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sagevalleymusings · 3 years ago

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BreadTube so White Because the Viewers are White and Other Hot Takes

I have a playlist of long-form video essays that I created for work about a month ago. I often find that a person talking in my vicinity but not to me helps me stay focused, and video essays because they’re academic are often better for that because the topic is vague enough and the tone even enough to ride the line between “boring enough to fade into the background” and “fun enough to not be annoying.” And they have the added benefit of being very long for YouTube standards, so the transition isn’t distracting.

There is a fine line for the criteria to make this playlist, which vaguely nebulates to “something I enjoyed enough to watch multiple times, by a creator I’ve followed long enough to have formed a parasocial relationship with, whose content is both vague but relatable in a way that I won’t feel the need to form a separate opinion or contribute to the dialog in some way.” And ultimately that’s very personal and very specific! Rowan Ellis’ “definitive proof that captain marvel is gay (spoilers)” got cut from the list for being too chaotic, but Hbomberguy’s “Flat Earth: A Measured Response” got to stay despite also being quite chaotic. And even though I have a lot of Lindsay Ellis on the playlist, I often wind up having to skip them because, since they’re essays about a specific movie, they wind up being too niche and draw my focus away from work. And yet I also have Folding Ideas’ “A Lukewarm Defence of Fifty Shades” with no issue.

The best videos tend to be by Contrapoints or PhilosophyTube, because both creators speak in soothing tones with vague but relatable content. It’s practically ASMR for academics.

But there’s something interesting about all the names so far. They’re almost entirely people branded as BreadTube. And they’re entirely… all white.

Naturally I am fixing this bias. There are creators I listen to on repeat who are not white. I listen to CJ the X’s videos three times in a row when they release and often go back to the archives again when Melina Pendulum aka Princess Weekes uploads a new video. But they didn’t make the first pass when I was putting this playlist together. Why?

For a lot of the artists I didn’t include, there were perfectly valid reasons. CJ the X is too chaotic, Princess Weekes is too niche. Khadija Mbowe’s videos are both vague enough and relatable enough that they should have been included, but I found out about them relatively recently, and their voice doesn’t fade into the background for me the way a more familiar voice would. T1J meanwhile I have the opposite problem with. He speaks so calmly and gently that his voice doesn’t give me enough focus to stay alert at work, and I get distracted. I had perfectly valid reasons for not reaching for those creators first in every instance.

But… these issues were present in white creators too. I just made allowances. Lindsay Ellis is as niche as Princess Weekes, but rather than not include Lindsay, I just skip it if it’s not helpful. Hbomberguy is… Well, not *as* chaotic as CJ because no one is as chaotic as CJ. But if Harry’s work is too chaotic for me that day I just skip it. Why include Folding Ideas’ Fifty Shades videos, but not Kat Blaque’s?

I mean, I know why. It’s because I am a white person, so I subconsciously relate better to other white people, and have to consciously think about that in order to avoid doing it. I know all that. But I still wanted to bring it up, partly to just advertise some cool, under-subscribed Black and POC creators, many of whom are trans or non-binary. In fact I think T1J is the only video essayist I follow who isn’t in some way queer. But I also think it’s important to talk about this issue not just from the creator standpoint, but also from the viewer standpoint. Yes, I have to go out of my way to seek out creators of color lest the default BreadTube white aesthetic overtake my YouTube recommends. So I do that. And you should too.

BreadTube is white because the people who decided what BreadTube is are the viewers, and the viewers who decided that were predominantly white people viewing content by people who looked like them. And although this is partly because if Contrapoints name drops Lindsay Ellis, that’s a way to discover a new creator and BreadTube does tend to reference each other, this isn’t entirely a failure on the creator’s part.

I think for me the person with whom this is the most obvious is Princess. Princess and Lindsay work together on the PBS series “It’s Lit.” They have similar talking styles, similar production quality, similar professional experience, and talk about similar subjects. I went to a book talk for Lindsay’s book, and Princess was there (if I recall correctly as a moderator). They advertise for each other. And yet, Lindsay Ellis has 1.1 million subscribers, and Princess has 120,000.

I think it’s safe to say that most of the people subscribed to Princess are probably also subscribed to Lindsay, but that clearly doesn’t go both ways. Most of the people subscribed to Lindsay are NOT subscribed to Princess, and that was, at the very least, a subconscious choice, because Lindsay has advocated for Princess specifically by name on more than one occasion. I can hazard a guess that most people would have a reason why Princess’ content didn’t catch them the same way, and I’m sure it would even be a reason that made sense. But the reason on its own is not enough to hold something as being removed from any underlying racial biases. If I am saying “well this person’s content is too niche for this playlist” but making that allowance for someone else, then there’s still an underlying bias at play, even if only on a subconscious level.

This is something that comes up all the time when liberal-minded white people are grappling with racial justice. I see it happen over and over again in hiring committees that a diverse pool gets slimmed down to the most qualified white men in the pool. And you could absolutely justify that by saying that the most qualified candidates rose to the top. But when one of those qualifiers is “a good fit” and other ambiguous language, people are encouraged to go with their gut feeling about a person, which often when no other information is present defaults to “people who look like me.”

I have heard activists claim that anti-racism at times goes too far, because it creates such a fixation on race that it feels like that’s the only thing you’re talking about. It makes more of a big deal about race than was there previously, and surely that’s a bad thing.

But the thing is… had I not been paying attention, and in the habit of questioning my own behavior, my playlist would have continued to be devoid of any people of color, purely on vibes alone. Race wasn’t a big deal because all of that was going on subconsciously. By thinking about it and talking about it, all we’re doing is bringing an existing problem into light.

Anyway none of this is new news and I’m ultimately procrastinating on a Monday like always so if you want more leftist long-form video essays in your feed by trans and non-binary people of color go subscribe to Xiran Jay Zhao or Khadija Mbowe or Kat Blaque or CJ the X.

#disk horse #discussing racism #lgbt #youtube

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dangerouscommiesubversive · 4 years ago

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Gai/Naomi/Juggler, B

Skipping ahead in my prompts kind of a lot because I just finished Orb last night and I’m in the mood to write for it. Contains spoilers for the end of Orb. B is for basorexia, the overwhelming desire to kiss

The thing that actually surprises Naomi, when Juggler shows up at the SSP offices several weeks after the defeat of Magata no Orochi, is not that he’s alive at all but that he’s wearing a different suit. “Gray looks good on you,” she says, cutting him off before he can offer some quip about being hard to kill. “I mean, I know it’s not as dramatic as the black, but gray and red is a good combination.”

Apparently thrown for a loop by this calm non-greeting, he stares at her for a moment before saying, “I was hoping we might have coffee.”

“At dawn?”

“I have reason to believe that the sunrise tomorrow might be well worth seeing, and while my preferred coffee spot has closed, I’ve found another one that’s very nice.”

She nods, says, “That sounds lovely, I’d like that,” and then bursts into tears and has to push her chair back to keep from crying into her keyboard.

Juggler freezes like a rabbit staring down an oncoming car and then comes around her desk and rests an awkward hand on her shoulder. “I don’t, ah. I’m not sure what to do in this situation.”

Naomi sniffles. “You should hug me now, weirdo.”

He’s an awkward hugger. It’s cute. She cries on his silk waistcoat anyway and lets him pat her nervously on the back, because maybe he deserves to be a little uncomfortable.

Once she’s done, though, she says, “Do you have anywhere to stay around here? If we’re having coffee at dawn then we’ll need to be able to find each other then.”

“I don’t sleep,” he says, reflexively, and then, “also, no.”

“You don’t--maybe you’d have spent less time trying to be a bad guy if you got some sleep once in a while. We have a space here, as long as you don’t mind it being where Gai crashed when he was here.”

An odd look crosses Juggler’s face. “No...no, that’s fine, I don’t mind. Thank you.”

She plans on going to the office and waking him up for coffee, and sets her alarm for it, but then doesn’t have to, because he shows up at her apartment just as she’s stepping out the door to go get him. “Wow, you really don’t sleep.”

He shrugs. “Not much.” Then, with a courtly bow, he offers her his arm. “Shall we?”

The sunrise is beautiful. The coffee, while not as sublime as Black Star’s, is very good. And Juggler’s much better at kissing than he is at hugging, especially when the sky is red and pink and orange and the clouds are thin and lacy and his mouth tastes like excellent coffee. Naomi has to take a moment to catch her breath when he pulls back. “Nobody’s ever kissed me like that before.”

Juggler raises an eyebrow. “Not even Gai?”

“Gai hasn’t kissed me at all yet, the slacker.” She resists the urge to pout, and then the incipient pout turns into a smile as she realizes, “So there you go, you got to be the first one.”

He does, as expected, look tremendously pleased with himself, and then says, “You’ll have to remind him of his duties the next time you see him. And give him this, from me.”

This kiss is very different from the first one, long and lingering and not sweet so much as it is full of intent. She can’t talk at all for a few minutes after, too red-faced and abruptly shy to attempt it. It feels like she’s walked in on something private, never mind that she was invited, offered it directly even.

“You’ll remember, of course?”

She’ll never call Juggler on how uncertain he sounds, but she’ll always remember it. “I promise.”

Juggler is gone two days later, to...wherever it is that he disappears off to, and it’s back to business as usual. Or rather, business as much better than usual; the SSP website’s really taken off, and she and Shin and Jetta spend a lot of time running around interviewing people and filming strange phenomena and writing articles. They’re making enough money that Naomi’s actually been able to quit a couple of her part-time jobs, which is a relief.

Gai gets back to Japan a couple of weeks after Juggler leaves. He doesn’t announce himself, of course, he’s just at the offices when they get back from a trip to a haunted bathhouse, sitting at Shin’s desk, drinking Ramune. Shin and Jetta fall all over themselves in their excitement to greet him, and then see how Naomi’s looking at him and very quickly find that they have other things to take care of.

“You’re late,” she says, “you missed Juggler by two weeks.”

He actually jumps slightly. “Juggler was here?”

“He was.” She crosses her arms over her chest, enjoying the hunted look on his face. “You’ve got some catching up to do, buddy. Also, he gave me something for you.”

“He...gave you something for me.”

“Yes. I’ll give it to you later. Would you like to have dinner with me tonight?”

He doesn’t kiss her in a rooftop cafe at sunrise. Not that it isn’t just as romantic sitting on the couch in her tiny apartment, but it’s a very different mood otherwise. He’s hesitant about it, too, not as cool or as obviously prepared as Juggler was, both of them bursting into nervous laughter after a couple of shy first pecks, but then he reaches for her again and it’s very nice.

After about ten minutes of increasingly confident kisses traded back and forth there’s a pause, as both of them clearly try to decide whether this is going to go any further tonight, and Naomi remembers. “Right, yeah, I should give you that thing.”

Gai nods, frowning. “The...the thing Juggler gave you for me?”

“Yes, that one.”

She does her best to kiss him the way that Juggler kissed her, and from the shocked look on his face afterward she’s at least partially successful. “He asked you to give me that.”

“He was very specific about it, yes.” A beat, and then, with more mischief, “He was very pleased to know that he’d gotten to kiss me first.”

Gai rolls his eyes. “Of course he was.”

They don’t go any further that night, and that’s fine, because Naomi finds after only the briefest consideration that she’s way too nervous about the prospect of asking Gai if he wants to stay the night. Eventually he does get up to go--only back to the SSP offices to sleep there, but that’s still going. But at the door he stops and says, “If Juggler doesn’t come around before I have to leave again, please give him this for me?”

Another shocking, private kiss, filled with yearning, dizzying in how lonely it makes Naomi realize Gai‘s been, his hand on the side of her face gentle in a way that’s entirely different from how he’s gentle with her. She nods, dazed. “Sure. I’ll keep it safe for him.”

Juggler does not, of course, come back for another three weeks, by which point Gai’s long gone. He receives his message from Gai with stunned pleasure, and gives her another one to send back.

He and Gai only miss each other by three days this time, but it’s still what happens. Naomi gives Gai the kiss she’s been saving for him, and he gives her another one for Juggler.

It takes three more repeats of this before she realizes that they’re avoiding each other.

It’s not like either one of them has a cell phone, is the really frustrating thing.

So she puts a note on the website, which has been doing very well. She knows they both check it, too, and that they’ll both notice the one-line addition to the right side of the main page, under the embedded Twitter feed, that just says, I miss you. - N.

Two days later, she and Jetta get back from an interview to find Juggler staring at Gai’s open bottle of Ramune like it’s personally attacking him.

Gai, for his part, is squinting at Juggler’s chest. “Did you get a new suit?”

“Oh, good.” Naomi hangs up her jacket. “Shin, when did they both get here?”

Shin is hiding behind his latest invention, which is fair, the atmosphere is pretty tense. “Gai’s been here for exactly two hours and seventeen minutes, Cap. J-juggler just got here ten minutes ago.”

“You planned this,” Juggler says accusingly.

“Obviously I planned it. You fell for it.”

“Can I take that note down now, Cap?” Jetta, bless him, is just acting like it’s a normal day, heading to the computer with camera in hand to move his footage over. Granted, both he and Shin were in on the plan, but he was the one who thought it was funny, so it makes sense that he’d be calm about things.

“Yes, please. I’m going to be out for the rest of the afternoon.”

Shin starts to protest, looks at the frozen expressions on Gai and Juggler’s faces, and shuts up.

They follow her back to her apartment in a deeply awkward silence, and then proceed to take up more space in her minuscule living room than she would have ever thought possible. She stares at them for several minutes, tapping her foot, and is about to start getting impatient when Gai, finally, says, “Was there. Ah. Something you wanted to talk to us both about?”

“Yes,” she says, with vehemence. “I am an independent woman and I would like my own kisses, please, if you two want to kiss each other then you ought to stop avoiding each other and do it yourselves instead of making me your go-between.” At Gai’s protesting noise, “Look, I don’t entirely mind, they’re extremely nice kisses! But you’re, what, a few hundred years old?”

Juggler coughs. “Thousand.”

“Ok! You’re a few thousand years old! And I know, I know you’ve spent a bunch of that time not talking about your problems, but I’m fairly sure you can behave like adults! You don’t need a, a kissing proxy!”

Neither one of them answer. Gai scratches the back of his head, and then actually shuffles his feet like a child who’s been scolded. Juggler is staring fixedly at her one little bookcase with its painstakingly curated collection of books about aliens and supernatural phenomena. She’d think he was mad, except that he’s blushing, which is very charming of him.

She gives them a moment to feel awkward in silence and then says, “Look, I’m going to, to go to the bathroom and then when I’m out we’ll order dinner from somewhere and you two have to talk to each other.”

She spends longer in the bathroom than she’d really like, because as she washes her hands she finds that she’s shaking. Obviously this whole thing makes her nervous, obviously it’s all strange and new, obviously her first serious relationship would be with two thousand-year-old aliens, and also she’s planning on finally asking if one or both of them wants to stay the night. It’s a lot! She’s taking a lot of steps, very quickly, and they’re going to get easier if Juggler and Gai will just talk like normal people instead of...thousand-year-old aliens with a longstanding feud. Which is what they actually are. And that’s, you know, hot, but maybe it’s also intimidating right now.

Also she can’t decide what to order for dinner.

Finally she stops staring at herself in the mirror and straining to understand the occasional murmurs she can hear through the door, takes a deep breath, and leaves the bathroom. “So I’m not sure what to get, would you two like--oh.” And then, “Well, finally.”

Because they aren’t answering her, they’re probably not thinking about what to order for dinner right now, Juggler’s got his back to the wall next to the bookcase and his hand in Gai’s hair and there’s a kiss happening that’s definitely a culmination of all these kisses they’ve been sending each other through her, or at the very least a continuation of them. Most people wouldn’t be able to see it, the hundreds of years of pent-up longing and regret and desire, but then most people aren’t her. Most people haven’t been couriering it back and forth for months now.

It’s almost heartbreaking to see.

It’s also quite possibly the hottest thing Naomi’s ever seen in her--admittedly, comparatively short--life. She’s not sure she can remember how to breathe.

When she does finally start breathing again, she says, “I think when you’re both done I’ll order us a pizza.”

#yumeno naomi #kurenai gai #jugglus juggler #fanfiction #askrikkaiandhyotei #smooth by santana and rob thomas came up on shuffle as i was finishing this #which felt like a good omen for them #huge win for the ot3

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muthaz-rapapa · 5 years ago

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Rewatch: Mahou Tsukai Precure Ep 2

For the record, I am always going to be that little girl excited to go magic school for the first time.

You won’t take that away from me, EVAH!

Hello, hello again and welcome to episode 2 of our rewatch marathon!

Unfortunately (or fortunately, hahaha), I couldn’t make it shorter since I have to talk about everything but I did finish it by Sunday so yay~!

Oh, and I’m going to switch to using the terms “witch/wizard” in place of “mage” from now on. The rough translation of “魔法使い” (mahoutsukai) is literally “magic user” but it can also be exchanged with words like “mage”, “sorcerer”, “magician” so technically, it’s not wrong. “Witch” and “wizard” can also have more specific translations ( (魔女, majo & 魔道士, madoushi, respectively) but I still feel they’re more appropriate for MahoPre’s setting. It just depends how you interpret the context, I guess.

Starting with the Snailiner.

I mean, it’s a giant snail train transporting you between worlds.

That’s so friggin’ awesome!! *squees* xDD

And here are our Muggle newbies, taking in the inter-realm sights for all its worth.

But that’s not as important as OMGERD, Mofurun’s lil’ tail twitching in wonder and curiosity! KYAAAAA~!!!

Mofurun smooshing her nose to the glass to get a closer look~!!

SO BABEY, IT HURTS!!!!

(੭ु ›ω‹ )੭ु⁾⁾♡

Riko, however, is eager to get down to business and tries to get an answer on how Mofu-chan came to life...

But these two are just too happy that they can talk to each other now that they don’t really care about the whys or the whats of the hows and UGH!

My heart! *clutches chest*

♡(｡>ˇ艸<)

God, we know Mirai has probably been talking to Mofurun since she could first utter words (and likely baby gabbled to her before that, too) but imagine how long that wait must have been for Mofurun! Never knowing if there will ever be chance for her to tell Mirai know how much she loves her and everything!

I’m so happy Mofu-baby got her wish in the end! <3

Oh, Riko...

You’re in for a lot of these non-answers, I’m afraid. (^ ^ ;;)

Next is Mirai’s turn to ask the questions and of course, she wants to know what Precure is.

We already know how this goes as a yearly tradition but it’s interesting how centuries/extensively long periods of time can embellish a legend so much that it differs significantly from how it was originally told or what it actually means.

The way Riko explains it, it’s as if Precure has appeared in the world before when in reality, Mirai and Riko are in fact the very first Precure (in this universe).

The conditions match up because (WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD):

1) The “magic” (Precure) Mother Rapapa mentioned before her passing will occur when the two worlds come together again. Cue a person from the Mundane World (Mirai) meeting and teaming up with a person from the Magic World (Riko) to fulfill that prophecy. Also note that before these two, no pair like them has ever showed up since Mother Rapapa’s death even though the Magic World has already found ways to travel to the Mundane World and back long ago.

2) Mother Rapapa’s powers are implied to take on the form of Linkle Stones. That said, they disappeared when she did...until they reappeared with the arrival of Precure. We can take that to mean that Precure are the inheritors of Rapapa’s will, to reunite the separate worlds.

3) The birth of Ha-chan, Mother Rapapa’s reincarnation, happened after Mirai and Riko became Precure together.

So really, if I’m getting this right, we might have three versions of this legend: the one that is the most commonly known but not exactly correct [Riko’s version]; the one which is told by the oldest fairies/magical beings who lived in the time when Mother Rapapa was still alive and the world was still one [the original]; finally, the one that’s happening before our eyes where the connection and bond forged between Mirai and Riko can bring about miracles, such as the return of Mother Rapapa through Ha-chan [the true version].

The fact that Deusmast’s revival coincides with these events are anything but coincidental. Mother Rapapa knew she was going to have to face it again so it’s not a stretch to say she might have planned for her own rebirth in the present day to prepare for that.

Two girls who can bring the two worlds together will become Precure, wielders of Mother Rapapa’s powers. Said two girls will also raise and look after her future self, Kotoha, before she’s ready to face her true purpose. When the two worlds are in sync again and Kotoha accepts her role as a divine existence, then, combined with the gathered Linkle Stones and the extra support of Precure and every living being on planet earth, the reborn Mother Rapapa can finally be summoned in her full might to confront and defeat Chaos once and for all.

......or at least, that’s how I’m interpreting it as of this moment. I may have gotten few details wrong but see, this is why I need to do a rewatch. To find out how on or far off the mark I am.

I’m really liking this theory, though, cuz it just makes too much sense! compared to the crazy ones I normally make anyways, lol xD;

Erhem, alright a break from the wall of text.

Mirai is like “Wow, that’s pretty cool!” because it’s not every day you’ve acquired abilities only found in stories and tales while Riko is like...

“Wait...wut?” *PROCESSING*

And then...

Proceeds to probably have one of the biggest revelations of her life and goes all creepy smiley about it.

lol, oh, Riko. You’re scaring me, darling. (^ ^ ;;)

But jokes and laughs aside, you can see the differences between their personalities in these few seconds.

Riko wants to be recognized and respected so badly as a proper witch that she’ll even settle for using a shortcut through the Emerald or simply bearing the title of Precure to get there. Despite the fact that neither of those are synonymous with the credit and skill earned from hard work. In other words, she’d only be a witch in name and nothing more. It’s not truly her magic.

However, from Riko’s standpoint, you have to understand why she’s desperate. She’s got poor marks in the most essential subject for magic users and thinks something’s wrong with her because of that. She can’t handle her embarrassment from that ineptitude and if she’s tried everything already and nothing works, then she’s going to have to resort to more outrageous methods to get out of the dilemma she’s in.

This logic is filled with flaws and it’s terribly worrisome but Riko, if anything, is determined to make something of herself. She may have fallen down more times than she can count but she always made herself stand up.

It’s hard not to cheer for her and want her to succeed.

Mirai, in comparison, seems more naive and simple-minded.

Riko’s excitement is not something she can comprehend right now because for one thing, she’s never had to shoulder the angst that comes with not being able to fulfill expectations that is, until the epilogue.

But rather than see this as a bland aspect of her character, we should appreciate that Mirai is a very stable, positive and warm person.

When Riko couldn’t deal with the frustration over her own perceived failures, Mirai never judged her for what she could or couldn’t do. She still wholeheartedly accepted Riko, unfailingly believed that Riko can achieve great things and still saw Riko as the most amazing witch she’s ever come across. Yes, even though there were more accomplished magic users she’s met since coming over to the Magic World, the one Mirai continued to admire and wanted to get close to the most was Riko.

It’s true that for a majority of the season, Mirai played more of supporting role to Riko at times and didn’t have any personal wish other than wanting to stay together with her beloved friends. Nevertheless, she’s always immensely cherished by the people around her for who she is. Especially Riko, who really needed someone like Mirai in her life. That Mirai places those she loves above any great ambition and later goes on to chase a dream of rejoining the two worlds so everyone can be happy together, it really proves how purely wonderful she is as a person.

That’s cute. 8D

I’d be lying if I wasn’t reminded of Harry Potter when I saw this because it did.

But this is a magical girl anime where almost everything is cutesy-fied so I’m obliged to scream when I see something I think is cute! xD;

This time, it’s Riko’s turn to treat Mirai to food!

Awesome! I like to believe they do this all the time. Riko takes care of everything when they visit the Magic World and Mirai provides when they’re in the Mundane World.

A part of their relationship that’s always balanced no matter what.

Ha-chan and Mofurun don’t have to pay, though, cuz they babies and it’s okay for their mommies to spoil them~ <3

Shivery Mofu-baby~

lol, she even goes to touch it a second time like “Brrr~, this is chilly, but one more cuz it’s gives me the tingles, bRrRrRr~!!”

xDDD

That looks sooooo cool!

I love mandarin oranges and I’ve ate them slightly chilled before. They’re great.

But eating one in this manner? I wanna try, I wanna try!

FEED DA TINY BEAR

( ☉ω⊙)

(๑ˊ͈ ॢꇴ ˋ͈)〜♡॰ॱ

Mirai’s so enjoying every moment of this impromptu trip and Riko’s quite satisfied that she can impress someone for once.

But then there’s that dreaded crunching noise and, well...

The mouth can’t lie while eating, after all, lol.

Ok, Riko’s faces are the best.

She went from “Are you serious, don’t make me look bad, plz” to “Shoot, these are hard as rocks, oh no, how do I protect my vulnerable image in front of this Muggle?! *sweats*”

In the end, she dodged it with tsun, hahaha

So they finally arrive in the Magic World and frankly, it’s a beautiful place. Is every piece of land a floating island?! I want to live there! :D

Also, yes, while StarPre did take extra steps in worldbuilding, there are few things you gotta remember:

1) MahoPre aired before StarPre did, so it should be expected for later seasons to improve on what their predecessors brought to the table. Seeing as MahoPre and StarPre had the same series coordinator, Isao Murayama, I’d say he definitely got better when it came to this topic.

2) MahoPre only had one foreign world in its setting while StarPre had many planets since it dealt with space.

3) MahoPre still did what a lot of other Precure seasons opted not to do: give the main characters free access to explore and learn about other worlds.

Seriously, the “fantasy land seized by darkness/evil and needs to be saved by girls from another dimension” plot is present in almost every installation of this tv franchise that it’s just refreshing to not be restricted by those limits for once.

I could go on but I think I’ve made my point. :P

Riko said the Magic Academy is at the center of the Magic World. So does that mean it’s the highest authority on all matters regarding magic? Because I don’t recall anything about the Magic World having an actual government.

Well, anyways, I suspect that all the students’ wands are registered with the school otherwise that’d be a huge security risk if anyone can just open the gate with a simple spell. (o_o ;;)

Oh, and look, it’s the kitty from Riko’s metro pass! :D

Same, Mirai.

SAAAAAAAMMMMMMMEEEEEE

SUUUUURRRREEE, WE’LL SEE ABOUT THAT

Here’s MahoPre’s version of McGonagall. Strangely enough, we never got a name for her. Same for the Headmaster. They were always addressed as just their faculty names.

Anyways, she’s as stern and strict as you’d expect of any teacher but even so, I don’t find her disapproval towards Riko’s actions to be too unfair or too harsh.

I mean, c’mon, if you were in her position and found out that one of your students broke a bunch of rules overnight only for them to come back with an outsider and this explanation, wouldn’t you react the same way she did?

The lady’s just doing her job.

Plus, her anger is justified because not only did Riko break the rules and exposed their kind but she could’ve really gotten hurt out there all by herself as well. Riko didn’t even bring any money with her for food, for crying out loud.

I’m sorry, Riko, as much as I’d like to give in to those puppy dog eyes (aaaahhhh, don’t look at me like that, you cutie~!), the professor’s right about this one.

Still, all things considered, she doesn’t outright expel Riko. Not because she doesn’t have that authority, I don’t think (that lies with the Headmaster), but it seems to me she might’ve wanted to find an alternative punishment as expulsion might be too cruel.

She even gave Riko fair warning not to leave the room until she found the Headmaster to discuss what to do next and when she saw Riko running around campus later despite that order, she freaked out in concern.

“Do you want to be expelled, Riko-san?!”

So yea, I’'d like to believe the Deputy Headmistress, at least, didn’t want to send Riko packing for home if it could be helped.

That done and said, it probably hit Mirai just how much trouble Riko’s in right now. Sure, Riko leaving school at night without permission is her own responsibility to bear and the same goes for bringing Mirai back to the Magic World with her when she shouldn’t have.

But still, Mirai being here is a violation of the Magic World at large. If she were aware of that, maybe she wouldn’t have gone with Riko in the first place (noooo!) so that Riko wouldn’t have to face possible expulsion.

Fortunately, Riko’s a sensible girl and knows Mirai isn’t in the wrong. It was she who wanted to prove herself, after all. She was just too blinded by her hopes to think about the consequences.

And so she revealed to Mirai that she’s actually a remedial student.

Like, Riko’s quite upset about the circumstances as it is but she still has it in her to be decent and honest with Mirai on her reasons for going to the Mundane World. It’s the least she could do for getting Mirai involved in magical affairs and taking her all the way here.

The search for the Emerald, suddenly becoming Precure, all these things were to show everyone that she can use magic effectively.

Riko’s pretty much reiterating what I said earlier in the post but I don’t think she really understood the full extent of it. At least, not yet.

She still wants the Emerald, of course, because her wish to be a great witch hasn’t changed.

She just realizes that yea, she broke the rules and no Emerald is going to excuse her out of the scolding she’s in for.

Then Mofurun decides to rolypoly on over to poor, depressed Riko and goes “SO WHAT? LOOK AT ME, I’M ADORABLE!!”

lol, j/k, j/k, she really said “I smell something sweet!” which was followed be this...

Riko and Mirai’s Diamond pendants glowing~

...honestly, they should’ve just let Mofurun do the explaining to the Deputy Head cuz it seems that every time Mofurun is within range of a Linkle Stone and announces its presence (“A sweet smell!”), they automatically start shining and voila~, the legend is real!

Ah, but really, Mofurun seems to be telling the girls to not sweat the small stuff.

Why? Cuz...

DESTINY!!!

......lol, yea, Mofurun knows Mirai and Riko are in for something greater than this little snag in the road and just wants to let them know to cheer them up.

And hey, she’s right. :)

It got Mirai motivated, at least, to go and explain things to the Headmaster herself. Maybe if a Muggle can prove she performed magic as Precure, they’d let Miko off the hook because then they’d realize she was telling the truth.

Again, Riko is surprised by the lengths Mirai’s willing to go for her. They can’t really be called strangers anymore after all that’s happened but they haven’t known each other long enough (it hasn’t even been 24 hrs yet!) that they can call each other friends yet either.

So why Mirai’s doing this, when there aren’t a lot benefits for her, simply baffles Riko.

*whispers* That’s what a best friend is, Riko-chan~

Meanwhile, Mirai, of course, doesn’t know her way around the school, much less who the Headmaster is or what he looks like, but that’s okay because she’s sooooo cute! x3

And maybe it’s a good thing this happened during spring break? Otherwise, she’d be catching the attention of the other students and faculty and she’d have a hard time getting to where she needed to go.

Like this when a breeze just drifted through the air and she suddenly got a feeling that she’s gotta go THAT way.

Humuhumu...yea, I don’t think it’s just the Precure powers that’s at work here. Mirai does have innate magical abilities of her own.

I’ve got a theory on that based on some MahoPre trivia I read, about the scratched concept of her having magical ancestors, but I’ll save that for another time.

Right, where were we? Oh, yes, the wind led her to a tree.

It looks like any ordinary tree but by judging by the way Mirai gazes up at it, something tells her it’s really more than that.

See? That’s her intuition. The magical side of it, anyways.

And whaddaya know, the wind led her to the person she wanted to find, too!

‘Course she doesn’t think he’s the Headmaster at first glance and who can blame her when he’s wearing a face that young.

But she’s not even thinking about the Headmaster at that point because did he just say wands? He said wands, right?

Yep, she’s got her priorities sorted out, haha~

Back in the classroom, Riko’s lost in her thoughts and can’t really forget how Mirai’s been nothing but friendly to her since the moment they met.

So even though Riko finds this devotion weird, she still can’t help but worry about her and decides it’s not good to just let Mirai wander off by herself when she doesn’t even know her way around.

Kyuuu~, I love it when Riko shows her soft side, especially when it’s about Mirai. She’s always like “まったく ...” in an exasperated way but gives in because she knows she can’t win against Mirai’s niceness and that just brings out her own niceness, d’aww~ <3

Now back to Mirai where she’s getting quite a fascinating lesson about wands. How every time someone is born in the Magic World, a Wand Tree immediately grows one out to give to that baby, how that’s the wand they use for life, etc.

That’s such a cool birth certificate! Can I trade mine in for a wand of my own?!

xD;

I’d hold that thought, Gramps.

A Muggle isn’t just drawn to a specific Wand Tree for no reason.

Maybe the reason why it hasn’t generated any new wand for ages is because it was waiting for someone like Mirai, a resident of the other world, to show up.

But as expected of the Headmaster, he could immediately tell Mirai’s not from their world and asks what she’s doing here.

Mirai tells him she needs to find the Headmaster and the way she holds Mofurun tighter to her (KYAAAAA~!!!) when the subject turns over to Riko says a lot about how she can’t let Riko’s life get ruined just because she broke a few rules.

Not when Riko saved what was most important to her. To the world, it might have been nothing but a small gesture of kindness but that same gesture is what meant the world to Mirai.

That’s why she has to return the favor to Riko. Riko helped her and now it’s her turn and that means...

PAUSE.

Please take a moment to squee at rolypoly Mofurun part 2 first.

........

We good? Okay, back to regular programming...

DEUS EX MACH-I’M KIDDING~

These are Wand Trees so I’m sure they’re sentient and can sense the sincerity in Mirai’s words along with her magic potential.

For that...

She gets her very own wand!

*gasp* And oh my, what a pretty wand it is! It suits my baby very well!

I am very pleased! 8D

Not only is Mirai sincere, she’s well-mannered as well.

And Mofurun, too. What good children they are. :D

The magic tree just granted her something meant to conjure magic with.

What do you think she’s going to do with it if not that? Use it as a back scratcher?!

That aside, I forgot about this. So it was the supernatural forces that dictated Mirai should be allowed into the magic realm and not because of the Headmaster’s decision.

I like that.

Then Batty shows up and starts destroying everything in search for them and Mirai immediately leaves to go find Riko.

I’m not sure if it’s because she knows she needs to be with Riko in order to transform into Precure or if she’s simply worried about Riko or both or what. But Mirai doesn’t even think twice about the dangers of facing Batty alone when a person she cares about is somewhere in the crossfire.

And it’s so clear that Mirai cares about the world Riko comes from. Not just because it’s Riko’s school and home but also because she has great respect for magic users in general.

She’s dreamed of meeting them for a long time and though they’re hesitant to welcome her because she’s a normal human (aka not like them), that doesn’t stop her from doing what’s right. When Batty tries to order her around, she defiantly (and G-ratedly) flips him off for all the havoc he’s making.

Yep, she’s not afraid of the bad guys, my brave little girl~ <3

Riko’s timing and aim are impeccable as always, lol

She’s almost like a human missile! xD;

That’s right you did, Riko! And you did a splendid job, bravo! *clapclapclap*

Mirai’s just relieved that Riko’s unharmed.

I mean, if Riko’s still giving tsundere service, then she’s definitely alright, ahahaha~

See?

Riko can’t win against Mirai when she smiles at her like that~

Blushy Riko is so...too...adorable for words! x3

Then they hold hands and yea, you know what happens afterwards.

Frankly, the fight in this ep wasn’t any better or different than the first one and only a few short moments are worth mentioning.

Like Miracle trying her best to not let any more damage come to the school and crashing to the ground because of it.

Even though things will go back to normal, with no signs of a battle ever happening there, after they get rid of the Yokubaru and all (but then again, they didn’t know that...did they??)

She’s too nice, jeez...

Magical checking if her partner is okay and Miracle brushing it off like “Whoopsie!”

And Magical getting irritated again but whup, no time for that, gotta protect Miracle!

Haha~!! xDD

Anyways, the biggest moment that needs to be discussed is this one when Magical’s almost doubting whether saving the school’s worth it since she’s in for expulsion anyway because she disobeyed the Deputy Headmistress.

Hmmm, I’m not criticizing her or calling her self-centered or anything. It’s just that it’s obvious Riko has weighed herself down with too many negative thoughts that it’s hard for her to see there’s still something she can do.

She’s Precure now so regardless of whether she gets expelled or not, she’s one of the only people there who can stand up to that monster.

And like Miracle said, nothing has been decided yet. They can still persuade the Headmaster to let Riko stay at school.

If they don’t at least try, then it’s guaranteed they’ll only get nothing out of it.

And that’s hardly the ending anyone wants, right?

Whatever the outcome may be, Mirai’s determined to do her best for Riko. If it’s too much for Riko to bear alone, Mirai will be there to support her.

Riko calls Mirai a busybody for this but you can tell by her expression that she’s really grateful Mirai talked her out of giving up.

Even Mofurun’s happy, perched up on high~

Then they get their Linkle Sticks and perform Diamond Eternal for the first time and blow the monster away, yay, all’s well that ends well.

Well, almost.

Thankfully, the Headmaster witnessed everything that transpired, sparing them from any need to explain.

And not only does Riko get to stay at school (whoohoo~!) but now Mirai will be attending classes with her as well!

I guess there are endings where all’s well that ends better, after all, huh? Hehehe~

And that’s all for this week. Will try to get ep 3 by next Sunday. Bye for now~

#mahou tsukai precure #asahina mirai #izayoi riko #mofurun #cure miracle #cure magical

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minhkhoas · 4 years ago

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the umbrella academy season two: my thoughts

OVERALL RATING: ★★☆☆☆ (2/5 stars)

NON SPOILER REVIEW: i had high hopes for this season, i’ll admit. i was excited to see the hargreeves siblings return! and in the 1960s, no less. the season seemed like it was revving up to be amazing at first but then everything slowly crumbled down. there were some redeeming moments, but i just didn’t vibe with the season by the end of the last episode. review with spoilers below the cut:

yeah, so... phew. this season was a Lot. mostly in a bad way for me but also in some good ways? starting right off, i was Very excited about seeing how the siblings lived their lives separately before being found by five and reuniting with each other. their outfits were all Wonderful (i loved allison’s hair) and i think the general 1960s setting was pretty spot on!

now for what i Didn’t like first lmao

klaus: he leaned so heavily into the “predatory mlm trope” this season that i had to stop watching a few times. first off, he goes after dave, who has absolutely no idea who klaus is. i can understand that klaus still actively misses him & loves him, but so many of their encounters are simply klaus talking to dave in an extremely overbearing way. another thing i didn’t like is how when ben was possessing klaus, jill stated that klaus had a threesome with her and that other guy with the glasses i think? i forgot his name. either way, that just feeds into the “slutty bisexual/pansexual trope” and i didn’t like it at all lmao ! also that comment about whether five would be a hottie when hes older or not was fucking gross as fuck & the fact that it was deemed suitable just bc luther/allison was brought up is so nasty!

this is still tied to klaus but his entire cult thing . i hated it. it came off as a mockery of hinduism and other more spiritual religions to me ! and sure its supposed to come off as a fake faux thing but :/ he literally bathed in the ganges river and im 1000% sure that was meant to follow the belief that bathing there cleanses you of your sins. the decor around klaus’ mansion and the music/general tones set for some scenes were also in extremely poor taste

allison: even though it had to have been included at some point solely because of just How The Hargreeves Have Powers, some of allison’s interactions involving the civil rights movement rubbed me the wrong way. the times she used her powers with things related to the movement (telling the cop to leave ray alone, the manager at the diner) just seemed like it was downplaying the actual struggles black people went through. there WAS no allison hargreeves back then that could just tell cops to stop harming black individuals. there was no allison hargreeves that had the knowledge that what they were doing would work. the thousands of black protestors who fought for their rights during the civil rights movement had no idea if their efforts would truly work or not, but they just had to hope. they kept fighting. now, i know allison could’ve helped in the sense that she could encourage the people around her that their actions were working, but again, the actual living people involved in the civil rights movement didn’t have that luxury,,??? idk something about it just didnt sit right w me and i feel like we were supposed to feel bad??? about her burning that white guys hand but i did not feel bad for the guy lmaooo make his hands Hurt ! and of course theres the nasty ass shit with luther still like :///

ben: ben... My ben... theres a lot of things i could touch on tbh . even though hes Been Dead and his ascent to the afterlife or whatever was most likely inevitable i really really wish we would’ve gotten more explanation on how he really felt ??? maybe im just forgetting shit already but what was the thing in san francisco he was worried abt ???? why was he attached to jill despite never speaking to her ,,,??? there are just so many conflicting traits with him tbh and i was Very Confused

vanya: i also had an issue w vanyas characterization tbh . i get that there needed to be a foolproof way for her to arrive in this new world and be “less volatile” than she was pre apocalypse but come on. She barely hit her head when the car hit her put some effort in. anyways i also want to talk about how she just. killed hundreds of commission workers w no remorse ??? like yeah i get that theyre the antagonists but this is the same vanya that felt so deeply angry and upset with her actions in 2019 that she felt she didnt deserve to live. she felt so incredibly bad for everything & now ur telling me that she killed that many people and didnt have any sort of reaction to it ???? Huh??

luther: i. this one is pretty self explanatory but i fucking despise the fact that luther/allison is still a thing in season 2

pacing: the pacing overall was just So Goddamn fast for me and this was especially clear in the last episode ! So much was going on !

writing: i do think everyone was like .. oddly slightly out of character?? like i know they were stuck in time for a while but even so we didnt really get Thorough details on their lives !! and also we didn’t get Any hints about lila being an october 1st kid so seeing that was just??? extremely confusing to me??? it seemed very sloppily put in

the humor: some of the humor was timed horribly & i get that theyre Siblings and i know siblings make fun of each other all the time but . god some of it was just Too Much

i was ✨not✨ ready for klaus to barf and i hated it 😺

as for what i Did like!

lesbians ,,,,,,,,, mg fngnfng

clothes & the soundtrack !!

i really liked how we got sibling bonding moments !!!! klaus and allison, ben and klaus, the team zero moment, VANYA KLAUS AND ALLISON, five actually showing that he Cares for his siblings, vanya and ben, and diego and ben !!! and probably more tbh

i did like seeing lila on screen bc ! desi rep ! even though i didnt like her whole Commission Spy thing but

i did like how we got to see how the siblings reacted to their fathers abuse in different ways ! that scene w diego at the group dinner,,,, 🥺

diego content .... i ate that shit UP

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maisstories · 5 years ago

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Like the great idiot that I am, I made a mistake when attempting to schedule the answer to this prompt and now I have to post it separately because I accidentally deleted the ask.

An anon asked me to write 102, “I promise I’ll come back for you”, for Marco.

…This happened.

First of all, a warning: there are references to non-explicit violence and hints of a few disturbing themes.

While there are no direct spoilers here, the idea for this piece came from very recent manga chapters. If you haven’t read chapter 957, read at your own discretion. I’ve done my best to keep any possible spoilers vague, though.

102 “I promise I’ll come back for you”

“I promise I’ll come back for you.”

Dad’s words run through Marco’s head as he crawls into one of the highest kitchen cupboards. He already went through it yesterday, but maybe he missed something amongst the old pots and pans in here.

Even if there is nothing, dad shouldn’t take long to come back now.

It’s been long, longer than Marco is comfortable with. Surely the ship has already reached their new home and the people have built what they need before anyone can move in. Marco wanted to go, he wanted to help dad build their new home, but dad said a city in construction is no place for a little boy.

Marco isn’t little. But dad has been very worried since the attack. He hasn’t been himself since they found mom. And so Marco stayed, because he doesn’t want to give dad more reasons to worry.

Dad will be worried when he comes back.

He told Marco to ask Mrs. Evans for anything he needed, but Marco saw Mrs. Evan rationing her family’s food last week, and no merchants have come to the island.

Marco can’t ask Mrs. Evans for food when she has trouble feeding her family.

But dad won’t take long to come back now. So Marco will wait, and he’ll keep searching the house in case he missed something. He has plenty of water from the well to last him, and he read somewhere a person can last a very long time without eating, even if he’s hungry.

Marco can be hungry for a little longer. Dad said there are plenty of fields at their new home. They’ll have lots of food.

Then Marco has a brilliant idea.

Mrs. Evans may have little food, but perhaps someone else has some to spare! There is still money in the emergency box mom used to keep, so Marco can use it to buy the food from them. That way they won’t be giving it away for nothing. He knows dad won’t be angry, he always says money is good to buy the things they need.

Marco has to push a chair against the dresser to reach the top drawer where the box is. He is not sure how much food will cost now —he knows it won’t be usual market price— so he takes the box and all its contents with him.

Their house is a little ways from town, and that spared it the worst of the attack. One of the fires reached their door, though, and mom’s orchards are gone. Black ash on blackened ground. Marco doesn’t look at it. It reminds him of how they found mom, and he doesn’t want to think about her.

He needs food. He can’t cry now. He’s cried a lot already.

Marco is walking through one of the rundown alleys at the town’s outskirts when he hears laughter. He stops. Not many people laugh here lately, not even little kids. And that laughter… there is something off about it.

“Man, can’t believe we made the trip for this crap!” someone exclaims. They sound amused.

“Should’ve guessed. Those farmers had nothing with them,” someone else answers. There is a crash, followed by a weird low noise, and more laughter.

Marco doesn’t know those voices.

He stops and moves carefully to press himself against the wall.

Did someone get drunk? Wouldn’t be the first time someone does that and starts breaking stuff. Even more so lately.

“Hey, no one’s told you to stop!” the first person yells. There is a loud smacking sound, followed by a sob.

Marco freezes.

He hasn’t heard these sounds before, no, but he’s heard stories. Many people talked, in hushed tones and when they didn’t realize he was listening, of the things that happened during the attack.

Marco’s breath is coming faster, and he grabs his left forearm and digs the nails of his right hand into it as hard as he can to keep himself grounded. He can’t panic, not now. He needs to get out. Away from the city and as far from the houses as possible. That’s what they did in school, last time. There isn’t a forest to hide in anymore, but if he can make it to the hills, then perhaps…

Marco nods to himself. Now with a plan, he turns and starts to backtrack his path. He tries to move as fast as he can while being quiet. He wants to run, but he knows it’s a bad idea. If he runs, he won’t be able to hear anyone approaching, and he needs to be able to hear them if he is to hide.

His strategy pays off when he hears the steps. They are loud in the silence of the alley, and they sound heavy. Whoever’s walking, it’s not a tiny person. Marco looks around, spots one of the many piles of rubble that have been moved out of the way, and dives to hide behind it. He can cover himself entirely in its shadow.

Keeping even breaths is harder, but Marco has had practice at controlling his breathing lately. Being quiet was the only way to avoid making dad feel even worse. If he’d known Marco still cried every night, he wouldn’t have left on the ship. They needed dad to go, Marco knows: he’s the only navigator left in town. So Marco learned to control his breathing and keep quiet, and now that could save his life.

The steps have come closer, and a massive shadow blocks most of what little sun enters the alley.

The steps stop right on the other side of the rubble.

“You should come out,” comes the voice.

Marco freezes again.

Maybe this person just thinks someone could be hiding around here. Maybe this person only stopped there by chance.

So Marco holds his breath, closes both hands around fallen pieces of bricks, and waits.

The shadow moves, but at the same time the person remains at the same spot. There is more sun, though, so whoever is there must have sat or crouched down.

“It doesn’t matter how well you hide; most people in this crew would find you anyway. So step out of there, son. I won’t hurt you.”

Marco bristles. Won’t hurt him?! He’s pretty sure he knows exactly what’s happening in town. Those words do nothing but confirm it.

Before he can think better of it, Marco darts around the rubble and hurls the two bricks up and forward. They bounce off an arm. A massive, muscular arm that’s resting on the knee of the largest man Marco has ever seen. Even crouching down, he towers over Marco and everything around them, and the large blade he carries and his clothes scream pirate.

The man looks down at Marco. Marco narrows his eyes and stays put, because this man is blocking his way and he’s too large to dodge around him to escape in any direction in this tiny alley.

There is a drawn out silence. Marco glances around, looking for another way out. Perhaps there is a hole in one of the many damaged houses he can escape through.

“That’s not a good idea,” the man says. He sounds calm, awfully calm, and Marco wants to yell at him.

So he does.

“And why not?!” he demands, clenching his fists.

He’s sick of pirates. They come into town, destroy and hurt all they want, and think they can get away with anything.

“Because nowhere in this island is safe.”

“You don’t know that,” Marco says, voice sharp. Inside, he’s gone cold. What does that mean? They’re not just here for their valuables and then will leave? That’s what pirates do, isn’t it? If he can stay out of the way, he should be safe.

But he’s not out of the way anymore, is he?

There is something weird about this pirate’s eyes. They don’t look like an evil pirate’s eyes should. To Marco, they appear sad. It makes no sense.

“This island is going to be destroyed. Everything in it taken down, and the remnants burned.”

Marco stumbles. It’s as though this man has hit him. But he hasn’t. He has spoken quiet and calmly. Not mocking, not amused like those other two. Just… stating a fact.

Marco wants to be sick.

“Why’re you telling me?” he asks, and is surprised his voice comes out at all.

The man stays silent again, looking at Marco so intensely he wants to squirm. He refuses to do it and instead straightens up.

“You resemble your father a lot.”

Marco can’t breathe.

What…?

The words he overheard earlier slam into him like a fist.

“Those farmers had nothing with them.”

Farmers.

Most of the people on the ship that left town last month were farmers, leaving to start working on the lands as they built.

“How…?” Marco attempts to ask, but he chokes on the words. How do you know my father?

The pirate is giving him an unmistakable sad look. Marco wants to beat it out of his face.

“We reached a small colony last week. They had just started to build,” the man begins.

Marco may have screamed. He isn’t sure. All he knows is that he launches himself at the man. He doesn’t care that he’s a giant, he doesn’t care that he’s armed, that he’s a pirate. He wants him to stop. To shut up and admit he’s lying, to say he and his horrid crew have never been to the colony.

The man doesn’t move, but Marco might as well be punching rocks for all the effect his attempt has on the man’s leg.

A hand descends on Marco’s. It’s so large in engulfs his whole body and keeps him immobile against the man’s leg.

“He asked— no, he begged me to spare his son when the captain announced we’d come here next. But very few are ever spared. Your best chance is to come with me.”

Marco isn’t listening. He doesn’t want to listen. He can’t listen.

This man, this monster—

He twists around and slams his head against the man’s hand. His arms and his legs are blocked, but his head is free enough. So Marco slams and slams, and when a giant finger stops him from moving, he bites what skin he can reach.

The man doesn’t react, not even when Marco draws blood.

The man moves his other arm, and Marco finds himself with another hand on him. This one isn’t holding him still though. No, the man’s rubbing circles into Marco’s back.

“There was no saving your father,” the man continues. Marco hates him. He hates him even more for daring to sound sorry as he speaks. “But you have a chance. If you’ll take it.”

Marco’s jaw has gone slack. He releases the man’s skin. His mouth is sour and bitter with blood and tears, and he can’t stop sobbing long enough to even glare up at the man, much less tell himself where to shove his offer.

The man moves one hand away and brings it back with something held between two fingers. He has to hold it really close to Marco for him to notice it at all.

“You have potential, kid. If you eat this, the captain will allow you to stay on board.”

Marco isn’t stupid. When the blurry blue thing comes into focus, he realizes the swirly patterns on it mean it’s a devil fruit. One of these, he knows, would make even a kid like him valuable to pirates.

It makes no sense that this guy’s giving it to him.

Somehow, Marco manages to choke the question out.

“I’m already a fruit user,” the man says. “I’d rather have this one help you now than sell it later.”

Marco doesn’t understand. He doesn’t understand this man at all. He has seen his father die without doing anything —if he didn’t kill him himself, and then Marco would…— has let Marco attack and even hurt him, has offered to let him live, and now is giving him the most expensive thing Marco has ever seen.

A thing that is also food.

A part of Marco wants to die. To leave this horrible world here and now, to go with his parents. But another part of him, a larger one, doesn’t want to. That part, the one that used to dream about seeing the world, now wants to see this crew destroyed. Wants to know what happened, why it happened, and wants to make sure it won’t happen again.

So Marco takes the fruit. He lunges for it, just now realizing he is no longer immobilized, and bites into it before the man can change his mind.

It’s disgusting, the worst thing Marco has ever eaten. He wolfs it down as quickly as he can. He doesn’t know when he’ll be able to eat again. If he will.

He’s wiping his face on his sleeve, having managed to stop crying as he ate, when he hears a voice.

“Oi, Newgate!” It’s one of the men from before, the ones who were… Marco doesn’t want to think about it. “What’s with that kid?”

The man, Newgate, doesn’t move from where he’s crouching, but he looks over Marco’s shoulder to where the voice came. Marco refuses to turn, not wanting to see any more of these pirates.

“He’s coming with us,” Newgate calls back.

There’s a guffaw.

“You think the captain’ll let you keep a stray?” It’s the other one this time, sounding both mocking and amused.

“Kid’s a fruit user,” Newgate says, as though that should be enough.

There is a short silence.

“Really?” the second man asks. He sounds skeptical, but also curious. “Well, I guess the captain’ll let you keep him, them. First step into that dream of yours, eh?”

And the two men burst out laughing, as though they’ve told the best joke in the world.

“Get lost, both of you,” Newgate tells them. He sounds tired and annoyed, as though the joke is an old one.

He stands up, and takes Marco with him and up on his hand. Without another word to his crewmembers, he starts walking away, and it doesn’t take long for them to reach another alley that’s empty and away from any noise. It’s as though most of the city is silent now. Marco doesn’t want to think about it.

“Listen,” Newgate says. He crouches down again, and sets Marco on his feet. Marco has lost all energy by now, and falls on his ass on the ground. “Being in this crew won’t be easy. It’s an awful place, and you’ll have to keep quiet about many horrible things, but it’s temporary, do you understand?”

Marco swallows.

“…Yeah.” Of course he does, he intends to destroy them.

Newgate moves so he’s kneeling properly on the ground instead of crouching. He’s so big it makes no difference to Marco.

“What’s your name?”

“…Marco.” He omits the surname. It’s irrelevant now, and he doesn’t want to associate his parents to this. What he’s doing, what he wants to do, would horrify them. It’s best if he doesn’t become a pirate as their son, no matter how temporary becoming a pirate will be.

So, he’s just Marco from now on.

“I’m Edward Newgate,” Newgate introduces himself. “Now, I’ll tell you what I know about that fruit of yours before we have to meet the captain. It’s a very special power, you know?”

#writing prompts #Marco the Phoenix #edward newgate #whitebeard #opfanfic #op fanfic #one piece #this was supposed to be a drabble #I have no idea what the hell I wrote #there's got to be a very good reason for WB to have been part of the Rocks pirates #given what we know so far #opspoilers #sorta #writing prompt

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incorrectmerlinquotes · 6 years ago

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i heard merlin whump fic recs... please... f e e d m e . . .

OH MAN AM I GLAD YOU ASKED DFGHRFGGFFGHGFG PREPARE FOR,,,,,,,,,,,,,, A DELUGE,,,,,,,, OF MERLIN PAIN,,,,,,,,,,

Unbreakable by eight0fhearts

S4 timeline, multi-chapter, complete, and whoo, this one is where it’s AT, my man. A whumpist’s bread-and-butter, if you will. The Quintessential Enchanted!Arthur-hurts-Merlin fic, and oh, MAN, does this author do it SO WELL fghnrfhbfgb like,,,, eight0fhearts,,,,,, teach me,,,,,,,

Trigger warnings for physical + verbal abuse, of course, but I really think that goes without saying for that one!! And it’s not SUPER graphic, either, at least not in my opinion??

Worse Things by Kita Hart

S4 timeline, one-shot, and not necessarily “whump” in the strictest sense of the word, more like,,,,,,,, Merlin is a fucking idiot who tries to cope by stuffing his feelings down and Not Thinking About It, but luckily Arthur and the knights are Ultimate Bros™ and give him lots of comfort. Again, not necessarily whump, but VERY cute, and a rare opportunity for Merlin to get some TLC the series never gives him. 10/10 would recommend. spoilers for 4x08.

Trigger warnings for physical + verbal abuse.

Please Help My People by M1ssUnd3rst4nd1ng

Between S4 and S5, in-progress, anD???? EXTREMELY GOOD. CANNOT RECOMMEND ENOUGH. LIKE,,,,, I DONT WANT TO SPOIL,,,,, BUT MERLIN,,,,,,, GETS HURT,,,,,, A LOT,,,,, AND THINKS ARTHUR,,,,,,, DOESNT CARE???? VERY GOOD EXTREMELY ANGSTY MUCH WHUMP SO ABUSE VERY EXTREMELY GOOD. CANNOT RECOMMEND ENOUGH HONESTLY. OH ALSO IT’S A REVEAL FIC AND IT’S BASED OFF “GOD HELP THE OUTCASTS” FROM THE DISNEY ADAPTATION OF THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME WHICH IS,,,,, MY FAVORITE DISNEY FILM,,,, EVER,,,,, SO,,,,, THERES THAT,,,,,,

Trigger warnings for physical + verbal abuse, and I think Merlin also gets flogged at some point?? I can’t remember gffgfgb iTS EXTREMELY GOOD THOUGH

Bandits, it’s Always Bandits! by Adeliade

Anywhere from S4 to S5 timeline, one-shot, and your obligatory Merlin-gets-hurt-and-tries-to-hide-it fic!! Very well-done, too, we get to see the knights and Arthur being protective of Merlin!! And Arthur yells. a lot. it’s really fucking good omg.

Trigger warnings for violence and broken bones!!

At a Loss for Words by staymagical

S4 timeline, multi-chapter, complete, and VERY good omg!!!! Merlin gets captured by slave traders, the knights are extremely protective of him, Arthur is extremely protective of him, Gaius is extremely protective of him!!!!! And ohhhhhhh the physical whump is JUST the tip of the iceberg. this author doesnt fuck around.

Trigger warning for,,,,,, everything tbh lmao most notably forced drugging and a resultant addiction + withdrawal, slave!Merlin, physical + verbal abuse and disabled Merlin ((and no, he doesn’t find a magical cure. I told you this author doesnt fuck around.))

Different by 1917farmgirl

Early S1 timeline and????? so cute???? Merlin’s struggling to adjust to life in the city and his duties to Arthur, and the other servants aren’t making it easy for him. Admittedly, all the actual hurt happens off-screen, but it’s still a nice look into Merlin’s sense of separation and loneliness from other people, and his desperate desire to find a place where he fits in. Also some absolutely GOD-TIER fatherly!Gaius like holy shit who the FUCK gave this author the right to give me feels abt a crusty old physician.

Trigger warnings for bullying!!

Silence Cuts Loudest Through the Chaos by 1917farmgirl

Early-series timeline, post-S2, if I’m not mistaken, incomplete, and SO. MUCH. WHUMP. I DONT WANT TO SPOIL BUT MERLIN IS A SLAVE. ARTHUR THINKS HE’S DEAD. MERLIN GETS BEATEN. AND STRIPPED OF HIS MAGIC. AND STARVED. AND OVERWORKED TO THE POINT OF PRETTY MUCH COLLAPSE. AND DID I MENTION ARTHUR THINKS HE’S DEAD AND THEN HE FINDS OUT HE’S NOT AND bhytghgfrtyhtfrgbhgtfgbhn SO. GOOD. LITERALLY WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT. WHAT. WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT!!! PLEASE!!! TELL ME!!! BECAUSE!!! I DONT KNOW!!!

Physical + verbal abuse, torture, slave!Merlin, magic suppression, all the good stuff!!!

Ignis Fatuus by Ericka Jane

S4 timeline, picks up shortly after 4x03 if I’m not mistaken, three-shot, complete, EXTREMELY FUCKING ANGSTY LIKE HOLY SHIT I WAS. I WAS NOT PREPARED. Really can’t say much without spoiling, but Merlin and Arthur get kidnapped!! Merlin is protective of Arthur and Arthur is protective of Merlin and Merlin gets tortured and a magic reveal and Arthur is many shocked much surprised o h m y l o r d its good!!!

Torture and magic reveal!!

Burning Amidst an Ocean by LFB72

Anywhere from S4 to S5 in timeline, multi-chapter, complete, aND EXTREMELY GOOD OH MY GOD LIKE I,,,,, SCREAMED,,,,,, SO MUCH,,,,,, MY FIRST TIME READING THIS I COULD NOT BELIEVE!!!!! HURT!MERLIN???? SICK!MERLIN??? FEVERED!MERLIN??? DELIROUS!MERLIN??? SCAR REVEAL????? FREYA REVEAL????? MERLIN ALSO NEARLY DROWNS IN LIKE CH1 LIKE LET THAT SINK IN SHIT GETS REAL IN CH1 AND DOESNT STOP FROM THERE ITS S O G O O D OH MY GOd!!!!!

Near-drowning, serious illness, hallucinations + delusions, mainly just things like that!!

Don’t Abandon Me by staymagical

S4 to S5 in timeline, one-shot, and whump is off-screen buT DOES IT MATTER WHEN ITS THIS GOOD??? NO. IT DOESNT. ABSOLUTELY NOT. AT ALL. SUPER GOOD SHGTFGHNGFGBHFGBH AND GUILTY!ARTHUR TO BOOT??? Your essential Merlin-gets-tortured-for-information-about-Arthur with some nice twists!!! another by the author who doesnt fuck around. gotta remember this one.

Referenced torture, also starvation and thirst, but all only mentioned!!

Beyond Recall by laurajslr

S4 to S5 timeline, VERY LONG multi-chapter, complete, and ABSOLUTELY INCREDIBLE honestly I CANNOT speak of this one highly enough. I’d argue it’s not so much a Merlin whump as it is just,,,,, a lot of manipulation? I’m going to explain it very badly so bear with me, basically Merlin loses all his memory of Camelot and Arthur and the knights, like he remembers nothing from the first episode onward, but it’s due to blunt-force head trauma rather than magical means, so that’s a twist!! But without his memory, he’s manipulated into serving another king who’s got an agenda AGAINST Arthur, and plans to use Merlin as a SPY for him AGAINST Camelot!!! So then it gets REALLY good !!! gosh just you WAIT and SEE I cOULD NOT put this one down it’s so good!!! kept me hooked all the way through!!!

warning for head injuries, obviously, but also magic reveal, psychological manipulation, essentially a slave!Merlin fic, but in a very unorthodox sense.

Dark Thoughts by Stealth Dragon

One-shot, complete, dbhgfghgfghbgf sUPER GOOD!!!! Something,,,,,,, magical happens?? And gives Merlin the temporary ability to read minds, and then there’s this CREEPY-ASS MOTHERFUCKER WHO HITS MERLIN he’s some kind of lord, i think?? I haven’t read this one in, gosh, YEARS I’m probably not remembering parts of it right. that’s the main gist anyway.

Warning for attempted non-con, physical violence, and some pretty graphic imagery!!

Between a Rock and a Hard Place by LFB72

S4 maybe pre-S5 timeline, multi-chapter, complete!!! sggfgfgvf l i s t e n,,,,, i havent read this one in a while but it is GOOD omg I’ve been meaning to reread it I just haven’t found the time yet but I remember there’s definitely a stone in there somewhere that detects magic, and Arthur gets his hands on it, I think it might actually be a gift from a visiting lord or something, and if Merlin goes ANYWHERE near the stone, the stone is a little bitch squealer, so Merlin’s gotta find a way to NOT set it off and still be near Arthur. cUE MAGIC SUPPRESSION!!!! rare example in which Merlin is a willing participant!!! have I mentioned magic suppression fics are my FAVE because magic suppression fics are my FAVe. fuckin fight me.

aforementioned magic suppression, like really graphic, too, goes into detail about how painful and damaging it is to block it up like that. kudos to the author for doing that. also magic reveal and violence!!

Honestly, I’m probably forgetting several hundred, there are just so many good ones, but this compilation is a pretty good start at least. Honestly, the authors mentioned on this list have a LOT more fics than just the ones I mentioned, I just picked my personal hurt!Merlin faves!! i hope this feeds you for now lmao if you want any more pLEASE feel free to ask because let me tell you i could talk all day and every day about Merlin whump lmao.

((((also I’m onceandfuturewarlock on both Fanfiction and AO3,��and i write whump as well!! i’ll be the first to admit it’s not v good, absolutely NOTHING on anyone else on this list, but both my fics Do You Feel Like a Young God and Heavy Stones Fear No Weather have some hurt!Merlin that i took far FAR too much pleasure in writing lmao. Heavy Stones has referenced non-con, though, and Do You Feel Like a Young God has on-screen non-con, as well as physical + verbal abuse, so stay safe!!!)))))

Anyway, I hope you like the list!!

#merlin #bbc merlin #ask #anonymous #mod answers #Anonymous

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jerrydog · 5 years ago

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I had absolutely no intention of watching The Rise of Skywalker. In fact, I’ve never even bothered watching a single trailer for this movie. The only way I’d watch this is if someone dragged me into it, which is exactly what happened. Thanks to The Last Jedi, I started viewing Star Wars movies in a different light— more objectively, so to speak. It made that cloak of nostalgia that was hindering my vision vanish completely. Because that’s all there was to it. I realized that I only liked Star Wars because of nostalgia. Because of its great significance in pop culture for the past few decades. Take that away, and I realized that most of these movies were average at best.

I was old enough to watch the prequels in cinemas. Maybe I was too young then, but I loved The Phantom Menace. This made me look forward to Attack of the Clones, which I didn’t really like at first. But everyone else seemed to like it. Everyone else was so hyped up over it, because duh— it’s Star Wars. So I somehow convinced myself that I should like it as well. Call it peer pressure or whatever. Revenge of the Sith had its issues, but overall I found it entertaining. At least entertaining enough to make me seek out episodes IV-VI on home video. Maybe it was the influence of nostalgia again, especially since my parents were huge fans. After watching all episodes from I to VI, I was already somewhat of a Star Wars fan.

 I was one of those who were so excited to see The Force Awakens. After such a long time, we were gonna see a new Star Wars movie on the big screen! And it had a lot of the original cast returning! That was surely a case of pandering to nostalgia, but heck everyone including myself lapped it all up. Sure it was mostly a rehash, it doesn’t hold up that well on repeat viewings, but it sure was fun to watch for the very first time. Especially once you see all those beloved characters back on the big screen. And with that cliffhanger ending showing our first glimpse of Luke Skywalker after all these years? Man, everyone sure as hell were hyped up for the sequel.

Which was the aforementioned The Last Jedi— definitely the most divisive Star Wars movie ever made. I can’t understand how some people loved it, because I think it’s downright horrible. Apparently I didn’t think it was so bad the first time I saw it— I gave it a 3/5 on my review here. That time though one of my friends fell asleep while watching. another one was so bored he wanted to walk out. These were HUGE Star Wars fans by the way. The fact that two huge fans couldn’t finish viewing a Star Wars movie was quite telling. I saw it again with my cousin after two months because she had not seen it yet. It’s a struggle to get through such a pointless plot on second viewing. I was shocked to find out that Rose Tico didn’t die. lol. Apparently I was no longer paying much attention towards the end on my first viewing. After this second viewing I’d give it a 2/5. I managed to see it alone at home for the third time, when I did a Star Wars marathon of sorts. It was the only movie that I was struggling to finish. Since I was watching it alone in the comfort of my own room, I could rate it the most objectively. After the third viewing, I’d give it a 1/5.

I know we all have different tastes. If you liked The Last Jedi, if you enjoyed watching it, I’d respect that. But please do not refer to it as excellent, as perfect, or the best Star Wars Movie ever because it isn’t any of those. I wouldn’t call a movie with such a useless plot perfect. That main plot could have been told in 15 minutes or less. The entire movie just wasted 2 ½ hours over nothing. The side quest was just as pointless. Plot holes were numerous. Beloved characters were quickly set aside. Beloved characters start to behave in a way that’s completely out of character. A bunch of new main characters pop out of nowhere, with no other purpose than to serve an agenda. Many things did not make sense even on a science fiction movie. Characters show new skills, even though such skills were never foreshadowed in what’s supposed to be a saga. It also diverged from any logical path following The Force Awakens. In fact after viewing all Star Wars movies in succession from episodes I to XI, The Last Jedi stands out because it doesn’t conform with the universe set in the other episodes. In doesn’t fit the overarching narrative at all. They might as well have called it The Last Jedi: A Star Wars Story.

Look, I get it. Innovation and non conformity should be praised, but only when it’s done in a proper setting. If you’re going to make a movie that’s part of a trilogy or part of an entire saga, you have to be a team player. You have to stick to a certain theme. You can’t push boundaries too far, else your movie won’t feel part of a whole even though it’s supposed to be. Rian Johnson knew The Last Jedi was gonna be part of a Trilogy. You can’t verge too far when you’re making an episode in a trilogy— especially not when it’s the second installment you’re making. So yeah, I’m glad JJ Abrams did a retcon and basically ignored Episode VIII. It wouldn’t take much to ignore it anyway, considering the fact that close to nothing of significance happened in that episode. Oh yeah, Luke died/ vanished. Also Snoke, in what was the only awesome scene in the entire movie IMO. Anything else that happened were basically non events.

 Now critics are complaining that The Rise of Skywalker ignores the narrative threads that were set by Rian Johnson. Oh you mean the same way he ignored the narrative threads set by JJ Abrams? I didn’t hear any critics complaining then. All I heard were praises because the movie was so inclusive, it was so empowering, it was refreshing because it didn’t feel like a Star Wars movie. How can “not feeling like a Star Wars movie” be a good thing about a movie that’s supposed to be part of the Star Wars Saga? Look, general audiences couldn’t care less about the race or gender of characters they see onscreen as long as a good story is being told. Majority of people who hated The Last Jedi aren’t single white men who are still living in their parent’s basements, so SJWs should quit that tired narrative. A lot of people who hated The Last Jedi are ordinary moviegoers who just wanted to have fun watching a movie set in the universe they’re familiar with. A lot of people hated The Last Jedi because even that was taken away from them. 

Critics are also complaining about several plot points. Like how Emperor Palpatine is still alive (not a spoiler: it’s on the movie’s official synopsis, and it’s stated right at the very beginning.) I know, that totally came out of left field. Palpatine clearly died on episode VI. There were no hints or foreshadowing that he was still alive on episodes VII and VIII, even on repeat viewings. Thus is comes off as a cheap and desperate attempt. Whose fault was this though? Who decided to kill off this new trilogy’s big bad on the second episode? Rian Johnson didn’t leave much for JJ Abrams to work with here, he was basically pushed against a wall and working with his hands tied. Creating an entirely new villain would be anticlimactic, but since it’s a part of a 9 movie saga, the next best thing would be to revive a villain from the past. Another common complaint is that this new movie feels rushed, that so many things were being packed in a little over 2 hours. Again whose fault is that? If Rian Johnson didn’t waste 2 ½ on the previous movie and told a story with significant events that would feed naturally onto the next episode, an episode that would serve as a bridge between two episodes instead of looking like some disjointed amalgamation, this wouldn’t have happened would it? JJ Abrams had that unenviable task of trying to tie up so many loose ends. It would have helped if Rian Johnson tried to be a team player by tying up some loose ends from The Force Awakens and then tying up some of his. But no, he preferred to do things his own way. He preferred to be different, he preferred to leave his indelible mark. Instead of effectively bridging two episodes, he left the Skywalker Saga with no clear direction.

 I agree. This movie seemed rushed. It seemed forced. It could use a lot more time to tell the story. But considering the difficult task that JJ Abrams was given, those faults are easily forgivable. Yes a lot of it is fan service and obvious pandering. But isn’t that only fitting for what’s supposed to be the final chapter in the Skywalker Saga that started way back in 1977? Anyone who grew up with these movies would enjoy this finale. it contains a lot of the things that people have loved about Star Wars. This series has been around for more than 4 decades, fans belong to different generations. Episode XI is not a perfect movie, but it’s a perfect thank you to everyone who has been a fan. I had no intention of watching this movie, but I’m glad I was forced to give gave it a chance. It’s not the best Star Wars movie, but it’s good enough to restore my faith in all things Star Wars.  …  My rating: 4/5

#star wars #the rise of skywalker #Movie Reviews #movie review #movie #movies

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kierongillen · 6 years ago

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Writer Notes: The Wicked + the Divine 39

Spoilers, obv.

And we collapse forward on the keyboard and twitch a while. This has been nightmarishly hard. I suspect the last arc will be hard (as nothing in WicDiv is easy) but the things we were juggling here were something else.

Before we dive in, some top-level thinking. The advantage of the way WicDiv is constructed is that we know what we're doing. A friend was just rereading the first arc, and noted how certain elements and approaches simply changed as the tone of the book solidified – while also noting that every direction we did take was there from the off. We knew the What We Were Doing but not always the specific How.

(Not least, as I was a hot mess in 2014. I'm amazed the WicDiv scripts weren't just bahsjasjfaglagsfk.)

But the problem with knowing the direction of the book is you're tied to ideas you may wish you hadn't put in play. Because a five year book is enough time to change significantly in what you consider a good idea or not – and even if you still think it's a good idea in the abstract, it doesn't mean it's an idea you would necessarily want to do any more.

At this point, there's various things flying around. Firstly, Laura has rejected her godhood. That's great. That's clearly the arc of the book. Secondly, Ananke is running her own eternal scheme with its eternal rules. I don't think it's a spoiler to say that Ananke (and I'm using “Ananke” for “Ananke and Minerva” here) is significantly deceiving people on some key matters, and using the holes in their knowledge to her advantage. At this point in the story the same thing happens to her. We see that her own perception is also incomplete.

So – what's the thing she's missing?

I fell upon Maiden/Mother/Crone as a structure to create a relationship between Ananke/Persephone/Minerva. What action would Ananke buy?

It has to be archetypal and mythic. Cheaty postmodernism doesn't work. Myth is brutal and basic and ugly and wrong.

So – if the Mother archetype has a child, Ananke's doomed forever. It breaks the little eternal circle and Ananke thinks herself trapped in that sensory void forever.

There's nothing in the above specifically and individually which worries me too much. It's how they intersect with the rest of the plot, and how we can chart a line between them all without saying anything we don't want to say, or without causing undue emotional distress in a way we're uncomfortable with.

We end up with our solution, which is merely our best solution, which means it's far from perfect. We do as much as we can, and try and touch on stuff as gently as we can to avoid any fair misreading of the story. Even so, there's resonances in there I dislike.

There's a sentence that is said all the time in writing room situations: “This is the bad version.” It's said when people are brainstorming, and asking the audience to know this isn't good, but they are good enough writers to make it better – it's just a structure of the sort of things that the narrative could delineate.

It's easy to imagine The Bad Version of this plot. Laura finding out she has to have a kid to save the world! Baal and Baphomet fighting over who's the father! An issue cliffhanger where you think Laura's own choice has doomed the world! I shudder. Like, someone with a different aesthetic to me would have done all of the above.

Instead, what we try to do is what we have to do to make the story work, and do it in the safest way possible. It's the guiding aesthetic of most of this issue, in terms of separating the two key threads – namely not confusing Laura's choice to have an abortion and Laura's choice to reject godhood.

But still – I spent four years trying to think of something that Ananke would buy, based on our implicit story, which wasn't this, and failed. I'd rather not have gone this way. I'm happy with the issue, but it was a heartbreaking amount of work as I take all of this intensely seriously.

So, to return to the opening, the problem with being as structured as WicDiv is means that you are tied to decisions you made years ago, without which the story simply breaks.

DIE (aka Project Spangly New Thing) rejects this kind of plotting. It's just as messy emotionally as WicDiv (hell, even more so) but leaves the characters a lot more narrative freedom. I'd have done it anyway (because I hate to repeat myself) but the experience on arcs like this certainly feeds into it.

Anyway – I'll be talking some specifics in this as we go through, as I suspect it may be useful for people thinking about the impact of choices.

Jamie's Cover: Ananke in her cavewoman chic. That means 2 “persephone”, 2 “minerva” and 2 “Ananke” covers for this arc. The symmetry seems fun.

Phil Jimenez's Cover: I first saw Phil's work in his pop-thrill issues of The Invisibles, an obviously influential work on yours truly. We worked together on Angela: Asgard's Assassin together, which was a thrill, and this glam-metal take on her. He's also very lovely. As such, Minerva in full-on catwalk mode is a great take. I love these kind of maximalist high-thrill ones. And LIZ's ‘When I rule the world’ has just come on my WicDiv shuffle at this point, which seems appropriate for Minerva stomping down a lightning-catwalk. Also, Dee Cunniffe (who has flatted nearly all of WicDiv) provides colours. Nice work, Dee.

Page 1-2

Black spaces. Like the opening of the arc – C's idea, I believe. Also, ensuring we get our page turns right. We dropped the recap for once. Normally we'd drop it in the mid-point of the issue instead of the first interstitial, but it would have broken the space.

Obviously mirroring the start of this arc.

The first obvious bit of delineation: this is ten days after the end of last issue. Laura stopped being Persephone 10 days ago. As such, anything that happens now is not connected to that.

The biggest reading we wanted to avoid: “Laura's abortion is the ritual by which she rejects and escapes the Persephone-Mother archetype”. Especially if people, either pro or anti choice, could make an argument we're saying we're saying the act is human sacrifice – a reading which seems especially possible in a story that already has human sacrifice in it.

Page 3-4-5-6

Reestablishing what folks have been up to in the gap – in short, bits and pieces, bits of information the characters should exchange, etc.

The Cass/Woden dialogue is stuff I'd have liked to get into issue 33, but was cut due to space and focus. It was Mimir's scene, and as he's been silent for the whole book, he gets to speak. The “He stole my life/I stole his” was all that was required. This is detail. Interesting detail, but detail. And, yes, loaded.

There's a lot of “starting other stuff” in this sequence – clearly the “ritual” is going to be important next arc.

I love what Jamie is doing quietly with Mimir and the boxes at the back of the room on page 4. Like, I wonder what's in each of those boxes, right? There's some horrible pure objectification here. Like, Pokémon. Got to catch them all.

You can tell that Woden is more chill with Minerva, right?

It was originally written with Minerva noting that mind-controlled-sex-is-rape at the end of page 4. That felt frankly aggressive, as if we were using it as a punchline. Instead, we soften it, and move it mid-panel, which changes the feeling around it, hopefully.

On page 6, I really like the “Hmm. You're learning.” It still makes me laugh.

Making the gun's controls REALLY VISUALLY OBVIOUS is not exactly subtle, but 100% needed to make sure the scene make sense.

Page 7-8-9

With a month gap between issues, it's possible that the reader may not have noticed that we've changed the issue structure from the rest of this arc. It's not “past stuff then present stuff” like the others. It's at least one reason why we didn't give a preview – that and that the first pages of the issue are entirely non-characteristic in terms of where the issue goes.

Anyway – first page is a pure repeat from issue 34, so a free page. This issue is a little longer than normal, due to normal cheats. It's actually 20 new pages long... plus one new panel.

Page 8 is very peak Jamie, plus Matt, for a certain mode. I never get bored of seeing what they do with blood together. Ananke's expression in panel 4 is just particularly well chosen. This isn't how Minerva feels last issue – that's after thousands of years of dwelling on it. This is first exposure. You don't go straight to AGRGRHRHRHRHH.

And back to the still angle on the third panel. Like, the static nature of these seems important in terms of mood.

I really hope Ananke isn't licking that knife.

Page 10

I spent the best part of a day trying to work out what to name this interstitial, after naming it a few things previously. That we end up with a very limited Bowie nod says everything. Anything else seemed to create resonances we were trying to avoid. Once more, the aim is to separate the two decisions from Laura as much as possible.

Page 11

I know drawing London kills Jamie, but I'll miss seeing stuff like this monthly when it's gone.

We don't know Laura's walked out of a clinic for a few pages, but it was important to just give her space here.

Researching locations in London, in terms of placing the events, the timing, what would be available, and Laura's condition after an abortion and trying to find a way to be sensitive to all of that as a writer. Ideally, I was looking for an option around Highbury & Islington, as I always prefer to reuse settings. In practise, this was best.

Page 12

I basically described Beth's crew as Valkyrie-plusses. As in, the mini-bosses in a videogame. Elite models for a basic troop type.

Toni pushes to the front, as he's always been the most talkative of the Other Two. Writing this I realised who he is here – he's basically “Imagine Marvel Boy, if Marvel Boy was a total idiotic dipshit.”

(Instead of the “mostly idiotic dipshit” he was in YA. Love you, Noh-Varr! KISSY FACE.)

I believe Jamie laughed at this a fair bit.

Page 13-14

I considered various captions for Laura here, but no matter what they did, they blurred the line between her abortion and her abandoned godhood. As such, the relative silence was considered more effective.

13-14-15-16

A lot is packed into this space. In an ideal world, I'd like another page for it, to extend Beth's choice to shoot or not, but it's all there.

Key delineations here: obvious restatement of the 10 days since she's been a god, to ensure it's clear. “Panel 3”; Beth never knowing (nor caring) where Laura has just been; Robin actually being human; Laura's privacy being respected; the “I've got more imminent problems” to separate her being shot from this; most importantly, Laura never knowing that this decision was important to Minerva, and never letting Minerva's mistaken beliefs impact her decision. Laura' abortion is her choice and doesn't need a bunch of mythic stuff attached to it for her.

The “shame” line resonates with another, more optimistic, line on the first page of Young Avengers. This speaks to the books, and the choices and the attached psychology.

Page 17

Oddly, the “no cameras in the bathroom” information we've set up allows this scene. Minerva isn't someone who would vocalise much if someone could have hear. You can imagine her looking in each booth to see if someone's around. I did consider moving to captions for a page, but Minerva getting captions for this one event seemed aesthetically off.

Page 18

Self-evident interstitial, and so long a bit of text I can hear designers wincing.

Page 19-20

Earliest scene so far in WicDiv. I did consider having it set after the murder, with the grandson coming back to hear her last words, but the “alive-dead-alive-dead-alive-dead” was getting a bit silly. A quietly magical breakfast conversation seemed the way to go.

I think the bleakest and darkly funniest thing in the issue is the “Eventually, we'll learn. It may take a thousand years, but someone will figure it out.” Oh, you total optimist, you.

I do like the mood of the colouring for this.

Okay – the key structural bit for safety-proofing this plot? The absolute minimisation of the gap between discovering the fourth rule, discovering Laura has had an abortion and then discovering that the fourth rule is just a lie. The longer it hangs, the more it is letting people live with an idea we find reprehensible. The thing I knew when starting this arc is all of this had to happen inside the same issue – the problem there being, that it also had to be foreshadowed enough to not come out of nowhere. And if you foreshadow too heavily, it's as same as saying “this is where it's going”.

Anyway – that wrapped up, we move towards the end...

Page 21-22-23-24-25

The continuation of last issue's end. Laura and her captions.

Some perfect McKelvie expressions, and some key beats. Like, this also adds shade to last issue – I forget if I mentioned that one of the key beats of the series (Laura rejecting her godhood) being dramatised by her swapping a SIM card seems absolutely key to where we are.

Two key expressions – the glance to camera with “I'm not a god” and “So what? So do you.” I could marry Jamie for these.

Matt working the blacks and the ochres here is fascinating.

Thought experiment: originally the layout on page 21 had two captions in panel 3 and two in panel 4. I moved the first from panel 4 to panel 3. Why? A single caption always has more weight in a given space. Having two in each was effectively giving no extra weight to any individual caption. Instead, three in one makes that the conversational beat and the one over the spiral-staircase means the latter just hangs there.

(In short: less dialogue/caption in any space makes the line more important. SPACE=MEANING is what I've been saying all along, usually with panel size. As in, “bigger panels read as more important.” But the same sort of thinking applies to lettering in terms of the space it is allowed to “control.”)

End of page 21 – a final restating of the two events being separate. Laura choosing to have an abortion is something she decided when starting to put her life back together. It's not a cause of her stopping being a god – if anything, it's something that's resulted from her new state of mind.

Lots in terms of mode in 22, but I love how Jamie has handled the nudity in the second panel. As in, she's a girl changing for bed, but she's never presented as something to be objectified, to looked at. Laura is always someone we're meant to be. We are meant to inhabit her, and her us.

The panel at the start of 23 is the extra panel we squeezed in. One panel for this amount of extra material, leading to the better reveal seemed a good choice.

Did I mention I lost a line I really liked last issue? The “At long last, I know what I'm not” was originally “I know what I am/and I know what I'm not.” Which is pretty and elegant, but also confusing with this ending – the “what I am” is “not a god” and what I'm not” is “a god”. Prettiness only goes so far, especially as it's not as if Laura's going to stop and explain that.

Lots of key bits of dialogue in these pages, obviously. “I distrust anyone who tells me who I am. Especially if I agree” and all that.

Obviously in storytelling choices, this is reprising, in an inverted way, the end of The Faust Act. Instead of a flash of light, fading into darkness, darkness emerging from light. Also, really strong choice of expression in that final panel.

Referencing ‘Dancing In the Dark’. Springsteen's is obviously great, but I'm thinking of the Downtown Boys' cover which is much closer to where WicDiv is coming from.

I choke up at all this scene. Been a long way to get here, Laura. Onwards.

The trade collection for Mothering Invention is out in October. We have two Specials before next arc, WicDiv: 1373 (out at the end of September) and WicDiv: The Funnies (out in November.)

We're then back in December, where we begin our final arc.

It's called – “Okay”. Including the quotation marks. Yes, we're going out on another Bowie reference.

Thanks for reading.

#WicDiv #the wicked and the divine #writer notes

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preserving-ferretbrain · 6 years ago

Text

Nildungsroman

by Dan H

Saturday, 27 September 2008

Dan finally identifies something that has been bugging him.~

I've always had a problem with Modern Fantasy. Not in the sense of "published within the last five years" (although there is also that) but in the sense of "set in the real world, only with magic and shit, which most people don't know about". Possibly that's Urban Fantasy.

This whole thing struck me while I was reading Cassandra Cla(i)re's City of Bones, which funnily enough seems to have a lot of traits in common with a certain other modern fantasy series that the author may or may not have heard of, and which I may or may not have said a few things about in the past, so these comments are slightly biased towards those two august tales, but I'll also be talking about other elements of the Geek Canon, including Buffy, Tolkein and Star Wars.

As ever, contains spoilers.

The Hero's Journey: Ur Doin It Rong

For what it's worth, I'm not actually a big fan of Joseph Campbell. I think the observation that lots of different myths have lots of things in common rates somewhere between "dog bites man" and "Bishop of Rome Espouses Nicene Creed" on the duh-o-meter. On the other hand, the Hero With A Thousand Faces One Of Which Is Luke Skywalker does nicely identify a basic structure which can, at the very least, make sure that a mythically-slanted story doesn't suck donkey balls.

Very broadly, the Hero's Journey has three stages: the departure, the initiation, and the return. The hero starts out as Joe Ordinary (or possibly as Joe Destiny), then goes off into the Crazy World of Magic Shit, then comes back a better and more complete man. Along the way he has to get eaten by a whale and meet a goddess, but that's basically the deal (any inaccuracies can be attributed to my not actually having read The Hero With A Thousand Faces and thus getting most of my information from Wikipedia).

Star Wars, as you probably already know, was based very, very, very (very, very, very) closely on the classic Campbellian journey (right down to including the trash compactor scene pretty much entirely to tick the "hero goes underground and bad shit happens" box). Early season Buffy actually holds fairly closely to the model as well, both in terms of its overall arc (at least in seasons 1-5) and the structure of individual episodes. An episode of Buffy usually opens with our heroine facing a Typical Teenage Problem, then getting drawn into a supernatural event which allowed her, at the end, to resolve her Real Life problem as well as lay the smackdown on some vampires. As I've argued before on Ferretbrain, I think Buffy lost its way around the point it stopped bringing everything back to the real world.

And that, in a roundabout way, is what I think is wrong with Modern Fantasy. If you blinked you might have missed it, so I'll say it again more explicitly. A lot of Modern Fantasy seems to be at least loosely based on the Hero's Journey, and while it does the departure and the initiation really well, it seems to write the whole "return" bit off as a waste of time. Modern heroes leave their home and family, descend into the underworld, and bloody well stay there.

Now I admit, part of this is going to be structure. In a TV series about fighting vampires (for example), you'll always get to the point where you can't view "going out to fight some vampires" as anything but routine, and you can only escalate so far before you have to play the "real life is the greatest battle" card or the "fighting the very essence evil itself" card (neither of which worked). On the other hand, part of it seems to be an issue with people actually missing the point of the Hero's Journey. I'm going to talk about both these phenomena, because I like to hear myself talk.

Sunnydalization: Myth Invades Reality

If, like me, you wasted your entire undergraduacy watching Buffy videos, and can quote pretty much the entire seven series end to end, including the "grr-arg" bits with the mutant enemy logo, you'll probably remember the bit in Prophecy Girl where Willow finds two dead bodies in the student lounge in Sunnydale High and, despite having seen at least a corpse a week for the past series, gets totally freaked out. When challenged about it, she says:

"I'm not okay. I knew those guys. I go to that room every day. And when I walked in there, it... it wasn't our world anymore. They made it theirs.

And at that point, Buffy changed subtly but irrevocably. Prior to that scene, Sunnydale was the real world, and the Hellmouth was the place where the monsters were. Every week, Buffy would battle the legions of hell, and every week she would come out and go to class and we would see exactly what she was fighting to protect. We'd see Jonathan and Cordelia and Harmony and the rest, all going on with their totally normal lives, totally unaware that little Miss Summers had been saving their collective assi.

After that moment, though, it all changed. Things got bigger and scarier, and the Demons didn't go back into their box. Buffy may have defeated the Master at the end of Season 1, but she failed to defeat the Hellmouth, and as the seasons progressed the line between the "reality" of Sunnydale and the Underworld of the Hellmouth became more and more blurred. In season three we are told that the mayor "built this town for demons to feed on" and by the end of season seven the two are so inextricably linked that the final closing of the Hellmouth actually destroys the town.

As I said above, I ultimately think this is an inevitable effect in a long running series. The first time a vampire attacks somebody on school grounds it's scary. The twelfth you just start to wonder why the school is still open. The Sunnydale body count became something of a running joke ("if we train hard, keep focus, and don't have so many mysterious deaths, Sunnydale is gonna rule") but while it was funny it also began to undermine the point of the show. What started out as a nice little town threatened by a supernatural enemy became itself a seat of magical corruption. By the end of series seven there is literally nobody normal left in Sunnydale, they've all evacuated because of the effects of the Hellmouth (even the more sympathetic demons get out of town).

What this means is that, by the end of the series, Buffy has literally nothing left worth fighting for, except possibly Joss Whedon's ropey feminist doctrine. The later series of Buffy fall flat because, as Sunnydale itself becomes a place of evil, the Slayer loses all contact with the real world.

Mugglism: The Family Romance

Ultimately, though, I can forgive Buffy for its structural flaws. What I have more trouble with is the peculiar tendency in a lot of Modern/Urban Fantasy to treat the Fantasy World as just flat-out better than reality.

The chronic offender in this case is, of course, the Wizarding World of the Harry Potter series. Harry is rescued from the dull, dreary (and psychotically abusive) Dursleys, the "biggest load of Muggles" Hagrid has ever seen. He is then taken away into the wonderful Wizarding world where everything is fabulous and magical. He then discovers that he is a figure of the utmost importance in said world, and people either treat him with awe or loathing, both of which he finds equally affirming, while the infallibly wise guardian of his new world assures him that he really is all that and a bag of chips. Meanwhile the author informs us in interviews that everything in the Wizarding world is indeed superior to everything in the real world.

Oh, and just to forestall the inevitable "but the Wizarding world is really dangerous" apologia, there are two things to say about that. Firstly, until Rowling writes a scene that actually reminds me of the Holocaust, instead of just vaguely alluding to people making Nazi salutes, real life has Rowling licked when it comes to being dark, man. Secondly, horrors of actual, non-school-based wars aside, "like the real world but nastier" is yet another way of saying "like the real world but better". I'm going to hark right back to my third ever Ferretbrain article here and say that one of the things that really impressed me about Pan's Labyrinth was the fact that the really scary thing in it was not the Faun, or the Labyrinth, or the dude with the eyes in his hands, but the brutal mass-murdering fascist.

Anyway, where was I. Oh yes. The "fantasy is better than reality" style of Urban Fantasy usually winds up being a version of the (Freudian, and therefore almost certainly no longer reputable) idea of the Family Romance. The belief, common in young children, that their parents aren't their real parents, and they're actually something different and special. Of course most of us then grow up and realise that our parents are pretty okay people, and that being a Magical Princess probably wouldn't be that great, and actually there's some pretty radical stuff in the real world which we could be getting on with (like writing for webzines or playing World of Warcraft).

A mythical journey in which the Hero leaves the real world and then never comes back is always going to seem, to me (and therefore to anybody who matters), to be fundamentally juvenile.

Pan's Labyrinth would have been completely meaningless if Ofelia did not ultimately end up confronting Vidal (albeit hopelessly), and the Lord of the Rings loses a lot of its impact if the Hobbits don't go back to the shire. Harry Potter may save the Wizarding World, but muggles like me have no reason to care about that. Stories like the Potter series work absolutely fine, as long as you're still labouring under the illusions that you're a beautiful unique snowflake, and the only people that matter are you and the few others you're willing to accept as equally special. The moment you - not to put too fine a point on it - grow the fuck up, and realise that everybody else (yes even the teachers at your school, yes even your parents, yes even the kids who are mean to you) are real people with their own lives and ideals, you have to let go of the belief that your secret world is the most important one.

I've not yet finished City of Bones, much less the whole "Mortal Instruments" series, but it's shaping up to go the same way as potter: a long story about somebody totally failing to grow up.

In Conclusion: Why Americans Damned Well Should Be Afraid of Dragons

Roleplayers in the audience will probably know that White Wolf Game Studio used to publish, as part of their risibly-entitled World of Darkness line a game called Changeling the Dreaming. It was a game about, like, the loss of innocence and the death of dreams, man. Players took on the role of Changelings, fairy spirits in human bodies, who were slowly losing their beautiful-unique-snowflakeness under the crushing "Banality" of the modern world.

As games went, it was alright, it fetishised childhood in a slightly iffy way, but otherwise was decent Guns and Wizards Urban Fantasy fare. What bugged me about it, though, was the way it essentially divided everything in the world into "Banal" (soul destroying and imagination crushing) and "Glamorous" (drawing on the power of the Dreaming, the wellspring of human imagination). In particular, what bugged me about it was that it assumed that "imagination" was associated purely with the trappings of medieval fantasy. An artist who paints grim cityscapes and urban decay is Banal, an artist who paints forests full of dancing elves is Glamorous.

Who Wants to be a Millionaire is Banal wish-fulfillment tapping into people's desire to get something for nothing. The hundred or so fairy stories about farmer's sons who get fantastically rich because of a stroke of good fortune are totally inspiring and bring out the best in humanity.

In her article Why are Americans Afraid of Dragons? Ursula le Guin observes (perhaps correctly) that the Fantasy genre is looked down upon in America, and that this is perhaps indicative of a society too obsessed with industry, productivity and profit, and distrustful of the imagination. Fiction in general, and fantasy in particular, encourages the reader to stop thinking about how they can best make a million bucks before they're forty and start thinking about any one of the million other things they could be doing. As Le Guin puts it:

"Fantasy is true, of course. It isn't factual, but it is true. Children know that. Adults know it too, and that is precisely why many of them are afraid of fantasy. They know that its truth challenges, even threatens, all that is false, all that is phony, unnecessary, and trivial... They are afraid of dragons, because they are afraid of freedom."

Of course the important thing to remember about this particular essay is that Le Guin is using "dragons" and "fantasy" as a shorthand for "fiction in general", and you could the mistrust of Fantasy in the twentieth century with the mistrust of the novel in the nineteenth. A lot of fantasy readers (and, by extension, some fantasy writers) go further. Like Changeling they come to view "elves and dragons and shit" as being synonymous with imagination, and to view imagination as the only virtue required in humanity, instead of as part of a healthy, well rounded personality.

Sensible proponents of Fantasy argue that it is perfectly okay to like dragons and wizards, and that the presence of fantasy elements does not make a story frivolous. Less sensible proponents of fantasy seem to want to argue that it is perfectly okay to like nothing except dragons and wizards, and that fantasy elements make a story more meaningful by their mere inclusion. This is particularly common in fandom and geekdom, where people are massively more inclined to focus on the details of a particular setting (elves, vampires, wizards) than on the actual contents of the narrative (destruction of rural England, coming-of-age in small town America, why suicide is totally heroic).

Obviously, I don't want a return to the nineteenth century, I don't want a world where nobody reads fiction, or where it isn't considered perfectly okay to pick up the odd bit of Laurel K Hamilton if you feel like something light and pulpy, but I am deeply concerned about a Fantasy genre that is coming to view fantasy as an end in itself. That's fine if you're aspiring to nothing more than light holiday reading, but a lot of fantasy (even, or perhaps I should say especially children's fantasy) takes itself very seriously, and it's ludicrous to try to deal with "real" issues in something that's totally divorced from the real world. You can't show us the reality of war in a world where everybody acts like an overgrown five-year-old and people only die when the author is trying to make a point.

Fantasy is not factual, and because it is not factual it must remain true, and the truth is that the real world matters, and that real people are amazing, and a Hero who doesn't return is no hero at all.

Themes:

J.K. Rowling, Books, TV & Movies, Sci-fi / Fantasy, Whedonverse

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Arthur B

at 15:31 on 2008-09-27I'm reminded a little, in fact, of Terry Gilliam's

Tideland

, which kind-of repudiates the fantasy-as-an-end-in-itself stance he took in some of his earlier films: in that one you have plenty of people who use fantasy as a means of escaping from the world around them, with the result that their lives are completely stagnant and horrible, and you've got the protagonist who uses fantasy to endure the world around her whilst still progressing through it, so she comes out the other end more-or-less unscathed and with a potential adoptive mum to boot.

You've glossed over an aspect of the Hero's Journey a little, which is that when the Hero returns to the everyday world he isn't just a fuller and more complete man, he actually enriches the everyday world by the fact that he's gone on this journey in the first place.

Lord of the Rings

is an exceptionally good example of this; not only are the Hobbits better people for having gone to fight Sauron, but when they get back they solve the Shire's problems and then (for the most part) become its primary movers and shakers for the next generation. Arguably, part of the problem with the way Buffy developed was that whilst Buffy's own real life problems were often solved by her adventures, she didn't so much enrich the community by her adventures so much as prolong the death throes of the status quo: things gradually get worse, and worse, and worse in Sunnydale until it all goes to shit. Harry Potter's magical studies not only have no beneficial effects for his community in the mundane world, he's actually legally prevented from letting that happen.

I think the problem with Hero's Journey type narratives in fantasy set in the modern day is that "it's the modern day, but with vampires" seems far too close to the real world, if you see what I mean. Back in the day it was sufficient for the hero to walk a long long long way away and people could accept that "oh, OK, way over there is the land of magic and adventure". The problem with the likes of Buffy and Potter is that the land of magic and adventure is

right on their doorstep

, and this actually makes the return to the real world slightly problematic; because the vampires and werewolves and death eaters are in such close proximity (physically and in terms of always getting in each other's face), you'd expect the hero to be concerned about them all the time. The reason

Narnia

does the Hero's Journey so well is precisely because Narnia is a mythic otherworld which it's non-trivial to get to, and I would argue that that's a requirement for any mythic otherworld in a Hero's Journey-based story: if you can get to the Hellmouth by walking down the street then that's not so much a Hero's Journey as a Hero's Morning Jog.

I suspect the answer is to use a different myth for modern-day fantasy.

Supernatural

seems to get a lot of mileage (no pun intended) out of the old Lone Ranger/Fugitive "Eternal Wanderer" story (which has the advantage that it's a lot easier to adapt to television, because you can spin it out for as long as you damn well like, whereas the Hero's Journey pretty much demands an end point).

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Andy G

at 20:52 on 2008-10-05Great article! That really put the finger on something that had been bugging me, except actually I hadn't realised it had been bugging me until I read the article. I was just wondering how you think Star Wars would fit into the pattern of the Hero's return, as you'd given that as an example of one closely written to the pattern, but it doesn't seem as clear-cut an example as the LotR or others where the magical world/magical powers are left behind?

Possibly a stupid question as you have clearly read a lot of stuff ABOUT fantasy (where on earth do you find it? I mean I do like to read fantasy, but I can barely ever find anything interesting written about it - except on Ferretbrain, of course) but have you read On Fairy Stories by Tolkien? It covers a lot of the themes from above, and it's one of my favourite essays with some really well-made points.

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Arthur B

at 21:15 on 2008-10-05As far as I can tell, the supposed precise mapping of

Star Wars

to the Hero's Journey is a bit ropey, and came about mainly because John Campbell was all "Hey,

Star Wars

fits the Hero's Journey perfectly" and George Lucas said "Oh... really? I mean, yes. Yes it does."

So working out where all the various bits and pieces fit in is sometimes tricky, but I think the Hero's Return is very much there, although it's pretty much described in a single scene - it's the bit at the end where they're all getting their medals and all the rebel forces cheer them. Having ventured into the depths of the Death Star's chasm and faced the dark lord, Luke emerges victorious and the community (said community being the rebellion) is enriched for it. That's all you really need for the Hero's Return - tenuous, I know, but so's the entire Hero's Journey idea to begin with.

(The end of Return of the Jedi is interesting in this light, actually - the community is having a big party, but Luke isn't really part of it - he's off at the edge, burning his father's body and communing with ghosts, his experiences finally alienating him from his community because he's endured so many things that have no parallel in the common experience of the war - hundreds of people can claim they were involved in the attack on Death Star II, for example, but only Luke actually saw Darth Vader's true face.)

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Dan H

at 16:29 on 2008-10-06

I've not read it actually (I'm far less well read than I pretend to be, I just shout my opinions loudly and hope people assume I've done some research).

As for Star Wars, the "real world" if you want to call it that in the SW saga is (IMO) the Rebellion, the big deal is that while Luke goes off and learns from Jedi Masters and confronts Darth Vader, it's the regular guys in the guns-and-bombs shooting war that he comes back to. Our Esteemed Editor also points out that Luke's return to Han and Leia is a quite literal return to family at the end of the series.

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Sister Magpie

at 20:38 on 2008-10-30Great article! I've been catching up and had just read your review where you asked why someone would have to add fantasy to New York City to find a sense of wonder--quoting that paragraph that's a beautiful image strangely undermined by the addition of werewolves, fairies, vampires and mermaids. (Central Park, Chinatown, the Hudson River are all far more interesting.)

I've always liked "our world, but with magic" in terms of books starting in our world rather than a totally different secondary world, but I totally agree with this--because as you say, setting something in our world and adding magic doesn't have to mean that our world is the world that sucks or can't hold it's own. A sense of home is always present in LOTR and that makes the Shire stand up as just as wonderful as any magical place.

It reminds me of the book Hatchet that I had to read a couple years ago for a thing I was doing on YA books. I have only ever read that book, but there are several in the series. It's not fantasy, it's about a boy who survives a plane crash and must survive alone in the Canadian wilderness. But in the end he's rescued and there's other books, some of which follow a "what if?" scenario where he never leaves the woods. What struck me about the synopses of the later books was that the main character pretty much wound up going off to live in the forest. He didn't like civilization any more and preferred his solitary life.

The idea seemed to be that the author enjoyed the more "real" life experience of fighting for your survival, hunting your own food etc. But I thought it made the whole series a failure by not realizing that the point of a Vision Quest is to find out how you can help your community. Deciding to be a hermit--a fine choice in other contexts--is here just selfish and avoiding the responsibilities of being an adult in the community.

It's just important to make the distinction between this really being a flaw in Urban fantasy and it being just something urban fantasists can use it for.

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Dan H

at 15:25 on 2008-11-17Hiya, sorry it took me so long to reply (this just in, doing NaNo is

hard

). Thought I'd clarify one particular point:

It's just important to make the distinction between this really being a flaw in Urban fantasy and it being just something urban fantasists can use it for.

Oh absolutely. By "a flaw in Urban Fantasy" I basically meant it in the specific, subjective sense (as in "this is something I consider to be a flaw in the works of urban fantasy which I have personally read") not a fundamental weakness of the genre.

I find it particularly infuriating since so much Urban Fantasy is either targeted at children or "young adults" and if there's one thing that young adults *don't* need to be told, it's that being an adult is for losers.

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Sonia Mitchell

at 01:52 on 2009-06-25Once again I know this is old, but I hadn't read any Campbell when you wrote this. I'm rehashing now I've read enough of

Hero With a Thousand Faces

to comment. Not all of it, I have to add (psychology texts bore me) but a fair amount (I'm also cribbing the exact terms from

here

because it's been a few months since I touched the book).

And while I agree with the points you make, Dan, I don't think HWATF backs them up. It's not a check-list of ingredients for a story, but a variety of factors of which some (not all) can be found in a given hero's journey. Refusing to return

a valid stage of the journey, even if it makes for an unsatisfying narrative. I agree that it marks Harry out as an immature hero, just as I think it does Achilles and the Sandman and the Pevensies (who never intended to return home in TLTW&TW). For most of us there does come that point where we stop thinking Dorothy's mad for wanting to go back to Kansas (we grow the fuck up, as you so rightly say), but nevertheless according to Campbell heroes who don't return are still heroes.

Suicide

can

be 'totally heroic' in the classical model Campbell's following, which isn't using heroes as role models. Working in the chivalric model, which I think maybe you are, naturally it isn't. And Harry Potter seems to strongly invite one to take the chivalric viewpoint, right up to telling us how 'gallant' Harry is for protecting a(n extremely competent) woman with an unforgivable curse. If nothing else, the cosmetic details (suits of armour, portraits of damsels, Arthurian treasures and constant references to Merlin) are knightly not classical, and invite one to take a certain perspective (there might be an article in this, actually...).

As far as I can tell, the supposed precise mapping of Star Wars to the Hero's Journey is a bit ropey, and came about mainly because John Campbell was all "Hey, Star Wars fits the Hero's Journey perfectly" and George Lucas said "Oh... really? I mean, yes. Yes it does."

Which I'd say is the right way to do things - treating. HWATF as a tool for analysis rather than an instruction manual on how to write fiction. I think consciously ticking off the elements of the hero's journey would make for a rather boring (not to mention contradictory) story, since the natural temptation would be to take them far too literally. I'll take tenuous any day :-)

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http://ruderetum.blogspot.com/

at 16:20 on 2009-09-10Great article and it immediately reminded me of Guy Gavriel Kay's Fionavar trapesty, which is a bit narnian in its basic plot, has some slight elements of urban fantasy and I thin generally is a surprisingly awesome take on what seems on the surfce to be an awfully cliched fantasy world. Commenting on heroic suicides, I think this one has one brilliantly haunting example and a few others might qualify as well.

But really made me recollec this is the development of Dave, who is kind of an average guy compared to the rest of the cast and doesn't get any cool pwers or even the girl or anything. But in a very awesome ending, without any sense of needless fanfare, you know that he'll return back to the real world and things will be okay.

I won't explain more because I'd hate to spoil it for any one and I guess it would be a bit tedious.

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#Ferretbrain #Harry Potter #J.K. Rowling #Buffy the Vampire Slayer #Ursula K. Le Guin #The Mortal Instruments #Cassandra Clare

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thermocoil-boilmaster · 7 years ago

Note

Nero and Cid for ask about a character

Excellent choices! Love these guys to pieces.

I’m gonna cut it here because of Patch 4.2 spoilers below! Please read on!

Nero:

-How I feel about this characterI dunno, I just like him. I LIIIIIIIIKE him. Really really like him. He’s a lot of fun to explore and write. He has this weird magnetic quality about him. He is compelling and interesting. But full disclaimer: I’m kinda drawn to characters like that anyway—you know, absolute dingbats! Though we were talking about him on Discord the other day and we kinda arrived at several conclusions:

Nero is not as bad a person as he thinks he is

Nero is not even as bad a person as he wants people to think he is

When he tells his coworkers he’s going out for a “smoke break”, he really just sits out alone on the loading dock with Cid’s fat cat and occasionally feeds her Cid’s lunch

It’s all trivial stuff. The guy breaks my heart, but that’s why I like him.

-All the people I ship romantically with this characterMehhhh. Y’all know Swilly doesn’t really do ships (well, Swilly rarely does ships, rarely!). I’ll read ships and say “hey, nice job!”. I just have no real opinions on shipping him one way or another. It’s all good. I personally do not ship him with anyone, that’s just me! Like Cid, he’s a devoted One Man Guy in Swillcanon. Incidentally, I don’t believe I have ever seen any other partners for him besides Cid and maybe other people’s OCs…

-My non-romantic OTP for this characterCID. Honestly, who else? Jessie, maybe—they seem like they are on the same wavelength in some respects and might even hit it off (as buddies/partners in crime) if given half the chance. But I feel like Cid and Nero are perhaps the only ones left in their respective worlds who can understand each other on a certain level. Also, didn’t you notice that pretty huge, but quite subtle bit of character development during the climax of the Sigmascape plot, when Nero basically passed the baton to Cid and said “Knock ‘em dead, champ”…?

-My unpopular opinion about this characterUh… I don’t know! I kinda get the impression sometimes that most of my opinions on him are generally unpopular. I don’t know if he is well-liked in the fandom in general…

-One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon.Well, in Perfect World, I want him to join the Ironworks at the end of Sigmascape (and in Perfect World, he wears the uniform because it’d be a laugh). Regular employment in a supportive (and well-supervised) environment would be a positive thing for him. If that doesn’t happen, AT THE VERY LEAST, I am begging, begging, begging that the writers do not intend to throw all of his progress and development into the garbage and somehow pull another whoopsiedoodles but he was really working against you this whole time!! Lol u so stupid “plot twist”. I cannot tolerate a story that refuses to let its characters grow, out of some bizarre sense of absolute morality. Here, it would be tiresome, inane, insulting and definitely cause for me to permanently end my involvement with the game.

Hmm. That was a little intense. Maybe that can count as my unpopular opinion?

Cid:

-How I feel about this characterCid is a gentleman and a gentle man. But he also has a lot of hidden qualities about him that make him so damn compelling. There is a darkness, even an intense anger in there that is wonderful to explore (as a writer). He has every right to be angry, of course. And I think sometimes, maybe just like Nero, maybe just a little bit, Cid also presents a certain face to the world. Perhaps because he feels locked into a persona that somebody else (or just Eorzea’s wont towards hero worship in general) has crafted for him.

Gosh, I’m getting fic ideas! Okay, let’s move on!

-All the people I ship romantically with this characterSee Nero’s entry. I’m just not really a big shipper. I’m lousy at writing romances beyond the fluffiest of fluff or ABSOLUTE DOWNERS. It’s not my thing, though I don’t really care if people wanna ship Cid with other characters. If it’s a good story and it works, why not?

-My non-romantic OTP for this characterAlso see Nero’s entry. These two, I swear. What a great duo they make. Not just for the comedy, but they challenge each other in ways that see them both grow and that is a fantastic thing. This is one reason why I hope Nero stays on as badly as I do—not just for Nero, but for Cid too. They need each other. Like Rimmer and Lister in Red Dwarf, in his own weird way, Nero keeps Cid sane.

-My unpopular opinion about this characterProbably everything I wrote above? I dunno. I’m sorry to admit this, but Cid does occasionally need a wee kick in the pants sometimes. Hey, we all do! Nobody’s perfect! Come on Cid, throw Jessie a bone here!

-One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon.I’d actually love to see Cid exploring, and perhaps attempting to reconcile with elements of his past a little more (particularly with Gaius/Midas…and do we know anything about his mother?). I do hope we get to learn more details about his family life and his time in the Academy. I feel like it would go a long way towards explaining the complicated man he is today.

#assassin-nya #Teatime in Eorzea #FFXIV #thank you so much for sending this!!#you know i love 'em

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man-i-dont-know · 7 years ago

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BNHA Chapter 167: Thoughts and Spoilers (emphasis on spoilers)

Well, I am on time for once, mainly cause I really want to talk about this chapter. So, let’s get into it. ((Fair warning, this one is long. Half way down is about where the important thing is discussed, it starts with a “...”))

Bakugou is clean up crew for the ice slide, he’s pissed but he likes to blow things up. The kids also help with the clean up and the tear is so thankful and promises to teach them well. Todoroki is there making sure kids are a safe distance from Bakugou while he is on demolition duty. The kids and high schoolers part on a positive note, promising to be friends, apologizing for taking stuff, and possibly agreeing to take up a hero role in the future (that kid who Todoroki said had a good quirk for rescue purposes). All the high schoolers leave the building some time later, which i was disappointed by, apparently this was just a lecture before the make up exam? I was under the impression that this was the actual exam... oops. Anyway they leave and run into a group of people outside.

All Might, Present Mic, Endeavor, Meat Grinder and Meat Grinder’s teacher are all talking. It seems that the two schools wish to work together more closely due to the League of Villains sudden advances on both schools. Endeavor tries to act like a father to Todoroki, and Todoroki dodges a head pat (I know it sounds like he is a toddler, but in this situation it hardly seems immature). Endeavor says that he is proud of Todoroki, which provokes a look of shock, or at least that is what it seems like. Anger is probably a better word. Here is what I think though, since the emotion is hard to pin down immediately, it is probably meant to be confusing, or a mix of emotions. Which makes sense, Todoroki has never once seen his father be supportive in a way that hasn’t been fulled by ambition or hate. Endeavor then goes farther and says that he will be a hero that will make Todoroki proud of him. It is a step. I believe that there should have been other things that he should have talked about or apologized for first, but if Endeavor went straight to the heart-felt apology right off the bat, then that would have been terrible and unconvincing character development. I don’t know how I want his character to develop, but I am looking forward to whatever it is.

Todoroki doesn’t seem impressed by what his father said, which makes sense. Then possibly my favorite reaction panels came up: Inasa watched all of this, punched himself, hard, and went straight back to his straight-face, all this has Camie in the background looking on with concern. I like this little add in cause right after, Inasa goes up to Endeavor, the only hero he has ever hated and says that he will root for him to improve himself. I love this cause it shows both Endeavor and Inasa are going to grow as individuals (which is weird to say an adult will grow as an individual, but people never really stop growing, maturing, or gaining wisdom). This is definitely a reoccurring theme throughout the series, growth. Learning from mistakes and making the best of the opportunities that are given to you. I really love that theme.

While I did just say I like that theme a lot, when everyone parted ways, Todoroki looked away from Endeavor smiling, and that doesn’t sit too well with me. I suppose the main reason is that Todoroki’s trauma probably relates to a lot of different readers, and I don’t particularly want to see Endeavor become nice and Todoroki forgive him while all those readers either lose sympathy/empathy or someone they can relate to. I also don’t like it because I would think it would take much longer for Todoroki to come to terms with everything, but instead he is showing signs of accepting already (that one smile). However, personally, I want to see them both grow, and to back up my argument I say this, it would have to be a whole family thing to do it. Todoroki was the one singled out by his father, his siblings were mostly ignored, which is painful in its own way (if the father was a good guy), so in the end, forgiveness would rely on Todoroki and his mother. The mother seems even less likely to forgive, but we don’t know her personality at all beyond her... mental break... I suppose you could call it, and that sure as heck is not her whole personality. I will be able to better judge where everyone’s relationship in that family if I got to see some conversation between Todoroki and his mother, along with the siblings (ignoring the Dabi = Todoroki theory, cause Dabi might not be an abusive family member but he is a mass murderer/arsonist and in a family full of heroes, that is probably frowned upon by all members of the family).

We then see some repercussion of the last arc, Sir Nighteye had his funeral, Nighteye’s office was taken over by Centipede, the internship was suspended and Centipede and the other sidekicks are awaiting Mirio’s return. Eri has also woken up and her fever has gone down, her horn that seems to be the center of her quirk has shrunk and is little more than an adorable little thing that makes Eri that much more endearing. Unfortunately her mental state is still considered unstable, so Deku and the others haven’t had a chance to see her again, which suuuuucks big time. I want them to all meet and be happy. Is that too much to ask? Probably. But I will await that day to eventually come. And finally, we see them in an actually class setting (which is something that has always thrown me, lots of anime and manga take place in class rooms but I have never seen anyone actually doing classwork, with the exception of Light from Death Note in episode 1). Well they are learning Calculus it looks like, Kaminari is straight up dead (understandable), Jirou and Tokoyami seem lost but have good poker faces for the teacher, Momo is diligently working and Deku is feverishly working, even though he eventually gets it wrong (relatable). And even though Mineta is a little gremlin, his interaction with Deku after he got the question wrong was strangely close and seemed totally normal, like “hey man don’t worry about it.” Doesn’t change the fact that he is a gremlin though...

... Then the beginning of the true reason I wanted to write this one out. Aoyama appears out of nowhere during the break and starts feeding Deku cheese. The sheer effort put into the two panels where Aoyama feeds Deku is astonishing, as well as the closeness of these two dudes was... tense. The whole act felt intimate and Deku was blind-sided by this. Aoyama’s comedic timing is fantastic too. He has a whole panel to himself where he is just chewing on cheese, another panel of him trying to offer more cheese and a third whole panel of him just swallowing cheese, never once did he blink. Truly perfect timing and spacing. Then, just to be extra, he sets up his lunch, first with a tablecloth over his desk, then a wine glass, plate, knife and fork (does he carry those in his school bag?), and his wine glass is filled with juice more likely than not. So, ultimately, he is 110% extra.I’m not done there though. The narrator (future Deku) comes in and says that he never could understand Aoyama, and that his true colors would soon show. “True colors? What could that mean?” Well I am glad you asked! It means that in the last couple panels of the chapter, Aoyama is literally standing outside Deku’s window at night (since before 1 am) watching him do homework and watching him sleep. There are a couple things that are absolutely horrifying with this picture: Aoyama’s posture is so that he is leaned up against the window, palm flat against the glass, he is staring down at Deku while he is in bed, his facial expression is the same as always (meaning a tight smile), and he has some wacky bootcut type pants that flare way out at the bottom below the knee. So.... what the hell? Where did this come from? Where is the explanation? Do I want an explanation?

Here is how I see it, there could be three things happening here, I will list them in from most understandable to least understandable. 1.) That is actually Toga, which would explain why she feed him earlier and is watching him so closely, she wants to as close to him as humanly possible since she “fell in love” with him, and it also makes sense that the League of Villains wants to keep a close eye on him. 2.) Aoyama is the traitor, so he is watching Deku for the purpose getting information for the League. 3.) He is... just... “deviant.” Somehow got into U.A. so that he could do the same thing Mineta is doing, to get close the attractive people. The problem with why this is so shocking is that the feeding and the watching at night are intimate and stalkerish actions respectively, which hasn’t really been talked about so far. Abuse, extreme violence, careless violence, and even arousal/excitement from violence (Toga/Muscular) have all been discussed, but crimes of a seemingly sexual nature is particularly uncomfortable to consider especially when most of the cast are great, pure-hearted high schoolers. Heck, Deku has nearly fainted from dealing with Mei, how would he react knowing that someone is watching him while he sleeps with possibly indecent intentions? All of what I just said was about option 3, I won’t go into option one because that one is the most understandable of the three, so I will just discuss option 2.

He is the traitor. If this is the case, then it was/is brilliantly executed. Aoyama’s personality is so over the top all the time that it would probably be easier to describe it as someone role playing as a stereotypical French person. Since his whole persona seems to be a character, it is so abstract that it is hard to understand even if you spent a lot of time with him, which he hasn’t with anyone. Plus his natural dramatics would make it easy to lie, since dramatic lying would look the same as dramatic truth telling. If that is confusing imagine this: “hey did you do the homework?” “!!!! Oh Non!!!! I started to do so!!!! Until I saw a stain my suit or armor!!!! I simply had to polish the suit!!! It would not be nearly SpArKlY enough had I left it!!! My ImAgE!!!!” “... ok dude.” Obviously an exaggeration, but that is the gist, if he is normally like that than how could anyone tell if he was lying? Then there is the fact about his quirk.

A while ago (I forget which post), I talked about who the traitor could be based on the usefulness of their quirks, but Aoyama has such a straight forward quirk, how could it possibly help? After this chapter I started to wonder something, how come we only ever see Aoyama using his quirk with his belt on? Sure it could be a safety measure (like X-Men Cyclops’ shades), but what if the belt was just a tool? And we don’t actually know what Aoyama’s quirk is? Truthfully, that would have been hard to get by the design company, but I like the theory so I an gonna bypass that fact for a moment. If Aoyama’s “quirk” is simply the belt, imagine the potential of him having a hidden quirk, or worse yet, he could give the belt to someone like Toga and boom, suddenly the shape-shifter also has the original’s “quirk.” Toga would be indistinguishable from Aoyama, and since his personality is so wacked, have small/major changes in personality probably would be overlooked, the same way that Toga was able to replace Camie so well. ((this could also mean that Aoyama isn’t the traitor but simply had his place switched based on the recommendation of the real traitor. Basically the Six Braves situation where “oh you are the traitor, now the number is good. Oh wait there’s another? Then there is another traitor?”))

Ok. I’ve tired myself out. I’m done, tapping out. Thank you for reading, sorry it was a long post, but I feel that it was needed to get my thoughts out there. So thank you again for reading, I hope you all have a great day.

#bnha #bnha spoilers #bnha thoughts #bnha theories #katsuki bakugou #todoroki shouto #Yoarashi Inasa #camie bnha #endeavor #deku midoriya #aoyama yuuga #toga himiko

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stompsite · 7 years ago

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On The Importance of Caring

Some time ago, I invited a friend over to watch one of my favorite movies with me. I was excited to share one of my favorites, sure that he’d enjoy it. Everything started out great, but my friend received a text, pulled out his phone, started texting back, and then, half an hour into the movie, looked up at me blankly and said ‘I don’t get this. Can we watch something else?’ I wanted to scream. He wasn’t paying attention to the movie! Of course he didn’t get it!

That’s an extreme case, but it illustrates an important point: if people don’t connect with your story, they’ll want to try something else. My friend created his own problem, but he’s far from the only person to struggle with following a movie. Heck, I’m a pretty smart dude who makes a living as a critic and game developer, I went to school to learn how to make and explain movies, and I still struggle to follow what’s going on in some stories.

What’s the point of watching a movie we aren’t connected to? David Mamet, one of the best living playwrights, once said “ANY TIME TWO CHARACTERS ARE TALKING ABOUT A THIRD, THE SCENE IS A CROCK OF SHIT.” He wrote it just like that, in all caps, in a letter to the writers of a television show he was working on.

It’s important to note that your audience doesn’t need to understand your story, and that’s why I haven’t used the word until now. It’s important that they connect to it emotionally. I loved watching Twin Peaks: The Return last summer, but I definitely didn’t understand that final episode. Emotionally, I connected with it, and it left a lasting impression on me, but I can’t tell you what was actually happening in that episode.

We make art for two primary reasons: to teach people things and to process emotions. Most of the former stuff is what you get in school, like “see spot run,” or religious instruction, like Jesus’ parables. Most of the stuff we make is about emotional journeys. You might be watching an exciting action movie or a drama about coping with loss, but whatever the case is, you’re doing it to get some emotional experience out of it. The worst thing that can happen, then, is an emotional disconnect from the work.

The key to connecting to a work is emotional engagement.

So, in fiction, over the millennia, storytellers have developed tools for keeping audiences engaged. Some folks are good at it. Others aren’t. Steven Spielberg is particularly great; Jaws is a masterpiece of tension; we watch it because it excites us, and Spielberg has made dozens of great movies that resonate with audiences around the world.

It’s not a science, though. Emotions aren’t like programs; you can’t input the same information to every human and expect the same output. You can ballpark it, but we’re all going to react in different ways. I can’t really tell you how I feel when watching Alien other than “it always grabs my attention,” but I know some people who roll their eyes at how dumb it is and others who are too scared to watch it all the way through.

We know some stuff works; dogs are good boys, so if a dog dies, the audience will probably be sad. That said, we also know that you have to earn the emotions you want; you can’t just kill a dog and make the audience sad, the audience has to care that the dog. If the dog is a bad junkyard dog that harries our protagonists, we probably aren’t going to be nearly as sad if it dies.

One of the biggest problems in movies is that they forget to earn their emotion. A monster attacking New York is a much bigger-scale problem than a couple in New York going through a divorce, but Godzilla is not as emotionally impactful to most people as Kramer vs Kramer is. We care more about Ted Kramer losing his son than we do about a bunch of people whose names I’ve forgotten facing off against Zilla. That movie was so bad, by the way, that Toho doesn’t even consider Zilla to be a ‘real’ Godzilla.

So it’s hard to get people to care, and a lot of work has to go into making them care, but even if you pull that off, they might struggle anyways. One reason that most television shows weren’t serialized for most of the 20th Century is that people might miss an episode and have no idea what was going on.

Arrested Development was a show that required its audience to watch every episode. The Simpsons works because every episode ends where it began. If a Simpsons season airs out of order or you miss an episode, you can still understand what’s going on. If the same thing happens in Arrested Development, nothing makes sense anymore.

I spoke with a TV writer who worked on Boston Legal, who explained that every episode was an exercise in reintroducing their characters; even non-serialized shows still need to help the audience connect to the characters. You can’t assume anyone knows what’s going on; some of the most successful television shows on the planet are successful because even channel surfers can tune in and grok things.

In games, it can be worse. You can watch a movie in a single sitting; it might take some patience, especially if you’re used to checking your phone every ten minutes, but you can make it through. Procedural TV shows are successful because each episode works as a stand-alone story. In contrast, most games can take days, weeks, and even months to complete. Heck, I started Company of Heroes four years ago and I’m still not finished with it.

That’s a lot of words to make a simple point: all stories need to make sure the audience connects with ‘em on an emotional level, but games need to do it the most, because it’s harder to connect to games emotionally than anything else, because it’s so easy to distract audiences.

If you asked me what I thought of Assassin’s Creed Origins, I’d tell you that it’s one of the best games in the series. If you asked me about the writing, I’d tell you that it’s pretty good; several people in my Twitter feed have noted that Bayek, the game’s protagonist, speaks differently to adults than he does to children, but not in a way that feels condescending. He’s friendly, warm, and open. He’s a good man and father, but one who has been wounded by some ugly circumstances, including the murder of his son.

I like Bayek almost as much as I like Ezio Auditore, the protagonist of Assassin’s Creed II, which remains the best game in the series, but more on that in a moment.

Origins has an unfortunate problem, which is in the way it introduces characters.

Since I’m talking about the story of Origins, we’re gonna get into spoiler territory. Normally, I don’t care all that much about issuing spoiler warnings, because my assumption is that if you’re reading criticism of a game, you should expect spoilers, but it’s a recent enough game that I’ll be on the safe side and offer you one now.

The game begins with Bayek assassinating… some guy. We’re not really sure who this guy is or why, but Bayek doesn’t really like him that much. Then he fights his way out of some ruins and meets another guy, who is a friend of some kind. We’re not really sure why they’re friends or what their relationship is, and when that guy dies later in the game, most of us probably didn’t care all that much, because the guy gives us like two early quests, and that’s the extent of our relationship with him.

You know whose death people do care about? Aeris Gainsborough, because we spend a lot of time with her in the game; she’s not just someone we meet once and then forget about on our wacky adventures until she dies, she’s someone we build a relationship with; her death matters because she matters to us.

Some of you might want to protest at this point that Bayek is Bayek and I am Me, and I cannot connect to Bayek’s friends the way he does, and that’s true. Have you ever heard of the rule “show, don’t tell”? That rule exists as a means of leveraging empathy to help people connect to a story. If someone says “Sarah is crying because her dog died,” you might feel nothing, because you don’t know who Sarah is or that her dog died. You can rationally understand that a dog dying is a sad event, but you are unlikely to connect to Sarah on an emotional level. If Sarah is your best friend, and she calls you on the phone in tears because her dog, Spot, who you used to play fetch with in the park, was hit by a car, then you’re going to feel a lot more strongly about it.

So Bayek is angry and he’s talking about some guys with weird animal names and how he’s going to kill them. He talks about how he’s been gone for a while but now he’s back. He talks about being a medjay, which is never really explained in depth, but it sounds like a kind of Egyptian Sheriff, who roams the land righting wrongs.

There are two problems here. First, we’re processing this intellectually, not emotionally, so it doesn’t really resonate with us. Second, the writers appear to be doing their best to approach this realistically. What I mean is, Bayek isn’t like “ugh, I’ve lost my memory, please explain how everything works?” or “hmm, I’ve forgotten you, who are you? Please tell me who you are.” Some games approach this with more subtlety; I love Half-Life because nobody knows what’s going on, not just you. There’s nothing to explain.

Origins clearly understands that awkward exposition can be annoying, so it avoids it and hopes the audience will infer most of what it needs to know… until it decides to flashback back to when Bayek’s son was still alive. Bayek gets to explain a bit about what being a Medjay is to his son, which is a nice, naturalistic way to exposit, and eventually we see how his son was murdered and why he’s mad at all these animal dudes that he’s been killing. Then we’re back in the present, doing more quests. At one point, you stumble across Bayek’s house. I did not realize, for the longest time, that this was Bayek’s house. It was just A House. Then Bayek said something and I was like “ooooh… okay.” But I didn’t feel like it mattered to me.

In an ideal world, the audience emotions are in lockstep with the character emotions. At some point, Bayek decides to go stab some more dudes in the face, and find out how his wife has been doing stabbing some other dudes in the face. We’ve never met her and only heard references to her so far, so when we do finally meet her… well, Bayek seems relieved, but this is our introduction to the character. What we feel about this meeting and what he feels about it are two different things; I’ve never met Aya. She’s a stranger. I feel like a third wheel, disconnected from the experience.

Now, I’m not going to take you through the entirety of the game, but this ends up being a consistent problem. When I met Julius Caesar--you know, that Julius Caesar--I didn’t realize it was him at first. It was just some dude. Then it turns out the villain is actually his… sidekick? There’s this guy we meet in like… one scene in the game? Julius, or Jules, if you’re buds, is like “hey, that guy you want to kill who you thought killed your son? He’s not the dude. Also I don’t want you to kill him, I’m going to arrest him.” The real guy is his bodyguard dude who’s standing next to him. At one point he says something like “yes, Caesar, I will ready the guards” or something, but when it’s revealed that he’s the villain, it’s… it just feels kind of random?

Alpha Protocol did this too; I remember playing that game and finding out that the real big bad was… the guy who helped me put on gear at the start of the game or something. Like, a random guy who was in a couple scenes and just kind of forgettable, the game suddenly states “hey, he’s the bad guy! Mwahahaha!”

I think the game writers believe this is clever. “Wow, that guy in the background was an evil villain the whole time!” But this only works if you actually know the character and don’t suspect them. A forgettable character is not the same thing. No One Lives Forever pulled this off by having a drunkard in every single level; it seemed like a funny gag. Every time you met him, it was like “haha, oh, this guy again.” Then it turned out that he was the villain the entire time. Because you recognized him, the revelation mattered. No other game has done this nearly as well. Origins doesn’t do it well at all.

What’s weird is, so many times, you’re playing the game and it just seems to assume that you know who you’re talking to. When people were saying the guy’s name--and I didn’t encounter it enough times to remember it, despite playing almost nothing but Assassin’s Creed Origins from beginning to end in the span of two weeks--I wasn’t matching the name to the face. I didn’t know who the guy was.

Imagine someone going “wow, Bob? I can’t believe Bob was the villain the whole time!” and I’m over here just wondering who Bob is. Who is it that all these people are talking about? I have no idea.

Origins does that a lot.

It’s hard to care when you can’t put a name to a face. It’s hard to care when you feel like you don’t know what’s going on. It’s hard to care when you aren’t feeling what the protagonist is feeling; the best stories are so often about experiencing the same emotional journey as the characters. We should feel scared when they feel scared, exhilarated when they feel exhilarated, angry when they feel angry. If I feel disinterested when Bayek feels angry, then I’m not going to feel satisfied when I kill the men who murdered his son. Instead, I’m going to feel like I just checked off another item on the list.

DOOM is so satisfying because you feel what Doomguy feels. You’re just as happy to kill demons as he is.

Origins is a huge game; I have like 60 hours in it and have tons of sidequests left to complete and locations left to find. I can’t help but feel that some of the game’s resources could have been better spent trying to introduce things better. Instead of an in media res introduction, what if the game had began with Bayek performing the duties of a Medjay, spending time with his wife, helping his son become a better man… and then losing all of that.

There’s a villain we kill named the Crocodile. We meet a little girl, and later, she gets killed. We find out who did it--the Crocodile’s henchmen. We hunt down those henchmen. We meet an “old friend” (who Bayek knows but we don’t), fight alongside her in the arena, and eventually kill the henchmen. Then suddenly our old friend is… somehow a bodyguard for the Crocodile now? The Crocodile is a random old lady who was in the arena crowds, who we literally never met or even saw before? Seeing the Celts, watching how intimidating they were, and killing them because they hurt a kid we knew mattered.

I ran into the Crocodile’s house and killed her before it even dawned on me that the person she was speaking with was Bayek’s old friend.

How much better would it have been if we knew the Crocodile in her human guise? If we knew our old friend from the time before, then meeting her again would feel relieving; we’d be happy to know someone had our back. Her eventual betrayal and service to the Crocodile would actually matter. As it was, when I killed the Crocodile, my ‘old friend’ simply despawned, and I never saw her again. I think the game wanted me to care that she’d switched sides. I barely knew her and she disappeared when I stabbed the Crocodile with my hidden blade.

Speaking of the hidden blade, it’s weird to me that the game never really goes into its creation; it’s the most iconic thing in the entire series, and it just… kinda happens? Bayek accidentally slices his finger off at one point, the end. Assassin’s Creed and Assassin’s Creed II both made it out to be this big, important thing. Losing your finger was the mark of becoming an assassin. The blade was part of that identity. In Origins, blink and you’ll miss it.

Normally, when I criticize a game, I try to talk about why something works or doesn’t, but I try not to say “it might be better if they did this or that.” The reason for this is because I don’t know what it was like for the developers to make the game, and hey, the game’s out now, so it’s not like they can change things. Recommendations are for when I’m consulting on a game, not after the fact.

Here, I’ve talked about what Assassin’s Creed Origins could have done to make things better, and that reason is this: because another game already did it.

Assassin’s Creed II begins with you as Ezio Auditore, punk teenager living a life of luxury with his family in Florence. Everything seems nice. When you meet Leonardo da Vinci, the game makes it clear that, hey, this is Leonardo da Vinci. It treats it as sort of a casual thing, but does so in a way that still makes it clear that you’re meeting an important historical character, as opposed to Julius Caesar’s introduction in Origins.

There’s a confidence in Assassin’s Creed II; the game takes it slow. Instead of murdering villainous scum, you beat up a punk who insulted your sister. You help your brother find feathers. You perform errands for your mother. You learn how to do everything in the small sandbox of Florence before the game properly begins, and in doing so, you build relationships with some of the game’s most important characters.

When your father, who seems like a good and honorable man, is unjustly imprisoned, you feel desperate to save him. When your father and brothers are hanged, your mother suffers a mental breakdown, and you and your sister are forced to go on the run, your plight feels dangerous. You feel angry and helpless.

You don’t know the murderer’s name, but you know his face, because you’ve seen him repeatedly throughout the game. Uncovering his identity--Rodrigo Borgia, is a big part of Assassin’s Creed II’s adventure. Every step of the way, Assassin’s Creed II primes you emotionally for what’s to come. When bad things happen to people you’re allied with, you care, because you’ve built relationships with these people. When you take down the Borgias, it’s so satisfying because you knew them.

A random guy who was Caesar’s sidekick is way less satisfying to kill.

Origins plays better, in some ways, than Assassin’s Creed II. The quests are enjoyable. The world design is neat. I love the map. I love the more modern controls. The combat system is undoubtedly better--it’s a very Dark Souls-inspired controller setup. This is a game that has learned so many important lessons from other great games.

I just wish I cared more about the people I met along the way.

I wanted to post this last month, but then I got hospitalized. Oops. Turns out I’m diabetic and I have a heart condition that requires surgery. It took a lot out of me. Really sorry this one’s being posted in April instead of March. I’m hoping to publish a lot more this month, though!

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lilietsblog · 7 years ago

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LETS GO MIRAI NIKKI LIVEBLOG THIS TIME HOPEFULLY WITH SCREENSHOTS

(update: nope didnt work. guess i do have to save the pics separately and not just copy-paste them into an rtf o well)

last time on: is Gasai trying to kill them??? i have no idea last time she was onscreen they (she and Yukki) were drinking soda from the vending machine????

I LOVE AKISE AND HIS FACIAL EXPRESSIONS SO MUCH like theres the normal guy freaking out and then theres this beautiful white haired disaster

meanwhile I think Yuno is??? roleplaying??? like she counts on him being non-responsive to play out her fantasy of being a caring housewife? anyway yeah she's done this offscreen huh. that was a jarring transition

AND SUDDENLY OPENING its somehow SUDDEN every time and I admire that man I love this opening so much and I cant take a single screenshot reflecting how awesome it is because the entire Thing is constant movement so hey Akise whatcha thinking man I love just the CONTRAST Akise:

Other people:

what is it with me and characters who never show their emotions on their face or in their voice but act exclusively based on them??? like theres this very specific anime trope of a white haired character who is stoic as fuck but instead of making rational decisions motivated by human people logic they do 100% self-destructive things based on curiosity / love / sense of duty / whatever the fuck else and in the end they appear to be missing precisely one emotion and that's self-preservation (yes self preservation is totally an emotion look it up) Akise is that exact trope and I LOVE IT SO FUCKING MUCH meanwhile, Yuno is having trouble feeding an unconscious prisoner... what an unexpected problem that could in no way be foreseen. let me guess: she's going to try to wake him up so he can swallow his damn katsudon ah no instead Hinata intervenes. hon SHE BEAT HIM UP AND TIED HIM TO A CHAIR HOW MUCH DO YOU THINK SHE CARES IF HE WANTS KATSUDON. what made you think speaking up was a good idea here

theres a meme of 'ask someone whos not in the fandom to interpret whats going on in this picture' but you know i think random ppl would identify this situation 100% correctly +- who Hinata is to Yukki. this anime is a cultural icon "Aren't you Yukiteru's girlfriend? Can't you tell?" I love the moon logic this anime operates on, that people inside it are forced to work within. Hinata knows how to put it in the one and only way Yuno would be willing to engage with it, ha. Aaaand looks like it's less roleplaying and more delusion. oh Yuno ah she figures out how to make him open his mouth by pressing on his jaw Yuno honey maybe the police wont come after HIM but after the shit you pulled it sure as fuck will come after YOU then again according to Akise it was coming after you anyway I guess I'm morbidly curious as to exactly how Yuno is going to organize Yukki peeing >_< huh, a sock aaaand Akise goes for the win! two skulls alas I already know One Spoiler that they are her parents, and her actions Almost Kinda Make Sense in that dream logic way so I think last time we saw the bodies they were mummies? but now that's definitely skeletons. huh

okay I'll be honest this is a reaction I did not predict this anime keeps surprising me with happenings that make perfect sense in retrospect, I really respect that about it OH IS THIS THE SCENE THAT SCREENSHOT SET WAS FROM NO I THINK THAT WAS YUKKI ASKING HER but Akise what the fuck are you counting on, that she'll come murder you in person??? I doubt all three of you could overpower her in Murder Mode tbh did you see her with an axe oh right you didnt :>

OH HEY THAT'S CLEVER I like how Yuno goes between 100% self-delusion about Yukki and painful 100% sane clarity about the horrible stuff with the other option being relatively normal interactions with Yuuki, memory suppression about murders and cheerful willingness to kill anyone for Yukki I think that second option really is better for her long-term )= you two do you realize she hears you as well maybe shut up okay no not really -I- know she's thinking because of the camera movement and stuff, -they- don't aaand she laughs. i dont think anyone (other than Akise I guess) saw this coming okay yeah looks like the gamble failed. the mind-preservation instinct of retreating into delusion overpowered the more mundane concerns so that's totally ventilation up there huh. I'm not sure if the gas plan will work for her huh so hum moment of truth WILL Akise send the email to the police or was that just a threat? (orrr the police might know already? he might have told That Nice Cop Guy about it) awww Kousaka's dying message is kinda cute

kinda superfluous - the police already know who they're looking for - but nice AHAHAHA POST LIMIT THAT'S KINDA HILARIOUS THAT'S WHY EVERYONE ELSE JUST USED THE MEMO FUNCTION ah no the rank increased fair enough wait what????? what the fuck @ Deus ah okay to clarify: what the fuck @ 8th well hey it worked out! I still quesiton a ventilation duct in a gassing room but hey I guess there was a lot of gas and Yuno didn't see a reason to conserve it and Kousaka's question is of course why the fuck is Yuno in her underwear. I mean... fair enough, I'm kinda curious too omfg

HELLO POLICE I WOULD LIKE TO REPORT A MURDER oh right... bad joke anyway I like how camera doesn't play along with Kousaka, while he's saying he's the ultimate weapon he's literally blocked by Yuno's head. we know who the main character is oh hey Yukki is coming to his senses! but can't talk huh right I figured it'd be the soda

*whaps with newspaper* NO NO BAD YUNO STOP THAT (she's drawn so prettily tho damn <3)

oh my sweet summer child you don't know the rules of this game AT ALL hum and the girls can't escape the same way he did because they aren't tall enough dude she's gone up against like five diary owners already and came up on top every time you don't know who you're challenging

huh she actually agrees to play the game wonder if that's genuine or if she has a plan like, I can imagine she's just been pulled into the situation and the role of the big bad setting up traps enough to enjoy toying with people and not just getting her way at the very least she hasn't axe-murdered him... or Hinata for that matter... yet

SERIOUSLY WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED it definitely wasn't just one event tho. Yuno doesn't act like someone who used to be a normal healthy kid in a supportive environment until One Bad Thing Happened and took their entire world. No, Yuno is acting like someone who'd built up the dissociation/delusion defense mechanisms over a long, long time, like, say, a victim of abuse who finally snapped and then didnt find a way to snap back I just wanna knooooow

OH MY GOD SHE SOUNDS LIKE SHE HAS A PLAN IS IT NECROMANCY IS SHE GONNA DRESS UP YUKKI AND HINATA AS HER PARENTS WHAT THE FUCK hum what did Yukki realize that's not a key is it?

IT ACTUALLY WORKED I CAN'T BELIEVE aaand

yeah at least she didn't kill him... immediately hum

Hinata and Yukki are both tied up so I'm not sure what they can do together behind Yuno's back but I know a foreshadowing shot when I see one for all that this anime keeps genuinely surprising me with twists, it does take care to make the events easy to follow, and I like that this is Quality Storytelling

yeah but it would have shown a Dead End, right??? or does it not work like that because it's like a 'secondary' diary, an offshoot of the 8th??? I wonder

AHAHHA sorry Yuno you're used to being up against diary owners, but so is Yukki, and he's been growing more competent at this too

NICE and she'd given him his own diary -> ???? brilliant decision but seriously if Hinata did something to Yukki wouldn't that be predicted orrr I guess Yukki's actions were actions of a diary owner so when he made a new decision based on his diary (again, brilliant decision) it changed he prediction ooooohhh she kicked the key that wasn't doing anything to Yukki in itself, it just enabled Yukki to act, which, again, the actions of a diary owner three diary owners????? please tell me that's Akise and Mao and oh right Kousaka was the third one the math doesn't add up :x I think the three diary owners would be able to find them bc of Kousaka's Diary and that's the 8th's plan

this must look so utterly surreal from the side

Yuno? You're not going to drug me and tie me up and try to kill my friends, are you? This girl seriously needs to learn how normal relationships work and I Yearn to learn what the fuck fucked her up like that.

BAD MOVE YUNO HE ALREADY TRIED THAT THIS IS THE RESULT

congrats Yuno you Fucked That Up

sorry but... yeah. you deserve this

???? someone in the cast lives in an orphanage??? I'm calling Akise in that case

oh nm it's something else huh

ah that's what it was oh Kousaka everything about you was a bad idea ...

... what

it really, really fucking isn't Yukki acted on information he had, and made the best decisions he had available. but he can't control other people's actions

...are these... the apprentice diary owners? how does the system work, anyway? how does the 8th send them after anyone? Kousaka has no clue...

uh was the dramatic slo mo effect in-universe too??? they were kind of racing on opposite lanes that couldn't have taken more than like. two seconds

see that's not wrong but. you really need to up your girlfriend game dammit im just rooting for Yuno in all this. you go girl. you fight your inner demons and figure out a happy ending for yourself damn that felt like a really long episode. probably because of the screenshots here's a proposition of a new function for the tumblr staff: uploading .rtf files automatically, splitting into several posts if they are too big. thats the kind of convenience the social media is supposed to offer, right? oh hey Murmur's diary! third installment of the You Saved Me series

beautiful

you naive fucking child oh my god Murmur

MURMUR NO

so was this, like, a dream or something? hum interesting

#liliet watches mirai nikki #still no screenshots

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seriouslycromulent · 7 years ago

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Midnight, Texas pilot reaction

So after binge-watching season 1 of Preacher on Hulu (I liked it, but I don’t have cable so I have to wait awhile to see season 2), I decided to get my next supernatural drama-edy fix from this new show that premiered on Monday called Midnight, Texas.

I never watched True Blood, so I didn’t go into it with any preconceived notions simply because the author of those books penned the original tales that created this series. And I’m glad I didn’t. Otherwise, I’ll have been distracted by what did and didn’t match the source material.

Even though it’s only the pilot, I really liked the premise and I’m interested to see what happens next. So in typical me fashion, here’s a not-so-brief rundown of my train of thought on the series premiere.

Warning: Here there be spoilers...

Who names their child “Manfred?” Seriously? That’s an Old Country name from way back. Does anyone call him Manny? Fred? Freddy? I think it’s interesting that no one comments on how unusual his name is for this day and age. But then again, it’s Midnight.

Writers will you please, please, please explore the voices Manny heard while he was walking through the pawn shop at the beginning. There must be 3 seasons’ worth of stories to tell in that store alone.

I don’t trust Bobo. My Spidey sense says he’s not the harmless cowboy everyone in town makes him out to be.

Typically, budding romances and flirting in the first episode makes my skin itch, but I don’t mind Creek so much. There’s something genuine there that doesn’t feel forced, unlike a lot of other fantasy shows where the romance feels melodramatic beyond all reason. (I’m looking at you CW lineup.)

Doctore!!! OK. He’s playing Lemuel, the vampire, but Peter Mensah will always be my Doctore. Spartacus fans will know why. ;-)

Interesting take on the vampire lore. It’s not just blood he feeds on, but carnal energy as well. Hmmm, noted. And his fangs don’t retract. ... Hmmm.

I don’t care for Olivia, the hit woman/non-musician. Just sayin’. She’s annoying.

That has to be the saddest small town picnic I’ve ever seen. It’s both adorable and sad. It’s sadorable.

I knew he shouldn’t have eaten those cookies! I said he didn’t know who the hell made them or what they were laced with. Tsk-tsk.

The makeup job on Aubrey’s body was amazing! Their makeup and costume team deserves some serious kudos for that one. Good job!

That is one severe-ass hairstyle on the female police officer. Could they make her look any more homely? Just because she has a no-nonsense job doesn’t mean she can’t love her hair enough to not pull it back so tight. Just sayin’.

I love how the association with witchcraft is still intertwined with lesbian women. It’s like society can’t think of a better way to condemn the practice of witchcraft than to marry it with being a lesbian. LOL! ... Silly society. Will you ever change?

I like the Reverend already. Don’t know why. I just do.

Unfortunately, the special effects on some of the spirits during the conjuring scene didn’t look very good. Their makeup and costume department may be on point, but the show needs to work on their effects budget and attention to detail.

Interesting how they made the witch on the show a Wiccan. I appreciate the fact that she’s a woman of color, but it does annoy me a bit when media portrays all peaceful, loving witches as Wiccan. As if you can’t be a peaceful witch without the Wiccan faith. But I suspect most of the writers (and the public) don’t know that not all witches are Wiccan anyway. ... I’ll leave it alone.

Jason Lewis. Still yummy after all this time. ::heartfelt sigh:: And his character, Joe, is a tattoo artist. And he’s in a relationship with an equally handsome Latin man. ... Oh yeah, and he has wings. Angel wings. But noticeably, when he was described by Creek, she never called him an “angel.” She just said he watched over everyone.

I’m already in love with Manny’s caravan and I don’t know why. Also, if his family traveled a lot and he comes from a long line of fortune tellers, is that the show’s way of telling us he’s of Roma descent? Not that you have to be Roma to have the gift and travel around a lot, but writers often like to cling to the same mythos the public is used to when they’re delving into a variety of supernatural characters. I hope they explore that further.

Manny is one crappy liar. And Olivia and Lem didn’t buy his story at all about why he said “Oh” when he learned the town sat on a vortex of mystical energy.

Why doesn’t Manny just change his phone number? If he has no friends or family, who’s he worried about not being able to reach him? If you don’t want the sharks to call you, then change your number, dude.

Again, I wish the special effects were better. Joe’s wings coming out of his back looked like CGI from about 10 years ago, even for television. Once they were fully formed, the wings looked fine. But the transformation? Not so much.

Fiji’s cat talks!! OMG! Her cat talks! And he has a Southern drawl. I love it!

Peter Mensah is 57 and he still has a body like that? Well, damn.

I was impressed not by Fiji’s ability to crumple the front end of the cop’s car, but the fact that she used her powers to uncrumple it once she decided to let them go. Now that’s power.

Whatever is under that house is pretty upset that Bobo isn’t nearby any more. And since we don’t know if he has any powers, I’m interested to find out how he’s connected. Lem only said that Bobo was human, but open-minded. That could mean a host of things.

This was a pretty decent pilot and the show looks like it has a lot of potential, but ... it’s on NBC, which makes me want to get out now before they lure me in with 13 episodes, then cancel it.

That, and I’m still pissed at how they handled Constantine. Bastards.

#midnight texas #peter mensah #jason lewis #fandom #constantine #charlaine harris

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