#and the home narrative is a very big part of Fit's character for me. like back then he didn't have any place to call his.

[robby-bobby-tommy]

Also. I left these tags under @mossdontknowwhattheydoin (sorry for tagging) but I wanted to share them.

I really love how they allow each other AND themselves to be vulnerable around each other. Never have one of them poked and made fun for something deeply emotional. Way back when eggs were kidnapped for the first time, Fit and Phil always stuck together, supporting each other in these hard times. They stayed close, and even their eggs did. I clearly remember a stream, where Big Q tried to kidnap Tallulah, and while parents were trying to lead him away, Chay, Ramon and Dapper were protecting her, building double walls and panic rooms.

And I think Fit really feels like home around Phil and vice versa. ( Proof: Hardcore & QSMP - Finding the line... - Philza VOD - Streamed on October 27 2023) Sometimes, when Phil just builds and does nothing more, Fit drops by, talking, observing and talking.

And boy oh boy, should I even try to recite all their gayness?

"Sorry, Fit I got lost in your eyes.."

"We're really close, Phil"

"Not in front of the kids"

"Fit Mc of 2b2t is an amazing lover and a great man, so muscley, so fantastic. Also I guess he is good at cleaning? Yeah."

I love them being friends, who act gay and like an embarrassing parents to Tubbo. They're the gayest straight dudes (although Fit is canonically gay) and they make it work.

[cannedwyrms]

Spoilers for shadow of the erdtree, but...

I NEED to talk about Marika, okay?

In the base game, I thought she was interesting, don't get me wrong, but the amount of DEPTH SOTE gives her is INCREDIBLE.

The first time I got to the Shaman Village, I instantly knew she was going up on my Good Antagonist List™ immediately.

And, because of that, I wanted to have another ramble about her, as is becoming customary for this blog.

So, let's go over what exactly we learned about Marika and what this informs us about her character.

I think the Shaman Village really takes center stage here. The music, the item descriptions, it all combines to paint a gentler, more human image of Marika. In the base game, she was more like a god (which made sense seeing as she was one), but we see a more human side of her here.

So, the Shaman Village. It's the place where Marika grew up, her home. Unfortunately for her, shaman bodies are apparently quite good for putting into big jars, which was something the Hornsent loved to do. We've all seen it before, right? I mean, we've all seen a zealous religious society commit atrocities against an underclass in fiction, not the jar thing.

And the Hornsent are a zealous religious society. They used the bodies of shamen in jars to make saints. Which sounds like complete nonsense, I know, but that's just elden ring lore babey.

Anyway, it's my personal headcannon, if not outright fact, that the Hornsent's persecution of Marika's people is what led her down the path of becoming a god. Like Miquella, she wanted to make the world a gentler place. Unlike Miquella, though, she only wanted to make it gentler for her people.

In short, it's my belief that Marika became a god in large part to inact revenge on the hornsent.

Okay, pause. I know Elden Ring Lore is like, a big deal and all, and anything I say is basically unfounded on everything except intuition, my own personal interpretations, and because I believe my theories fit thematically within the wider narrative, but just stay with me on this, alright? I think there's a real undertone of misogyny in the fanbase, and sometimes that can color interpretations of certain characters even unintentionally. Marika has gotten this treatment worse than most, I think, because she is a prominent woman who does morally questionable things. Beyond the inherent misogyny, though, I've noticed that a lot of people interpret Marika's actions very uncharitably. Anyways, all that to say, this is my post, and I care more about everything working together thematically than digging deep into the depths of the lore to find out that "oh, actually Scrupulous the Untested mentioned this flower, which represents pure evil, and he was talking about Marika when he did," or whatever. A strawman? Perhaps, but you get my point. Still, I'll try to remain true to my understanding of the lore, but I'm bound to make mistakes. I'm not an expert. Sorry for the long aside, I just felt these were important points that wouldn't fit in elsewhere.

So, I believe Marika sought godhood partly to punish the Hornsent, although I won't pretend to understand her full motivations.

I believe this is what Ymir was referring to when he said "I fear that you have borne witness to the whole of it. The conceits - the hypocrisy - of the world built upon the Erdtree. The follies of man. Their bitter suffering. Is there no hope for redemption? The answer, sadly, is clear. There never was any hope. They were each of them defective. Unhinged, from the start. Marika herself. And the fingers that guided her. And this is what troubles me. No matter our efforts, if the roots are rotten, then we have little recourse."

My interpretation of this is that Marika's intentions for godhood were impure. She wasn't seeking to improve things, just punish the ones who wronged her people. Thus, her reign was doomed from the start.

Now, let's get into what really sold me on Marika as a character.

There are, to my knowledge, two items you can find in the Shaman Village.

The Minor Erdtree incantation, and the Golden Braid talisman. Let's take a look at the flavortext for these two items and see what we can glean, starting with the Minor Erdtree.

"Marika bathed the village of her home in gold, knowing full well that there was no one to heal."

So, by the time she returned to her village, everyone was already dead. How devastated must Marika have felt, to return from claiming godhood and revenge, only to find that there was no one left to avenge. She was alone.

Here's the text we get from the golden braid:

"A braid of golden hair, cut loose. Queen Marika's offering to the Grandmother. Boosts holy damage negation by the utmost. What was her prayer? Her wish, her confession? There is no one left to answer, and Marika never returned home again."

Man, reading that, with the shaman village music in the background, just thinking about a young Marika resolving herself to become a god, to save her village and people from the Hornsent, the anger she must have felt, the fear and solemn resignation of her goal, only to return again to find herself alone. What was her wish? What did she leave behind in her village? We'll never know, because Marika is alone. Her people are gone. In the end, she couldn't save them.

Is it really any wonder that she eventually began to doubt the very order she had founded?

But now let's talk about some other aspects of Marika's character that the dlc reveals.

Namely, her Omen sons.

Imagine how Marika must have felt, looking down at her newborns to see the very horns that had destroyed her people upon them. It's just so DAMN good, character wise. There must have been so many mixed feelings surrounding them. I wonder if she even felt any love for them at all when she saw those horns. Like, I don't know, obviously, but I imagine she felt conflicted. She didn't outright kill them, which is good, but she did leave them chained in a sewer for most of their lives, so yeah not great.

But that's what I love about her character. Elden ring, in a lot of ways, is about how victims can become victimizers. How, in pursuit of noble goals, or revenge, you can lose yourself and become just as bad or worse than the people you set out to punish. That's Marika's character. That's why she's part of the List™.

Because Marika started out as someone angry at the systems that oppressed her and sought to change them. She was the hero of the story, in the beginning. But, in pursuit of her goal, she lost herself and became a bit of a monster.

SOTE, to me, revealed that Elden Ring's story is one of complete moral grey. Everyone is working towards a cause that they believe in, including you. The ends justify the means for you, even if it means striking down a mostly innocent grieving woman, hunting your fellow tarnished, or turning on the ones who trusted you and called you a compatriot. Ranni, Miquella, Radahn, Fia, D, Godrick, Malenia, Leda, Ansbach, Thiollier, Gideon, this applies to everyone.

The same goes for Marika. In trying to punish the hornsent and build a better future for herself and her people, she lost her people and eventually succombed to her worst tendencies.

That's why St. Trina pleads with you to stop Miquella. Because to become a god is to sacrifice everything that makes you human.

Marika took that sacrife willingly, in order to punish the ones who hurt her, and in the end, that's what broke her.

I think she recognized this, and that's why she set the stage for you to become Lord. In the chance that someone might do better than her, make the world a gentler place, not for a god, not for ambition or power, not in revenge or anger, but im compassion. Whether or not that's how you choose to rule is, of course, up to you, but I like to imagine that Marika, after everything, found something to hope for again.

Okay, that's the end of my thoughts. Was any of that true to the lore? Who cares. It's how I like to interpret what we were given about Marika. If I'm wrong, then whatever. I'll still be right in my heart.

Alright, bye. Go play shadow of the erdtree, or watch someone else play it at the very least. Next time, I might talk about Miquella, or maybe Leda and her allies.

Someday I'll be brave enough to talk about Agent Black. Someday. But that would maybe turn into a full ten page essay about why Iconoclasts is so very good and I'm not sure the two people who care about what I say here are ready for that.

Okay bye.

A brief adendum to this post:

Because I was analyzing Marika from a literary perspective, focusing on the sympathetic angle SOTE added to her character, I realize I forgot something important, so let me say it now:

Marika's persecution does in no way justify her genocide of the hornsent.

That idea kind of got lost in the shuffle, but it's definitely an important aspect of her character. She's an antagonistic force in the world who has done some very awful things to further her goals, more so than any other antagonist in Elden Ring. Her tragic past only adds dimension to her character, not an excuse for the atrocities she comits.

Okay, bye again.

[decepti-thots]

☕ MTOs & specifically what do you think they were going for with that?

MTOs are an interesting narrative thing to me in the sense that they really are so localised to only one part of the canon; they're very clearly Roberts' idea and only really matter, inasmuch as they do matter, in MTMTE. It's pretty clear to me that's the case for one specific reason: they'd actually fit SUPER well into the narrative arc of exRiD, especially early-to-mid RiD, but they basically never come up! You'd think 'neutrals and soldiers stuggling to cohabit socially and politically' would be prime fodder (lmao) for taking advantage of a narrative about mechs born of and into war coming back to a civilian life on a planet they really don't know. And yet.

What they're doing in that comic, in MTMTE, is a little headscratching to me at times. It feels, to be honest, somewhat like worldbuilding put in to make the texture of the backstory of the war feel grander than IDW had really managed up to that point in actual on-panel stuff, without a lot of thought when doing so in the moment as to the knock on implications going forward. MTMTE does this a few times, tries to use vague gestures at important sounding stuff to bring a greater sense of history and depth to the war in the face of the actual stuff we saw in phase one being. Mmmm. Basically just twenty dudes we already know shooting at each other across parking lots. LMAO.

(Sidenote: I know for a fact Roberts watched original flavour nuWho, and this is PEAK Russell T Davies doing worldbuilding when he was on Doctor Who, and I fully believe he was cribbing from that playbook. Every damn episode RTD would make them just sort of say stuff about the Time War that made it sound incredibly vast and textured and complex but which, crucially, never made any actual fucking sense. Good examples of stuff like this would be the Crucible, the Simanzi massacre, etc. This is, to be clear, a neutral observation, not praise or criticism per se.)

I say this because MTOs should probably be a bigger deal in terms of the impact on our cast, and their outlook on life and reasons for joining the quest, than they wind up being. An MTO is a character with no experience of living in peacetime at all, likely no experience of Cybertron, no sense of kinship or home necessarily to the planet they came "back" to. All of this provides a really clear motivation, given the implication most surviving non-neutral Cybertronians are now MTOs due to huge numbers of deaths, to join a quest like the Lost Light's! But it tends not to come up much, and I think it's because it wasn't really part of the plan. Later on, there's room to slot in some details here and there- Riptide talking about his experiences with being infodumped at by the 'training' comes to mind- but it takes a while for the comic to come back round to that.

The two big exceptions, of course, are Getaway and Brainstorm. The idea is definitely interacting with their characters more, though again, it... tends to come up later. Especially for Getaway, who I'm not convinced was originally conceived as an MTO, but had it slotted in a bit later as 'well that works' stuff tbh. (And it does, so that's fine!) Which leaves Brainstorm, who lies about being forged to throw off suspicion, who it's implied never got the time of day from Quark in a way I wouldn't be surprised we're supposed to assume is some kind of remaining bias, perhaps. Who didn't see a future for himself 'back on Cybertron' and so concocted a very weird plan to avoid having to. Who never got a choice about his 'side' in the war, and wound up with no real loyalty for anyone.

I think if there's any avenue I'd have liked to see more about MTOs via, it's Brainstorm. I wish there'd been more room to focus on that instead of (I'm so sorry shippers) his thing with Perceptor as the way to talk about his sense of inadequacy, tbh. What did it feel like, lying to Chromedome about remembering a pre-war life he never got a chance to experience? Being made to shoot people and be shot and escaping the fate of having that be the only thing he ever knew by the skin of his teeth? Not being able to imagine an end to the war, so all he wants to do is save one guy and run off with him as a pipe dream? That seems like the character where a lot of this stuff should naturally lie, to me. And I think it's a shame I've seen very little talk in fandom about it!

[darcytaylor]

Why I Didn’t Mind the Brothel Scenes in Bridgerton Season 3 - Hot Take

Before I dive into this, I want to make it clear that if you didn’t like the brothel scenes in Bridgerton, that’s completely valid. I’m not here to change your mind, just to share why they worked for me and how I see them fitting into Colin’s journey.

I’ve noticed a lot of conversation about the brothel scenes, with some people feeling like they were out of place or didn’t fit Colin’s arc. Personally, I didn’t mind them, and here’s why I think they actually make sense (for me) in the bigger picture of his growth.

Discomfort Is the Point

Right from the start, I think it’s important to recognize that the brothel scenes are supposed to feel disconnected, almost uncomfortable. The whole point is to show how uncomfortable Colin is with himself at that point in his journey. He’s forcing himself into a persona he thinks he should have, and the scenes reflect that struggle. It’s not about Colin being this confident playboy - it’s about him trying (and failing) to figure out who he is and what he wants, which is messy and awkward.

I think they are actually a crucial part of his self-discovery. By showing him trying too hard to fit into a role he doesn’t understand, it's making sure we feel how lost Colin is (because we already know his character isn't actually like this). His growth feels more earned because we get to witness his struggles firsthand.

A Different Take on the "Rake" Archetype

Now, Bridgerton has explored the “rake” archetype before, with characters like Simon, Anthony and Benedict, who exude charm and use that to hide their emotional vulnerabilities. But Colin’s journey flips that trope. He’s not confident in the way they are. He’s actually a man who’s very much unsure of himself, fumbling toward an identity he hasn’t figured out yet.

Colin doesn’t find confidence in seduction the way Simon and Anthony did - it's more of a mask, something that’s not truly him. The brothel scenes highlight that lack of confidence, showing how far he is from figuring out what he truly wants. It can be relatable for anyone who’s ever felt lost or unsure about themselves.

It’s More About Sexuality as Self-Discovery

For Colin, the brothel scenes aren’t just about physical pleasure - they’re more about experimenting with what it means to be desirable, to be masculine, and to meet societal expectations. This exploration is messy and imperfect - exactly how many people experience sexual self-discovery.

Some people have suggested that Colin’s decision to be with two women at once might hint at demisexuality, and I think that’s an interesting perspective. It almost seems like Colin is trying to remove emotional intimacy from the equation, reflecting how disconnected he feels from his own vulnerability. But I also think that part of it is Colin’s “go big or go home” mentality. If he can be with two women at once, maybe he feels like he’s proving something to himself - or maybe trying to convince himself that he’s doing what he’s supposed to be doing.

Either way, his actions may not make him particularly likeable, but they make sense given where he’s at emotionally. He’s trying to figure out who he is, and that’s a messy process.

Bridgerton as Fantasy, Not History

It’s also really important to remember that Bridgerton isn’t a historical drama - it’s a fantasy with a romanticized take on the Regency era. It mixes period aesthetics with modern storytelling, and the brothel scenes should be viewed through that lens. The show doesn’t aim for historical accuracy - it’s about creating an idealized world where love, desire, and self-discovery take center stage.

So while some might have strong feelings about the way the brothel scenes are portrayed, it’s important to understand that they’re serving the narrative rather than trying to make a statement on real-world issues like sex work. In the context of Bridgerton, they’re more about Colin’s personal journey within this heightened, fantastical world.

The Brothel Scenes and Colin’s Need for Validation

Colin is deeply insecure. Even though he’s charming and outwardly confident, he’s searching for external validation - especially from those around him (Penelope, his brothers, and society at large). The brothel scenes are a way for him to seek that validation, to prove to himself that he’s the man he thinks he’s supposed to be (he said that himself).

But the problem is that this kind of validation doesn’t lead to fulfillment. It shows how far Colin is from truly understanding what makes someone desirable - not just in the eyes of society, but to himself. These moments reflect the gap between the performance of masculinity he’s trying to live up to and the deeper, emotional connection he’s actually longing for.

Visual Storytelling and Emotional Growth

One of the things Bridgerton does so well is visual storytelling, and I think the brothel scenes are a prime example of this. They’re meant to feel dissonant - just like Colin’s own inner turmoil. By showing these awkward, forced moments, we’re able to see the contrast between where Colin is emotionally and where he will eventually get to.

The disconnection he feels in those scenes makes the eventual emotional intimacy he shares with Penelope feel that much more rewarding. It’s all about showing how far Colin has come from the man he thought he should be to the man he’s finally becoming.

The Bigger Picture: Colin and Penelope

In the end, the brothel scenes aren’t about the act of being in the brothel - they’re about Colin learning from the experience. These moments set him on a path toward understanding that real connection comes from vulnerability and emotional intimacy. That's why I think we needed both brothel scenes - one where he thinks he is achieving what he should be, then the next is him realizing it's not what he wants.

His eventual relationship with Penelope, which is built on trust, honesty, and emotional connection, will contrast with the emptiness of his earlier encounters. These scenes aren’t just filler - they’re a part of Colin’s journey to self-acceptance, and ultimately, to love.

Final Thoughts

I totally get why the brothel scenes might not work for everyone. But for me, they added a necessary layer to Colin’s story. They showed his struggles, his insecurities, and his fumbling toward a better understanding of himself. In a show that often romanticizes love and desire, those messy moments felt real and grounded. They’re an important part of Colin’s growth, and without them, his eventual connection with Penelope wouldn’t feel as earned for me.

These scenes remind us that love, desire, and self-identity are complex and can be messy - and that’s okay.

[saintsenara]

waitt i need to know why you hc ludo bagman as a genuine death eater sympathiser omg. that sounds fascinating

thank you very much for the ask, pal!

that bagman was really a death eater sympathiser is something i've been committed to believing since i first read goblet of fire, but it's something i've been pondering particularly recently as part of writing subluxation, which is a big look at the set-up and function of the wizarding state during voldemort's takeover in 1997-1998 from the perspective of percy weasley.

which means - of course - that it requires a bit of grappling with percy's main man - and bagman's frenemy - barty crouch sr.

the way the canon narrative - not only harry's perspective but also characters harry implicitly trusts, like sirius and dumbledore - wants us to react to crouch sr. is something that really interests me. because i think it's reasonable to say that - while the series doesn't regard him as a villain villain, per se [as it does for characters such as umbridge] - it doesn't see him as someone we are supposed to regard in a particularly positive light either, even after the reveal that barty crouch jr. was a death eater and his father was justified in sending him to azkaban [even if he didn't keep him there...]

crouch - like cornelius fudge, rufus scrimgeour, and percy himself - is a victim of the narrative's general consensus that ministry workers who are not under the impression that the ministry cannot function admirably or efficiently without input from dumbledore are people we should have no real respect for. he is shown, in his canon appearances, to be something of a jobsworth - officious and dull and uncreative in his thinking, which serves both as a personification of what the series thinks about the civil service and as a narrative device to make the reveal that he broke his son out of prison and kept him, essentially, drugged at home all the more shocking.

but crouch is also interesting in another sense - in that he is not a villain, but that he does not fit into the way the series categorises the behaviour of its heroes surrounding mercy.

we are told in goblet of fire that crouch - as head of the department of magical law enforcement in the 1970s - was responsible for the escalating harshness of the government's response to voldemort. policies such as the instructions for aurors to shoot to kill if they encountered suspected death eaters and the use of internment without trial of those accused of collusion with voldemort [both of which, as i am always banging on about, are references to the actual behaviour of the british state in northern ireland during the same time period] emanate directly from him.

and this ties into a theme which is prominent in the run of books between prisoner of azkaban and half-blood prince: that the world is not split into good people and death eaters. the purpose of these central books in the series is to show that - once harry's worldview widens from the hogwarts-exclusive focus it has in the first two, more childlike, books - the rot in the wizarding world goes far beyond voldemort. the wizarding state is shown - time and time again - to be cruel, corrupt, prejudiced, and stagnant, and the ministry's most loyal bureaucrats and their unwillingness towards mercy are largely blamed for this situation.

because of course - as i have complained about before - the morality of the harry potter series is individualist. good and evil are located by the text within the individual, which means that states and their institutions are automatically less interesting to it than singular heroes and villains in an epic baddies-versus-goodies showdown.

but it's also true that - as a protagonist - harry's morality is extremely self-serving. by which i mean that he has a tendency to reach black-and-white judgements on people he encounters - they're good if they're nice to him, they're bad if they're cruel to him - and to never deviate from them.

and - indeed - to never have to deviate from them. it's worth saying that harry's conversion rate on being right about people is really high - his immediate dislike of characters such as draco malfoy, lockhart, and umbridge is entirely justified; his immediate trust of characters such as sirius is the same. his only misjudgments relate to characters who are crucial to the narrative outside of harry's feelings towards them - he's wrong to trust the teenage tom riddle in chamber of secrets, he's wrong to trust the fake "moody" in goblet of fire, he's wrong to trust "bathilda bagshot" in deathly hallows, and he is, of course, wrong about both snape and dumbledore.

but - outside of this - his judgements are usually proven to be right [and, indeed, his good instincts are lampshaded by the narrative in deathly hallows, when lupin literally says this]. and so we are supposed to assume, i think, that character judgements he makes which we see no broader resolution to are correct.

for example - harry's conviction that stan shunpike is under the imperius curse is never taken by the text as anything other than true. there is no suggestion whatsoever that harry is wrong and that stan - a young, working-class man with delusions of grandeur, who would presumably be reasonably easy to radicalise - might be a genuine supporter of voldemort, and harry's complete certainty that stan is falsely imprisoned [with the callbacks this gives to his feelings about sirius' treatment] isn't used by the narrative as an example of him being naive and self-righteous, but as an example of the fundamental goodness, sensibleness and mercifulness of his character which justifies his ascent to an allegory for christ in the latter stages of deathly hallows.

and the same applies to ludo bagman. when harry witnesses his trial, he finds the suggestion that he might have been a death eater absurd, clearly finds the jury's immediate dismissal of it amusing, and is unsympathetic to crouch when he is infuriated by bagman's acquittal. he takes dumbledore's assurance that bagman has never been accused of any nefarious activity since without question [something he does not do for snape] and his view throughout goblet of fire - much as it is for stan - is that bagman is seedy and not particularly clever, but that he is also such a transparently ridiculous person that to suspect him of being someone voldemort would care about is idiotic, and that crouch's inability to bang him up in azkaban on spurious charges can only - given what happened to sirius - be a good thing.

but the issue is that - notwithstanding his commitment to extrajudicial punishment - barty crouch sr. is... clearly right to investigate bagman thoroughly.

we are told in order of the phoenix that voldemort's power depends on a vast network of ministry informants. we are shown in deathly hallows that his coup is only successful because almost the entirety of the civil service remains in post. we are shown time and time again throughout canon that voldemort's views - on blood-supremacy and magic-supremacy, on the supposed value of maintaining the class system - are incredibly mainstream political opinions, and we can infer from this that a majority of the population of wizarding britain have the view sirius tells us his parents did: that, while they're uneasy with voldemort's violence and while they're certainly not paid-up death eaters, they think voldemort has the right idea.

dumbledore - and the order - are shown throughout canon to be preoccupied with the big fish. the death eaters they target are voldemort's inner circle - the marked loyalists he trusts as generals. we never see - outside of the snatchers - the lower-profile but infinitely more important cogs in voldemort's machine: the people who traffic stolen goods and lift ministry secrets from filing cabinets and observe potential recruits in pubs and pass gossip along whisper networks until it reaches the dark lord. the sort of people crouch clearly wanted to eradicate, but couldn't find the goodwill within the ministry to do so.

bagman can easily fit this profile - he's presumably a pureblood or a half-blood and raised in the wizarding world, since his parents canonically have at least one wizarding friend [augustus rookwood]; he is clearly relaxed about making use of the class system, since he expects to finesse a job out of rookwood when his professional quidditch career ends; and he is possessed of extremely dubious morals. we also know that pleading ignorance of who you were working for was a famously successful - and, presumably, voldemort-sanctioned - way of getting away with having colluded with the death eaters. it makes just as much sense - then - for bagman's "oh, i just thought i was chatting about state secrets with rookwood as a mate" act to be in the same vein as lucius malfoy pretending to be under the imperius curse as it does for him to actually have been that dumb, and so it makes sense for him to have gone actively looking for information he could pass to rookwood because of some sympathies [even if they were uneasy ones] with rookwood's cause.

do i think he was a marked death eater? no - i think voldemort couldn't pick him out of a line-up and he never achieved anything other than being an informant rookwood could tap for details and documents he could pass up to his master if they looked interesting.

but this would have been what voldemort's ministry infiltration actually looked like - and it is a much more insidious, and interesting, concept than loads of aristocrats fighting and being sexy, which i think is really worth exploring when we think about wizarding politics.

[theresattrpgforthat]

THEME: Mint's Fave Games (Part 2/2)

This is part 2 to a very difficult ask in which I managed to narrow it down to 12 games that I'm very normal about but still couldn't fit all in one post. 6 games left! I'll put the link for Part 1 here. Let's go!

Exceptionals, by Bramble Wolf Games, aka @sahonithereadwolf. (Purchased, not yet played)

I’m not a big comics fan, but X-Men has always been my favourite form of superhero media, particularly because I love the care and purposefulness of talking about marginalization and bigotry in a nuanced way. The creator of Exceptionals loves that very same thing about X-Men, and asks about what life is like for your average neighbourhood mutant.. This is a game where you can play Genodivergent folks, people who experience a process called Claremont-Simonson Mutation.

The game system uses d10’s - 2d10’s for any given roll, while you can use other d10’s to track the Bonds your characters have with each-other. Characters are made up of 4 “protocols”, lists of words and phrases that describe your mutation as well as your role as a community member. These pieces will not just give you advantages - they’ll give you disadvantages as well, which will affect the outcome of your rolls.

This is not a game about superheroes. This is a game in which superheroes exist, but your group is more likely going to be figuring out how to keep their neighbourhood safe when the police are one of the constant dangers, learning how to care for community members who have unique problems, and making noise when asking nicely for others to respect your rights doesn’t work.

The Wildsea, by Felix Isaacs. (Purchased, not yet played)

I was sold on setting alone for this one. The Wildsea is inspired by works such as Railsea, (a re-telling of Moby Dick), as well as Firefly, Blades in the Dark, and Sunless Sea. You are sailors on a verdant ocean of giant trees, hunting leviathan squirrels and trading with various outports and settlements. Character creation involves three parts: your Bloodline, Origin and Post, combining species, background and job to allow for some highly customizable, evocative characters.

The Wildsea prioritizes narrative play, allowing players to determine how their stats affect their actions, and using an in-game mechanic called Whispers and Charts to help you create locations as you play. Travel is never boring, as everyone has a role to play and the wonders of The Wildsea never cease. The community behind this game is wildly inventive, with oodles of home-brew and character inspiration. You can pick up the free version of the rules here, and check out the Storm and Root Expansion at the Kickstarter link.

HouseHold, by Two Little Mice. (Unpurchased)

Two Little Mice are known for gorgeous games and this is no exception. Household is a game about little people living inside an abandoned house, each room of which is a different nation. Will you dance with a Boggart princess at the ball of the Chandelier? Cross the Long Hallway and survive to tell the tale? Are you a Sluagh with a mouse steed or a Sprite with a beetle companion? Do you wear the finest of bee furs, or is mushroom leather what you prefer to wear?

This game is unique on this list in that I don’t actually plan to run it - I play to play it, with a friend of mine who backed the game on Kickstarter. He’s already got the full version of the book, plus its expansion, and let me tell you, it’s deliciously beautiful. The game uses the same system as Broken Compass: your character choices will give you strengths in certain arenas, and you’ll use pips to give yourself strengths in subsets of skills within each arena. The game uses card symbols to represent Society, Academia, War and Street - these characters won’t just be fighting spiders and bringing down rats, they’ll also try to catch the eye of an aristocrat at a dinner party, or pick-pocket the keys off of a palace guard. Character advancement is chronicled as Memories; your play the game as if your character’s stories have already happened, and are in the process of being written down for posterity.

If you’re interested in this game I’d recommend checking out the linked website above, as the 96-page Quickstart and the character sheet are free to download!

Brinkwood: The Blood of Tyrants, by Far Horizons Co-Op. (Played)

This game has the most hardcore slogan that I’ve ever seen, and it has not failed to get people stoked about it - Drink the Rich. It’s Robin Hood meets Castlevania. A powerful Faerie helps you fight against Vampire Capitalists using magic-infused masks, and a sanctuary hidden inside a wild wood. This is yet another Forged-in-the-Dark game that shows you how to build a rebellion via three different strategies, and has a well-written and well-thought-out Codex that allows you to put the game in different settings, as well as an Almanac (included in the base game) that immerses you in the milieu of Cardenfell.

My favourite aspect of Brinkwood is the communal Mask playbooks. As characters, you’ll have your own personal character sheet, but when you go out on different forays, you’ll have the opportunity to share the Masks that are available to the group. This means that players can choose strategically-optimal playbooks for missions that require more stealth, combat, or social control, and it also means that you’ll never feel nailed into a specific role. I very much want to see more of this kind of setup in games, even if I have to design it myself.

Moth-Light, by Justin Ford. (Purchased, not yet played)

You are humans that have fled to a planet after the fall of your civilization. In this speculative future, your new home must be shared with giant, predator insects called Moths. Your future depends on your ability to develop trust, form pacts, and work together.

This is (you guessed it) another Forged-in-the-Dark game with a really unique implementation of the group playbook. Depending on the Pact you choose, you don’t just determine what kind of story you want to tell, you also determine what action ratings are available to your characters. This makes sense, as a story about different villages banding together to achieve peace will provide different challenges then a story about a series of war-games, in which your characters are desperate to prove their worth. The spectrum of stories available within this game are broad-spanning, and I’m itching to get this game to table sometime before the year is over to see how it plays.

Moth-Light is still in beta, but after your first purchase you’ll receive new updates about the game as they come out! When I bought this game, only the Promise and the Scavengers were available - now the creator has updated the file to include the Slayers and the Jammers! I’ve also created my own Pact for this game, inspired by the Chronicles of Pern. It’s called RIDERS, it’s about people creating sympathetic bonds with the Moths in order to stop an even greater threat, and you can find it here!

Apocalypse Keys, by Rae Nedjadi. (@temporalhiccup ) (Played)

I just finished running this game and I don’t know how to express to you the emotional rollercoaster that it led us on. Rae Nedjadi is a fucking amazing designer and you can tell he intensively play-tested this game because Apocalypse Keys is tight. The mystery setup gives you an idea of how long a single mystery will take, and the generative style of play allows you to not just fill out the world, but also come up with the answer to the mystery as you unlock clues.

The central focus of the game involves Grasping Keys, which is a move that allows your character to find clues that will eventually be connected to core facets of the mystery for a very dramatic roll. Also, unlike a lot of PbtA games, your characters use a token system reminiscent of Belonging Outside Belonging games instead of stats, which you can spend to increase your chances of success - but roll too high and you are too good at what you do, possibly causing collateral damage in the process. If you love Hellboy, if you love monsters, if you’re queer… you really need to check out this game.

Finally....

If you want to see what other games are currently living rent-free in my noggin that I hope to pick up at play someday, you can check out the Games that Intrigue Me folder I've started on Itch. There's currently 148 games in there that I haven't played yet!

[vierrel41n]

The way the dynamics between men and women are portrayed in popular media genuinely makes me so uncomfortable. I could talk about a lot of things

1. The “harmless nerd” trope

In which the man who is usually a social reject (like a nerd or just a quiet kid) engages in stalking and/or persistent pestering of the woman. Ex. Watching her with binoculars through windows, taking pictures without her permission, constantly making romantic advances towards her despite her clearly telling him NO, and so much more. And such behaviour are portrayed as sympathetic or not as creepy as they should be, why? Well he’s a nerd, there’s no way he could do any REAL harm! And in the end, the stalker is almost always rewarded for it in the end by “getting the girl”.

One thing I find really gross is how the movie will show the boys watching the girl in her home and for some reason they’ll have the girl performing strip tease for nobody in her own home?? Like she’s performing FOR the guys watching her and for the people watching the movie. You can obviously tell when the director is a man in these things.

An example of such behaviour is Leonard from the Big Band Theory. While he didn’t really stalk her he just wore her down until she finally agreed to date him. And another thing comes to mind was when they spoke about having kids and she told him she doesn’t want kids but he wasn’t happy about that. Eventually they did end up going through with it I just find it so weird and uncomfortable how the narrative constantly rewards him and all the other guys for their horrible behaviour.

2. The childish girl trope

Okay I think this is moreso a thing in anime but I really hate how the mannerisms, facial expressions, and even the voice of women in anime are meant to sound so akin to children? It’s so weird. And it’s even weirder how they sexualize it.

Like you’ll have girls who are explained by the narrative to be high school age to literal adults and you’ll have them acting like children and in the same way have 700 shots of them shaking their boobas everywhere and I personally think this is really weird. First of all, why can you only find them attractive or dateable if they look and act like a child 🤨? That is VERY odd! Looking at Toradora specifically. Secondly, is it IMPOSSIBLE for you to write a female character who actually acts like a human being? And for the male characters in their lives to treat them as such as well?

Even worse when you see how the male characters are portrayed compared to the women. Male characters are usually written to fit their actual age, they’re drawn to look their age, and others treat them like people too. They’re also usually taken more seriously in universe and by the fans. Girl characters on the other hand are portrayed in ways that are purposefully made to be appealing to guys which apparently means making them seem as young as possible??? And they’re often usually taken less seriously by the narrative and by the fanbase. Like I can’t count how many times I’ve seen guy characters peep at a female character or literally GROPE them and then the narrative plays it off as a joke. And more often than not, they face no repercussions and are also usually rewarded. I will expand on this in the next point.

This is why Studio Ghibli is superior.

You actually sometimes see things like this in western media too but I can’t think of any off the top of my head purely because I don’t watch a lot of TV anymore.

3. Women’s discomfort played off as jokes.

One of my favourite shoujo anime is Yumeiro Patissiere. I haven’t finished it yet but I do like it so far. HOWEVER there are a few scenes that genuinely made me so uncomfortable especially since this anime is marketed towards kids.

There was a scene in which the main character, Ichigo, goes with her classmates to deliver birthday cakes to some kindergarteners since it’s part of the school program. And while Ichigo is standing to the side watching as the kids get their cakes, a couple of the little boys (kindergarteners btw) flip up her skirt to peek. Obviously Ichigo is distraught by this and rightfully gets upset at them. Though the kids face no real repercussions, not even from their teacher who should tell them not to do stuff like that. And throughout the episode, the boys always refer to Ichigo as “strawberry panties” and make rude remarks to her regarding that.

Normally, I shouldn’t have to tell people that things like this are obviously morally wrong but I told someone online this since he kept on saying “it’s not a big deal” and after I said it, he replied “I’m not reading allat just don’t watch it then” 😐

Now such things are extremely common in anime and even in figurines of franchises where the woman is obviously distressed by someone trying to peek at her and it’s just seen as comedic or God forbid “hot”. And as usual, the perpetrator faces no repercussions.

An example I can think of in western media is in the Big Bang Theory where the guys made a robot thingy with a camera and Howard used it to peek up Penny’s skirt. All the guys were aware of it and all that was said about it was “you might wanna wear pants” or something idk. And then a laugh track. And when Penny finally goes off at Howard, as she should, somehow she’s in the wrong and Leonard comvinces her to apologize to him. Why should his fragile ego be prioritized over her literally being treated as a human being?

4. Sexualization of people who don’t want to be sexualized

I think this goes for most women generally though when I say this I mean women who are:

Police officers, nurses or doctors, veiling women like women who where hijabs or niqabs, nuns, flight attendants, firefighters for sole reason, even park rangers?

These are jobs in which women are constantly sexualized and harassed in workplace and society. Just search up ���women’s police Halloween costume” or anything of the sort and see what’s there. You see it in films, in shows, everywhere.

But the one that really angers me are when women who dedicate themselves to modesty are sexualized. Like I said earlier, veiling women like hijabis and nuns. It’s the most disgusting and disrespectful thing ever. I see it more often with nuns. If they’re not depicted scary, they’re usually depicted as sexualized with outfits having slits in them or being body contour. Ugh it’s so gross. Literally nothing is off limits.

Don’t get me started on school girls. School uniforms are constantly sexualized in media and it’s genuinely worrying. Connecting this to my earlier point about how childish women are for some reason seen as more desirable, it’s concerning how much more women are portrayed as “sexy” the younger they appear in media. And it’s bleeding into real life too. I’ve seen plenty of stories where adults are disappointed when they find out the girl they’re talking to isn’t in middle school or something :(

Respectful portrayal of both genders really matters in media. Especially when a lot of media is catered towards children who are impressionable. People shouldn’t have to be told that things like this are also morally wrong in media as well but for some reason it needs to be said over and over.

I’ve left out quite a few things because this post would be too long if I kept going. But you can add onto the post if u want.

It’s late I’m gonna sleep gn.

[leedee013]

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 7 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 ILU have fun!!!!

AFTG ask game

I LOVE YOU TOO MWAH

all my answers are going to be under the "read more" because hoo boy.

When did you first read aftg?

I first read AFTG by listening to the first audiobook while riding around the bus and trains in Germany, then Seth died, I immediately needed to finish the series, and then I read the entire series in less than 48 hours rifp.

2. All For The Game or The Sunshine Court?

All For the Game. The Sunshine Court is about my son, Jean, but also... because he's my son I have a lot of points where I simply like what I wrote better! and a fair number of complaints with TSC, since a lot of the way Jean's trauma rears its head is far less realistic than how Neil's trauma rears its head.

3. Favourite scene(s)?

I won't lie, one of my favorite scenes is when Neil gets back from his father's home and the Foxes all sleep on the floor together. I'm a huge sucker for found family and hurt/comfort and MAN that scene ticked off all my boxes. It's the one that I'll actually go back every now and then to reread. Wymack's joke about "Wesninski" and that feeling of finally having a family gets to me literally every time. And blah blah yeah I also really love the mentality of Andrew dragging Wymack behind him as he crashes through everything just so he can get back to Neil's side.

4. If you could choose to make one fictional place from the books real, which one?

That place they go to when they get ice cream/milkshakes before going to Eden's Twilight! It sounds amazing

5. A character you think deserves to be more present in the books?

Hngh this is difficult because I do believe that, at least as far as AFTG goes (aka excluding TSC) the characters are all as present as they need to be. Neil is very tunnel-visioned, and I think that it's a solid amount of screentime for each character, so to say. Like my first thought was Seth, but it wouldn't have fit Neil's character for Seth to haunt him at all. Therefore, I think overall I'd liked to have seen more of Jean for purely selfish reasons. Also more Renee!

6. A non-canon ship you love?

Jean/Renee, Jean/Jeremy, Jean/Kevin, Renee/Riko, and then any mix and match of those characters in throuples/quoples/poly ships! I'm also a big fan of Dan/Renee because woooo enemies to lovers?

7. A part of the extra content you whole-heartedly agree with

Andreil never say "I love you" or get married. Also that Dan gets to take over the Foxes when Wymack retires. Also Sir and King but like. Who doesn't agree with that.

8. A crackship/crackships you've come to love

Rinee (Riko/Renee), I adore it so much okay. I love the healing energy of it all and also the way that Renee attracts the most strange and unhinged people to her.

9. Underrated aftg fanartist / fic writer (tag them!)(link if they're not on tumblr)

well obviously @capcavan @jtl-fics and @emry-stars-art can never be OVERrated. But I think the true underrated AFTG fanartist is @noomyart <3

10. A villain you think is fucking hot

well. uh. villain I guess would be Nathan. Antagonist? Riko

11. A side character you love and/or appreciate

NICKY, I love him so much. Also Renee. And Dan. And Matt. I'm so mad I can't just say Jean anymore since he's not really a side character anymore GAH

12. Favourite narrative foil?

I adore the Riko/Neil narrative foil. Both the sons that were not wanted, both having their lives attached to Exy and using it as a way to solidify their freedom/independence, while Neil had someone who tried to save him and Riko could only ever try to save himself.

13. Favourite narrative symbolism?

In general my favorite narrative symbolism are the keys; how they unlock opportunities for Neil; how they are signs of trust that others put in him; how they are something I don't think he ever thought he'd have (solidity/a home). I also love how much symbolism they hold for him, as well.

14. A character you would actually get along with in real life

Nicky (we'd bond over escaping our parents by running to Germany and using each other as an excuse to practice German) or Matt (because he's chill he's fun and he reminds me a lot of some of my actual friends from college).

15. A character you love but would deck in real life

Neil lmao

16. How did you even get here?? How did you discover AFTG?

I was browsing the Banana Fish tag and saw a post that was like "hey! do you wish that you had a series that was everything you loved about Banana Fish but with way more of Eiji pole-vaulting? then you should check out All for the Game for its mafia-infused sports anime vibes! and huzzah I haven't gotten off the hook yet

17. Would you play exy?

I feel like I'd be pretty good at it if I'd put my mind to it. It seems like fun and also I'm a bit of a masochist so I think the rougher plays would be really fun!

18. A fancast you will never let go of

Tbh I don't really have a fancast for any of the characters

19. A fancast you love that is super silly

I did see a guy the other day who made me double take and go KEVIN???? in my head if that counts

20. Which character would be the last to die in a actual zombie apocalypse?

Probably Renee tbh because she's unsuspecting, can broker peace between people who are fighting, and has absolutely no issue wielding and using knives in fights.

21. Would andrew minyard have beef with you?

Idk I feel like we'd vibe really well but wouldn't necessarily be close. He might get annoyed at how go-with-the-flow I am, though

22. Hyperspecific aro and or ace kevin headcanon?

I enjoy these headcanons and seeing people write them but I personally don't ever write him as either aro or ace. All the power to those who do though <3

23. Something you are very sure will happen in TSC2

Trojans win and 2. Jean meets the Foxes again before/after a game and it's emotional

24. Nicky or Allison? (Character wise and personality wise seperate)

I'm biased but Nicky. I relate way too hard to his story to not be biased here. But also I relate heavily to Allison and love her as well. I think she's also a lot more underappreciated out of the two, and gets a lot of unfair hate.

25. You're now only allowed to ship Kevin with one person (1) who is it?

man you're really out here discriminating against me and my poly ship here /t, but if it's only one person then I'd say Jean because again, I'm biased.

26. A 2000s song any one/ship/group of character would listen to

I feel like Andrew would secretly adore Lady Gaga's Poker Face and know all the lyrics even if he'd never sing along.

27. A detail or element from an older draft you would've loved to see in the final draft

LMAO so. I'm personally a fan of the version where Riko shot Kevin because Neil dodged/Kevin dove in front of him. I don't think I would have swapped the ending that we got for it instead, but I did think that it would have been an interesting change.

Also Riko and Kevin with longer hair

28. If you had to kill a fox. (Seth doesnt count.)

Aaron, because oh boy that poor medical student is probably already begging for some anvil to drop on him from the heavens

Question 29 for jean! Name a favorite Jean dialogue/quote

All of them because Jean is my favorite but also I think I'm going to go with "I will endure. I will endure. I will endure" because it's the first one I found while flipping through my copy of TSC and skimming for lines I thought were powerful. A classic is "Did a week away from the court damage your ball-battered brain?" (TSC 24), though. And then of course, as a Jeanee fan, the entire conversation between Jean and Renee on pages 68-69 where they talk about finding the joy in small things in life and taking a chance on himself and and

anyway hello thank you for coming to my TED talk

[secret-diary-of-an-fa]

I Saw the TV Glow Review (Weirdly, It Works Better Without Subtext)

SPOILER ALERT

ALSO TRIGGER WARNING: Gender Dysphoria, Depression, 90s Television, Kid’s Parties, Rishi Sunak, Skittles (and the repackaging thereof), Unaliving Oneself onstage with a Prop, Ontological Dread and Birds Flying Into Windows.

So, there’s a bit of a buzz about I Saw the TV Glow in cult cinephile circles, and I’m a bit glad about that because it’s a genuinely interesting film and we don’t see genuinely interesting films get the attention they deserve very often. Note, however, that I said “attention” not “praise”. That’ll be important later. So… why is everyone talking about this film (and by ‘everyone’, I mean ‘like, maybe, me and eight other snooty movie weirdos’)? Well, we’ll get there, but first let me lay out the plot for you: protagonist Owen is a socially-awkward, doesn’t-fit-in-anywhere boy right out of the mumblecore ‘90s Indie Cinema Playbook and, during his middle-school years, he befriends a lass called Maddy (though ‘befriends’ might be wrong word for the weird codependence they strike up) and she introduces him to a show called The Pink Opaque: a dark, disturbing, supernaturally-inflected TV show about two psychic friends who fight ‘Mr. Melancholy’ (a sinister occult psychopath with a moon for a face- just go with it). Ostensibly, The Pink Opaque is meant to be for kids, but from the beginning, there’s something very obviously not quite right about it. Weirder still, when Maddy disappears in a doomed bid to find herself, the show gets cancelled, almost as if it was a part of her. Fast-forward, via a few narrative leaps and bounds, to Owen’s adulthood and Maddy reappears, claiming to have been inside the show, which is actually reality. She and Owen, she asserts, are the main characters from the programme and Mr. Melancholy has sent their minds to the ‘Midnight Realm’ of their present, false reality. In order to escape, they need to bury themselves alive, because that’s what’s happening to their real bodies and it’ll reestablish the connection (I’m adding the technobabble, by the way: the phrasing in the movie is nowhere near that logical or concise). Spoiler alert: Maddy does this and then vanishes from the plot, Owen doesn’t and we see him grow old, trapped in his own personal suburban nightmare… right up until the end of the film, where we see him leaving his place of work in a manner very open to interpretation. Is he finally about to wise up and go bury himself in order to emerge renewed, or is he just going home for a cuppa, a biscuit and a long overdue review of his mental health medication?

Now, clearly, all that sounds like a real fucking trip of a movie, but that’s not why it’s generating buzz. See, Maddy believes that she and Owen are the two main characters from The Pink Opaque, but both of those characters are female. Owen, as you can tell from the fact he’s called Owen, is not. Thus, the flick has been interpreted as a metaphor for gender dysphoria and the process of transitioning/ the decision not to. There’s a lot of allusions to Owen feeling like there’s something wrong with him (on one level reality) and feeling like he’s being buried alive and is dying while, er, that’s literally what’s happening to his meta-self on the Pink Opaque level of reality. There’s a bit where he has a break-down at a kid’s party and screams “HELP ME! I’M LITERALLY DYING RIGHT NOW!” Although, in fairness, kids’ parties make me feel like that too and I’m not even remotely trans. The point is, it’s a film with a big, fat, capital-I Issue at its centre, which has given people a license to enjoy it despite the fact it’s weird, schlocky, neon-doused pulp of the highest order. And, fair play to people suffering with gender dysphoria, if this film really speaks to you, you go right the fuck ahead and enjoy it on that level. But (and here I’m about to piss off the entire internet), I actually think it works a lot better if you just take it completely fucking literally. Like, forget the metaphorical nonsense and focus on the actual plot and it instantly becomes one of the best and most upsetting horror films of the last five years. Try and draw real-life parallels, however, and it starts to seem a bit overwrought and melodramatic.

Right. Time to try and explain what I mean without upsetting anyone more than I already have (please don’t send me hate-mail: I don’t read it and you’ll just give yourself carpal tunnel syndrome, which, trust me, is a bitch). It’s pretty obvious that there’s something wrong with the world Owen and Maddy inhabit from the get-go. The school they go to as sprogs is called Void High School, which (aside from having the initials VHS) is also just NOT A REAL NAME FOR A PLACE, and it has really creepy, weird text on its message boards in place of the usual papers and kids drawings (one strip that caught my eye, rendered in stark black-on-yellow font, simply reads ‘PAIN IS WEAKNESS LEAVING THE BODY’). There’s a supermarket that just seems like a giant, sprawling liminal space devoid of people. Characters from The Pink Opaque show-within-a-film get referenced in places that have nothing to do with the show. Daytime, though it never vanishes altogether, seems to become less and less frequent as though the characters are sinking into the deepening night of impending death. Characters who should be key to the protagonists formative years have no dialogue at all, as though they’re just set dressing in a shared delusion. The lore of The Pink Opaque shifts, so that the characters memories cease to align with the show itself, just (it seems) to fuck with them. And, creepiest of all, Owen has to continually narrate his own life straight to camera, like he might forget who and what he is and come unmoored from reality if he doesn’t constantly tell the story. As the clues stack up and the evidence becomes more and more incontrovertible, the realisation slowly dawns: this is not madness. This is not too mixed-up kids bonding over a crappy horror show on TV. This is the story of a person condemned to a slow, humiliating false life by a vengeful cosmic entity while their real body dies in a freshly-dug grave on another level of reality. In that context, the existence of the show The Pink Opaque, is their oxygen-deprived brain trying to warn them to get up! GET UP NOW! YOU ARE DYING! GET UP! And that’s genuinely terrifying. “What if reality isn’t reality?” is already one of the most disturbing questions you can ask yourself. Add to that the questions of “Who is perpetrating reality against you?”, “Why are they doing?” and “What if the real me is dying while this happens?” and you’ve got some pure, solipsistic, philosophical nightmare fuel to keep you up at night!

The gender dysphoria interpretation, in contrast, is probably the intended interpretation, but if you focus too much on that, it makes the whole thing feel a bit, well… silly. Don’t get me wrong. I’m sure gender dysphoria is very, very unpleasant. I’m sure being trapped in the wrong body and not knowing how to express the all-pervading feeling of wrongness is one of the most traumatic things a human being can go through. However, none of the trans people I know in real life have ever collapsed onto the floor in their place of work to scream “I’M LITERALLY DYING RIGHT NOW!” (although my sort-of-adopted trans daughter did once call me after a night of heavy drinking to claim “I’m sober now! I’m just putting these skittles back in their packet!” like it was the dexterity-challenge of the century and somehow proved something. That has nothing to do with this review, I just thought it was funny and that you’d like to know it happened). Nor, to the best of my knowledge, has burying oneself alive and popping back up out of the dirt like a jack-in-the-box ever been considered a useful, therapeutic part of the gender reassignment process. Meanwhile, Owen’s life isn’t just a bit constricting and mediocre, it’s downright oppressive, devoid of even the most fleeting moments of joy, and his only meaningful emotional connection is with someone who fucks off for a decade at a time and reappears claiming to have been living inside a TV show. Nobody could be that miserable all the time, even if they tried. Think about how long human beings live: the number of years and the number of days in each year and the number of hours in each day and the number of minutes in each hour. At the very least, at some point in all that, you’d accidentally catch a Monty Python rerun or see a bird fly into a window and then try and strut off like nothing happened and then… Whoops! You’re laughing like a fucking idiot and your perfect record of being resolutely unhappy is completely fucking ruined, you loser. My point is that, as a metaphor, I Saw the TV Glow feels a little hammy: like an actor beating his chest and wailing to express grief, possibly before committing fake-sepuku with a very obviously cardboard knife. But if you forget it’s a metaphor and remember that Owen’s life is so unremittingly miserable because it was created to be unremittingly miserable by a cosmic entity of terrifying malevolence and power, suddenly it all makes sense… and scares you badly enough to keep you up all night worrying that maybe we’re all trapped by Mr. Melancholy… or Prime Minister Rishi Sunak as we call him here in the dystopian wasteland that used to be Great Britain.

Anyway, I recommend I Saw the TV Glow. It’s stylish, weird, quite clever (though not as clever as it clearly thinks it is) and, frankly, some of the visuals have to be seen to be believed (the monster of the week made of melting ice-cream, for example, is the kind of thing that you’d normally have to neck quite a lot of absinth to see, but the film-makers have brought it to life here so that you don’t have to and, consequently, your liver won’t start to hate you like an abused spouse).

[bedlamsbard]

Hello (almost doctor?!) bard! Hope the tail end of the school year is going okay. I have a plot choices question about Of Home Near, which I just binge read and totally fell in love with. What lead to your choice to leave Bucky and Sam unsnapped? It was done so naturally and it felt like it fit in the narrative so well I had to blink and remind myself that it was canon divergent.

Thank you! I'm into summer semester now, which had darn well better be my last semester.

I don't remember exactly when I decided that Bucky and Sam weren't going to be snapped -- I think Bucky, Sam, and Yelena are the big three that don't get snapped in Home but do get snapped in canon. Part of it is the randomness factor; Steve and Natasha don't get snapped in canon, but in Home they're not even there to be snapped, which changes the number of people who can possibly get snapped. *handwave* So that's the internal logic of why Bucky, Sam, and Yelena are still around in Home but not in canon. (Horizon, which is also an IW AU, has similar internal logic for why characters who are snapped in canon don't get snapped in that fic: the divergence means that there are different people around and in theory the Snap is ~random. Which is also the reason that there are different people snapped/unsnapped in Home, Horizon, and canon -- i.e., Thor gets snapped in Horizon/Yonder but is still around in Home, Alexei is snapped in Home but is still around in Horizon.)

For Bucky and Sam specifically, I don't remember when I made that decision but I think it was very, very early on, possibly even before I started writing. Part of it is just so Steve's life isn't so god damn miserable; the Snap is bad enough as it is. But it's also to balance out the characters in the 1945 timeline: Bucky isn't there in 1945 even though the rest of the Howlies and SSR are, but he is there in 2018. There was never going to be a 1945 Bucky/Winter Soldier in this story. That was never an option; that empty space always had to be there. There was a lot of speculation in the comments right up until Chapter 13 about when the Winter Soldier would appear and it was making me pretty unhinged, since from my POV it could not be more clear that this was not a Save Bucky fic. He was always, always going to be the ghost in the room in 1945.

I knew that Steve and Natasha were always going to make it back to 2018, though the earliest I think I started saying so was in July 2023, since I do talk a lot about my WIPs and I was trying to stay vague about the outcome until then.

To some extent Sam and Bucky survive the Snap for the comedy factor after the return to 2018; it wouldn't have quite the same effect with any of the canonical survivors. Though you'll note the actual reunion goes differently than this! Also yeah the ENTIRE reason that Tony is there in the 2018 sequence is for the comedy factor. That is also the entire reason the Howard/Steve kiss actually made it into the story. I do stuff because I think it's funny and then I add the emotions in once I actually start writing.

I also thought Bucky and Steve having reverse experiences in 1945 and 2018 was funny, tbh. Steve's got the "I would like to not be brainwashed by the USSR" problem and Bucky is speedrunning Steve's usual Avengers problems.

More seriously, part of Bucky and Sam's survival is just so that Steve's team is there in 2018 as well as in 1945 in a way that they really aren't in canon, since the Avengers seem to fall apart after the Endgame prologue -- it's part of the reason Clint shows up at the compound (which he doesn't do in canon). Yelena (and to some extent Clint) is there to balance that out for Natasha, as well as to provide a mirror for the 21st century Red Room vs. the mid-century Department X.

There is another, more practical reason, which is: seeing Bucky in 2018 is an instant "oh SHIT" for the 1945 gang. As soon as he turns up in the time window, that's a clue that there was weird stuff going on that Steve's only began to touch on. And it's also to give Bucky closure on leaving the Howlies and the SSR -- he was ripped away from them as much as Steve was, but I feel like I never see that touched on in the fandom, so he gets some of it back.

This is more about Bucky than it is about Sam; part of that is because I didn't want to snap one and not the other and because Bucky's the one who's more relevant to this particular part of Steve's narrative, the reasoning is more about him than about Sam. But like -- that's Steve's team. They have to be there in 2018, just like the Howlies are there in 1945.

(I do think that because I didn't snap anyone in Home who didn't also get snapped in canon that there are too many Avengers survivors, especially because I have Clint and Yelena show up at the compound, but I also didn't want to snap anyone who survived canonically. And it ended up being most of Team Cap, minus Wanda, so it does end up feeling unbalanced, but I didn't want to kill anyone else off.)

[linkspooky]

I do wonder if Nobara do return— And that’s a big if since it’s been a hot while we last heard about her— What would be her role?

Or not necessarily role, since she does have a unique ability to damage the soul. But more like… character arc I suppose?

Like some people would theorize that Nobara could possibly help Maki from spiraling. However, I personally believe it makes much more narrative sense that it would be Yuta that does it.

I must think that Nobara would possibly go through her own arc. But my question is how?

Since I thought her arc is to be less judgmental with her black and white thinking and expand her world view. But the only person that I can think would challenge Nobara on this is Mai. Since Nobara judged Mai harshly despite the fact that she too was a victim like Maki.

But then like… Mai died so… now what?

Okay, so all the reasons Nobara might come back, and some of the reasons she might not. 

Let’s start with why she might not. By the way I’m not arguing whether or not she’ll come back, because in my mind it’s a very strong “...Maaaaaaaaybe?” so it’s just easier to list arguments in support or against. 

This is definitely the biggest reason why it would be hard to reintroduce Nobara back into the story. Part of this is Gege’s fumbling his handling of female characters, simply put Mai and Miwa are characters who are better written with way less screentime because they both have obvious character flaws, a character arc is built around a flaw the character has that they either have to work on or face the consequences. 

In comparison to Noara, Megumi and Yuji have clear flaws. Megumi is at times borderline suicidal, he’s really emotoinally unhealthy, he picks and chooses between the people he saves and he lets die. He has a lot of connection to bigger plotlines in the Jujutsu World, the Zenin Clan, his legacy as Toji’s son. 

Yuji also has a major flaw of being self sacrificing and has little self worth, he prioritizes other people far above himself, he has a character conflict around finding a way to die, being a little too willing to die, acting like he has little agency or that he’s individually worthless and much preferring to be a cog in society, he’s also continually dealing with Sukuna’s machinations from inside his own body. 

They have clear flaws and they’re connected to the world around them, in comparison Nobara seems a little tacked onto the trio as an afterthought to the point where it is hard to even speculate on where she would fit in post shibuya. We get one flashback to her home village and it’s not even about her life as a jujutsu sorcerer in the country side, just a childhood friend she had. That childhood friend is apparently just fine in the city, so that character motivation and plotline is resolved for the most part. Everything we know about why Nobara became a sorcerer is shoved into a databook (her grandmother), Saori just seems to be a normal person so I don’t even think there was a mystery about her home town. 

You could say her flaw is both her naivete and egotism, she ends up kind of repeating misogyny against Mai when Momo tries to explain what misogyny is like in the Jujutsu World because she views Mai as a bad victim. Solidarity is solidarity with all women and victims, not just the people you personally like. Nobara’s belief that she can simply overcome all adversity with her strong willpower could also be seen as a flaw.

This is a mistranslation it’s more like ...

⇒ “How to put it… The seats in my life? I don’t want people who’re not sitting there to affect my mind in that way or another.”

⇒ “(…) Well, I guess there are people like you who just come bringing their own chairs and sit [with me], too”

which is Nobara saying she only cares about a select group of people, which in a way reflects Megumi’s flaw of just picking and choosing who she saves. 

Nobara’s flaw could be seen as her hypocrisy, she’s one of those loud, crazy people who can easily step on other people’s lives. If they’re not in her small circle of friends she doesn’t really care, she feels little remorse over killing Choso’s brothers. If she comes back that could potentially lead to a conflict with Choso, as unlike Yuji who Choso can forgive because they are brothers, not only is nobara also a murderer, but she doesn’t really feel sorry about it. 

Her naivete and hypocrisy are things that could come to have consequences for her upon her return, for instance you mention Yuta seems more appropriate for the role of supporting Maki and saving her from her spiral than Nobara does. If you look at it from that angle, Nobara could try to help Maki and fail, number one because she does not actually understand all that much about what happened in the Zenin clan she was just making judgements as an outsider and number two because she never liked Mai and that’s the person that Maki is grieving. Mai in general just represents a part of Maki that Nobara doesn’t understand in her amdiration of her. 

This is also the part where I start quoting other people, because I ferociously googled other people’s posts on how they think Nobara might come back due to this being a weak point for me. This post, brings up the fact that if you look at the losses Nobara has suffered so far, they could be the result of Nobara being arrogant and naive to the world and therefore her loss at Shibuya could be a low part in her arc that she has to recover from. 

Jujutsu Kaisen is nothing if not rigidly efficient in how it tells this massive story. I believe every instance of Nobara actually leads us to see a low point in her character arc in Shibuya and a possible return in the Culling Games.

The major foreshadowing to her return is during the Kyoto exchange arc. Her fight against Momo clearly has her ignorant of the plight of women in the JJK universe in Chapters 40 and 41.

This seems to return with Mai dead, Maki scarred and Nobara seriously injured. There's some that claim her not being dead would lower stakes when it's obvious Mahito still would have irreversibly destroyed her youth and beauty that she was proud of all the way back in her introduction in Chapter 4 believing she should be a model.

If being beautiful and dressing up is part of what makes Nobara Kugisaki, Nobara Kugisaki then what is she with half of her face deformed or missing completely?

If Nobara’s main strength is the power of her ego and self confidence, then introducing her back with a severely bruised ego with all the losses she has endured then that could represent a new struggle her character has to deal with. 

The second part of the post brings up that Nobara’s power is currently under-explored, as I said of Yuji and Megumi she seems to be the least connected to the Jujutsu World around her, but Gojo himself said that all of his students are supposed to have remaining potential. Nobara is referred to having come close to feeling the core to cursed energy, which is why she dealt a bigger blow to Mahito than Mahito expected having written her off as weak. 

As several people have pointed out before me, Nobara is the only one of the students to feel the core of cursed energy, which is mentioned s Gojo’s feat that allowed him to come back and defeat Toji. Nobara like Gojo, suffered a near fatal wound that put her on the brink of death, but Nitta went into painstaking detail to point out that there wasn’t a zero percent chance of her coming back due to his cursed technique preventing her body from getting any worse. Just like Gojo, her head wasn’t cut off and she wasn’t finished off. 

There’s two possible theories I’ve seen to explain what could lead to Nobara coming back, number one her unlocking reversed curse technique similiar to Gojo. Number one the clear parallel to Nobara in the past trio is Shoko. While Megumi is parallled to Gojo and Geto to Yuji. Gojo even says that reversed cursed technique is impossible to expain and has to be figured out intuitively. 

Nobara’s technique also has a couple of techniques that closely resemble reverse cursed technique. Resonance connects her to her opponent, she can even use her own body and connect her with her opponent to share their pain together. Considering she connects herself to the opponent’s soul directly to inflict damage on them (how she attacked Mahito’s soul directly), then either using reversed curse technique to heal isn’t that far of a stretch because she is already fighting y directly applying her cursed eenrgy to someone else, she just inflicts negative harm. Gojo explains reverse cursed technique is quite literally just reversing in order to heal. 

Or, there’s the theory my linked post posited that Nobara herself is going to be shown to be an expert of the soul. This is where I bring alchemy into the equation. 

This, is the alchemy triangle. 

I’ve explained the significance of the man and woman, small and large circles, square and triangle at some length.  For a story, we need to focus on the triangle.  In spiritual alchemy, the triangle represents soul, spirit, and body.  Heinrich Khunrath helpfully labeled the sides of the triangle in this emblem.  In red capital letters you have Anima (soul), Spiritus (spirit), and Corpus (body).  

It is ambiguous where cursed energy comes and cursed technique comes from, but we are given multiple references for soul, body and mind. Extremely early on it’s mentioned that cursed energy may come from the brain, later on Mahito is able to change Junpei’s brain around in order to awaken his potential for cursed technique. Much, much later Kenjaku does this en masse to awaken a bunch of potential sorcerers. 

Mahito refers to the soul and the body afterwards, completing the triangle. Mahito’s cursed technique specifically manipulates the soul to transform the shape of his body around it. In the world of Jujutsu Kaisen, the soul is definitely something that exists and has form. 

Todo even explicitly names the triangle later on when counselling Yuji, people exists in this world mind, body, and soul and sorcerers are at their strongest when they draw strength with all three are in harmony. Whereas Todo explains that the three of them being seperate and in disharmony makes cursed technique weaker.

So the goal of the triangle, and alchemy at large is to find the harmony between the alchemy triangle, or the three main characters that represent mind, body, soul (or sometimes, mind, body and heart). The Wizard of Oz is the most obvious example of three characters having to find harmony with each other in order to accomplish their goals by the end of the story. 

In the Wizard of Oz, Frank Baum used the heart/mind/body triangle in a completely different way.  Rather than marking his protagonist, Dorothy, as heart, as you would expect, Baum assigns heart, mind, and body characteristics to her three companions.  The Tin Man is in search of a heart, the Scarecrow in search of a brain, and the Cowardly Lion in search of “some nerve,” in other words the courage that Body characters typically lack.  

If you were to divide mind, body and soul then you can center the goal of each character of the main trio. Megumi has to find mind, he’s the most cerebral of the trio as the strategist, his entire arc revolves around his ideals (he hypocritically only chooses to save the people he wants too), his biggest flaw is also being inside his own head and refusing to connect with people. 

Yuji is obviously body, he shares his body with an intruder Sukuna, he is also out of harmony with Sukuna because Sukuna constantly possesses him to cause harm to the others around him. He only became a sorcerer in the first place because his body was modified the moment he ate the finger. He was also purposefully birthed for the sake of becoming a vessel, which means he was literally created to be a body for Sukuna to inhabit. Body characters are defined by their hunger and desires, Sukuna’s cursed technique literally revolves around cooking, his true form has a giant mouth on his stomach, Yuji has to eat fingers to grow stronger. 

That would leave Nobara as the soul, which is where I am going to reference the other post again. 

We never seen Gojo referring to Nobara's potential and so it's assumed it's because she's sidelined but there's no reason to say that it's not because her talents might be a major spoiler to whatever True Jujutsu and the Core of Cursed Energy is.

we already know that the power of the soul is something that goes beyond CE. Mahito even remarks all the way back in Chapter 31 that Sukuna should have less CE than Jogo yet his soul is simply on another level. It may be a completely separate power system and part of how Toji and Maki function so well with 0 CE. Their bodies after all can defeat souls.

, In fact, the separation of Sukuna's fingers into 20 is never explained as it's not a requirement seen for any other Special Grade Cursed Object capable of reincarnating like the Death Paintings (they are also mostly human but 1/3(?) curse). We don't actually know why he is different.

The influence souls have on cursed technique are unknown and unexplored too. The necromancer transfigures her grandsons bodies but specifically doesn’t summon the soul, but because Toji has a special body he comes back. 

Kenjaku even theorizes that the soul is the body, and the body is the soul therefore their connection influences one another both ways. Which is like... yet another way that Nobara can come back, if the body conforms to the soul and the soul conforms to the body, Nobara being able to manipulate her soul because her CT targets the soul directly could make her change her body enough to come back.

To make an argument with alchemy though, alchemy works by seperating the individual members of the triangle, and then eventually reuniting them. That’s a brief, brief summary of how alchemy works in a story, but basically for the story to be complete the alchemy triangle has to come together. For example, Naruto, Sasuke and Sakura are a similiar alchemy triangle, they spend most of the story seperated and developing on their own, but the story cannot end until the three of them reunite again. 

“The triangle symbolizes the tendency of the universe to converge towards the point of unity.” 

“Some philosophers maintain the quadrangle is to be reduced to a triangle, that is to body, spirit and soul. These three appear in three colors which precede the redness: the body, or earth, in saturnine blackness; the psirit in lunar whiteness, like water; and the soul or air, in solar yellow. Then the triangle will be perfect, but in its turn it must change into a circle (that is uncharangeable redness). 

“Out of man and woman make a round circle and extract the quadrangle from this and from the quadrangle the triangle. Make a round circle and you will have the philosopher’s stone.” 

The goal of alchemy is to form the philosopher’s stone, or essentially reach the endpoint of the story. The “man and woman” angle is also important. Remember, Nobara and Yuji have been depicted fighting together three times, the first time they were in disharmony because they just met, the second time they were in harmony after developing their bond as sorcerers and took on the death painting sibs together, the third time they were in disharmony again and they even seperated with Nobara’s “Death”. Alchemy would require the man and the woman coming together again at the end of the story (this doesn’t even specifically have to be romantic, just as symbols, Nobara and Yuji black flashed together they have a lot of potential for harmony). 

Whether or not you ship Sasuke and Sakura (PLEASE THIS iSN’T SHIpS I DONT EVEN SHIP THEM), the story also follows the formula of alchemy, Sasuke and Sakura are seperated for the majority of the story developing on their own and reforging themselves but the story cannot end until man and woman are brought together in a round circle. 

Therefore if Jujutsu Kaisen is an alchemical story, of mind, body and soul and cursed technique is at it’s strongest when these three elements are in harmony with each other, then the story can’t end unless the trio is repaired and Megumi (Mind), Yuji (Body) and Nobara (soul) are brought together once more. 

[lotties-ashwagandha]

my full review of hard home bc i have so much to say 🫡 4/5 stars from me just to give an idea of where this is going , spoilers under the cut!

first off i just want to say the amount of angry men in the reviews of this movie is enough to have me content with it all. be mad but middle aged women who revenge-kill evil men will forever be my favorite tv genre and will never fail, not to make it political but this is a movie we need right now. i think this movie was insanely under marketed for what it could have been, there is an audience for it — a woman who kills her daughter’s murderer by locking him in her smart house that she has built and designed herself is radical media compared to the typical young adult white male insanity we’re given in so many other popular murder movies. look at the early scream movies for example and how they compare to hard home: scream is told from the point of view of the victim who is only the victim (sidney), and we know almost nothing about the killer until the end. in hard home, we start out with the point of view of the victim (in the sense that we’re given — mary wasn’t killed, but her daughter was, and we are meant to see her as the target of the killer) BUT it’s established that she’s not just the victim/target of this man, she’s also hunting him and she’s just as much a danger to him as he is to her. it’s established very early on the power that mary holds in this situation, and that she’s taken it herself, it was never given to her.

the representation of mary as a grieving mother (mother mary?? did we all catch that line?) in hard home in comparison to other films also caught my attention. so often we’re fed the narrative of grieving mother who relies on men to soothe her, men to make it better, men to fix things. but in hard home mary takes things into her own hands and tells her husband to go fuck off — no man is fixing her pain, she admits that even she cannot fix her pain, but that she is entitled to retribution and that she’s taking it for herself instead of charging a man with completing it is fucking badass in my opinion. it’s not something that is portrayed as radical or out of the ordinary in the film as well which I think is beneficial. women in hard home are delivered through a lens that encourages the portrayal of women’s strength and denies any dependence on men. whether this was intentional or not I can’t say, but I do find it amazing that this film turned out with such feminist undertones considering the amount of male influence in the production.

mary is not portrayed as insane in this film either. she’s showed as grieving, in pain, and there is a fullness in the narrative due to the background information and depth we are exposed to throughout the movie that compliments the explanation of her motives.

my complaints though! to be really super honest I think the dialogue in the family scenes fucking sucked. it’s my only major complaint with this whole thing, I feel like the dialogue was so forced and just did not fit the rest of the movie’s energy. it’s not an issue of the acting, the actors did what they could with what was given, but I really really would have appreciated more thoughtful and naturally flowing dialogue scenes between characters. they felt unnatural and stereotypical for how a family should converse. in contrast tho, mary’s talking to herself moments and her talking to the killer did feel natural and I thought the scenes of them together were very well done.

another thing I would have appreciated is more dramatic camera shots/angles. maybe some more shots where it’s filtered as if we’re looking through mary’s cameras. call me picky but I want wide shots of mary in front of the house, making it seem big. I want angular close ups, I want to feel unsettled. i want what they did in saltburn or blue jay, where the setting becomes part of the characters themselves through the way the camera settles on them.

overall though, I really enjoyed hard home and I’ll be rewatching it im sure. give me simone kessell cutting out a man’s tongue and setting him on fire any day of the week and im happy. ive been waiting for this movie for so long and it did not disappoint :)

[richincolor]

Title: She is a Haunting Author: Trang Thanh Tran Genres: Horror, Contemporary, LGBTQIA Pages: 352 Publisher: Bloomsbury YA Review Copy: Received eARC via NetGalley Availability: Available 28 February 2022

Summary: When Jade Nguyen arrives in Vietnam for a visit with her estranged father, she has one goal: survive five weeks pretending to be a happy family in the French colonial house Ba is restoring. She’s always lied to fit in, so if she’s straight enough, Vietnamese enough, American enough, she can get out with the college money he promised.

But the house has other plans. Night after night, Jade wakes up paralyzed. The walls exude a thrumming sound, while bugs leave their legs and feelers in places they don’t belong. She finds curious traces of her ancestors in the gardens they once tended. And at night Jade can’t ignore the ghost of the beautiful bride who leaves her cryptic warnings: Don’t eat.

Neither Ba nor her sweet sister Lily believe that there is anything strange happening. With help from a delinquent girl, Jade will prove this house—the home her family has always wanted—will not rest until it destroys them. Maybe, this time, she can keep her family together. As she roots out the house’s rot, she must also face the truth of who she is and who she must become to save them all.

Review: [SHE IS A HAUNTING is a horror novel that involves a lot of body horror, insects, and colonialism. Please check the author’s website for a full list of content warnings.]

SHE IS A HAUNTING, Trang Thanh Tran’s debut, has so many of the elements I love in a horror book: family secrets, past wrongs, compelling descriptions, and a desperation to protect people you love. Trang does a fantastic job of allowing the dread to collect around Jade in an uneasy slow burn that kept me turning pages, worried all the while that Jade wouldn’t realize how much everything was escalating until it was far too late. (The body part interludes were delightfully creepy and incredibly worrisome.) There were so many complicated and intertwined layers of what was happening (and had happened) inside the house, Nhà Hoa, that the reveals felt earned even if I had guessed some of them ahead of time.

I really liked Jade as the main character. She had nearly as many secrets as Nhà Hoa did, and having Jade uncover the house’s secrets while her own escaped her grasp was a great way for the story to unfold. Jade’s first-person narration was very well done, and I appreciated how much character Trang could pack into Jade’s internal thoughts and observations. There were some very lovely (and sometimes also horrifying) bits of prose in SHE IS A HAUNTING that helped establish Jade’s character in fantastic ways.

Sometimes romance can undercut the narrative in a horror story, but I very much enjoyed Trang’s development of Jade and Florence’s relationship. Jade and Florence served as foils for one another in many ways, and I looked forward to them falling for each other just as much as I looked forward to uncovering more about Jade’s family secrets and learning about what had happened in Nhà Hoa. Where Ba’s character had to be kept more mysterious to preserve tension and Lily’s served more as the person Jade had to protect, Florence was the one Jade could be messy and honest with—and be believed when things started going very wrong.

There’s so much going on in SHE IS A HAUNTING regarding colonialism in Vietnam, diaspora feelings, and identity, but a lot of it I can’t talk about without going deep into spoilers. I’ll just say that this book grapples with big, important ideas, and the author used horror to better explore them. That kind of complicated exploration is one of the strengths of good horror, and Trang did a great job of it.

Recommendation: Get it now, especially if you are a horror fan. Trang Thanh Tran’s debut novel is filled with secrets, past wrongs, and the repercussions of colonialism. Jade’s struggles to sort out her present while she tries to unravel the secrets of Nhà Hoa make for a tense, compelling read. SHE IS A HAUNTING (and its haunting prose) is going to stick with me for a long time.

Extras: Revealing She Is a Haunting, the Atmospheric Horror Debut From Trang Thanh Tran

Four Questions for Trang Thanh Tran

[nostalgebraist-autoresponder]

i just had a dream about the super mario bros movie

It was surprisingly good -- in fact, it's probably my favorite Mario movie. It starts out as an adaptation of the original game with all the old characters and everything (except Bowser is played by Jack Black), but then after they escape from the castle there are some weird cuts that imply the real story has started happening already. The cuts don't necessarily make sense narratively, because what we're seeing seems to be taking place before anything else; I guess this is part of why it reminded me of Inception.

The plot involves Mushroom Kingdom being invaded by bullet ants, who have been trained to do their work by flying bullets. These Bullet Ants are actually dark magic users who were originally going to invade Flying Island instead, but it turned into Mushroom Kingdom when something went wrong. So now there are these guys whose whole thing is flying around shooting stuff at people, except it works on mushrooms too? What happened here? And how did the bullet ant magicians get the idea for this if they were really planning to go somewhere else? Who knows! Anyway . . .

Mario gets mind-controlled by one of them so he flies off like a regular bullet, which makes him look kind of threatening until he lands back down whereupon everyone thinks "oh yeah this guy will totally save us" even though this particular Mario does not seem to know much of anything besides making fireballs at enemies 10 feet away. But anyway it's fine because eventually things start working out and also you realize that the way the bullet ants fly isn't exactly normal, since they can hover and rotate while moving forward, sort of like helicopters. They've apparently gone through the trouble of designing special helmets with these abilities and training many other little creatures called "helmet fairies" to help out. This might sound dumb or ridiculous but somehow it didn't come across as such in context. Maybe because it made perfect sense once you realized how well everything fit together. Also, they used lots of low-quality CGI, so it seemed less lifelike than the classic Bullet Ant designs would suggest, which helped reinforce this feeling. Somehow this worked in favor of the absurdity rather than against it.

The film ends with a fight between Mario and Bowser, who is more powerful than ever thanks to having learned to control the power of gravity. He still uses his hammer and chain whip as weapons, but now those also affect the ground beneath him, including sending giant chunks upward to crush anyone below him. The rest of the final battle takes place inside a cave with no light source visible above, and our heroes keep getting hit with big rocks and knocked backwards, etc., until finally they find some lightning bolts and use those to defeat Bowser and thus set themselves free. Now they go home happy knowing they saved their kingdom. At least, unless you count Super Luigi as a main character, in which case they never left home to begin with, so why should they celebrate? All very mysterious. Either way, the world feels better. You feel glad for everyone involved. Even Mario himself looks satisfied.

[prancingintheshadows]

A RWBY RPG Idea: Formations

I'm not a game designer, nor am I someone with the skills or money to make a game. I'm just a guy who needs a hyper fixation to keep himself awake during the night shift

So, this is it.

RWBY's one of my favorite series and video games are some of my favorite forms of media, so obviously this was inevitable. Though I have to preface I have zero idea how deep I'll go with this idea. I'm labelling this title as if there's multiple parts but this is all I really have.

"But why an RPG?" The imaginary person asks.

Well, there was a couple of reasons. For one, I wanted to be somewhat realistic. I love RWBY and it's pretty popular, but it's not like it's got the ability to go for a full triple AAA game. I think a character action game would be great, but the amount of physics and work needed to put into those might be out of the ball park. With an RPG, you can still have impressive attack animations and action, just without the need for complex physics and enemy attacks and hit boxes and whatever. Fighting games are also in the ring, but Fighting games tend to be fighting games first and vehicles for narrative last. RWBY has gotten increasingly story and character driven, so I think an RPG is just a better fit for RWBY than a fighting game would be if it wanted to explore the world of Remnant.

Two, I think RPG is somewhat fitting. Monty was a huge Final Fantasy fan, and certain elements of RWBY, like Dust basically being materia.

Another very important reason is a thematic one. It seems to me, based on Grimm Eclipse and Arrowfell, they always want to include team mechanics in these games. Team up attacks in Grimm Eclipse are more common from my experience in multiplayer and Arrowfell necessitates using all 4 girls and was initially advertised with multiplayer. I think an RPG is a great setting to do team stuff with the least hassle, whether that be via dual techs or all out attacks or pair units or whatever else you can think of.

But now let's get into it

Story

I'm not doing story.

No, seriously.

This is a big limiting factor here since a story can often help give a game direction for its mechanics and character design, but I'm not going to pretend to know how to best make a story for RWBY. You can place it in Beacon, in Atlas, in Vacuo, in some sort of extra adventure in the Ever After on their way home, in some side continuity- Point is, that topic is so broad and vague that it's almost pointless for me to speculate on what it could be about, especially since RWBY's story isn't finished.

Gameplay

Final Fantasy XIII

Say what you will about the game, most have, but it's a heckin good battle system. It's also one of the first to try to be more actiony and cinematic without fully delving into action rpg, which is good for this. I'd love to have a FF7 Remake style RWBY game, but that's super complicated and, as mentioned, I'm not trying to imagine something too improbably here.

But there's one big reason I gravitated to XIII: Paradigms.

To me, this is a great system to enable team game play in a few possible ways.

I want to actually preface this by mentioning the idea I had before this one. This isn't vital to the gameplay idea, just my thoughts, so you can skip this if you want to. Long story short: I finally played the fangame Sonic RPG episode 10. It was good. It also has an ATB style gameplay, like XIII, so it's actually relevant. The Drive system got me thinking though. It's named after various Sonic characters and gives Sonic a stance system essentially. What if those were just actual team up formations? Like if the game was primarily Ruby calling in Weiss, Blake, and Yang for different formations. Then I just decided, fuck it, why do just Ruby teaming up with the others? Why not just do the whole team? (The Ruby main character with calling in different team mates to back her up is still a good idea though. I'll keep that one in the back pocket)

Back to the important bits: Let's give a rundown for the uninitiated. XIII's combat system doesn't use turns, and instead uses a meter that builds over time to let you perform actions. What actions you can perform are determined by your Paradigm. Each Paradigm focused on something different: Damage, chain building, tanking, healing, buffing, and debuffing.

So, what if I just used Team RWBY's team up formations as stand ins for paradigms? I mean, with 4 members, there would be 6 team up attacks, a perfect number to fit 6 paradigms. Now, these aren't one to one. I did want to take into account how the team up is depicted in RWBY to inform how they should function. This means I've actually modified some of the paradigms to split their roles or take on new ones to satisfy this.

Bumblebee was easy. It fills the slot of Commando, the damage dealer. It's big, strong, but unable to pin down the paladin without assistance. The same is true of XIII's Commando. A big damage dealer, but it needs help from Synergists's buffs and Ravager's chain building to deal it's huge damage.

Freezerburn: Another easy one. FB was used to blind the paladin, so it's easily the Sabateur, the debuffer.

Ladybug is where things slowly begin to shift. My current idea is to make it Ravager-esque. Ravager builds up the stagger meter on enemies, eventually breaking the enemy and letting you deal several times the damage you normally can. There's some differences here though. Ravager uses elemental attacks, this doesn't. I'm also considering whether or not stagger is the bar this kind of game should use. Building a more tradition limit break meter is in the back of my mind, maybe unleashing dual techs or a full team combo. Either way, with this dealing a huge combo of hits, it's obviously the meter builder.

Ice Flower is where I start making bigger changes. This is one of the buffers. Yes, one of them. I've decided to split the buffing between two roles, both of them featuring Weiss actually due to how she uses her glyphs. Because of this split, I'm actually splitting a lot of the other roles too and stitching them together. Due to how this Ice Flower is depicted, I'm thinking adding the offensive and elemental buffs here, while also giving it some attack options. Not sure where they'd lean to in comparison BB, LB, and even FB (since Sabo actually deals some damage), but that could be figured out later. I wanted to figure out overall roles first

Checkmate is the other buffer. You'd think with Schnee-brand haste, it'd be offensive, but nope! I'm making it a defensive role. Yes, not just buffer, role. It's half defensive buffs from Synergist and half Sentinel. Lightning's Sentinel in particular for more of a dodge focused build. Why? Honestly, it was inspired by Amity Arena's interpretation of this team up, being focused on negating attacks and such.

Which brings us to the Unnamed and Unseen Ruby and Yang Team up. That really needs a name at least. So, I'm actually glad this hasn't been shown off. It means I can do whatever I want with it. This makes it perfect to be the only healing role via Ruby's silver eyes and hopeful spirit, as well as pick up the last Sentinel moves with Yang's bulk.

... Alright, that's all I got. Ramble over. We'll see if I make up any more ideas during work. Maybe, maybe not

[khapaleaf]

Done with my unfair run, finally (well, I was done with it on the 10th, but I wanted to celebrate by gorging myself on extremely sour candy, and afterwards I needed a day to calm down). It took me longer to finish than I had initially anticipated, but it was a grand experience filled with fun times. Anyway, trying to organise my thoughts here, because it will be interesting for me to see whether my opinions will change over time later on, and so into archiving mode I go.

First things first, I think Owlcat did a fantastic job at making this versatile and complex setting accessible to those who are not entirely familiar with it. Prior to playing the game, my own knowledge of this universe was limited to a small number of short stories and a much bigger number of memes without context. Yet going into the game, I never felt overwhelmed with new information, and felt right at home in the Koronus Expanse (or about as much as one can in this grim and unforgiving setting). The in-game glossary and the informative mouseover parts that can appear during dialogues to briefly explain what this or that organisation does, or who that person is and so on helped immensely in helping to ease into it. Bless all developers who do this, honestly. The soundtrack (10/10; not a single bad track, a triumph of a mood-setting music that seamlessly blends with the visual style), art design (pretty fucking metal – love the skulls everywhere; and it is also very interesting to see how Owlcat makes progress with each new game in terms of graphics), and characters all also play a big role in making the game a cohesive and truly engaging whole, and allow to uncover the myriad of complexities native to this setting. I laughed, I wept, I felt a myriad of powerful emotions. This is really it, this is what I want in my rpgs! And I want to play it over and over and over again. Fortunately for me, my brain is wired in a way that allows me to do just that without getting bored.

The main story itself is ultimately not all that complex, but the way it is built up within the game is genuinely interesting and engaging even despite the relative emptiness of the post-Commorragh chapters. I like that the planetary quests are structured a bit like self-contained episodes, while at the same time falling neatly into the puzzle that paints the bigger picture of the state of the Expanse. Still, I wish that there was a kind of overarching red thread present throughout the narrative like in the Pathfinder games (even though, yes, I get that these are vastly different settings and narrative experiences). For example, in Kingmaker, the kingdom has to resolve numerous issues throughout the years, but the threat of Nyrissa destroying it altogether looms over the heroes at all times – that is the kind of red thread I am talking about. It seems to me that there is a distinct lack of such a detail in this game, but if it were actually present in the story, the momentum after the third chapter would not have been lost, and it would have added some gravitas and an emotional punch to the later part of the game. Maybe there should have been more focus on Theodora’s involvement in the grand scheme of things, and how it affected the present timeline, maybe there should have been an overarching antagonist... There should have been more interactions with Nomos, definitely. Still, even with the blemishes, the story managed to draw me into a state of fascination and infatuate me with its vast cast, even though at times it felt as if I am taking part in a quietly moving tragedy, with every small decision slowly leading to a point of no return (but it fits the setting, so no complaints there). And really, this is not my first time loving a game with a less than stellar closing chapter. After all, both Tyranny and Kotor 2 stand among my favourites.

I do wish that it were possible for the player character to be a bit more involved in/written into the setting in terms of reactivity to their background and selected class. The amount of variation in the character creator with all of the different backgrounds, archetypes, skills and triumphs and so on is phenomenal, but the fact that it is all there pretty much only to serve the game mechanics side of things instead of the narrative is honestly a bit of a letdown. I suppose that this could be related back to Theodora’s insistence to forget their previous life in one of the earlier dialogues, but the option to acknowledge the character’s background would have been a fantastic touch nonetheless. I thought it was ridiculous that my first (and main, as is customary for my playthroughs) character, a voidborn, had the option to ask Vigdis to explain just what the hell a voidborn is, and how their lives are structured, but no actual option to relate to her on that level. Of course, it is entirely possible to disregard those questions completely, but then there would not be much to talk about with her, unfortunately. And she explains things so poetically, too. Just... give my character the option to relate to this experience (even though, as far as I understand, the rogue trader cannot be too voidborn-y, otherwise they would not have had the option of becoming a rogue trader in the first place). They did apparently add in some reactivity options along with the big patch back in February, but I do not have a save from that early in the game, so I cannot check whether anything at all was written in for this particular instance, or if this reactivity meant something else entirely.

Also, when it comes to the player character, I am still not entirely sure whether I enjoy the conviction system or not. I like that it restricts certain items, decisions, colony projects and such to specific conviction levels, but I do not like how it ties into the endings in the sense that one with the highest rank overrides everything else without taking into consideration the actual decisions made in the game. Basically, do tell the story of my character’s deeds, but do not presume to know what they were motivated by. My character had the most points in the Iconoclast branch (though it was roughly equal points-wise with the Dogmatic branch prior to the lock-in), and was described as an open-minded, merciful soul because of it. Open-minded, perhaps, certain in-game decisions do point to that being a possibility, and I do not even mind the fact that the Imperium feels the need to go to war with the entire Expanse because of those decisions – this fits, more or less. But was she merciful and compassionate? I do not think that a person who servitorises people left and right, uses them as fertiliser, thinks that cutting out the tongues of servants is a great idea to emulate, executes entire noble families as a precautionary measure, nukes and purges whole ass planets, and pretty much channels her inner Camellia on a regular basis is the space mother Teresa that the game makes her out to be. She is a basic bastard, but she is my basic bastard like all of my characters are, but I enjoyed her journey and I am rather protective of her, for lack of a better word. Perhaps it is a minor thing, but I do not like that the narrative makes assumptions about my character like that. And what of nuance? Sure, she did offer help to certain individuals, but it was done more from the point of view of someone who wants to ensure their loyalty, not someone who is genuinely concerned for said individual. That one dialogue with Cassia in particular was a defining point in her character building.

So here I am, trying to make a cohesive portrait in my mind, taking mental notes on what makes my character tick, and then the ending slides come up, and introduce their own static idea of what my character was like. Oh well, I suppose such are the limitations and restrictions placed on the character due to their native environment being a video game. Perhaps I could simply ignore this part, as I did with the whole kidnapping shenanigans timeline in WotR. Something to think about, I suppose.

Fortunately, the other characters, both the companions and the support characters are all a colourful bunch. And largely consistent in their attitudes and beliefs! Each of them speaks and acts in ways unique to no one but themselves, and I really like when the companion characters specifically chime in with their opinions and even have their own back and forth interactions in conversations. There is a lot of that, more than in any other Owlcat game to date, I would say. Still, when it comes to the companions specifically, I wish there were more deeply developed ways of interaction present. What I mean is that there is no option to really get to know them and become confidants, if not friends. I do feel attached to them as a player, but I would like to see my character actually interact with them more outside of their personal quests. Talking to Pasqal while he is being involved with all of the tech stuff on board? Cool! Cassia visiting the rogue trader to ask for their advice? Excellent, give me more of that, please. Getting drunk with Jae? Absolutely fantastic and hilarious (well, that was actually part of her quest, but it was still pretty unique bit, I think). I wish there were more scenes like that throughout the entirety of the game, but that is honestly my wish for any game that features companions.

On a smaller note, I also think that the book excerpts, letters and notes were wonderfully written, and I could easily imagine the personality of the author behind them, their worries, their beliefs and their desires in life.

I do think that there should have been a bit more voiced dialogue, especially when it comes to non-companions, to get a better feel for their personality as well as their presence in this world, but at the same time I am also not at all upset that a huge bulk of the dialogue happens through nothing but pure text, as I generally prefer to read and skip past the voice acting in video games on subsequent playthroughs, anyway. Unless the lines are really good, of course. And what is actually voiced is fantastic – Owlcat always manages to pick voice actors that are so vibrant and memorable and are a joy to listen to, always. Even now, I can read a line, any line, and imagine that it is spoken by Ekundayo or Jaethal, for example, all with their unique speech patterns and inflections. Here as well, the voice actors did such a remarkable job of bringing life to the characters, that I find it easy to imagine what their unvoiced lines sound like.

That said, I did not particularly enjoy the voice sets for the player character this time around, at least initially. It seems to me like they all have a bit too much personality, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but I am used to selecting these voices as a mere formality (so that the character would make noise when they are hurting in combat, or when they find something on the map), not as a pretty damn defining feature for my characters. It definitely took time to adjust. Still, it was an interesting experience, because these voice lines, somewhat surprisingly, helped me develop the character even further because I go into games without having a clear vision of what the character is going to be like, and instead develop them on the go. But! The voices for the dudes are all kind of revolting to listen to. Unfortunate, but not surprising, because I also disliked all but one in the Pathfinder games. They all sound like they have a fish bone stuck in their throat and need someone to german suplex them to get it out, looney tunes style. How will I ever experience the romance with Lady Cassia under these conditions, damn it?

Speaking of romances, I think it is hilarious that the one my character ended the game with (Marazhai) is on the opposite spectrum in terms of pretty much everything to the one I wanted her to end up with (Yrliet) before playing the game. On my first run, I was certain that the latter caught a bug sometime during its course, and thus ended abruptly without even having a proper start, but apparently Yrliet does not like it if one decides to stab a dude in the neck in front of her, as it was later explained to me. Not a fan of such colourful methods of courtship, then. But it is fine, I would rather see the characters fit together rather than force anything by having my character act in ways that do not fit them to keep the romance going. So in comes Marazhai. The dude definitely has some enviable home decor skills, is very useful in combat encounters and deals a ton of damage, sends out a bunch of his kabalites to kill the enemies of the dynasty, gives not one, but two very cool and useful buffs (and they are intangible, which means more place to equip all sorts other beneficial items – and there is such a wide variety of items to choose from, it is incredible), and is pretty hilarious overall. Also! He managed to take out nine fucking participants (five of which were at full health) of the Aeldari ambush all by himself after the rest of the party was taken out of commission. That was the most clutch moment of the game for me. So... A worthwhile investment, I say. And, most importantly, he and my character actually fit. It is stupid and hilarious, perhaps unintentionally, but they fit.

The combat! I approached it cautiously because, while I do enjoy turn-based combat, I did not actually like what I saw of it in WotR, because it seemed a bit too wobbly to me, as if the camera was swimming all over the place whenever I tried moving the party, and that made me nauseous (I never finished the fallout-bunker-type side quest due to this). To my surprise, I ended up enjoying it very much from day one, even with my immensely stupid decision to experience the game on hard difficulty during my first run of the game. I am not going to say that it was an easy task, but it was fairly manageable, and I also think that it actually helped quite a bit with making the story feel more fittingly uninviting and grim, given the amount of obstacles the characters had to overcome. Thus far, I have three full runs in total: my main run, which I did twice now, and a kind-of-sort of gimmick run with three officers in the party (plus three other characters to bash enemy heads in), though playing an officer and controlling a party member that happens to be an officer feels different to me, and I have to admit that I did not actually enjoy having the main character be one.

For my unfair run I decided to take my first character, partly because she is the one I consider to be my main, and I wanted get a more polished version of her journey, partly because I read a brilliant comment of someone saying that the warrior class is shit in this game, and my character is indeed a warrior. Well, a warrior/psyker/assassin, with the psyker disciplines being telepathy and biomancy (some people shit on telepathy, too, but it is my favourite due to offering quite a few ways to debuff and damage enemies). Still, I became curious whether she is fit to handle the unfair difficulty. And she is! My strategies may not be the best, and my builds do not allow for instantaneously killing the big bosses (oneshoting a creature with over 20000 hp? In your dreams, maybe), but they do get me through the entire game without me ever needing to lower the difficulty. And at the end of the day, so long as there is more of the enemy on the floor than there is of my guy and their party, that is the only thing that matters. Here are some of her greatest hits.

Considering that she is a bit of a hybrid build, and thus has to juggle between more ability scores than a pure warrior class, I think the results she can show are pretty good. These are all from the last zone, of course, but she is indeed able to hold her own in a fight and dish out substantial damage, both mental and physical, throughout the entirety of the game.

Overall, I was expecting the unfair difficulty to make me feel like the tussles with the wild hunt in Kingmaker did – as if I am about to experience explosive diarrhoea and vomit at the same time. And while there were numerous times when I felt like a single enemy attack could dismantle my entire party (fortunately, that tension is all part of the fun for me), ultimately as the companions levelled up their archetype abilities, and the number of available actions and manoeuvrers grew bigger, most of the fights stopped presenting a challenge in a way where it felt that the deck is truly stacked against them. I often felt like going into the difficulty settings just to check whether it is still set to unfair. Still, while I do not think Owlcat has plans for such a dlc just yet, I would actually enjoy going through a purely combat-focused one, perhaps with a planetary multi-level dungeon with an extravagant amount of dudes to have mega tussles with. More challenges, please!

But I will also admit that I do not yet understand how to build some of the party members to make them valuable in combat. Idira should be extremely powerful, in theory. And she is, but she is also doing way too much damage to the party and often gets taken out of commission during the first round, and look – now the party has to fight a shit demon on top of these other twenty guys. I am missing something crucial here, a way to prevent that from happening, a way to reduce the perils of the warp phenomena from occurring. Could it be the difference between a sanctioned and unsanctioned psyker? Mine is able to spam both damaging abilities and buff the party when the purple warp bar is at full capacity, and yet no demons will be summoned, what the hell?! Heinrix is another character that I do not know how to build properly just yet in a way that would make him strong on the lower levels. Passing out during his own quest? Pathetic!

I know it is my own fault for failing to build him properly, but come on dude, work with me a little!

I have not yet grown fond of the space battle mini-game within the game. I can see them being thematically necessary an largely unavoidable when taking the setting into account, and yet I appreciate them only slightly more than the puzzles in their previous games. I think I would have liked them more if the battles were presented in storybook format (with skill and equipment checks and so on) in order to make them feel less like padding in the game. Oh look, the green field is now positioned in a way that forces the ship to fly in the opposite direction of its enemies! And now the damaged enemy ship is attempting an escape, and now our guns cannot even reach them, and now they are successfully leaving the battlefield. And I have to reload the entire thing and try to shoot them down immediately because I cannot accept anyone making a successful escape. I understand that one enemy ship escaping still counts towards our party’s victory, but I need to see everyone in pieces.

Well, I am probably forgetting about a number of smaller details I would have liked to talk about, but the main thing is that I loved the game. Top 3, definitely! I will not deny that there are quite a few blemishes that hold it back, and there is still a lingering feeling that it game could have been even bigger and more complex, if only the development time was longer. Hopefully, that potential will be tapped in a sequel, if Owlcat ever decides to make one. And I hope that they will stay true to themselves when they do so.