extensive reshoots messed with the overall product to the point where you can pinpoint while watching what comes from which shoot, though that’s in part to the horrendous wig they put on Sue to cover up that Kate Mara had cut her hair for a different movie in-between. Josh Trank’s dogs did $100,000 worth of property damage, somehow, during filming. So I’m going to talk about what I like about Fant4stic, and here’s a really big thing: as superhero movies go, it’s different.

There’s something I hear a lot in discussions about Spider-Man films, when someone goes, “No, it wasn’t a good Spider-Man movie, but it was a good superhero movie.” Which is something I take issue with because how are we defining what makes a superhero movie good? And what people seem to think makes a superhero good is the MCU’s general formula -- not necessarily the content of their movies, but formula with which they’re devised, which does, it’s fair to say, make for a big office winner, too. And what the MCU does is it makes superhero action movies. It plays around a little with genre -- Captain America: The First Avenger is a war movie, but it’s an action war movie. Guardians of the Galaxy is a space action movie. Ant-Man is a heist action movie. It’s spun its Spider-Man movies as coming of age stories, but they’re action movies. This becomes a problem for a viewer (me, I’m the viewer) if you don’t really love action movies all that much.

In no way, shape, or form can anyone make the claim that Fant4stic is an action movie. Its one big superhero fight scene is a complete and utter failure and probably the worst scene -- probably because it was never meant to be in there. Fant4stic was meant to be a horror movie with a superhero angle, which isn’t all that surprising considering it was directed by Josh “Chronicle” Trank. And I’m really into using big superhero properties to explore other genres -- Logan’s dystopian western, TASM/2′s romance. Fant4stic’s horror. Some of the best parts of the movie are the ramping up to the accident. You know it’s coming. You know it’s going to go horribly wrong. You know Ben, in particular, played with a quiet but longing stoicness by Jamie Bell pre-transformation (and the only film Ben to be acknowledged on-screen as Jewish), is about to be, pardon the pun, doomed. And then there’s the utter horror of the aftermath: Johnny, apparently a burnt out shell, lying in the wreckage as Ben screams for Reed for to help him. Reed crawling through the smoldering chaos only to look back and see that his legs are still pinned under the wreckage. That’s good. A version of the film was apparently screened before the reshoots and the test audience found it “too dark” and I desperately want to see that cut.

In addition to Fant4stic’s horror angle, there’s the villain of the piece: the US military. Doom, despite showing back up last minute looking like lovechild of Annihilus and a melted toy soldier -- Annihilus was supposed to be an initial villain in the film, so the resemblance likely isn’t accidental -- isn’t the true villain of the piece. If anything, young ecoterrorist Victor who just wants to rule his own planet is kind of a charming concept. But the villain of the piece is the military, who wants to use the gate for their own purposes. The military imprisons Ben, Johnny, and Sue after their transformation and explicitly uses Ben as a killing machine. When Harvey Allen approaches Ben, he convinces him Reed’s abandoned him, and that he has to “play ball” with the government. Johnny’s youthful enthusiasm and longing to belong places him in similar danger -- Sue and Franklin explicitly talk about how, if they don’t do something, Johnny’s going to be used as a weapon. One of my favorite lines in the film is when Reed is brought back to the compound to see his reworked invention: “You made it ugly.” The film backs off on this at the very end -- it doesn’t stick the landing like TASM/2 does, where the ultimate villain that spawns the actual superpowered villains is consistently Oscorp’s abuses -- but it does better highlighting this than a vast swathe of other superhero films: the bad guy isn’t Doom. Doom isn’t the one who tortures Ben. Doom isn’t the one who remakes the gate with the express purpose of breeding super soldiers. It’s the military.

I also really like the characters within the film. I don’t think this is going to be hugely surprising to my followers, but really all you need to do to make me like a Fantastic Four adaptation is nail Johnny Storm, and Fant4stic nailed Johnny Storm. I think Michael B Jordan was really terrific casting, and I’m sad we didn’t get to see more of him in the roll, because he was great at portraying Johnny’s insecurities and his vulnerability, making his occasional moments of swagger charming instead of oily, like when he blows a kiss to a rival racer. Introducing Johnny with a drag race -- and with Standing in the Shadows of Love, which is a great Johnny song, and I love how music is a big thing for both Storm siblings -- established his ability with cars and his talent for building things, letting the audience know that Johnny is smart and capable, it’s just that he doesn’t feel like he is. I love this Sue, too, serious and blunt and a little awkward, incredibly smart and far more inclined to hold a grudge than her brother. I love how she’s styled -- her clothes are normal and her makeup is realistically minimal, not movie-minimal. There’s no scene where Fant4stic’s Sue has to strip off her clothes to use her powers, or where a sexy nurse exists so Johnny can hit on her and the audience can get their recommended fifteen minutes of female objectification.

Ben is, as he often is in Fantastic Four pieces, a standout, of course, and Jamie Bell gives a great performance, both anguished and full of rage and resentment and at the same time love for Reed, but it’s his design I love the best. The 2005/2007 Thing design is cartoonish -- the 2015 is monstrous. I love the first few Thing scenes where Ben seems to have trouble moving, dragging himself across the floor, because you get a sense of how incredibly heavy his new form is and how difficult it is to exist in it beyond just looking like a rock creature. The horror of the superhero transformation is built into Ben Grimm at his core, but here it doesn’t manifest in a lost fiance or children screaming on the street but in the difficulty with which he moves, the new grinding note of his voice, vocal chords landsliding together. It’s some really terrific work. And while I think Ioan Gruffudd’s Reed was actually a pretty perfect 616 Reed (more’s the shame about the rest of the films), the Reed of Fant4stic is Ultimate Reed in the beginning through and through. The precocious genius of his childhood, misunderstood by everyone but Ben until Franklin Storm sees him, the scene where he takes the kid’s model airplane and awkwardly apologizes afterwards (the “you’re a dick” line IS funny), his awkward attempts to connect with Sue, his attempts to connect with Victor. Like Sue, he’s straightforward and blunt. The way he isolates himself in his attempt to fix things. How gross his powers are in motion. The aforementioned “you made it ugly” line. I really do like him as a Reed. And Victor... Victor is hilarious. I’m sorry, but it’s true. I was on board back when they were like “he’s a blogger, he’s a gamer” like I was 100% down to see Doom’s tortured neon green on black LiveJournal screeds, and opening on Victor unwashed in the dark playing video games? Hilarious. Victor seeing glowing green energy and immediately going “I’m gonna f*ck it”? Superb. Is this a good Doom interpretation? Maybe not, but it was entertaining. I think they could’ve gone full Ultimate and put little metal hooves on him post-transformation, granted. It’s not the Doom I want for any upcoming Doom projects -- I want my science wizard monarch -- but I can’t say I don’t like the character that Fant4stic gave me.

Fant4stic is an imperfect film, but I’d rather have an imperfect film with characters and themes that I like and one that did something different than a perfect film made with the same old formula and the same jokes on the same beats.

Also, if anyone’s curious, since Fant4stic has no DVD commentary (a crying shame on so many levels), @johnnystormcast recorded our own in our Giant Size Annual and you can download it to watch along with our thoughts, which are very deep and not at all mostly about how Ben and Reed are in love in the film.

[joyofcrime-elinorhigh]

RWBY REVW:

** Disclaimer: When I do reviews, I make it my mission to point out both the good and the bad in whatever I'm reviewing. And I want to make it clear that me doing so is in no way meant to be taken as disrespect to anybody who worked on the show, especially the late Monty Oum. He was a visionary animator and it's a tragedy that he was taken from this world so soon. Anyway, with all that out of the way, let the regular review commence. **

**  **Hello everybody, my name is JoyofCrimeArt, and I've always had a particular fondness for web series. There's just a certain charm to online content that I don't think can be repudiated with other more conventional mediums. Unlike other mediums, web series have the most creative freedom to do whatever the heck they want. They don't have to adhere to studio notes, focus groups, or censorship guidelines. It's just a group of people, or sometimes even just one person, deciding to put something out there into the world. Simply because they want to see said thing exist. And I think that the freedom that can comes from that can result in some very unique and creative piece of entertainment that may not have been approved if they had been pitched to a more "main stream" outlets. Not to mention the fact that web series, when compared to film and television, are definitely the underdog. And who doesn't love a good underdog story?

 I've talked about several web series before, (like _Don't Hug Me, I'm Scared _and _Camp Camp) _and I'm defiantly going to talk about more in the future. However, today I wanna talk about a certain web series that managed to do something that very little other web original series have done. And that's break into main stream through sheer force of will. And that series is RWBY.

 RWBY, created by the late Monty Oum and produced by Rooster Teeth, is an anime inspired online series that premiered in 2013. Now in the middle of it's sixth season (Oh, I'm sorry. Not seasons. Volumes? Cause we have to be all different all of a sudden.) it is still going stronger than ever. Now Rooster Teeth had always been one of the biggest companies out there for online content, and have had plenty of success with their very popular Red vs Blue machinima series, along with other projects. So RWBY doesn't exactly have the same underdog story as most other web series out there. It was made by a studio, and had a decent budget behind it from the start. However, the thing that I find noticeable about the series, and the thing that drew me into the series in the first place, was just how different it looked compared to so many other web series out there.

 Animated web series as a genre is very much a dying breed. Sure, they were all the rage back in the early 2000's on sites like Newgrounds, and with shows like Homestar Runner and Eddsworld. But ever since the rise of Youtube and the algorithm shift they've become a bit of a dying art. (Outside of the "Animated Storytime Video" genre but that's kinda it's own separate thing.) Why spends weeks or even months on a three to five minute animation when you could just record a let's play or vlog in a fraction of the time, and get way more views in the process? And if you do decide to devote yourself to web animation than you gotta find a way to make it cost effect. This usually means short, comedic, easy to animate sketches. Often with some kind of parody element included to help get the viewers in. That way the series would (hopefully) become financially viable enough that more animations could be made. (Like How It Should of Ended as an example.) And this isn't necessarily a bad thing. There's nothing wrong with the shows that follow this formula. But I bring this up to show how much of a contrast RWBY is by comparison.

 A fully original action anime inspired series, not based on any pre-established i.p, where the animation was the main focus. Rather than being animated in flash it was animated with motion captured CG. And despite all of that the series had new episodes coming out on regular basis and getting millions of views with every released. This series broke every rule in the book, and somehow ended up becoming insanely popular in the process. There wasn't very many web series like it. Now, I've brought up this series several times in other reviews. Sometimes I praised it, other times I made fun of it. Which is why I think it's time to finally put the jokes aside, and give my honest on RWBY.

 Now there is a lot to go over with this series. Like, I said earlier, there are six sea-VOLUMES out as of the writing of this review. And given that this is a story based show with a changing status quo, it makes reviewing the show a bit tricky. And since I wanna have this review act somewhat as a introduction to the series for people who are on the fence about watching it or not, I'm going to try to keep spoilers somewhat light. But there will be some things I'll have to talk about, so if you want to go into the series COMPLETELY BLIND without knowing anything, you should probably drop off now. And if there's enough support in the comments (or if I just decide to at some point) I may come back to this series at a later date and do a more spoiler heavy review focused on events of the newer volumes. But with all that said, let's dive right in.

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_x9zjk2MgVQ

The plot of RWBY is actually pretty simple. (GASP!-)

 The series follows a young teenager names Ruby Rose. She's a protege when it comes to the art of combat and dreams of being a huntress. What a huntress you may ask? Well hunters and huntresses are warriors who's job is to protect humanity from the Grimm? What are Grimm you may ask? Well Grimm are monsters that are manifestations of humanities negative emotions. Try to keep up. Anyway, Ruby, along with everyone else in this world, has aura. aura is used to channel there semblances. _WHAT ARE SEMBLANCES you may ask?! _Well there basically superpowers powered by aura used by hunters to fight Grimm. But then there's also Dust, which is not the same thing as a semblance or aura and is DEFINITELY not magic. Magic is a whole separate can of worms that comes up later. Dust is energy (not aura though) that hunters put into there weapons to fight Grimm. RWBY semblance is super speed and her weapon is Crescent Rose, which is a scythe that's also a gun. Understand that? Good, cause that's just the first three minutes. Don't worry, it's all very well explained, and not convoluted in the slightest. Anyway-

 Basically, the world functions like an JRPG. That's all you really need to know. There are random monsters everywhere, everyone has weapons and abilities, and they can equip the weapons with special elemental attributes attributes. After a chance encounter with some mysterious villains Ruby, despite only being fifteen, is selected to attend the worlds top school for hunters and training. Weapon Meister Academy, I mean Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry, I mean UA Academy, I mean Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters, I mean Beacon Academy! Yeah, that's the one!

 Ruby ends up getting sorted into her house-err, I mean-sorted into her team, Team RWBY. (convent, I know.) where she is joined by her half-sister Yang Xiao-Long, and her new teammates Weiss Schnee and Blake Belladonna. _Can these rag-tad team of huntresses in training learn to harness there abilities, and just maybe learn friendship along the way?! _Well if you've ever seen a piece of fiction before, you probably know the answer.

 Now, I know I just got done taking a ton of jabs at the shows premise for having so many similarities to so many other popular piece of media. But all jokes aside, I don't think that any of that is actually a problem. As they say, there are no original ideas. So taking some inspiration from other works isn't really an issue as long as you have your own unique execution and spin to it, which RWBY thankfully does. RWBY has this unique style and flair to it that's all it's own. And it really does help it stand out as it's own thing. Also, since it borrows from so many different genres and franchise, the series ends up being this really bizarre melting pot of concepts that I haven't really seen done in tandem before. There's elements of action, drama, fantasy, magical girl, superpowers, coming of age stories, giant robots on at least one occasion...and THAT'S pretty original.

 It's like the people at Rooster Teeth decided they wanted to make an anime, but couldn't decide on what kind of anime they wanted to make. So they just said, "Screw it!" and decided to do them all, And while that might sound like a criticism, it really isn't. I love how over the top and crazy this show can get. It's kinda part of the charm.

Now let's talk about the characters. I've seen a lot of people (mostly hard core anime fans) argue that the characters in this series are cliche and uninspired. And in my opinion at least, there both kinda right and kinda wrong. It's true that a lot of the cast do fall into the somewhat standard "anime" tropes. Ruby is the typical wide eyed genki girl who's greatest skill is her kindness and optimism. Weiss is the stuck up snob tsundere from an upper class family who has to learn the power of friendship. Blake is the quite bookish girl with a dark and mysterious past who learns to open up. and Yang is the hot blooded action girl slash cool older sister archetype. Basically, there's a waifu for every flavor.

 But like the series itself, the series makes up for some of these more cliche elements by adding more elements to the characters as the series goes on. These developments start fairly basic with things like "Oh, Ruby has to learn responsibility and leadership" or _"Oh, Weiss has to learn to stop being a fu*king BITCH for like the fifteenth time this week." _But as the series goes on we get much more complex and serious themes. From Ruby's history with her dead mom, Yang's struggles with PTSD, Weiss' broken family, or Blake' history of racial predigests. These are all themes that are tackled, and they are tackled well...for the most part. For a show that starts out pretty light it ends up in some dark places. But despite this it never deviates so much that it loses it's root, and becomes unrecognizable from where the series started. The series ages with the audience and the characters.

 In addition to Team RWBY we also have Team JNRP (Juniper). They're kinda like the "B-Team" of the series. However, they become more important as the series goes on, and are basically main characters in their own right too. They're's Pyrrha, a prodigy huntress, gifted with natural talent. She's smart, kind, popular, and a skillful leader, and is literally selected as the objective best student by the school's headmaster in volume three. But she's not a Mary-Sue or anything...she has problems! Like how people are intimidated by her because she's so perfect and...she's not a Mary-Sue I swear! We also have Jaune, the leader of the team. He's a pathetic loser who has no skill, no semblance, and literally had to lie his way into the school. So of course he's the one who Pyrrha has the hots for. Because wish fulfillment. There's Ren, a stoic but sensitive ninja warrior who, judging from his hair and season four redesign, really seems to like the color pink despite being...y'know, a ninja. And Nora, a hyperactive genki girl who's job is to hyperactive and generally genki when Ruby's not around. Also, there all named after cross-dressers for literally no reason.

 Like Team RWBY, while they all start kinda cliche they become more and more interesting as the series develops and we get more into there development. From Jaune's arc (Heh, get it?) of becoming a competent warrior to protect the people he cares for. To Ren and Nora connected tragic upbringing. To Pyrrah...being too perfect. Y'know, all good character arcs that really helps develop the cast.

 I don't know why I keep making fun of Pyrrha. I really do like her as a character, and her arc with Jaune is very captivating...She is a Mary-Sue though. 

 These arcs end up being just as interesting as the arcs the members of Team RWBY go through, an help make these "side characters" all the more interesting and human. Even if there not the stars of the show, I ended up finding this team just as interesting as our main protagonist, if not more so on certain occasions.

 And sure, the characters may rely a bit on common tropes, but it's all about the execution of these tropes that determine the quality. I'm not going to act like their the most complex characters ever made or anything, and a lot of the darker themes I talked about before have been explored better in other series. But that doesn't mean the cast is bad, by any sense. I was still invested in there stories, and felt suspense for them when I was suppose to. There's a real comradely with the teammates, and they good chemistry with each other. They feel like real friends, and that's what matters the most.

 Let's talk about the animation. I've seen a lot of people either really love or really hate the animation of the series, and I noticed that the difference seems to often be based on what standard it is being judged by. People who judge RWBY as a web series seem to be really impressed with the visuals and action scenes. While people who judge it as an "anime" seem to think that the show looks cheap and uninspired. And while I can understand the later viewpoint I do tend to find agreeing more with the viewpoint of the former. RWBY isn't an anime...

 _-**YES IT IS! SHUT UP! **_

 ...And while Rooster Teeth is a big company, but it's still not as large as other major anime productions. They obviously were on a budget, especially early on. And they were taking on a project on a scale much larger than anything they had done before. It's an all CG motion capture web series, featuring entirely new and original assets that had to build from the ground up from scratch. So yeah, or course it's not going to look as good as other animes. But I don't think that should be held against it to much, given the circumstances. Plus honestly, it's still probably one of, it not the, best looking web series I've ever seen. It's definitely one of the most ambitious.

 That being said though, I'm not going to be one hundred percent nice here. Looking back at early episodes, yeah, they look kinda rough. They still look good, especially by the standard of web series. But you can definitely see the budget show in some parts. It's clear they were biting off a bit more than they could chew in some respects. That being said though it is remarkable to see how much the shows animation has improved overtime. By the time we get to volume four, where a new animation engine was introduced, the show goes from "looking good by web animation standards." to "looking genuinely good by animation standards in general." I honestly really like the shows visuals a lot.

 And don't forget the action scenes! This is the part of the show that you can tell the most amount of effort was put into, and the part that the shows original creator, Monty Oum, was the most personally involved in. From the animation to the choreography, the action scenes are what gives the series it's sense of style. The action scenes are over the top, flashy, stylish, and such an array of pure insanity, and it's hard not to be blown away by them. And in a time where so many western cartoons are so comedy oriented, it's really a breath of fresh air to see an american action show with fight scenes as hype as the ones this show presents.

 The voice acting is also pretty good. Starting out with a cast mostly reusing actions known from Rooster Teeth's other works. I admit that there were some growing pains early on with the cast, but they really did grow into there roles pretty fast. And as they series goes on they get a lot more "high profile" actors. From the likes of Vic Mignogna, Aaron Dismuke, Chris Sabat, Yuri Lowenthal, and Cherami Leigh among others. All the actors do really good jobs preforming there characters, for the most part. If I had to nitpick any performances though, and these are nitpicks mind you, would be the performances of Ruby and Pyrrah. Maybe it's just me, but I never felt like either characters sounded like the ages they were suppose to be. Regardless, these are nitpicks, There more of just an observation rather than a "fault" in the series.

 So the show has good animation, good characters, amazing action scenes, and a pretty all star voice cast. Sounds like the show is pretty awesome show, right? Sure they've been some nitpicks and complaints here and there, but it's mostly been over all pretty minor stuff. Nothing that would impact the show that much.

 So, Let's talk about the shows writing.

 So remember when I said that this show was convoluted? This is a serious problem. Things in this show are often not explained very well. For example, in most stories where a character has a special powers, there powers would be shown off or explained right when the characters are introduced. We'd learn how they work, and what there limits are. There are several characters in RWBY who's semblances I still don't fully understand. Like Ruby's super speed. Does Ruby turns into roses peddles when she uses her super speed or is that just an artistic license thing? And there are some characters who we don't even figure out what there semblances do until WAY late into the series. Ren for example, who's introduced in volume one, semblance isn't shown until volume four! And it's not like he only unlocks his powers in volume four or something, he's always had them. It's just never mentioned or came up before, and you'd think it would be. Things like "How are characters powers work." are things that should be established early on!

 The show is also REALLY bad at set up. (Don't @ me!) They'll have these moments where a "big twist" is suppose to happen that's suppose to catch the audience off guard. And they do, but only the twist are set up in such minute ways, there's no way the audience can realistically be expected to see it coming. I know the idea is to help make these twist surprising, but they don't give the audience enough hints to piece things together. They'll be a minor, one off line in one episode, that'll be a major plot point volumes down the road, with nothing to imply that said line was significant. And since these twist aren't set up very well, a lot of these twist just end up feeling like, "um, okay. This is a thing now." I know it's probably all planned out from the beginning, but it's not properly set up. It sometimes feels like the people behind the show are just like "Hey, you know what would be cool?" and just throw things at the wall until they stick. This can work sometimes but other times it just feels random. The shows acts like "They got us." when really it's a problem with their own writing.

 The show also has a major problem with focus. I listed Team RWBY and Team JNPR as the main characters. That's EIGHT different characters to divide focus between, which is already a lot when you only have twelve to fourteen episodes per volume to work with. And while those eight character are the closest thing the show has to "definitive main characters" there are so many other side characters who  that I didn't mention in order to keep this review spoiler free/not ten thousand words long. addition to Team RWBY and JNPR, there's also _(Slight Spoiler Warning) _Team SUNN, Ozpin's circle, Cinder's group, Salem's group, the White Fang, Raven's tribe, the various teachers at the school, the characters extended families, That useless rabbit girl that the fandom likes for some reason. etcetera. (Spoilers Over) There's just too many characters to keep track of! And while there's nothing wrong with having a large cast, (personally I tend to gravitate more to shows that do.) it can defiantly be hard to juggle all that screen time. Sure these side characters are often interesting, but they end up distracting focus and taking time away from the main cast, and side characters shouldn't do that.

 Often, characters will only have a few moments per volume to really shine, due to just how much screen time they have to share. And sometimes it can make big character moments feel a bit undeserved, as there just isn't enough build up to make the moments feel as powerful as they should. And this is a problem that has gotten more and more prevalent overtime as the series has become more ensemble. But I'm hopeful that, given the series extending it's length from twelve episodes per volume to fourteen, as well as the episodes getting genuinely longer, this problem may be able to be fixed in the future. Maybe. Please...

 So to sum up, is RWBY a perfect series? No. It is a very flawed show. VERY FLAWED. Particularly in the writing and the story department. However, I do not think that the show is as bad as a lot of the more vocal hatedom seems to think it is. Just because a series is flawed, doesn't mean you can't enjoy the elements that do work. Even when the flaws are extremely glaring. And that's how I feel about this show. Sure it has problems, but in my opinion the positives out-way the negatives. The action is still done very well, the characters are all pretty fun to be around. The world, while a bit overly complicated at times is interesting. And more importantly, the series never feels like it's being lazy. You can feel the passion that went into the series, and the show can be a lot of fun. There are just some parts where you might need to turn your brain off for a bit. There are plenty of worse series out there that don't try as hard and provide a lot less. But overall, the element I think I enjoy the most about RWBY is what the show represents.

 What RWBY shows is that it is possible for a web animated series to hit the main stream. You can get RWBY T-shirts and merch easily, not just online, but in actual retail stores without much effort. The series can be watched on Netflix and Cruchyroll._ _There are not one, but TWO tie in manga's. There's a spin-off comedy series that's on it's third season. It's one of the four franchises represented in _Blazblue: Cross Tag Battle! _And most importantly it is partially responsible for transforming Rooster Teeth from a fairly successful internet company known for video game parodies, to a studio that is seen in the same light as the likes of more main stream television outlets! Never in my life had I seen a web animated series see this level of success. And sure, you could say that all that just means that the show is just good at selling out or whatever, but I like to have a more positive perspective. I think the show deserves to be respected for it's accomplished.

 And to me, that's inspiring. It's like the weeb equivalent to the American dream! And that's why I have a RWBY poster hung over my work desk. As a reminder that there is no limitations to how far an online content can go. With just some hard work, determination, a studio of about three hundred employees, a stellar marketing team, a close connection to the anime dubbing industry, and a ton of money, you too can make your dreams a reality. And that's motivational...I think...maybe. And if they can make it, maybe I can make my own weeaboo dreams a reality...

_  **SPIRIT WARRIORS COMING OUT TWO THOUSAND AND NEVER!~

**_  So that's my review of RWBY. What do you think of the series, and would you like me to do another review of the series in the future? Maybe on volume six or something, kinda like what I do with my Dragon Ball Super reviews? Tell me all this in the comments down bellow. I'd love to start a conversation, even if you disagree with my points I made here. Please fav, follow, and comment if you liked the review and have a great day.

(I do not own any of the images or videos in this review all credit goes to there original owners.)

https://www.deviantart.com/joyofcrimeart/journal/RWBY-REVW-775726477 DA Link

[utopianparadoxist]

Witch of Space==> Ascend : What is Jade Harley’s Story?

Alright here we go I finally get to write about Jade. My biggest Homestuck secret is that for how relatively little I talk about her, Jade is actually probably my favorite Beta kid.

I love the others and Rose and Dave in particular are intensely personal to me but Jade vibed with me in a way pretty much no character in fiction ever did because she’s an unabashed furry and that’s basically the subculture that raised my preteen catholic ass.

So Jade means a lot to me, and the way her narrative grows has always spoken to me as much as Dave’s narrative about overcoming toxic masculinity, or Rose’s struggle to find existential meaning. In a way, Jade’s struggle IS Rose’s struggle! Jade and Rose have narratives that lead us to twin conclusions about the nature of Homestuck’s reality.

That’s getting ahead of myself though, and I’m going to do this wild thing where I try to impose some structure on my approach so hopefully you can come away with a clear idea of what I think Homestuck is doing. (I want to give special thanks to @landofsomethingsomething for helping me out with the feedback that led me to striving to improve in this respect.)

So. This post has three thesis statements that I hope you come away with at least seriously considering, if not outright buying into.

1. Jade’s character arc was as thought out and deliberate as any of the kids’. She was not “shafted” by the story. The two reasons fans most likely seem to think she was were the Three Years trip she spent alone, and that she “didn’t do anything in Collide”. I believe both are misreadings of the canon.

2. Jade’s arc is meaningful both for herself and for the broader narrative, and builds to one of the most important revelations about Homestuck’s universe.

3. Jade and Davepeta are not only canon but deeply romantic, and Davepeta stands to improve one of the biggest reasons fans feel Jade got “shafted”--not to mention that some fans might take issue with Jade’s lack of a romantic arc, and Davepeta...well...is her romantic arc.

But before we can talk about where Jade’s arc succeeds, we need to talk about what it is, which means we need to talk about her title--Witch of Space. For the record, here’s my view on the mythological roles:

They aren’t a pasted on set of superpowers, and they aren’t given to the kids by Skaia. The titles describe the nature the kids had all along, and the way their patterns of thought reflect onto the world around them. They also foreshadow their narrative arcs and trajectories in their entireties--Just like the titles Hussie was inspired by in creating the system, the Hero of Time and Hero of the Winds structure from the Legend of Zelda.

I’ll begin by tracking Jade’s similarities to her fellow Witches and Space players. By pointing these out I believe I should be able to give you an idea of what I think Jade’s arc is about, exactly.

After that, I’ll expand my reading of Jade as a Witch of Space to include her later narrative turns, as well as explaining how I feel Davesprite--and later Davepeta--is inherently tangled up in her arc, as well as being a better romantic partner for Jade than basically anyone else in the story.

Let’s go. I’m hoping this is the beginning of something really excellent.

Where lies the Witch’s magic?

The first striking similarity between Witches is their bond with an outside force much more powerful than they are representing their Aspect. For Jade, this is Becquerel. For Feferi, it’s Gl’bolyb-who is about as Lifey an entity as it gets. It is, after all, defined by being unknowably massive, incomprehensible Living things, with conscious awareness of its own. 

It is simply a completely alien kind of Life to our own, and thus the Cosmic Horror. Gl’bolyb also requires the consumption of vast quantities of Life that Feferi has to provide it, tying it to Life’s themes of edible consumption. More on Life stuff when I write about Jane soon, though.

Like Jade, Feferi has little direct power early in her life. But she’s able to accomplish stunning feats through her connection to her guardian--which functions effectively as a Witch’s familiar. Before ascension, a Witch’s power is linked to the symbol that identifies her as a Witch in the first place.

Feferi is also ambitious. Not only did Feferi originally aim to change the rules of Life in troll society imposed by the Condesce’s will, but through her connection to the Horrorterrors, she’s able to fundamentally change the rules of Life on a metaphysical level, allowing Ghosts to exist inside dream bubbles in an unnatural limbo.  

Damara has an outside power figure linked to Time, too--Lord English, who she associates with and wishes to work for. She also changes her relationship with Time--turning it into a weapon to use against her friends as revenge as opposed to a tool and series of systems she needs to serve like Aradia and Dave do during their sessions. She’s quite willful and ambitious about both her relationship to her “Familiar” and her use of her Aspect. 

Both witches are driven primarily by their own ambitions and desires, and both witches are also fundamentally Changed by their Aspects. Feferi loses her life and becomes a ghost, her will becoming almost indistinguishable from the Horrorterrors’. And Damara’s primary use of her Aspect coincides with a drastic change in outlook and personality, making her cynical, bitter, and willing to serve her Familiar over connecting with others. 

Now--if Witches are ambitious about and defined by both changing and being changed by the domain of their Aspect, then what is Jade’s field of ambition in this regard? To answer this question, it’ll help to look at her fellow Space players.

The weight of Space

We don’t see Porrim pre-session, but from their introductions, Jade, Kanaya and Calliope are all defined by a unique passion for Sburb. This makes sense--Sburb, after all, is the construct that defines the Space they will exist in their entire lives. 

Waking early on Prospit also essentially makes them grow up in two environments--places--at once, meaning that they grow up influenced by the culture inherent to two different environments. 

This is particularly notable with Kanaya, who is uniquely untouched by Troll culture compared to her friends. Her morals are much more aligned with Sburbs’ spirit of growth and cooperation, and she takes a passionate interest in fashion--which is to say, the expression of ideas about oneself through clothes. 

This kind of self-expression is something Sburb encourages constantly, and is in fact it’s core philosophy. Kanaya internalizes it completely to such an extent her identity is created by her relationship to Sburb--and Space--much more than by her relationship to Troll culture. Calliope, too, is so inspired by Sburb’s philosophy of cooperation and possibility that it works against her Cherub sociology.

This connection also allows them to use the insight gained from one environment to influence the other. Space players tend to set the stage for their own sessions, laying the Setting for their games in their own unique ways. 

Calliope--the Muse of Space--inspired Dirk and Roxy to set the stage for the Alpha session, and influenced Jake into setting the stage for the Beta session as well. Lord English’s particular exploitation of Trolls was also influenced by her, setting the grim stage for both the troll sessions as well.  Kanaya used Rose’s guide and her visions to help set up her session, too.

Finally, all Space players seem to end up somehow becoming entities they surround themselves with and are influenced by in life, in this sense being drastically affected by their own environments. Kanaya grew up influenced by troll rainbow drinker novels, and just so happened to develop an affinity for the Alternian sun. 

And once she died, she was outright reborn into one. Sylphs being the Passive Creation class, this makes sense--Kanaya heals and Re-Creates herself as her own ideal image. If her ability to do so is intrinsic to her being, that’s no surprise, since Sylphs are considered a kind of Fairy or Elemental, and so are intrinsically connected to and created by their Aspect. 

Once she transforms, she gains super speed--ie: an increased ability to navigate space-- and the ability to fill her environment with Light, which she always found highly desirable. This pattern is repeated across Space players--Calliope is able to inspire others to see her as a Troll, while Jade is able to deliberately Change herself into a Furry. More on that later in this essay. 

Now a picture begins to emerge. 

The Witch is the Active Change class. One could parse the title as:

One who Changes X, or Changes through X.

With the corollary attribute of One who is Changed By X. 

And as Sburb defines everything about the setting of Homestuck, and the enviroments of Space players growing up. And given Witch’s ambition and zeal, it makes perfect sense to think Jade’s ambition and execution would concern Changing not just Space, but Sburb itself. 

Which is true! Among the main kids, Jade is uniquely passionate about actually playing the game. She sets up her session, gets Rose interested, and takes charge of orchestrating and executing the plan that leads to the Beta’s victory. 

And she is uniquely changed by the environments the game exposes her to--the divide between Jade’s Dream Self and her Waking Self is by far the widest of any Player. 

Dream Jade is relatively pampered and aloof, and while having access to a whole other world makes Waking Jade’s life far less distressing and lonely than it might otherwise have been, she still ends up more practical.

And once the game really gets going, also more demanding. In her desire to protect people and be an asset, Jade holds herself to a very high standard. As such, she actively tries to be strong and keep an upbeat attitude, and in execution Jade’s approach to this is quite similar to John’s--she ends up coming off as weirdly emotionally detached from the consequences of what she’s doing. 

The difference is that Jade willfully uses that detachment for her own benefit, like Jake does. After all, reviving Dream Jade this way directly leads Jade to becoming a God Tier, and embodying Space as a First Guardian.

Dream Jade, meanwhile, dies, and is greatly changed by the stagnancy and fatalism inherent to the Dream Bubbles. Jade tries to comfort Jadesprite, but this also brings us to another core facet of Jade’s. Jade has a habit of bottling up her emotions in a big way, like Jane. Jade wants to be reliable and useful, and to her that parses as a focus on practicality and solution-oriented thinking. 

So when Jadesprite--who’s another version of her--fails to live up to her standards, Jade tries to be caring... but tries to find practical solutions which go ignored as Jadesprite copes with the trauma of her circumstances. Jade’s frustration with the game, with Jadesprite’s defeatism, and with Jadesprite as a reflection of herself build until finally she gets fed up and...

Blows a gasket. Jade’s got self-loathing issues just like anyone in Homestuck, and for her they manifest as being angry at what she could’ve become under different circumstances. She hates Jadesprite for being so malleable to her environment, and for being something she sees in herself--Selfish. Jade didn’t think too much about Becquerel before creating Jadesprite, after all, did she? Active classes are intrinsically self-motivated, and Jade is no exception.

Jadesprite is the only character Jade is quite this cruel to other than Karkat, who torments her for years and exhausts her with hyperemotional debates that distract her and waste her time. But this attitude is still something she carries across her relationships. She’s kind to Tavros, but his logic turns circular for long enough that she gets frustrated and turns their attention towards practical matters.

She extends much more time and patience to her friends, consoling Rose when her Mom dies...but even then is immediately concerned about what she will do with her feelings. In this pesterlog she also begins to question the nature of the game they’re playing, beginning to note Sburb seems outright cruel at times--foreshadowing her more intense struggles with the nature of the Space she inhabits.

Which brings us to Davesprite. Dave and Jade had a special relationship growing up, and Davesprite is a Dave brought into being by the game Jade is so invested in. And Davesprite is the one who finds Jadesprite at her lowest, and comforts her. He then makes her aware of her own power...

And encourages either Jade’s first great feat of magic as a Witch of Space. Immediately after this, Jade ascends, becoming one with Jadesprite and bringing the entire session under control--an action Davesprite bears witness to in it’s entirety. Soon after, Jade and Davesprite start dating during the three year’s boat trip. But…

It doesn’t work out. Why?

Well, there’s two reasons. The first is that Dave is an abuse victim, and that isn’t really the kind of trauma Jade could easily relate to--she’s been exposed to neglect and isolation, but the experience of being subjugated under an overbearing guardian would be alien to her-- and she never takes it particularly seriously growing up.

Grimbark Jade clues us in on the second. Davesprite also feels set apart from the kids, distanced by his Sprite status. He considers himself auxiliary to Alpha Dave, the same way Hal does with Dirk. John even rubs it in a couple of times, and openly wonders about Davesprite’s importance relative to Alpha Dave himself. And of course, Davesprite himself admits it.

This is something Jade can relate to to some extent--she was solely a Sprite for a time, and distanced and set apart from all society besides that. But the game fixed both of those for Jade, through bringing her closer to her friends and God Tiering. Not so for Davesprite.

Note what these issues have in common, though: Neither abuse trauma nor existential marginalization are problems that come with practical, tidy solutions--which are Jade’s instinctive method of dealing with things. 

Jade wants to look for something to Do about everything, but there’s nothing to really Do for Davesprite. So Jade bottles her feelings of frustration up, only to have them come out when she goes Grimbark. But even while evil, brainwashed, and pissed off about Davesprite breaking up with her...

She still sticks up for Davesprite’s validity and personhood. Now, let’s move on to the retcon. 

Davepeta happens, obviously--Nepeta acting as a Rogue to “Steal” Dave’s Heart for his own benefit. Davesprite transcends both his issues with his Bro and his tortured sense of auxiliary identity. Nepeta benefits from this arrangement, too--but we’re talking about Jade, so let’s see how the retcon treats her.

In the Post-Retcon version of the three years trip, Jade ends up completely alone and isolated. Fans usually hate this about her arc, but hear me out, because this is where I make my case for the first point I laid out at the beginning of this:

This isn’t just about tormenting or “shafting” Jade. It isn’t Hussie being lazy or not caring about her. Jade is struggling with her Aspect, the same way Dirk is tormented by his Splinters, Terezi by her Choices, and so on.  And as she struggles with Space, she also struggles with the Game--and the label it seemingly “assigns” her. Space. She dreams about and meets Alt!Calliope, who tells her the Game has ordained this tragic reality for her, and as a result Jade feels distanced and set apart from her friends--just as Davesprite once did. When she meets Alt!Calliope again, she reinforces this notion, seemingly telling Jade that it is in a Space player’s nature to be alone.

But that’s not all she tells her. As she’s exposed to the fully-fledged Muse of Space the longest, Jade is also uniquely privy to the deepest secret of the nature of all of the entire Homestuck multiverse. A secret implied and built up to literally from the moment John first bites Sburb’s apple and enters the game(citation pending--I’ve got that video recorded already):  

That Paradox Space is composed out of the abstractions of thought called the Aspects. This is the root of my second point, that Jade’s narrative is important both for herself and the wider Homestuck story--not to mention our understanding of it’s Multiverse.

The implications of this stunning revelation are enormous. Calliope literally states that ideas are made up of the Aspects, and what the Alchemy system does is make physical objects out of ideas. All of Paradox Space grows outwards from these twelve tiny elements of thought, and so reality is literally something created by those perceiving it. In Homestuck, existence is created by thought--and so too is all physical matter.

This is why I argue all depictions of Light in Homestuck symbolically contain the Light Aspect’s fundamental ideas--because Light as a physical presence is simply a concentrated enough amount of Light aspect abstractions to be visible in physical reality. The same is true of every Aspect--in this same sense, you can argue all food is made out of Life, and all absence out of Void. 

Imagine being granted the key to understanding the entire universe. That’s what is happening here. Jade doesn’t understand all of it right away, but the core idea gets across. And understanding the true nature of reality this way could take Jade’s interest in science to an entire other level. There’s practically no limit to what she could do with this information, I mean--if all of reality is created by thought, then what are the real limits of what’s possible for anyone?

Having delivered this information, Calliope leaves--leaving Jade as close to the biggest symbol of Space in the comic--the Green Sun--as she could get. Jade lingers, waiting, under the impression she is inherently meant to simply comply with the will of her Aspect and Paradox Space, when along comes…

Davesprite, freed of all the issues that made their relationship originally unworkable. Only now it’s Davepeta, and Davepeta is a wholly new entity, completely and utterly defined by their relationship to the Game that functions as one of Jade’s primary domains of power and influence. It would be literally impossible for Jade to have met any version of any person even remotely like Davepeta elsewhere. It had to be here. It had to be through Sburb.

Davepeta also has unique insight into the nature of the Player’s ultimate reality, and is one of the few characters with more insight into that reality than Jade herself. 

In keeping with the Light motif with Homestuck’s romantic relationships, Jade lingers in the dark Void of her loneliness, not knowing whether she should Do anything, by a hyper-incandescent 2xSprite, an entity literally created to provide aid and information as well as giving off Light physically.

As if that weren’t enough, Davepeta is also a twice over Passive player--a Knight who serves their friends Time, or serves them through Time, and a Rogue who can Steal Hearts for the benefit of others.

And Davepeta is also coded as a cat and a bird, simultaneously--the two animals most commonly associated with Witches. 

Do you see where I’m going with this? Now that Jade is a fully ascended Witch who has mastered Space, along comes Davepeta, framed perfectly to act as the Witch’s Familiar. A Familiar whose existence reflects not just dominion over Physical Space, but mastery over both Sburb and the nature of Paradox Space.

And what does Davepeta do when it’s, for once, Jade at a loss for what to do next, trapped in a circular spiral of logic on whether to even move forward? Davepeta says that’s dumb, and that Jade should do whatever she wants to, and offers her a practical solution to help her do it. Making it clear that Davepeta is capable of being a partner and aid to Jade’s desires and ambitions.

Jade then wakes up, and decides to follow Davepeta’s (and Calliope’s) advice: She has fun.

In Collide, Jade chooses not to fight, but rather to use her space powers to play with Bec Noir and PM, distracting them and keeping them busy. Doing this leads her to Changing the game in the most powerful way possible. 

The two First Guardians are completely equalized by Bec’s influence on them, making them equal in power...but also giving them equally powerful feelings of love for Jade.

This gives PM the advantage. PM is the one able to control her own emotions, find nuance in her situation, and take a middle solution between really hurting Jade and complete inaction--which Jack is unable to do. 

By setting up this situation, Jade turns the core fatalism of Sburb on it’s head--setting up a scenario where White can do the impossible and defeat Black itself. That’s about as “Changing” the nature of “Space” as it gets--a Witch of Space, fully realized.

And now Jade is hanging out, happy with her friends and not lonely or isolated at all. Jade is having fun and enjoying herself on Earth C. That’s a pretty satisfying narrative, as far as I’m concerned. 

Jade struggled, but she also gained unique insight and knowledge entirely in keeping with her Aspect. At the very least, considering the importance of the information Jade got from her journey and all the thematic imagery surrounding it, I think it’s likely that approach was intentional and not a byproduct of Hussie “not caring about Jade” or “shafting” her.

Whether you guys do or don’t like where he took Jade’s arc is another conversation, albeit one I’m willing to have--I’m just arguing there was intent behind the chaos.

That said, now I’m going to do something I don’t usually like to do, and speculate about Jade’s future a little. 

I personally think Jade’s “arc” is complete enough as it stands now--Davepeta’s a compelling romantic partner, but it’s not like Jade necessarily needs a romance in the first place. I won’t be upset if I end up wrong about this stuff-- I just think the nature of all this build up between Jade and Davepeta makes it more likely than any alternatives I can think of.

So here’s some thoughts about the Epilogue you may want to consider:

Whether Davepeta will survive to meet up with her again is, admittedly, an open question...but considering all this narrative buildup, the fact that we already know Sprites exist past the end of the Game, and that Davepeta already fought Lord English and survived, I have a hard time believing they’re going to be killed off at this point.

Especially considering [S] Credits is clearly setting up the Masterpiece, and if we see the Beta kids get sucked into that Juju it’s likely we’ll also see them pop out the other end...in the Void, where Davepeta is.

And one last thing:

We already saw Roxy steal something from nothing, so it’s not impossible to think Davepeta could reach across the Timelines they already see, and steal the Heart or Time Game Over Jade spent with John and Davesprite in the original timeline back from the Game that took those experiences from her--fitting into Jade’s motif of Cheating the game to suit her desires.

This is the nature of my third and final point--that on top of everything else Davepeta adds to Jade’s narrative, they could subvert the lasting pain and suffering the Game inflicted on Jade across those three years, enabling her to remember her relationship with Davesprite, and also potentially giving John and Roxy another person who remembers the old timeline.

No idea if that’s gonna happen, or be shown in detail if it is. I just think that given the sheer depth in which Davepeta’s and Jade’s arcs are interwoven, it’s not impossible. If it doesn’t, I’m personally pretty happy with Davepeta giving Jade some good advice and helping her out at the end. Feel free to let me know what you think! :)

Alright, that’s all I got on Jade for now, guys. Hoping to write one post about Jane soon, but I’m going to be refocusing back towards video editing and job hunting, so these written posts may slow while I devote more energy to making videos. This has essentially been a side project to my Homestuck, Explained series as I gathered my thoughts on the endgame enough that I thought it warranted posting some more of them.

If you’re interested in enabling me to write more of these posts and making more videos, it’d be cool of you to check out my Patreon. We’ve got a neat little Discord community of Homestuck aficionados thinking and talking about a bunch of different Homestuck analysis topics, and doing so can also get you perks like previews of my video scripts and previews of the videos themselves.

That’s all for now, peeps. As always, thanks a ton for reading.

See you again soon, everyone.

Until then, Keep Rising.

[bellabooks]

Imagine If They Had Just Made Them Gay: SuperHero Edition

Out of all the numerous movie categories out there, the superhero genre has always struck me as insanely queer. Maybe it’s all the tight, spandex outfits. Or the overly common “outsider / sociality reject” theme that can be found in almost every superhero movie known to man. But, regardless of the reason, most superhero movies tend to be one good, sweaty grappling fight scene away from being dubbed an LGBTQ+ instant classic. So then why aren’t there more queer superhero movies? Simple. Superheroes, by our antiquated societal definition, are supposed to be the epitome of hyper masculinity. They are super muscular, insanely good looking, and always manage to not only save the day, but also win over the affection of the damsel in distress while doing so. And of course, this naturally means, they can’t be associated to anything that remotely goes against those stereotype. Like being female. Or queer… Or, god forbid, being a queer female. Yes, there have been some great strides made over the past few years to fix this general disparity and we are finally starting to see more of an overall variety when it comes to types of superheroes on the big screen *cough* Wonder Woman *cough*, but there’s still a long, long way to go. So, while I sit and wait for Hollywood to finally make my dreams come true and produce a honest to god queer female superhero movie, I pass the time by playing a few rounds of “Imagine If they Had Just Made Them Gay” with some of my all-time favorite superhero movies.   Power Rangers (2017) Now, I know what you’re thinking… Power Rangers? Seriously? Out of all of the one to choose from in the vast lexicon of superhero movies, why Power Rangers? Isn’t it just a cheesy, big-screen version of the painfully bad 90’s kids TV show? Well, three reasons. One, the Power Rangers Movie is actually good… like surprisingly good, in an modern day Breakfast Club, extra angsty sorta way. Don’t believe me? Go on and watch it for yourself. Don’t worry. I can wait… Done watching? Good. Now, let’s continue. Secondly, the Power Rangers is one of the rare examples of an ensemble superhero movie that features more than one female lead. Crazy, right?  But, sadly, it’s the truth. The Avengers? Black Widow. Fantastic Four? Sue Storm. The Justice League? Wonder Woman. You get the point. And lastly, it’s the first superhero movie to feature a queer character. Granted, I use the word “queer” loosely because this is only hinted at in one scene where Trini (aka the Yellow Ranger) gives an indirect “coming out” speech after being asked if her problems were “girl problems.” But, at the same time, though, given her steady wardrobe of flannels and beanies, and faux shaved side of the head hairstyle, little to no verbal confirmation is actually needed. Trini, in short, is one rainbow flag away from a one woman pride parade. So, given all of the above, plus the overwhelming amount of Trini / Kimberly (aka the Pink Ranger) “getting to know you” deleted scenes, why on earth didn’t they just take it one step further and make it a full-fledged queer falling in love story? Absolute head scratcher, right? Well, I still hold out hope for there being one in the next movie (that’s if Lionsgate comes to their senses and finally green lights a sequel), but in the meantime, imagine if Power Rangers went a little something like this… Kimberly Hart. Once head cheerleader and ex-teen royalty of Angel Grove High, falls from grace after leaking a nude pic of her ex-best friend to her then boyfriend. (side note: still have sooo many questions as to why she had this pic to begin with. Is this a straight girl thing? Cause, if not, it so screams gay in a “I have memorized every Tegan and Sara song known to man” sorta way.) After giving herself an impromptu bob in the high school bathroom during Saturday detention, Kimberly happens to stumble upon four other high school social rejects late one night at the local quarry and they proceed to make a life changing discovery in the way of five oddly colored, intergalactic gems. Quickly coming to the realization that they suddenly now all possess superpowers thanks to the mysteriously gems, the group returns to the quarry the next day in an attempt to figure out what the hell is going on. And it’s at that very moment, that Kimberly’s whole life changes… Cue Trini. Angel Grove’s very own death metal loving, yoga practicing, resident pocket-sized queer. She’s feisty, sarcastic, and knows just how to impress a girl with her climbing up the side of a rock face and then leaping over an enormous cavern skills. Unable to hide her gay, Kimberly stumbles her way through a painfully awkward conversation where she tries to turn on the charm and convince Trini to come with them. And when that doesn’t work, she decides to just bite the bullet make a move (literally) but grabbing hold of Trini, throwing them right over the side of a cliff. And so begins the all too familiar “is it or isn’t it a date” montage. It’s all fun and games, until a gold obsessed villain named Rita shows up and decides to pay a late night visit to Trini. Rita proceeds to rough Trini up as a warning to the rest of the rangers and in the process fully ticks off Kimberly. Out for blood, Kimberly convinces the rest of the rangers to go after Rita. But, like most novice superheroes, the are beyond ill prepared and not only do they get their asses handed to them but the run also results in Billy ( aka the Blue Ranger) getting temporarily killed. After a quick regroup back at the ship for a prep talk and a minor supernatural resurrection, the rangers go after Rita once again, this time sporting brand spanking new suits and prehistoric themed vehicles. An epic battle ensues and in a sudden life and death moment, the light bulb finally clicks for both Trini and Kimberly. They want to be together… No, scratch that. They NEED to be together. And right now. With the burst of extra motivation, Kimberly and Trini lead the charge and help the boys send Rita on a one way trip to deep space and then sneak off to celebrate with one another… again… and again… and again…   Hancock (2008) Again, I know what you’re thinking… Power Rangers is one thing, but Hancock?  Not only is it a mediocre movie at best, it’s not even based off of a pre-existing comic franchise. I whole-heartily agree that Hancock has its fair share of problems. For starters, the main one being the casting of Will Smith as Hancock himself. Now, don’t get me wrong. I love Will Smith. There are roles that are just good fits for him and then there are the other ones–the ones like Hancock. And then there’s Jason Bateman. Jason Bateman always plays one type of character and one type of character only… Michael Bluth. And Michael Bluth should never ever exist within a superhero movie. But, looking beyond its problems, Hancock does have something going for it that most superhero movies, more often than not, tend to severely lack–an original and unique story. Hancock’s plot at its core is an unrequited love story. Two superheroes, who are destined to find one another time and time again regardless of the situation, yet the mere presence of one another is so toxic that being together will eventually lead to their deaths. Sound vaguely familiar? Like something you might’ve seen in real life once or twice? That’s because this plot could also double as a description for roughly 65% of all queer relationships. Who hasn’t had a friend (or ten) break up with the same girl time and time again only to get back together with her a few months later because “they can’t help themselves”? So, given that it’s plot is insanely queer to begin with, imagine if Hancock went something like this… (Sidenote: My photoshop skills are good, but not THAT good. So, every time you see Will Smith, just imagine an amazing actress instead… Like Samira Wiley) Hancock, a rough around the edges queer superhero, is known for two things. Protecting the citizens of greater Los Angeles from a wide array of criminal activity and creating an insane amount of collateral damage while doing so. In short, Hancock has a MAJOR perception problem. But does she care? Chalk it up to years of being dubbed an “outsider” or a superhuman sized chip on her shoulder, but Hancock just doesn’t seem to care what anyone thinks about her. She’s a superhero and that means show up, kick some ass, and save the day. End of story. There’s just no need for anything (or anyone) else. But, then one day, Hancock’s world is turned upside down when she happens to save the life of a lovable but super generic PR specialist named Ray. Beyond grateful, Ray makes it his personal mission, not only to befriend Hancock, but also to help her turn her public image around. New clothes. New attitude. And of course, new social circles. Hancock begrudging goes along with it all, including agreeing to attend a family dinner, where she happens to discover that Ray’s wife Mary looks oddly familiar. And suddenly… BAM! Hancock finds herself inexplicably drawn to Mary. She simply can’t get enough of the woman and needs to be around her 24/7. Mary, though, wants nothing to do with Hancock. She’s not only strangely standoffish, but seems to make up an excuse to leave the room whenever Hancock appears. Dying to win Mary over, Hancock attempts to learn more about her and in the process discovers that Mary, in fact, is a superhero as well. But before Hancock can confront Mary on this unique shared similarity, Mary falls deathly ill and is hospitalized. No one seems to know what the problem is and to make matters worse, Hancock is affected as well, but only when she’s in proximity to Mary. Hancock is pushed to the brink of insanity while trying to unearth what is causing Mary’s illness. Unable to handle her feelings, she goes on a crime-fighting bender and after being hit on the head by a flying piece of debris, suddenly remembers who exactly Mary is. Mary is Hancock’s eternal soulmate and, in a cruel twist of fate, also her ultimate kryptonite. Lifetime after lifetime, they are destined to find one another, only to inadvertently poison each other to death by their mere presence. Not wanting to put Mary through anymore unnecessary pain and suffering, Hancock decides that the only sane and logical thing to do is for her to disappear forever and live out the rest of her life in utter isolation. She goes to see Mary one last time to say her goodbyes, but for she can carry out her plan, Mary stops her. Thanks to modern technology, there’s a way they can be together and yet be apart at all at the same time… So, what do you think?  What other superhero movies do you think would be better if they had just made it gay? http://dlvr.it/PjNdz1

[aion-rsa]

Wonder Woman 1984: Get to Know Cheetah

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Wonder Woman 1984 will apparently still be hitting screens in October of this year and, when it does, the film will introduce fans to one of Princess Diana of Themyscira’s most famed rogues. The character of Cheetah was created—like Diana—by William Moulton Marston and H. G. Peter, but has appeared in the comics in multiple guises.

The version that we’re getting in the highly-anticipated sequel is based on the third incarnation of the character: George Pérez and Len Wein’s classic ’87 creation, Barbara Ann Minerva. In the comics, Barbara is an archaeologist from the British isles who, in an Indiana Jones-esque adventure, becomes imbued with the spirit of a powerful deity known as Urzkartaga. But, from the new trailer, it seems like that origin will be drastically changed, focusing on the movie version of Cheetah’s relationship with Maxwell Lord. 

Though the trailer didn’t give too much away, what was clear is that this is a very different version of Cheetah. Barbara seems to be a mousy, quiet, and polite young woman who goes through a transformation thanks to Maxwell Lord’s promise that he can change peoples lives.  “Anything you want, anything you can dream of, you can have it,” Lord teases in voiceover. Here, that seems to be the power for Barbara to fight Wonder Woman, who the transformed woman believes has “had everything” whereas people like Barbara have “had nothing.” Perhaps this is in relation to the idea of superheroes in a mortal world? Or could it be that Barbara found out about the existence of Themyscira through her work and gained a simmering resentment for the female-led island where brilliant women live lives of strength and harmony? Either way, this seems like a big change from her origin.

We also get more than one moment in the new trailer where Diana and Barbara face down, building on the idea that the pair have a relationship before Barbara fully transforms. We know that Diana works in museums and that, in the comics, Minerva’s career would put them in the same circles—we’ll come back to that a little later—so could it be as simple as a personal jealousy or competition? I’d hope not, as there’s far more interesting and complex ways for the pair to interact. Hilariously, their battles in the comics come from a very solid petty comic book motivation: Barbara wants Diana’s Lasso of Truth simply as something to add to her collection of archeological finds. Although that seems to be an unlikely route for the movie, it’s certainly something to keep in mind. This is all in the pre-Crisis version of the character’s backstory, though, and what we’re going to see in WW84 seems to be taking more from the post-Crisis timeline. 

During the New 52 reboot, Cheetah was reintroduced as a sometime friend and most of the time foe of Diana who was raised in an all-female cult known as “Amazonia.” She was trained to see life and survival as a hunt but, as much as that might seem a little dark for the movie, what’s key here is the pair’s relationship. In this iteration of the character, Barbara is an antiquities expert rather than an archeologist and becomes close with Diana as they work together, but she becomes obsessed with Diana’s origins and wishes to become superpowered herself due to her upbringing in the commune. From what we saw in the trailer that could definitely be woven into Barbara’s backstory or motivation, especially as we hear her say, “I don’t want to be like anyone. I want to be an Apex predator.” But whatever happens, it’s definitely going to be a melding of her decades-long history as an antagonist to the hero of Themyscira. 

The biggest diversion here seems to be the addition of Maxwell Lord to Cheetah’s backstory. In the comics, she’s driven only by her own desires and discovery, but it seems like, in WW84, part of her journey will be shaped by Lord. Pedro Pascal will be playing the ’80s villain and we can’t wait to see him on screen, but I’m not too happy about the addition of Lord to Barbara’s backstory as it adds a man into the female-led conflict at the core of these two characters. 

One of the most unique things about this iteration of Cheetah is her human look. As a huge Batman Returns fan, I couldn’t help but notice the similarities between Barbara’s looks and attitude shift and Michelle Pfeiffer’s iconic performance as Catwoman in the 1992 movie. The geek-to-goth transformation seems key here and echoes Selina Kyle’s journey after she’s pushed out of the window by Max Schreck. In the trailer, we see Barbara as a mousy blonde in glasses and a sweater before she begins to rock a studded leather jacket and smudged eyeliner. Cheetah is also a feline-themed DC hero, so it makes sense that Jenkins and co. may have added a little homage here and there to Pfeiffer’s memorable turn as Catwoman. 

Whatever direction the film decides to go, it’ll be very interesting to see how Cheetah and Wonder Woman square up, and whether they ultimately have to team up to take down Maxwell Lord. Girl Power, etc!

The post Wonder Woman 1984: Get to Know Cheetah appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[overseer2020]

Honing Skills 1

I’ve been afk for quite a while, so this recap is for my benefit as well as yours. So far, I’ve introduced you to a World of Crime, described the major inciting event -- the return of magic (in vague terms since it is the central mystery of the first set), and showed off the first half of the ten cards I created that inspired this whole shebang.

Most of what I’ve outlined so far is lore-related, which isn’t surprising for a top-down set, but now I need to talk about mechanics. From high ideas down to the nuts and bolts.

One of the hazards of taking on a long-running project if you happen to be me is that the core concept will have time to change. I’ve gone through many iterations on... oh, wait. I haven’t set this up yet!

In order for a Magic set to feel different and unique, it should do something no other set does (obviously). It should also make a player feel like they’re engaging with elements of this new world. Ravnica’s guild structure permeates nearly every aspect of the sets that take place there. Innistrad cards exude a sense of dread at every opportunity. Kaladesh has hopeful, optimistic and intricate artwork, embodying a spirit of invention. This set is about superheroes. And superheroes have superpowers. But how does one give Magic creatures superpowers in a game where most creatures already have static, keyworded, activated and/or triggered abilities? How can one make the use of such powers special and compelling?

My answer (as of this writing -- I put a lot of work into the current mold, but I can’t say I won’t throw it out in favor of something better should it come along) is to make these “powers” actual cards of their own. More powerful than abilities printed on the creatures themselves, and more flexible should the creature not be available. Okay, but how are these “power” spells supposed to be special? They’re reusable!

But before I explain how that works (or you scroll down), this mechanic needs a name. “Power” already has a meaning in Magic: the Gathering. So does “Ability”, and “Gift” would just be confusing. Eventually, I landed on “Skill”. The word Skill doesn’t seem to have any pre-existing rules definition in Magic, so I’m using it. At the moment Skill is a keyword ability with a modifier like Enchant. Auras might have Enchant Creature or Enchant Land, thus do Skills have Goblin Skill and Assassin Skill.

Currently, a Vedalken Skill requires you to have a Vedalken creature on the battlefield when you cast it. Recently, I’ve been tweaking these Skill cards so they don’t function exactly the same way across Parts I through IV. I don’t know why I didn’t design a bunch of cards to be castable at any time, but have more powerful effects should an appropriate creature be under your control from the beginning of design, but now I intend to revisit some of my original takes on Skills.

Finally, I said they were reusable. At the moment, they are written to be recoverable at the end of any turn for a mana cost of one Colorless mana. Note that this is not one generic mana. The payment must be made in Colorless mana. This is actually just a placeholder (that might make it to final versions). The Development cycle will determine actual costs. Earlier in Design, I toyed with the cost to recover a Skill being 2 colorless mana with the idea that I would change some to colored mana later in the process, but the vast majority of cards I have designed so far are not designed to be too much of a problem if reused. The real issue is card advantage, both in giving the player more cards to discard, but also in shifting the card economy. I look forward to tackling these issues should I ever get the chance to playtest this insanity. Hopefully, the fact that you have to control a creature of the appropriate type in order to get it back from the graveyard will be enough of a balancing measure.

Next: More to unpack regarding Skills!

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Getting old sucks. ‘Logan’ does not

Getting old sucks in ways no one foresees.

There’s fussing with reading glasses and pesky new meds, as if you need more things to remember when leaving the house. Walking morphs into hobbling. God forbid you ever get hurt; healing takes an eternity and is never quite complete.

And of course, all this starts happening just as the children in your life need you most.

SEE ALSO: New ‘Logan’ trailer features Wolverine reading an ‘X-Men’ comic

So it goes for aging superheroes, too just one of the many unique shades of Logan, the presumptive last chapter in Hugh Jackman’s illustrious cinematic run as the Wolverine. And bloody hell by which I mean a sort of hell, but more bloody what a way to go down swinging.

Logan is a spiked gut-punch from start to finish, a gleefully gory and skull-crunching R-rated slaughterfest with an emotional wallop hidden behind its back. It’s also a dust-biting Western of a road-trip chase across the Great Plains, an introduction to new mutants and a farewell to some favorites, and yes, a bittersweet discourse on what a drag it is getting old.

It’s a whole lot of things all at once, and yet Logan plays stripped-down and lean it’s reminiscent of Hell or High Water in tone and efficiency, which has at least something to do with how overstuffed superhero movies have become.

Not so with Logan, whose core story is pretty simple: It’s 2029, and our bleary, battle-scarred hero is in a permanent state of hiding, occasionally looking in on his old mentor Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) and the tracker mutant Caliban, his caretaker (Stephen Merchant). Three old guys, no longer useful to the hostile world that hunts the last of their kind, running out the clock. Finding enough medicine to quell Charles’ destructive seizures is their primary challenge then along comes Laura.

Thrust into their care without warning or much explanation, Laura (Dafne Keen) is a pre-teen of few words, but it soon becomes clear why she’s here: She’s a mutant, despite what you may have heard about them going extinct. Not only that, she seems to be the second coming of Wolverine himself.

Laura and her daddy.

Image: YouTube

That’s because she is, essentially: Laura is based on X-23, the clone-daughter of Wolverine in the X-Men comics and animated TV series. And though she may only be 11 or 12, she is every bit as aggressive and deadly as her genetic predecessor. About as talkative, too.

And so Logan and Charles have a new challenge: get this feral creature to a mutant safe-haven in the flats of North Dakota, lest she fall into the hands of the evil corporation that created her. A chase across the continent begins, despite that Logan is convinced that this “safe haven” does not exist; it’s merely flimsy lore from a faded comic book.

Whoa, a comic book, did you say!? That’s another new shade in Logan: Yes, the X-Men comics do exist here, a first for the wider Marvel Cinematic Universe as far as we know, a nifty nod to the origin material that’s now driving our story. In the world of Logan, the comics are heavily embellished accounts of real-life superheroes, kids play with Wolverine toys and yes, Logan gets recognized sometimes.

Because of the implications it has for the franchise, this is an X-Men movie as much as anything.

Not always, though. His advanced age certainly isn’t helping. Jackman looks painfully haggard. His beard is wild and wiry. His rheumy eyes are all but shot. His muscles still bulge impressively, but like jangly ropes beneath loosening skin. His hip is clearly bothering him. He still heals, but not quickly or seamlessly; wounds linger and so does the hurt. He tires easily. The Wolverine is simply not game for this fight anymore, not up to the task of doing battle with younger, stronger, fresher versions of himself. He ain’t got it no more.

But … he did always have that thing no other hero did: The unbridled rage. The murderous berzerker state of mind. A deeply cynical darkness. That’s the Wolverine, and director/co-writer James Mangold (whose last film was The Wolverine) painstakingly and lovingly earns him one last shot to put it to good use here.

The superpower of Logan, however, is that in the end, big stuff happens. Because of the implications it has for Fox’s Marvel franchise at large, this is an X-Men movie as much as anything. There’s still some time to play with before we get to 2029, but with an endpoint so sharply drawn, it’s clear that we’re about to hit a regeneration phase.

BONUS: Forget taxis; Dubai wants to fly you around in passenger drones

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